Femme aux poules
signed with the artist's initials 'C.P.' (lower right)
ink wash, contra crayon and pencil on paper laid down on paper
6 5/8 x 6 3/8 in (16.8 x 16.2 cm)
Executed circa 1895

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Dr. Joachim Pissarro and will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Drawings and Watercolors by Camille Pissarro.

Camille Pissarro's depictions of rural laborers provide an intimate portrayal of the toils of daily life for the men and women of the pastoral heartland, far from the flux of urban life. While Pissarro refrained from romanticizing his subjects, he captured the authenticity of their experience through a filter of dazzling Impressionist techniques or, as seen in the present work, in conversation with the monochromatic simplicity of ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints. Following his introduction to Japanese prints in the late 1860s, Pissarro, in accordance with many other members of the Impressionist movement, became captivated by their radical pictorial qualities. The formal techniques displayed in these works, such as a flattening of perspective, stylization of composition and close cropping of picture space, were later incorporated in their own compositions serving to re-present familiar subjects through fresh and innovative means.

Well familiarized with his subjects, Pissarro's intimate depiction of the female figure in Femme aux poules evokes a sense of empathy and humanity. As the art critic J.K. Huysman stated about Pissarro at the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition of 1882, "Pissarro has entirely detached himself from Millet's memory. He paints his country people without false grandeur, simply as he sees them. His delicious little girls in their red stockings, his old woman wearing a kerchief, his shepherdesses and laundresses, his peasant girls cutting hay or eating, are all true small masterpieces" (quoted in J. Pissarro, Camille Pissarro, New York, 1993, p. 157). Representing the rural lifestyle as pleasant and fulfilling and through a modernized lens, Pissarro offers a radical reinterpretation of the pastoral tradition.

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