Two Young Peasant Women

Title

Two Young Peasant Women

Artist

Eric Glaser

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

"Two Young Peasant Women"

Artist: Camille Pissarro (Danish-French, 1830-1903)

Title: Two Young Peasant Women

Object Type: Painting

Date: 1892

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 35 1/4 x 45 7/8 in. (89.5 x 116.5 cm)

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY USA

Current Location: European Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 1973

Inscription: Signed and dated (lower right): C.Pissarro.1892

By virtue of their size, placement, and quiet dignity, these youthful laborers dominate the landscape setting—an open field near Pissarro’s house at Éragny. Sympathetic to anarchist ideals, the artist wanted to preserve the values of agrarian society that were being threatened by the rapid industrialization of France. He began this picture in summer 1891 and completed it in mid-January 1892, a month before the opening of a major exhibition of his work organized by his dealer Joseph Durand-Ruel. Many of the fifty paintings were sold from the show, but Pissarro kept this canvas and gave it to his wife.

Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.

In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the "pivotal" figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the "dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality". Paul Cézanne said "he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord", and he was also one of Paul Gauguin's masters. Pierre-Auguste Renoir referred to his work as "revolutionary", through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".

Text Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Google Arts & Culture

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Additional image editing by Eric Glaser

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July 29th, 2020

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