Peasant reading

By 1896 Grigorescu had settled into the last long chapter of his life, painting the countryside and its people around Campina, north of Bucharest. Peasants, ox-carts and village lanes were his steady subjects now. A peasant reading is a quietly pointed choice for the time. In rural Romania at the end of the 19th century most country people could not read at all, and a book in a labourer's hands carried the hope of a whole reforming generation that wanted to lift the village. Grigorescu paints it without preaching, as an everyday moment caught in soft daylight. He would go on working these rustic themes at Campina until his death in 1907.