In the collection of Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia — check current display status with the museum.
FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG
A woman washes linen in a flower-filled garden. A child to her right, as if eager to help, tugs at the pail of suds. Washerwomen were popular figures in 19th-century art and literature. Manet's good friend Émile Zola, for example, described their tough lives in his novels. But this depiction is idyllic. Flashes of white paint —offset by grays and blues—become sunlight on the drying fabric. After the jury of the French Salon, the annual state art exhibition, rejected this painting, Manet exhibited it independently.
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Young Mother (Jeune mère)
Henri Lebasque — Le Goûter sur l'herbe
Mary Cassatt — A Child's Bath
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Gabrielle and Jean
Camille Pissarro — A Washerwoman at Eragny
Camille Pissarro — Woman and Child at the Well
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Femme au puits
Edgar Degas — Woman Ironing
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Promenade (La Promenade)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Mother and Child
Edouard Manet — The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteu
Gari Melchers — The Grove
