Peasant Women under the Trees at Moret

Peasant Women under the Trees at Moret, 1902, was painted at Moret-sur-Loing, the small town on the Seine where Alfred Sisley had lived and worked until his death in 1899. Pissarro's visit to Moret three years after Sisley's death may have carried a commemorative quality, revisiting a landscape associated with his fellow Impressionist. By 1902 Pissarro was at the height of his late urban series but continued painting rural subjects, particularly in Normandy and around Paris. The pairing of working peasant women under trees connects to his lifelong political interest in agricultural labour and the dignity of rural work.

Pissarro's treatment of figures in a landscape at this date combines his urban series colour sophistication with the more earthy, varied palette of his rural subjects. The dappled light through the trees creates a natural broken-colour pattern that he builds through varied short strokes of green, ochre, and warm shadow.