As a young man, Pissarro was encouraged by his mentors to paint outdoors (en plein air). And so he became a kind of country landscape master, painting gardens, country roads and paths, rivers, fields, orchards, forests and farmhouses. Late in life, when his eyes failed him, he rented top floor hotel rooms overlooking city parks and boulevards, painting what he saw outside his windows.
Here at Pontoise, Pissarro painted while sitting next to another great impressionist artist, Cezanne. It was Cezanne who said of Camille Pissarro, "He was in closest touch with nature." We are in the apple orchard with the two great painters, behind the house where Pissarro lived. There is a great rise in the landscape and what appears to be a three-storied apartment building at the top.
It is spring. The trees in the center and to the right are old and somewhat gnarled. The other trees are young, and Pissarro reveals them in the happiest of spring colors: shades of pink, the green- grass covered earth and the leafing out of other trees, the prettiest blue and white sky. Even the blue roofs of nearby houses get in on the Spring action.
We know the expression Seize the day, but here, more wonderfully still, Pissarro has seized the moment, as the flowers of fruit trees are delicate and transitory, and a blast of wind and rain can spoil them quickly. Seizing the moment is a good way to live. "Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment," the English author Ellis Peters said. This is a way to pray unceasingly, as St. Paul instructs us in 1Thessalonians 5:17. To notice. To detect. God is here.
Pissarro paints the garden that is carefully cultivated, but a heart can be cultivated too. I want to cultivate my heart in the things of prayer. But the Greek word Saint Paul uses adialeiptos doesn't mean "without stopping" but surfacing, recurring or returning again and again. We live busy lives requiring our full attention as we do our work and interact with people. But during those busy days we experience dozens of hopes, wishes, glances, good intentions, even sighs. Acknowledging them: those are prayers. Trust it.
Kateri Tekakwitha prayed with her eyes. Therese of Lisieux prayed with a sigh. Looking carefully and deeply at Pissarro's Vegetable Garden with Trees in Blossom - I sigh. That's a good prayer.
