Field at Eragny 1885

Camille Pissarro created this oil on canvas painting, "Field at Eragny," sometime during his career. The image shows a landscape outside the small commune of Eragny in northern France. The unassuming nature of this scene is telling, as Pissarro was known as a kind of socialist revolutionary within the art world. Eschewing traditional subjects drawn from history, religion, or mythology, he and his Impressionist colleagues instead took inspiration from the everyday world around them. One might consider this turn to landscape as a kind of democratization of painting, an argument that the life of a peasant was as worthy a subject as that of a king. It is worth noting that Pissarro spent much of his career outside Paris, painting scenes like this one far from the art establishment. To understand Pissarro’s work, research into the history of Impressionism as an artistic movement is essential. In this context, “Field at Eragny” stands as a testament to the radical potential of art to find beauty in the mundane.