Divisionism/Neo-Impressionism: Arcadia & Anarchy, April 27-August 6, 2007
 
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  Camille Pissarro, Apple Picking at äragny-sur-Epte (La Cueillette des pommes, äragny-sur-Epte)Angelo Morbelli, For Eighty Cents! (Per ottanta centesimi!)
 

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Rural Life

The bucolic and agrarian realms have long held appeal for artists. The Divisionists and Neo-Impressionists sustained this pictorial legacy, depicting the ebb and flow of rural life. Images of this kind are distinguished by the concentration on rustic subject matter and an idealization of rural existence, only sometimes tempered by sympathy for the harsh actualities of this life. Conceptions of the peasant ranged from monumental, heroic figures—much like those in the paintings of realist precursor Jean-François Millet (1814–1875)—to the anecdotal, whereby the subject was merely a vehicle for investigations into the chromatic effects of light upon color, to the compassionate depiction of backbreaking work.

There were tensions between aesthetic concerns and content. The painters' dedication to their subject was bound up in their engagement with pictorial issues. In these carefully constructed compositions, painstakingly rendered with a profusion of tiny dots or dashes, fields shimmer, light is radiant, and clothes are a vibrant array of colors. The harmony these paintings achieve often conveys a meditative stillness and a serenity that is at odds with the farmers' or shepherds' exhausting labor. Although the artists were sympathetic to the peasants' plight, suffering, and exploitation, they also were preoccupied with formals matters.

The contrast between the visual beauty of these paintings and the hardships being depicted elicited criticism from opposing camps. Angelo Morbelli's For Eighty Cents! (1895), showing bent-over mondine (the women who weeded the rice fields in notoriously awful conditions) in his native region of Piedmont, was alternately criticized for privileging aesthetics over commentary and documentation or for choosing to make a politicized statement and depicting "ugly" subject matter instead of painting appropriately appealing scenes. What these bilateral attacks demonstrated was that Morbelli, like many of his contemporaries, did not favor subject matter over painterly issues or vice versa. Instead, he married the two in an image that could alternately conjure sensorial pleasure and speak to social dilemmas.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT:
Camille Pissarro, Apple Picking at Éragny-sur-Epte (La Cueillette des pommes, Éragny-sur-Epte), 1888.
Oil on canvas, 61 x 74 cm. Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund

Angelo Morbelli, For Eighty Cents! (Per ottanta centesimi!), 1895. Oil on canvas, 69 x 124.5 cm. Museo Francesco Borgogna, Vercelli. Photo: Giacomo Gallarate