Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), L’île Lacroix, à Rouen, etching, aquatint, maniere grise, drypoint, burnishing, c. 1887. Signed and numbered (No. 1) in pencil lower left, annotated 1er ét?t lower right. Delteil 69, second state (of 2). In very good condition, with full margins (traces of foxing), 4 1/2 x 6 1/4, the sheet 10 3/4 x 13 inches.
A fine impression of this great rarity.
Delteil notes that only a few impressions were made of the first state, and eight impressions of the second.
Although Pissarro himself notes that this is an example of the first state, Delteil shows that in the second state Pissarro burnished the trees and hills at the left, and the water in the lower left corner, as in our example. This would not, of course, be the first known instance in which Pissarro mis-stated the state of the print in his pencil notations.
A related drawing for this composition is at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The plate was cancelled after an edition of posthumous impressions was printed in 1907; they are not, of course, comparable in quality to the rare lifetime impressions, such as the present example.
