A Colheita

Pissarro painted this at Montfoucault, a farm in the Mayenne countryside owned by his friend the painter Ludovic Piette, where he often went to work and to escape money troubles in the city. It shows a harvest at full tilt under a wide, cloud-piled sky, the field warm with cut grain and the figures bent to the labour. He showed it in 1876 at the second Impressionist exhibition, when he and his circle were still being handled roughly by most critics. Plainly seen rural work was Pissarro's lifelong subject more than any other Impressionist's. The canvas was later owned by Gustave Caillebotte, the painter and collector whose bequest helped bring Impressionism into France's public museums.