![Camille Pissarro - Two Young Peasant Women [1892]](http://c3.staticflickr.com/1/672/30834788994_0569317029_b.jpg)
Pissarro began this picture in summer 1891 and completed it in mid-January 1892, a month before the opening of a major exhibition of his work organised by Joseph Durand-Ruel. Many of the fifty paintings were sold from the show, but Pissarro kept this canvas and gave it to his wife. By virtue of their size, placement, and quiet dignity, these youthful labourers dominate the landscape setting - an open field near the artist's house at Eragny. An avowed anarchist, Pissarro wanted to preserve the values of agrarian society that were being threatened by the rapid industrialisation of France.
[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 116.5 cm]