The Apple Pickers
7:00 AM |
| Camille Pissarro, The Apple Pickers, 1884-6 |
By KAELYN ROSS
Richard R. Brettell, author of Modern Art 1851-1929, depicts Pissarro as a dedicated painter of traditional rural life. However, the author also explains how the artist, an anarchist, differentiates himself in the category of rural depiction because of his use of urban art techniques. Brettell explains the artist as seemingly a perfectionist and possibly insecure because Pissarro painted this three times before finally selling it. I believe that Pissarro excluded the sky from this work to remove the subjects from the natural setting and more so resemble a factory as they hunch over in the heat exhaustedly.
I agree with Brettell that these women were intended to depict farming innocently despite their sex, which was commonly used simply for lust. One woman pokes the apples with a stick to remove ripe ones, one hunches over to pick them up and arrange them in a basket to transport, and one woman bites an apple to taste test. Brettell does not explain but this work clearly shows the cycle of production to actual profit because the workers must grow, pick, clean, transport, and then sell their products. Brettell explains how most farmers did not only produce food for themselves, but to sell to a market and or individuals for a profit which can be taken from the work because of the worker eating one in the process of preparing to sell. The author gives background in explaining that the artist chose this topic to paint because he admired rural labor and other people were already doing industrial labor.
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