Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Hippolyte Petitjean

Boat on a Pond

ca. 1912 - 1929
Watercolor on Paper.
30 x 48 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1999.13
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Like many of hippolyte Petitjean's works, his watercolours carry no indication of date and place. Although they are very close in style to those painted by both Pissarros-the father and the son-in the years 1866-1890, according to Robert Herbert, the art historian of neo-Impressionism, they were in fact painted in the last years of his life, from 1912 onwards, when the artist had moved back to the neo-impressionist technique he had abandoned at the turn of the century. These watercolours, which constitute the most interesting part of his work, have been highly sought-after by art collectors ever since they were revealed to the public in the exhibition organised in 1955 with the support of the artist's daughter in the gallery of the "Institut de Paris", which was followed by a second exhibition at the David D. Findlay gallery in New York in 1959.

Throughout his career, Petitjean systematically moved back and forth from neo-Impressionism to a more academically inspired art, in the style of Puvis de Chavannes. This attempt to reconcile tradition and modernity found its best expression in his pure and thoughfully constructed landscapes, in which the painter abandons all allegorical or mythological allusion. Here he uses very freely the technique of colour division, applying the paint rapidly with small brushstrokes, in a loose network which lets the white paper show though. Thus, he sets off the brightness of the colours, without tarnishing them by superimposing them. In this way, Petitjean achieves a very decorative, fairly bright effect, but very far from that obtained with a more rigorous use of colour division according to the strict principes of the divisionist method, as was understood by Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross.

Here, there is very little drawing, few outlines. The artist depicts the scene in large masses: the water, the sky and the tree in the middle, framed on either side by the dense vegetation of the verges. He clearly enjoys opposing the density of the boat and the vegetation-represented with more intense colours and denser touches-to the lighter and more spaced out strokes of the water and the sky. He then concentrates on describing the overlapping of the colours, particularly the bright sunny yellow which spreads into the blue of the sky. Petitjean also avoids marking too neatly the lines which separate the vegetation from its reflection, thus creating a poetical landscape, more evocative than precisely described, and is more interested in depicting the effect of the light-probably that of the end to the day when the warm and coloured shadows become longer and blur the perception of the limits which separate reality from its reflections, and the object from the shadow it projects.

Painted in a style very similar to the previous work, again this watercolour has no indication of place or date. It might be a landscape of the Ile-de-France, but the massive and squat Romanesque bell-tower could be that of the village of Donzy-le-Perthuis, near Mâcon, in the department of Saône et Loire, often depicted by the artist. In fact, Petitjean regularly went back to his native region, and left many watercolours of Donzy-le-Perthuis similar to this one. Curiously, the bell-tower at the centre of the composition is the only object which has not been painted in divided strokes. This makes it appear as an isolated element, and may suggest that the artist was reluctant to use, for the solid character of a building, a technique he applied more willingly to evoke fluid elements, such as vegetation or nature in general.

Here we find again Hippolyte Petitjean's taste for simple and readable compositions. Isolated on a low hill, at the foot of which some houses can be made out, the bell-tower is framed on either side by the trees bordering the road to the village, and is clearly played off against the hills in the background. Again, the artist has simplified the colourful composition by isolating the elements of the landscape in large zones with clearly defined shades: the foliage of the trees and the triangle of the road in the foreground framed by the blue shadows of the trees, then the bright sunny yellow of a wheat field and the paler blue of the hills in the distance. The sinuous lines of the tree trunks and boughs, the more sweeping touches which represent the foliage, introduce a slight movement in this sober and geometrical composition. The dispersion of the small coloured dots creates a general sense of vibration, reinforced by the choice of colours. The light shades, enhanced by some notes of pure colours-yellow, red and blue-which liven up this extremely classic composition, create the illusion of light and movement. Thus, this watercolour embodies the charming art of the shy and modest Petitjean. It shows at the same time his naivety and his spontaneity, his faithfulness to tradition and his over-tempered boldness. It expresses the contradictory inclinations which marked the artist's entire career, dominated by the continuous alternation between two temptations: remaining the admirer of Puvis de Chavannes and choosing a moderate art, or being an artist in search of novelty, sensitive to the modernity of colour as understood by the neo-Impressionist painters.



Marina Ferretti
 

20th Century19th Century - French paintingWork on paperWatercolorPaper
Listen
Download image Print page

Products and publications

The Impressionists and Photography. Exhibition catalogue. English Hard Cover

The Impressionists and Photography. Exhibition catalogue. English Hard Cover

38.00 € 36.10 €

De Palacio Villahermosa a Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Historia de un edificio

De Palacio Villahermosa a Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Historia de un edificio

28.00 € 15.50 €

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

34.00 € 15.50 €

Catalog Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (English)

Catalog Walid Raad: Cotton Under My Feet (English)

25.00 € 23.75 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Hippolyte Petitjean
Hippolyte Petitjean
Village and Bell-Tower
ca. 1912 - 1929
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
The Barn (Cow in the Stable)
1912
Gustave Loiseau
Gustave Loiseau
View of Notre-Dame, Paris
1911
Henri Martin
Henri Martin
The Sower
ca. 1914 - 1920
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
Boat on a Pond. Barca en un estanque, c. 1912-1929
Boat on a Pond
Hippolyte Petitjean

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación.

Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Coleccion Carmen Thyssen.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotografico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
Boat on a Pond. Barca en un estanque, c. 1912-1929
Boat on a Pond
Hippolyte Petitjean

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The Photo Library of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works of the Carmen Thyssen Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialised publications, you should contact the Photo Library by email at the e-mail: @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail: @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022