White Frost

1873

Oil on canvas, 65.5 × 93.2 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

A plowed field near Pontoise on a frosty morning, with a lone figure on the path. It hung in 1874, the first of the eight group shows Pissarro joined.

Pissarro paints one passing condition, frost on a cold morning, instead of a timeless landscape. Catching effects like this became central to Impressionism.
Louis Leroy ridiculed it, while Philippe Burty likened it to the best of Millet.
Look at the furrows climbing the slope and the man walking with a load on his back.
Pissarro laid the paint on thickly, partly with a knife, so the frozen field feels dense.
Jean-Baptiste Faure bought it in 1874; it has been at the Musée d'Orsay since 1986.

Pissarro lived at Pontoise, northwest of Paris, for much of the 1870s. Its fields and farm workers, not suburban leisure, were his main subject.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain