Camille Pissarro - St Martin Fair In Pontoise - Pencil Drawing

Rare drawing by Camille PISSARRO representing a show at the St Martin fair in Pontoise (costumed characters on stage), bearing the CP stamp at the bottom right.
If PISSARRO regularly painted and drew this famous annual fair (animal market, animated alleys and stands, fairgrounds...), the theme addressed here, a costume show, is unusual and really pleasant.

This fair was described as follows by a teacher in 1899: "The popular fair… the real Pontoise fair is that of Saint-Martin, which lasts three days… Cattle of all kinds… (cows, pigs, horses…) , fairgrounds, charlatans, merchants, junk dealers, peddlers of all kinds seem to have arranged to meet…more than 30,000 people painfully circulate there in the midst of a deafening noise: it is an extraordinary spectacle, that you have to have seen it to realize it"

The drawings of PISSARRO offering a respectable size and well animated (there are about twenty characters, on stage or among the spectators) are rare on the market and are negotiated in specialized galleries ( or at the salon du dessin...) at much higher prices than ours, 2 to 3 times more expensive !

Graphite on paper

Dimensions of the sheet 22.5 x 30.5 cms (with frame approximately 36 x 44 cms)

Stamp "CP" at the bottom right (reference Lugt L.613e) as well as a numbering in red "182 " (stamp)

On the reverse, stamp of the gallery "Mercédès ROUSSO, formerly Léopold ZBOROWSKI, 26 rue de Seine, Paris"
The Mercédès ROUSSO gallery, active in the 1940s, was specialized in the Impressionists.

On the back, a small pencil sketch of a horse pulling a hay cart.

Good general condition, two small pinholes in the lower corners and a small tear at the bottom of the sheet, in the center
The sheet, which was heavily insolated and had numerous foxing which spoiled the readability of the drawing, was cleaned by a professional restorer specializing in works on paper (the drawing has not undergone any restoration, only the paper), there are still some slight scattered differences in color but the improvement is striking

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