Camille Pissarro - Harvest, Pontoise [1881]

Camille Pissarro - Harvest, Pontoise [1881], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

At the centre of this painting are three figures gathering potatoes; they are united in the composition as they occupy a green, grassy knoll and toil under the shade of a tree. A fourth figure can be seen on the left, his actions unrecognisable from such a distance. All are labouring on a hill that slopes down to the right and occupies the majority of the canvas. 

The theme of potato gathering recurs in Pissarro’s oeuvre in a number of mediums, pencil, gouache, oil, and prints, over a period of thirty years. In the Lehman painting, Pissarro’s treatment of the subject is carefully structured while remaining expressive in tone and in brushwork. The artist is both borrowing a traditional subject matter from the great Barbizon painter Camille Corot, while anticipating the more staccato, broken brushwork of later artists such as Georges Seurat.

[Oil on canvas, 46 x 55.2 cm]