LONDON.- Le grand noyer à l’Hermitage, one of a series of ground breaking works by the French Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro is for sale at Bonhams Rau/UNICEF sale in London on 5 December. It is estimated at £200,000-300,000.

The proceeds from the 85 lot sale of works from the renowned collection of the German philanthropist, the late Dr Gustav Rau, will be used to benefit the Foundation of the German Committee for UNICEF – for the children of the world

Le grand noyer à l’Hermitage was painted in 1875 just a year after Pissarro, with Monet and Cezanne and others, had taken part in the landmark exhibition from which the word impressionism derived. Rejected by the official Paris Salon, the principle annual market place for new art, the painters had staged a rival show. A critic derided their work as unfinished and merely giving an ‘impression’ of their subjects and a whole new movement in art had acquired the name b y which is would always be known.

Although Pissarro had exhibited at the Salon many times in the past he had increasingly departed from the official precepts of the artistic establishment focussing more on exploring the real world as he experienced it. This approach, depicting the natural world and the daily lives of workers without weighty symbolic meaning, painted in raw brushstrokes of pigment applied wet on wet, was in direct opposition to the perfect finish and romantic nuance of Corot and his peers. The public was hostile to such vulgar and commonplace scenes and the Academy was scandalised by the sketchy finish.

Le grand noyer à l'Hermitage is a perfect example of Pissarro’s technique at this stage of his career. In its loose, speedy exploration of the play of light through the foliage to the left, and the sympathetic handling of paint in the depiction of a rutted track leading past a strolling peasant to the homestead beyond, the work expresses a great deal of what these pioneering artists were trying to achieve. That it seems so harmonious and natural to modern eyes is a true indication of the success of their revolution.

Pissarro first stayed in Pontoise, 30 miles northwest of Paris, in 1866-68, returning in 1872 following the destruction of his studio at Louveciennes during the Franco-Prussian War. He lived at various addresses in the town, mostly in the neighbourhood of L'Hermitage, until 1882. His more than 300 paintings of the town and surrounding area chart this incredibly fertile period. The exact location of Le grand noyer à l'Hermitage was identified by the artist's son Ludovic-Rodo as the rue de la Côte du Jalet, now rue Victor Hugo, the old road from the hamlet into the centre of Pontoise, and a short walk from 18, rue de l'Hermitage, where Pissarro was living at the time. The white house in the centre of the composition, with its characteristic white gable, is the Maison Rondest, now 51, rue Victor Hugo, which belonged to Armand Rondest. Rondest was a successful local businessman who owned a number of properties in the village and was, among other things, Pissarro's greengrocer