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In 1880 Pissarro began pushing figures to the front of his pictures, and the figures he had to hand were his neighbours at Pontoise, the market town north-west of Paris where he was living. This one is Marie Larcheveque, 56 years old and the mother of four children. She sat for him on a canvas about 73 centimetres high, in a blue and white working dress with a yellow scarf on her head, in front of a green wooden wall. When he sent the picture to the Impressionist exhibition of 1882 he gave it no name, only a trade and a caveat, Laveuse, etude, washerwoman, study. The title on the wall at the Metropolitan is still the one he used.