Laundress at the edge of the water in Optevoz

In June 1852 a small group of painters gathered at Crémieu, east of Lyon, around the local landscape painter Auguste Ravier. Corot was one of them, and so was the younger Charles-François Daubigny. They lodged at an inn in the town and went out to paint in the nearby valley of Optevoz, a place of ponds and marshes. Over that stay Corot and Daubigny each made a series of views there. This one is small, oil on cardboard, about 25 by 39 centimetres, and signed at the lower right. Under a low grey sky a pond spreads between grassy slopes and a bank of reeds, with tall trees on the far side. A woman kneels at the water's edge doing her washing, and her reflection shows in the pond beside her.