Washerwomen at the Edge of the Pond

Around 1880, laundry in the Normandy countryside was still washed by hand in open water, and this is a record of that ordinary chore. A row of women in white caps kneels at the edge of a pond, bundles of linen heaped beside them, with a dark-roofed building and low green fields across the water. The panel is small, about 18 by 25 centimetres, smaller than a sheet of office paper, and the brushwork stays quick and loose throughout. Boudin's signature sits in the lower left corner. The painting later passed through dealers in Paris and London and was sold at Sotheby's in London in 1973. A collector from River Forest, Illinois, William Hobson Green, bought it from a Paris gallery and gave it to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.