Gardeuses d'oies se baignant

Following a period of great involvement with the Neo-Impressionist masters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, by the 1890s Camille Pissarro had returned once more to his Impressionist roots, preferencing the natural world and its multitude of transient sensations to that of the meticulous and studied analytical approach of his divisionist contemporaries. Nonetheless, this influence would remain palpable in Pissarro’s later work, as evident in the dappled and luminous Gardeuses d'oies se baignant from 1895. In layering tints, both warm and cool, the artist expertly created an atmospheric diffusion of glowing afternoon light across the riverbed, conveying a bucolic scene of peasant life.
At the foreground, a woman wades into the water, tending to a nearby flock of floating geese. The swift brushstrokes that compromise their bodies allow them to nearly disappear into the shimmering reflective waters. On the nearby shoreline, a group of women appear as if readying themselves to join the lone bather in the river’s shallow depths. All seem at ease and unencumbered by the work of the day, peacefully and wholly immersed within their idyllic surroundings. Together with the landscape, the bathers and geese form a compositional triangle, further reinforcing their perceived interconnected unity and harmony between man and nature at the very heart of Pissarro’s artistic vision.