In spite ofPissarro’s preoccupation with landscape, there was one scene that he never tired observing – the market in small villages and towns. He made innumerable drawings of peasants offering their produce, of butchers, grocers, and other merchants selling their wares, of women buying or chatting. The animation of this aspect of country life always attracted the painter. Out of these many sketches made on the spot came this large gouache with its colorful crowd. Some of the figures are familiar to us from other paintings byPissarro, for example the old man in the lower left corner, and the girl at the right – doubtless the artist’s niece Nini, whom he very often used as a model for out door subjects.

This lively and harmonious composition is a forerunner of other scenes of crowds whichPissarrodid later in Paris.