A Peasant Girl in a Straw Hat

The drawing A Peasant Girl in a Straw Hat was executed by Camille Pissarro in 1892. This intimate and sophisticated work is classified as a drawing, utilizing pastel over charcoal on beige laid paper, a medium Pissarro favored in the latter part of his career for its capacity to combine the graphic structure of charcoal with the rich, luminous color of pastel. The beige laid paper acts as a warm mid-tone, allowing the charcoal lines to define form and depth, while the careful application of pastel provides soft, broken color and textural variation, giving the figure a vibrant, yet intimate, presence.

The subject is a young peasant girl, depicted with a quiet dignity, her face often partially obscured or shaded by the broad brim of her straw hat. Pissarro’s persistent focus on the French agricultural laborer, particularly women engaged in daily tasks, reflects his humanist and democratic commitments during the period spanning 1876 to 1900. Unlike earlier artistic treatments that often idealized or sentimentalized rural poverty, Pissarro sought to portray his subjects with integrity and an unsentimental appreciation for their demanding way of life.

This piece, created toward the end of the artist’s life, demonstrates the enduring influence of his Impressionist training concerning light and color, even as Pissarro was concurrently experimenting with the more structured, optical concerns of Neo-Impressionism in his oil paintings. The drawing stands as a testament to the artist’s versatility and his ability to master media outside of traditional oil on canvas. Today, this significant work is preserved in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. It remains an important example of Pissarro’s draftsmanship, frequently studied by scholars, and is widely reproduced in the form of fine art prints, sometimes entering the public domain as collection accessibility policies evolve.