This very nice and interesting monotype must be added to the very rare corpus of monotypes made by Pissarro between ca. 1879 and 1895. The artist indeed most likely learned the technique in ca. 1879 from Edgar Degas – who had exhibited drawings made with greasy ink and printed at the third Impressionist exhibition of 1877 – when the two artists were working together on the project for a journal of prints entitled Le Jour et la Nuit. However, unlike Degas, who used the technique extensively for fifteen years, Pissarro only made about 25-30 monotypes, the romantic printed drawings as he wrote to his son in April 18941. Melot and Shapiro listed twenty compositions in 1975, to which we can add six monotypes that came up in auctions, including a second printing of Melot/Shapiro no. 4. Of all Pissarro’s monotypes, only two are dated: one in the National Gallery of Art and one in the BNF.

See Barbara Shapiro and Michel Melot, "Catalogue sommaire des monotypes de Camille Pissarro", in Nouvelles de l 'estampe, no. 19, Jan.-Feb. 1975, pp. 16-23