Camille Pissarro is considered one of the most influential of the Impressionist painters, and is celebrated for his landscapes and depictions of everyday life. From the 1880s, until his death in 1903, Pissarro and his family spent much of their time living in village of Éragny to the northwest of Paris. It was here that his observations of the rural community became a defining feature of his work.

During this period, Pissarro’s interest in the human figure became of greater importance in his art. Seated women were the subject of numerous works, with the artist often enhancing their prominence in the composition to give them a sense of monumentality. ‘Paysannes assises causant’ marks this shift in Pissarro’s pictorial style. Here, the landscape acts as secondary to the women, who command the centre of the painting, rather than sitting within the landscape as was Pissarro’s preferred earlier style. For Pissarro, no subject was too humble, instead choosing to elevate those he depicted and within this lies the radicalism to his art.

In ‘Paysannes assises causant’ a gentle blue hue draws harmony across the scene. The painting is powerful in its simplicity, and Pissarro has replaced the more traditional smooth brushstrokes with short defined ones which modernises the painting.

‘Paysannes assises causant’ comes from a series of paintings of rural women and girls in the landscape, largely seated, from 1881 Examples of these are now in such institutions as the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo (‘Paysannes au repos’) Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Jenne fille à la baguette) National Gallery of Art, Washington (‘Jeune paysanne au chapeau de paille’), National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (La Conversation), Národní Galerie v Praze, Prague (‘Paysanne et enfant revenant des champs, Auvers-sur-Oise’), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (‘La Récolte, Pontoise’).