Peasants in the 19th Century: A Controversy

At the end of the 19^th century, as Europe sprung into modernization, French Impressionist artists began to take interest in depicting the fleeting and temporary moments of Parisian life. After a few years of this bustling city life, there was a movement towards showing the parts of society that had been left untouched by this industrial movement. It is during this time that artists such as Vincent Van Gogh slowly evaded the fast paced city life in search for a more traditional manifestation of French culture and lifestyle. In doing so, he began to explore the values and principles of country life, most specifically the life of peasants in 19^th century France. Even before Van Gogh, we see French artists take a similar path into portraying peasants in various stages of their daily routines. The purpose of this exhibition is to compare Van Gogh’s depictions of peasants with those of French Impressionist artists of his time, seeking to find out how technique via color and brushstroke impacted the message that the artist was trying to convey to the audience. These paintings not only paint a picture of what peasanthood truly looked like in the late 19th century, but they also speak to the narrative of the social and cultural environment in France during that time. 

Jean-Francois Millet, Des Glaneuses, 1857, 

Oil on Canvas, Musée d’Orsay, H.0.835;L1.1

Des Glaneuses was one of the first pieces depicting peasant life in the Parisian Salon of 1857. Jean Francois Millet was interested in depicting the step-by-step action that peasant work involved. In this piece, Millet uses three women to show the process of bending down, picking up and standing back up again. The daily routine of the working class is characterized by repetition.  Millet paints with tones that resonate with the color of the fields, pastel like hues in their clothing that give no connotation of luxury or comfort, but instead emphasizing simplicity. The figures have a sculpted look to them, almost as if they were placed on a flat background. Contrary to Van Gogh, Millet wishes to communicate the banality of peasant life, where very little excitement occurs as this working class is mainly concerned with the day-to-day survival.

Jules Breton, Le Rappel des Glaneuses, 1859, 

Oil on Canvas, Musée d’Orsay, H.0.905;L.1.76

Jules Breton’s interpretation of peasant life is highly romanticized compared to Van Gogh’s and other artists of the time period. The upper levels of Parisian society in the 19^th century disliked artistic pieces that portrayed the misery of the working classes. Breton changed his focus to showing peasants as living perfectly idealized lives. He does this by staging the scene during the golden hour of the day, allowing the sunset glow to permeate throughout the painting, as well as creating a sense of nobility about the figures, misrepresenting the laboring country folk of that time. In this piece, the laborers are being called away from work, giving a misconstrued conception of what their lives were truly like. Le rappel des glaneuses has an almost playful feeling about it, as if the peasants are being called home for dinner after being out with friends. Breton chose to please the salon audiences of Paris, over a true depiction of what peasant life is actually like.

Camille Pissarro, La Mere Larcheveque, 1880, 

Oil on Canvas,  MET 56.184.1

Weary of the Parisian salons, Camille Pissaro returned to his artistic roots when he began to paint peasant hood once again. He had grown tired of impressionism and the lack of contextual substance that characterized the movement. Pissarro’s purpose in painting peasants was to educate the public on the real living conditions of “common man.” He did not seek to idealize their day-to-day endeavors, but instead to portray them as earnest hard working people that needed to be shown. He wanted to show them for who they truly were, dirty and fatigued, even if it was offensive to the Parisian salon societies. This was similar to Van Gogh’s approach; after all, Van Gogh was under Pissarro’s tutelage for many years.

Camille Pissarro, Haymakers Resting, 1881, 

Oil on Canvas, McNay Museum of Art

Pissarro created many artistic pieces covering the livelihoods of peasants in 19^th century France after his impressionist period. However, it is particularly interesting how many paintings were made of peasants resting. This was important to Pissarro, as his main focus was to portray them in their everyday, as normal people who must be thought of and respected like any other. In the many pieces that the artist painted where peasants are not hard at work, the warmer color palettes chosen by Pissarro depict lives of simple contentedness. This is one of the first pieces by Pissarro where we see a new technique called Pointillism.  In midst of the modernizing craze of European cities, the French impressionist artist wanted to show that peaceful existence still could be found, and to the disgust of the Parisians, it could be found in the unwanted and ignored lower classes of society.

Georges Seurat, The Laborers, 1883

Oil on Panel, National Gallery of Art, D.C.

In Seurat’s 1883, The Laborers, the methods and techniques that he uses to paint peasants in the 19^th century are different to any other French artist of that time. The figures in the painting are geometric and lined. This piece was a foreshadowing of the Neo-impressionist period that was to come, where the rational can be artistic, but it falls into either scientific or emotional categories. The Laborers is an emotional neo-impressionist painting where the warmer color choice conveys gaiety and harmony. Seurat used the lined brushstrokes, in this case, facing upwards to stir up positive, uplifting feelings that went hand in hand with his color choice. It is in my opinion that Seurat only painted peasants as an experiment of color and method that he would soon develop into a whole new movement of Neo-Impressionist art.

Vincent Van Gogh, Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885, 

Oil on Canvas, MET 1984.393

Vincent Van Gogh painted Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace during his time living in Nuenen, France. It was in Nuenen that Van Gogh was exposed to the harsh conditions that many peasants underwent on a day-to-day basis. Van Gogh’s approach to portraying the peasant life was different than his predecessors. Most of the time he would use much darker color palettes with dark greens, browns, blues, and black. His method of broad brushstrokes in his painting gives the viewer a sense of the dirtiness and grittiness that characterized the peasants living situations and daily grind. In most of his works depicting peasant hood, it is almost as though he had mixed in mud with his paint, giving a more authentic earthy and rustic feel to the piece. The paint is thickly placed on the canvas, layer on layer, a technique Van Gogh employed to convey the daily repetition of activities that these peasants understood well. During his peasant stage, Van Gogh was less interested in depicting specific occurrences in a peasant's routine, and he certainly was not interested in romanticizing their lives, but instead showing the uncleanliness of the peasant life as a consequence of the extremely hard work they had to endure.