The Gardener - Old Peasant with Cabbage

This 1900 National Gallery of Art painting shows an old peasant man carrying cabbages in the garden near Pissarro's home at Éragny — a subject that typifies his late engagement with the human presence in the rural landscape. Pissarro consistently depicted agricultural workers, not as picturesque peasant types, but as individuals absorbed in real tasks. The old gardener with his cabbages is a figure of dignity and labour — the kind of subject Millet had pioneered in the 1850s, which Pissarro continued in an Impressionist mode into the new century. The title 'The Gardener' suggests the subject's dignity as worker rather than picturesque type.

Pissarro uses his late loose-Impressionist technique, the figure rendered in warm flesh tones and earth colours against the garden green. The cabbages provide both compositional weight and chromatic interest — their blue-green tones contrasting with the warm ochres of the path and soil. Brushwork is free and confident.