Peasant reading,

"Peasant Reading" from 1896, painted on wood rather than canvas, shows Grigorescu's continued experimentation with supports into his late career. Literacy among Romanian peasants was expanding in the late nineteenth century as the national education system developed following independence, and depicting a peasant engaged with written material carried a quietly progressive charge—it asserted the peasant's capacity for intellectual life at a time when that capacity was often doubted by the urban intelligentsia. Grigorescu's choice of subject aligns with his broader project of ennobling rural life without romanticizing it. The wooden support gives the painting a harder, more resistant surface that typically produces a slightly different painterly quality than canvas—sharper edges, different paint behavior. Held by the National Museum of Art of Romania, the work represents Grigorescu's continued investment in peasant subjects even in the final decade of his active career.

Wood as a support provides a rigid, non-absorbent surface that handles paint differently from canvas—smoother transitions are possible, and the ground does not flex under brushwork. Grigorescu may use this to achieve a slightly more precise touch while retaining his characteristic tonal directness.