Dans les Blés (In the Wheatfield)

With this work, Berthe Morisot depicts a rural scene on the outskirts of Gennevilliers in the style of a Japanese print structured in horizontal layers.

Like the other impressionists of her era, Morisot rejected any idealization of the real. Above the yellow mass of ears of wheat, she shows the chimneys of an industry that was eating away the fields surrounding Paris little by little.

The figure depicted in the picture, however, remains a mystery.

Wearing a hat, with a bundle slung over his shoulder, we don't know if he belongs to this place or if he's discovering it with us.