Shepherdess bringing sheep in

By 1886 Camille Pissarro was in his mid-50s and the oldest of the Impressionists, the only painter who would show in all eight of their group exhibitions. That eighth and final show, in Paris that spring, was where the young Georges Seurat unveiled his huge dotted canvas of Sunday crowds on the Grande Jatte. Most of the old group disliked the new method. Pissarro, to their surprise, took it up. He had met Seurat and Signac the year before and began building his own pictures out of small separate touches of pure colour, set side by side so the eye does the mixing. This shepherdess and her flock come from those years. Look closely and the field, the sheep and her skirt are all made of countless little dabs. It was slow, painstaking work, and within a couple of years he gave it up as too laborious and went back to a freer hand.