The Harvest at Montfoucault 2 1876

Camille Pissarro made this painting, The Harvest at Montfoucault 2, with oil on canvas. Notice the way he’s applied the paint, not trying to hide the loose, gestural strokes. The subject is labor, of course. These figures are harvesting the fields, gathering hay into stacks. Pissarro does not depict the labor in an idealized way. These aren't heroic figures; the painting emphasizes the repetitive, collective nature of the work. Note the figures in the background, their faces obscured, absorbed into the landscape like the haystacks themselves. Pissarro has not only shown us agricultural labor but also enacted a kind of labor in applying his materials to the canvas. His work encourages us to value a hands-on, process-based approach. It implicitly challenges the traditional hierarchy between fine art and craft, by drawing attention to the material act of painting.