Two Peasant Women in a Meadow (Le Pré)

Two Peasant Women in a Meadow (Le Pré) at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, painted in 1893, belongs to the period of Pissarro's complete recovery from Neo-Impressionism and his return to the freer Impressionist touch that suited his subjects and temperament. The abandonment of pointillism — which he had practised rigorously from 1886 to approximately 1890 — was a decision that cost him his alliance with Seurat and Signac but restored the directness and warmth of observation that his rural subjects demanded. The two peasant women resting in the Éragny meadow are painted with a gentle freedom that contrasts sharply with the laborious dot-by-dot surface of his Neo-Impressionist canvases: the figures are substantial and present, the meadow grasses loose and varied, the overall effect one of unhurried, observational warmth. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston holds one of America's most comprehensive collections of French Impressionism, and its multiple Pissarro holdings from across his career document the full range of his long practice.

Pissarro uses a loose, varied touch that distinguishes the meadow grasses from the women's clothing through texture and colour. The palette is warm and summery. The two figures are placed in the middle ground with the full meadow spreading around them, avoiding the compositional devices of conventional figure-in-landscape painting.