Cleveland Museum of Art

Seated Peasant Woman

Date

c. 1885

Medium

charcoal

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Lhermitte's work portrays simple peasants working in harmony with a bountiful natural environment without reference to industrial development, mechanization of farm work, and the depopulation of the countryside. His sturdy images of Champagne's rural life have a sober, unsentimental character in which the peasant figures are neither tidied nor prettified. The artist achieved his most personal expression in his charcoal drawings which first achieved critical success in London where they were exhibited from the early 1870s. By the 1880s, his drawings had gained wide popularity in France.

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