A Washerwoman at Éragny

Camille Pissarro

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

A Washerwoman at Éragny depicts a peasant woman at work outdoors, scrubbing linens and clothing in one barrel and rinsing them in another, set against the lush rural landscape of the village of Éragny-sur-Epte in northern France, where Pissarro made his home from 1884. The surrounding vegetation is rendered with dappled, broken brushwork—a lingering trace of the Pointillist technique Pissarro had adopted in the mid-1880s under the influence of Georges Seurat—while the artist mixed pure yellow paint into the greens of the grass and trees to evoke the shimmer of sunlight. Born in 1830 in the Danish West Indies, Pissarro became a central figure in French Impressionism and the only artist to exhibit at all eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886. This intimate canvas reflects his lifelong commitment to depicting the dignity of rural labor and the everyday rhythms of peasant life observed around his home.