Camille Pissarro : “Young Peasant Girls Resting in the Fields near Pontoise” (1882)

Pissarro’s early impressionist works shocked contemporary critics, accustomed, as they were, to the strict conventions of academic realism. His loose, dabbling brushwork sought to capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details. In an era when historical, mythological and religious themes rested at the very pinnacle of fine art, he painted the everyday lives of ordinary people. Rather than blending his pigments to precision, he juxtaposed complementary colors to create bright, vibrant contrasts, and avoided the dampening effect of black by painting shadows in the reflected light of their surroundings. If academic realists were uneasy about the advent of photography, Pissarro and the impressionists had no cause for concern; their object was not to represent the world as it exists, but as it is perceived.

In the early 1880s Pissarro entered a neo-impressionist period, during which he sought to “educate the public” by painting ordinary country folk in realistic settings. Unadorned by any hint of romanticism, carrying no overt political message, these works were nonetheless described as “revolutionary” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In 1885 he would meet Georges Seurat and Paul Signac and have his dalliance with pointillism before finally returning to impressionism with renewed vigor.