After not a little rejection, this painting, titled, "Hoarfrost" was displayed at the first Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. I love Pissarro's ability to lean in to new work and new ideas despite harsh criticism. He was no quitter. Here, the new impressionist style is on full view, breaking with the approved themes of his day which were great religious, mythical, historical and military scenes.
Camille Pissarro loved painting outdoors, and he loved ordinary people, who are almost always represented in his images. Here, a peasant is out early in a winter morning, carrying fire wood he has gathered from somewhere else. The field is likely his own. We can see the frozen furrows running from the top of the rise to the bottom. The hoarfrost cuts across on an angle, making the ground and translucent frost into a kind of woven fabric.
Camille is telling us that this older man (he walks with a stick) though faceless, has dignity and value, even in the everyday task of collecting wood to heat his home. All around the world there are people whose dignity is denied them - they are trapped in systems that exploit, manipulate, grind down, devalue, cheat and abuse them. Pissarro would have felt that classes and castes have no place in our world - that every human person is of great and irreplaceable value.
Some people get nervous with that kind of talk. We can be so quick to put nasty labels on things we don't understand or that make us afraid. Pope John Paul II would have understood Pissarro's painting of the wood-carrying, old man and the frosty morning. He said to the post Soviet Union young people of Kazakhstan:
"Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? What is my destiny? My answer is very simple but it has tremendous implications. Listen, you are one of God's thoughts! You are one of his heartbeats! To say this, implies that, in a certain sense, your life has infinite value and your irreplaceable individuality, is what is most precious in God's sight."
A final thought about the weaving in this painting. Our lives are like this woven ground and frost: the people we've met, the schools we've attended, the jobs we've held, the way we were parent-ed, the books we've read, the paths we've chosen, the places to which we've traveled, the friends we've had, the best and worst treatment we've experienced. And somehow, thanks God, we have come to this day, to this moment. What about that? Can you identify it in your own life?
