Included in the seminal Fifth Impressionist Exhibition that took place in 1880, Camille Pissarro’s Femme lavant une casserole encapsulates the quintessential Impressionist style and subject matter of the artist’s figure paintings.
As well as rustic, quotidian scenes of the rural French landscape, Pissarro frequently painted women absorbed in daily activities.
Indeed, from 1879, the year that he painted the present work, Pissarro began to create a number of monumental figure studies that reflected his growing interest in the primacy of the human form within the landscape setting, a theme that would continue throughout his career.
Here, a woman is framed by blossoming shrubs and flowers, bending over slightly as she washes objects in a bowl.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) | Femme lavant une casserole, 1879 | Christie's