Girl with a Stick 1881

Camille Pissarro’s *Girl with a Stick*, now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, is composed of thick layers of paint where the artist uses brushstrokes to give a sense of volume and texture to everything he depicts. The figure blends into the landscape, immersed in the play of light and shadow. The painting is heavily influenced by the Impressionist’s interest in the transient effects of light, but Pissarro’s deeper structural investigation creates a tension between the objectivity of observation and the subjectivity of perception. The artist’s exploration into materiality results in a layering effect where the girl and the environment are perceived as being made from the same substance. The girl is not just in the environment, but also of it. Pissarro emphasizes the flatness of the picture plane, a key strategy in modern art. Through materiality, the artist engages with philosophical issues about the nature of representation and the limits of perception.