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Pissarro was born on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, then a Danish colony, and he painted this in 1856, soon after leaving it to settle in Paris and train as an artist. The seaside path outside the port town of Charlotte Amalie is a memory as much as a scene. The two women are Afro-Caribbean, one balancing a tray of laundry on her head. Slavery had ended in the Danish islands only in 1848, a few years earlier, so these are free women at their work. Washerwomen and country labourers would occupy Pissarro for the rest of his career, well after he became one of the founders of Impressionism. He probably never watched this exact meeting happen. Back in Paris he built the picture from sketches, memory, and a good deal of invention of the home he had left.