The Nap, Peasant Woman Lying in the Grass, Pontoise

The Nap, Peasant Woman Lying in the Grass, Pontoise at the Kunsthalle Bremen, painted in 1882, is among the most unexpectedly direct of Pissarro's figure subjects: a woman simply lying down in a summer meadow, resting. The casual, unselfconscious posture — neither posed nor narratively motivated — was the kind of subject that conventional genre painting could not accommodate: there is no moral, no story, no picturesque quality, just a woman taking a rest in the grass. Yet this is precisely what Pissarro found interesting: the unremarkable physical reality of a person resting in a field, treated with the same seriousness and attentiveness as any more conventionally painterly subject. The Kunsthalle Bremen, which held a significant collection of French and German Impressionism before the Second World War (much of which was sold by the Nazi government), rebuilt its collection in the postwar period and holds this canvas as part of its reconstituted French holdings. The painting's combination of political commitment and formal simplicity is characteristic of Pissarro's most personally felt work.

The figure is placed in close foreground, her horizontal form creating the primary compositional element. Pissarro renders the lush summer grass in varied greens and yellows around her. The woman's clothing — a white blouse, dark skirt — provides tonal contrast to the surrounding vegetation. Brushwork is relaxed and confident.