Pissarro had a keen interest in depicting his friends, family, and the normalities of everyday life. His work elevated those that would have been seen as humble subjects by a contemporary audience. Pissarro’s following of left wing politics, and that he himself struggled financially, led the artist to present such subjects as the present with a fresh understanding and approach.

In ‘Étude de paysanne’, Pissarro uses both charcoal and ink washes to depict the woman hard at work. That he has drawn a single figure filling the whole page, suggests that this drawing is a study. Pissarro used drawing as a means to both work out composition and observe life as it happened before him. From 1883 he had an interest in caricature and capturing people, elements of which can be seen in the ‘Étude de paysanne’.

The present drawing relates to two drawings from sketchbooks now in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Pissarro became particularly interested in market scenes in around 1880, using them to depict a microcosm of rural society whose members were a melting pop of different characters.