Hay Harvest at Éragny

Camille Pissarro's 'Hay Harvest at Éragny' (1901) is one of his late rural subjects from the Normandy village where he lived from 1884 until his death in 1903 — the hay harvest was among the most traditional and visually spectacular of seasonal agricultural events, the countryside of temporary haystacks and the labor of haymakers providing the rural subjects that had interested him throughout his career. His late Éragny works showed his return to the rural subject world after his Rouen and Paris urban series, the countryside around his home providing the immediate material for his most personal late subjects.

Pissarro renders the hay harvest with his mature Neo-Impressionist or post-Neo-Impressionist handling — the agricultural activity depicted with his characteristic combination of social observation (the specific figures of the haymakers at their labor) and atmospheric investigation (the quality of the summer light on the cut hay and on the working figures). His late palette maintained the coloristic richness of his Neo-Impressionist period within a handling less rigidly systematic than his pure divisionist works.