Laveuses au bord de la Touques

By the 1880s the Normandy coast around Trouville had become the seaside playground of fashionable Paris, all bathing huts and parasols. Boudin, who grew up there, kept turning his back on the holidaymakers to paint the local women at work. At low tide the fishermen's wives came down to the mouth of the River Touques to do the family washing, kneeling on the wet sand near the beached boats. He painted this scene close to 100 times over the years. He rarely lets them chat or face us. They are bent to the task, seen from behind, while thin smoke from the town's new chimneys drifts across the sky behind them. Boudin was the older painter who first talked a teenage Monet into working outdoors, in front of exactly this kind of weather.