Artwork · 19th century · Camille Pissarro

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The Harvest, Pontoise (La Récolte, Pontoise)

Camille Pissarro1881Oil on canvas46 × 55.2 cm

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At a glance

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On a sunny hillside field, three farm workers bring in the harvest, filling sacks as they go.
The French Impressionist Camille Pissarro painted it in 1881 at Pontoise, a village northwest of Paris.
Short strokes woven tightly together build the earth, grass and sky, in a subject Pissarro returned to again and again: people working the land.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the woman bending over at the left. She wears a blue apron and holds the mouth of a bulging sack with both hands. Her face is in shadow, but you can feel the effort in her back and arms. The blue of the apron is built from many short strokes laid one over another.
Look at the man in the white shirt in the middle. He stands with his back to us, holding a tool in his hand. A gray sack sits at his feet. Blues and greens slip in among the whites of his shirt, so sunlight and shade fall on him together.
Zoom in on the young woman crouching at the right. She reaches one hand down to the ground to pick something up, and a round basket sits in the grass to her left. She lifts her head toward her coworkers. The grass around her is a tangle of small green, yellow and blue touches.
Look up the path on the hill at the upper left. A tiny figure stands there. A white head covering and blue clothes are made with just a few dabs of paint. That little figure makes the sloping field feel wide and deep.
Zoom in on the lower left corner. In blue paint are the artist's name and the number 81, marking the year 1881. Even the signature sits lightly on top of the earthy brushstrokes.

When it was painted

In 1881 Pissarro was about fifty and living in Pontoise. He had settled in the village in the early 1870s and painted its fields, orchards and the people who worked them. He had a large family to support, his paintings did not sell easily, and money was a constant worry.

That summer he had visitors. His old friend Paul Cézanne came to paint beside him, and Paul Gauguin, who was still working as a stockbroker, spent his vacation in Pontoise too. The older Pissarro was something like a teacher to younger painters.

Around this time, people began to take up more room in Pissarro's pictures. Farm workers who had once been small dots in the landscape moved forward, their working gestures clear to see. The Metropolitan Museum notes that potato gathering appears again and again in Pissarro's work, in a range of media, over some thirty years.

Pissarro showed work in all eight Impressionist exhibitions, held from 1874 to 1886. This painting later belonged to the New York banker and collector Robert Lehman, and it came to the Metropolitan Museum in 1975 with the rest of his collection.

Look again at the bending woman and her sack. Pissarro painted not just the light on the fields, but a day of hard work under that light.

The painter

Camille Pissarro

1830–1903

When painting this, the artist was about 51 years old

All paintings by Camille Pissarro →

More by the same painter

Jalais Hill, Pontoise1867

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many sacks and baskets can you find in the picture?
Why?Why do you think Pissarro made the workers' gestures clearer than their faces?
What about you?Every potato we eat was picked by someone bending over a field. How much do we know about the people who grow and harvest our food today?

Same period