Paysannes au repos

Pissarro depicted rural workers throughout his career, and field workers are to Pissarro what dancers are to Degas. In 1880, Pissarro began what would become a large series of figure paintings focused on rural women, shown at work or, more often, at rest in a rural environment. Pissarro’s scenes of rural leisure contrasted with Jean-François Millet’s depiction of peasants, who were shown for the most part engaged in back-breaking labor, while Pissarro depicted a more relaxed sense of rural labor balanced by plentiful leisure time. Pissarro completed a series of canvases around 1881 of rural women, which mostly depict them in various positions of rest, often seated, leaning, or lying on the ground. In keeping with this series, the four figures in Paysannes au repos wear simple peasant costumes and are depicted as strong and hardy rather than willowy and graceful. Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote in his review of the seventh Impressionist exhibition: “Pissarro exhibits an entire series of peasant men and women. And once again this painter shows himself to us in a new light… The human figure often takes on a biblical air in his work. But not anymore, Pissarro has entirely detached himself from Millet’s memory. He paints his country people without false grandeur, simply as he sees them.” (J.-K. Huysmans, “L’Exposition des Indépendants (7ème Exposition, 1882),” in R90 I, p. 397).These figures are involved in the dynamics of everyday chores, providing an unadorned simplicity, a quality in art that Pissarro consciously developed and prized. Pissarro avoided any signs, expressions, or gestures that could suggest sentimental narration or, more generally, anything emotional, religious or imaginative that would assign precise context to these young women. The figures represented here are seemingly at one with nature and in harmony with each other. Pissarro was always wary of sentimentality, as he was convinced that the most corrupt art was sentimental. Despite their calm, prosaic appearance, these rural female figures are an exceptional representation of Pissarro’s lifelong dream of a utopian world where we are one with nature.

—Joachim Pissarro