‘La Servante assise dans le jardin d'Éragny’ is a charming depiction of Camille Pissarro’s children Ludovic-Rodo (to the left) and Jean-Marguerite (to the right) being watched over by their nursemaid. The work was painted in Erangy in the spring of 1884 where the family had moved that year and would remain for the rest of the artist’s life. During this period, Pissarro focused on capturing the normalcies of everyday rural life, and the landscape that surrounded him. He wrote with enthusiasm to his Parisian dealer Paul Durand-Ruel that “I haven’t been able to restrain myself from painting, so beautiful are the motifs that surround my garden”.

The early 1880s was a period of change in Pissarro’s art. His handling of paint evolved from the loose free brushwork, more closely associated with Impressionism, towards small and carefully controlled touches of paint. He spent less time painting en plein air, instead preferring to work more in his studio and increasing the amount of preparatory sketches.

At this time, Pissarro also began to favour figure paintings over landscape, creating a number of depiction of the women of Eragny working in the fields. In ‘La Servante assise dans le jardin d'Éragny’, he places the children’s nanny at the forefront with this children in the background, to give gravitas to the woman watching over his children.

Pissarro gifted ‘La Servante assise dans le jardin d'Éragny’ to his cousin Alfred Nunès who was close to the family. More recently, it was on long term loan to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.