Upon receiving an invitation from his dear friend Ludovic Piette to the rural enclave of Montfoucault, Pissarro embarked upon what would become a three-year investigation of “the true countryside” (Janine Bailly-Herzberg, op. cit., p. 95). Looking to the pastoral landscape of northwestern France, as well as to the work of Millet—whom the artist respected as one of the few serious painters of such scenes—Pissarro found himself gravitating to the peasants and farmhands of the estate (see fig. 1). Works from this time witness maids, sowers, plowmen and other servants diligently at work under cheery skies or within domestic enclaves on the farm, despite his hesitations taking on such a well-mastered subject. In a letter to Duret, Pissarro discusses his progress and misgivings, stating “I haven’t worked badly here. I have been tackling figures and animals. I have several genre pictures. I am rather hesitant about going in for a branch of art in which first-rate artists have so distinguished themselves. It is a very bold thing to do, and I am afraid of making a complete failure of it” (ibid., p. 95).

A triumph of composition, structure and volume, La Mère Jolly raccommodant and Pissarro’s other work from his time in Montfoucault mark a turning point for the artist, who previously had not studied the human figure in such depth or with such grace. According to leading scholar Richard R. Brettell, “the paintings of 1874 show ample evidence of a change in both style and iconography. Pissarro’s facture became more dense and brushstrokes broader… His attention turned from distantly viewed landscapes to the concentrated space of the barnyard populated with figures and defined by complex arrangements of form… The sheer physicality of form—its weight, mass and proximity—became Pissarro’s overriding concern in the Montfoucault period and that reality was expressed in a manner matched in the period only by Cézanne” (Richard R. Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise, London, 1990, pp. 162-64). Hailing from one of the most focused and grounded periods in Pissarro’s oeuvre, this distinguished genre scene offers rarely afforded insight not only into pre-industrialized French life, but also into that of the master painter himself.