Camille Pissarro

Vachère au Bord de l'Eau Delteil-Cailac 93, Leymarie & Melot 93 etching with drypoint, 1890, on light-weight cream laid paper, with the Van Gelder watermark, a superb impression of the exceedingly rare 4th state (of 8)*, with rich burr, annotated "4e état, n° 1" and titled in pencil by the artist, with full margins and deckle edges, several smudgy fingerprints in the lower margin, annotated "unique" in an encircled pencil comment in the lower right corner (by Jean Cailac?), otherwise in quite fresh condition   P. 199x134 mm., S. 250x162 mm.

Provenance: a private Parisian collection

This exceedingly rare impression of the 4th state is practically completed, and there were only 9 or 10 trial proofs pulled of the final state (cf. the final state impression held in the Bibliothèque Nationale at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6955226q.item)

Camille Pissarro made considerable efforts in finalizing this print, even though he never produced an edition per se in his lifetime; he was not really interested however in producing editions for the market, much like Degas, but more simply drawn to the artistic possibilities of the medium.  It is however one of his most well-known prints as it was later published in a large posthumous edition in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in May 1904.

*  "De toute rareté, sinon unique" ("of the utmost rarity, if not unique"), according to Delteil.