La Femme aux Poules

Working in the second half of the 19th century, Camille Pissarro sought through his art to capture the timeless beauty of the French countryside. As advances in industry and technology proliferated across Europe, Pissarro’s rural scenes were seen as nostalgic, if not sentimental, odes to the working class. His depictions of agrarian farm life idealized labor, while still posing an alternative to the rapid urbanization of the day. In this scene, a peasant woman feeds a small group of chickens pecking around her feet. Narrowly framed and simplistically drawn, the act of feeding reads as a caring and intimate gesture. Labor is represented as being in harmony with and inherent to nature; the chickens are dependent upon the woman, as she is dependent upon them.