Jeanne Pissarro, Called Cocotte, Reading

Painted in 1899, this intimate portrait shows Pissarro's daughter Jeanne, affectionately called Cocotte, reading at Éragny. Pissarro frequently used family members as models throughout his career, finding in domestic subjects an antidote to the commercial pressure of producing saleable landscapes. Cocotte was one of his youngest children and appeared in several of his late figure paintings. The image of a woman reading carried feminist associations in late nineteenth-century art — Pissarro, whose anarchist politics included support for women's education and autonomy, painted educated female figures with quiet dignity. These domestic intimacies at Éragny complement the grand urban series he conducted in Paris, revealing the two poles of his late practice.

The figure is modeled in warm tones of ochre and cream, with the reading subject absorbed in quiet concentration. Pissarro's brushwork in figure paintings of this period is freer and less structured than in landscapes — broad, gestural strokes for drapery and looser treatment of facial features, consistent with his return to fluid Impressionism.