The word "Peasant" appears in numerous Pissaro paintings. But for him, peasant, was never used in a pejorative sense. Unlike his 17th century predecessors and more than a few of his contemporaries, Pissarro didn't paint wanderers and beggar children, peasants in squalor with collapsing house and and junkyard property. The folks Pissarro painted in rural settings were honored workers. Life for the many workers was changing for the better with the Industrial Revolution. Pissarro never painted the remnants of a miserable peasant life, such as fishermen huts and cave dwellers.
Here, Pissarro gives us a peasant woman dressed not in gray, brown and black, but in shades of blue, including the principal color of her dress, which we might well call royal. For a man who was decidedly not religious, even perhaps anti-clerical, Pissarro seems to have understood the most foundational piece of Catholic morality: the dignity of every human person. Once we embrace this principle, everything is changed for us.
The 13th century Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, wrote: "The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being." Who am I to change a pope's words, but I will anyway. I would say, "how you think of every human being". Pissarro thinks highly of human beings, especially those whose work is considered lowly. Not only is the lady's dress royal blue, but the very ground beneath her is energized and sparkling. Pissaro is not a romantic, rather, I'd say he has spiritual vision. The high-end lawyer and the fellow who cleans the public toilets: the same.
Notice too that while the woman collects "grass" (perhaps really the herbs found growing in the grass - the way some Italians still collect dandelion leaves for wine) she might be said to be tumbling or falling over. In the 1980s there was a lively country song with lyrics: "Timber, I'm falling over, falling in love with you." And the trickster might say to us, "You fell for that one, hook, line and sinker."
But I'm thinking more of that splendid Catholic Prayer we might pray after receiving Holy Communion - Anima Christi: "Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me..."
Inebriate is largely understood negatively today. "The police pulled him over because he was inebriated." Drunk. But the broader sense is more simply to fall over, to be knocked off one's feet, to be toppled in awe. That's the sense I get here. This lady, who seems to be falling, reminds me of the soul which has gotten out of its head (where a lot of religious people live) and is falling into the beauty of God, the love of God, the arms of God's mercy and compassion. Have you ever experienced that?
