This Pissarro painting has only recently been discovered and has been dated somewhere between 1852 and 1855, before the artist relocated to Paris for art studies. Pissarro had returned home to Virgin Islands (where he was born) and which at that time were called The Danish West Indies.
The portrait is of a young boy of African descent. What is so wonderful about the painting is that Pissarro paints people in their everyday lives. Real people matter.
Everyone deserves to have his or her portrait painted, not just "important" people with refined tastes and who can afford commissions. This boy wears a dull homespun shirt, not red silk. That might be an apron around his neck or the edge of a bag used to hold the things he picks in a field. He wears a soft crumbled hat, not a gentleman's stiff stove pipe hat.
We can imagine how surprised and perhaps afraid this young man was when Pissarro asked him to sit for the portrait. To have one's dignity acknowledged! All the sermons in the world won't convince people of the inherent dignity of each human person: that each person is unique (one of a kind) and of inestimable value. Pope Francis has virulent enemies, even in Catholic countries, for his consistently promoting this message.
Sonogram images are a kind of portrait that can wake people up to the reality and value of the pre-born child. But maybe today, we need new portrait painters to sit at the world's borders where desperate people gather, sometimes in great numbers, looking for some kind of salvation. Or portrait painters who roam around America's cities where homelessness is again on the rise. Armies of portrait painters, randomly pulling unknowns out of crowds, the message being: In a world of anonymity, there is you, and you, and you, and you. An antidote to the infection of "them" and "otherism" that has got us so sick lately.
"Such as we are, such are the times." St. Augustine of Hippo.
"Change your mind; change the world."
The boy in this portrait had a story and a family - just as we each do. His work mattered. And Pissarro, who wasn't at all a religious man, understood this well. We might print a copy of this young boy and place it among the holy picures in our prayer corner or prayer book.
