As capinadeiras

In January 1882 the Union Generale bank crashed in Paris and pulled the art market down with it. Paul Durand-Ruel, the dealer carrying the Impressionists on advances, was badly caught, and he paid for the seventh Impressionist exhibition that March all the same, where Pissarro showed more than 30 works.

That is the year of this one. Pissarro was at Pontoise on the Oise north-west of Paris, where he had been living for a decade, and he had turned from open landscape towards figures seen close up, mostly women at work in the fields, which is the subject here. The land around Pontoise was market-garden country, worked in small strips.

He left for the neighbouring village of Osny at the end of that year. The picture has stayed in private hands and has never entered a public collection.