A Seated Peasant Woman

1885 was the year Pissarro changed his method. He was 55, settled with his large family at Eragny-sur-Epte, a village near Gisors northwest of Paris, and he had been painting the farm workers around him for years. That autumn he met Paul Signac and then the much younger Georges Seurat, looked at the dot-by-dot system they were working out, and took it up himself. Laying paint down in small separate touches slowed him to a crawl and cost him buyers. His dealer Paul Durand-Ruel wanted the looser Impressionist handling back, and the next few years were lean ones. Seated country women like this one stayed his subject right through the change. He let the dot go again around 1890, saying it had made it impossible to follow a sensation quickly in front of nature.