A Cowherd at Valhermeil, Auvers-sur-Oise

Painted in 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, this Metropolitan Museum canvas shows a cowherd tending cattle in the countryside near Auvers-sur-Oise — a village that also attracted Daubigny and later Van Gogh. The cowherd and pastoral subject connects Pissarro's work to Millet's celebration of agricultural life, reinterpreted through Impressionist light and directness of observation. Auvers lies just across the Oise from Pontoise, and Pissarro explored both banks of the river throughout his Pontoise years. This painting was made at the moment of Impressionism's public emergence.

Pissarro uses a loosely structured composition with the cowherd and cattle placed in the middle ground against a high horizon. The foreground is built in varied greens and ochres, with characteristic broken brushwork suggesting the texture of grass and soil. The sky occupies the upper third in the airy, open manner of his mature plein-air style.