At at age twenty-six, Pissarro moved to France and began private studies with a number of art masters. But his paintings still reflected his boyhood life in the Caribbean.
This painting from that period is titled: Two Women Chatting by the Sea. The atmosphere is still hazy; is it morning? Do these ladies know each other? Do they see each other every day? Are they long lost friends? It can be fun to imagine these things, but perhaps what matters most is simply that they have stopped for each other.
A lot of people today walk with their heads down. We're in such a hurry, we don't even see others. Or we do see them but don't want to get too close. Some people think it's rude or intrusive to make eye contact. I've wondered at times if some people at Mass sit so far apart from others because they don't want to have to shake hands. Or we can go to Mass and sit near the same people for years and know nothing about them and their families. This early Pissarro painting seems to depict the opposite of this kind of thinking.
Even though they are clearly about the business of their day, the women have stopped. The lady in the white dress and yellow scarf carries a large shade-creating covered basket on her head. She is also carrying something else in her yanked up skirt. The woman in the blue dress carries a basket on her left arm. The dirt path they walk is well traveled. We see some some folks on a raft, but they are out a good distance. Maybe Pissarro doesn't want anything to distract us from the conversation of these two engaged women.
Camille Pissarro wasn't a religious man, but people mattered to him greatly. It's rare to find a Pissarro painting that isn't people-d. Indeed, other people should be a major concern of religious practitioners. Doesn't Catholic prayer begin with The Sign of the Cross? Touching forehead and heart, a strong vertical aspect is established. Then touching left shoulder and right - an equally strong horizontal dimension. God matters, but also the people who are to my left and right, near and faraway. Jesus is so clear: Love God; love neighbor.
The horizontal flatness of the basket on the woman's head, the background mountain with the flat base and horizon - all echo this horizontal sense of relationship. Waking up to this is part of the Lenten call to conversion.
Pissarro depicts endless roads in his paintings. With these Caribbean ladies, we travel our own life-road everyday. Lent beckons us to wake up to some new understanding or direction as we walk along. Pope Francis has said:
The horizontal flatness of the basket on the woman's head, the background mountain with the flat base and horizon - all echo this horizontal sense of relationship. Waking up to this is part of the Lenten call to conversion.
Pissarro depicts endless roads in his paintings. With these Caribbean ladies, we travel our own life-road everyday. Lent beckons us to wake up to some new understanding or direction as we walk along. Pope Francis has said:
"Conversion of heart is more important than conversion of creed. It's more important to help people in their walk with God than to sell them your brand in the religious marketplace."
Maybe this Pissarro painting proposes forty days of stopping, if even for a greeting. A Christian might find this idea particularly attractive as so much of what Jesus does begins with his simply stopping. Don't give up anything - except what I need to give up in order to stop for others. Resist running by, going down a different aisle, waving from a distance. In all the period piece British dramas, everyone's always stopping for teatime with others. We've lost the sense of stopping like that. Indeed, so has Great Britain, which has recently declared loneliness as a national crisis. Sad, but honest.
