& quot; Girl with a rod & quot ;, Camille Pissarro, 1881

Description of the picture:

The girl with the bar – Camille Pissarro. 1881. 81×65

   At the beginning of the 80s, a new direction, the technique of which Pissarro repeatedly used in his own works, was completely approved. From one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five years, the painter is trying to prove that he is not the orthodox landscape painter as he was during the first 20 5 years of his own creative life, but an experimenter who is trying to completely transgress or at least change the bases of the impressionist technique.

   To this end, on the advice of Degas, he turns to completely different materials, uses gouache, pastel, lithography and etching. The graphic technique forces him to work in a workshop, because of which he evenly loses contact with wildlife, and for an impressionist artist, communication with nature is of primary importance. The figures of people to whom the painter could not find a place in their own landscapes earlier became almost the main ones. Now nature is just the backdrop for the presentation of the main motive, be it the ladies engaged in farm work or the girls who indulge in dreams. In these paintings, poses are frankly borrowed from Millet, although, unlike him, Pissarro does not idealize the villagers, in his paintings there is no elevation or monumentality. On the contrary, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd plans are very close to each other, seemingly merged together, which in a special way limits the depth of the picture and the expressiveness of the plot within the framework of concise expressiveness.

   Popular picture "Girl with a bar" – one of the most important in the work of Pissarro. The perspective and, at once, the proximity of the object are compositional features appropriate for Degas’ works, which Pissarro was so enthusiastic about. The pensive face of the girl, a slight inclination of the head, peace and tranquility – this, one way or another, resembles figures from paintings by Mille or Renoir."