Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, by whom gifted to
Dr. Th. Gaillard
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 9 December 1936, lot 9
With H.H Clark, Shaftesbury Gallery, London, 1938
Sale; Christie's, London, 6 December 1957, lot 66 (as Landscape with three figures walking)
With The Fine Art Society, London
Private Collection, U.K.
Sale; Phillips, London, 17 November 1998, lot 91, where acquired by the present owner
Private European Collection

Exhibited
London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Spring Exhibition, 8 February-3 April 1907, cat.no.118
London, New English Art Club, Winter Exhibition, 1909, cat.no.9
Southport, Atkinson Art Gallery, Spring Exhibition, 1912, cat.no.320
London, Redfern Gallery, Pointillists and Their Period, 2 Novemeber-9 December 1950, cat.no.46

Literature
W.S Meadmore, Lucien Pissarro, Un Coeur Simple, Constable, London, 1962, p.213-216
Anne Thorold, A Catalogue of the Oil Paintings of Lucien Pissarro, Athelney Books, London, 1983, p.64, cat.no.66

In 1938 the present lot was discovered in the window of a Shaftesbury Avenue gallery by Lucien Pissarro's nephew David Bensusan-Burr, masquerading as a work by Lucien's father the famed Impressionist Camille Pissarro. David sent a detailed description of the picture to Lucien who found it strange that he could not recall such a composition amongst his father's oils, especially as the family were in the process of compiling a catalogue of Camille's works. Lucien made the trip to London to view the work and instantly recognised it, not as one of Camille's paintings, but as one of his own with an added spurious signature and date. Furious, he compiled the necessary evidence and requested that the Imperial Arts League take legal action against the dealer in question. Despite five repeated attempts to seek legal recourse no progress was made as the picture, now sold to a private collection, could not be produced as evidence. In reaction Lucien wrote an article published in The New Statesman outlining the difficulties facing artists wishing to protect their work from misuse. The picture did not reappear again until the late 1950s when a young émigré man approached Lucien's daughter Orovida Pissarro. His mother had been forced to abandon her home in Czechoslovakia and take the long journey, with other refugees, to Palestine. One of the few possessions she had deemed precious enough to flee with was the rolled canvas which Orovida at once identified as Epping, April.