This eleventh brochure, written by Guy Abot and published by the Association Les Amis de Nicolas Tarkhoff, examines an oil on canvas (82 × 105 cm), painted around 1912.
The painting*, which is the subject of this brochure, depicts a scene that had become familiar to Nicolas Tarkhoff. One late summer day in 1912, he painted his market-gardener neighbors and their day laborers. He set up his easel on the gentle slope of a wooded field behind his house, at the foot of a hill.
Under his brushes, the sky comes alive with large clouds streaked with delicate shades of blue, which the rays of a timid sun manage to illuminate with touches of yellow. On the right side of the composition, a black horse, roaming freely, quietly grazes in a meadow, indifferent to the human world around it. Bent toward the ground, the workers busily harvest peas or lettuce—the rewards of their hard labor. The following day, they will take the first morning train to Paris to sell their produce at Les Halles.
In this world, saturated with countless shades of green and yellow, the silhouettes of the farmers stand out as cobalt-blue or ultramarine patches across the surface of the composition—itself punctuated by small touches of red—and echo the colors of the hill.
On the left side of the painting, a man stands upright, picking fruit. Placed at this point in the composition, the blue of his clothing and of the bush helps to create a visual balance.
A stylistic innovation that year: Nicolas Tarkhoff outlines the trees in black or dark green.
* Exhibition: Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow, 2003. Former collection Boris Tarkhoff. Private Collection.
