Haymakers Resting is an oil painting by Camille Pissarro created in 1891. It was painted on a Canvas 25 3/4 x 32in large. The painting, as most of Pissarro’s works, is an impressionist piece with a rural theme. The technique used to create the painting is called pointillism, a common tool of impressionist. The painting depicts three farm women lying in loose hay. The women are plainly dressed, obviously workers who are either taking a breaking or coming to a stop for the day. The women wear plain clothing, but the figure on the left has a contrasting red garb with green handkerchief to liven up what would other be a dull monochromatic piece.
The lady in the center of the painting is the first thing figure the viewers eye is drawn to, followed by the two women in the foreground off to either side, and then the sprawling golden field behind them. The artist seemed to take a really liberal approach to which colors for his painting, deciding to not mix his pigments and instead using small strokes of solid color. On a close inspection the hay in the foreground can be seen to have bots of blue, green, purple, yellow, red, and orange. Painter Camille Pissarro was born on July 10, 1830.
He was educated at a french boarding school, where he was first introduced to fine art. In his free time he developed his drawing skills, and when he returned home to work with his father he continued his artistic pursuits in his leisure time. Three years after returning home from school he would meet and befriend artist Fritz Melbye, who would convince him to leave home and come work in Paris as a full time artist. Pissarro apprenticed under Fritz’s brother, Anton and met many other artist who would inspire him such as Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet.
Their paintings of rural and countryside scenes resonated with him the most, and he adoption many of their themes into his own works. Pissarro would travel to the outskirts of Paris where he would work to capture the beauty of the countryside. His time in the art world brought him together with other like minded individuals such as Claude Monet, Armand Guillaumin, and Paul Cezanne. Together they formed the french impressionist movement. Their first showing in 1874 upset a lot of critics, their paintings were seen as too undefined and the subject matter being too common.
Not all reviews were negative though, and some considered him and his compatriots to be revolutionary. Later on in life he would experiment with Neo-Impressionism, a style that took the color and painting techniques from Impressionism, but differed by placing more importance on subject matter. He would drop NeoImpressionism only a few years later but would still have a lasting effect of the rest of his artwork. Camille was one of the founders of Impressionism along with Claude Monet, Armand Guillaumin, and Paul Cezanne. He laid the groundwork for future impressionist and is considered by some to be the godfather of the movement..
Impressionist is a painting technique where the painter creates a fleeting impression of his subject matter by capturing how the light moves around the scene. The subject matter in Impressionist paintings is often not as important of the fleeting feeling put onto canvas. The movement was a departure for traditional European painting because of its short strokes of broken color instead of long stead strokes. Camille later temporarily joined a sub group of Impressionism called Neo-Impressionist. NeoImpressionism was a lot like a more organized impressionist painting.
The small swaths of color where often orderly and in line instead of all over the painting over lapping each other. Pointillism and divisionism are painting techniques that were popularized by Neo-Impressionism. Camille would later turn away from Neo-Impressionism and go back to making impressionist paintings, although his later paintings had a much more subdued and calm demeanor. Haymakers Resting was one of Pissarro’s later works, after his stint with Neo-Impressionism. The way the light is captured on the canvas is warm and energetic.
The warm colors and smooth flowing of the light gives a sense of friendship and pleasantness to the women resting in the hay. The gold fields and low saturation of the background are reminiscent of the warm comfortable glow of the sun. The foreground’s use of higher saturation, shadowing and in general cooler colors makes the space seem almost inclusive, a cool retreat from the sun after a day of working in the fields. The flowing light softens the painting, the movement of the colors is just as important to the painting as the subject matter.
I personally love the impressionist movement and their painting techniques. Impressionist was one of the first movements where how they painted was just as important if not more important that the subject matter. The brushstrokes in the piece capture the light as if it were a living moving thing. The way Pissarro captures the feel of the French countryside is inspiring. His use of unmixed pigments is surprisingly pleasant to they eye, the seemingly odd colors in the shadow are not as disconcerting as I feel they should be. There’s really nothing | can fault this painting for.