Laundresses at Low Tide, Étretat

Courbet made two visits to Étretat in the 1860s. In this painting, the artist did not include the town’s famous arched cliffs, focusing instead on a peaceful stretch of sea and sky. The tiny figures visible along the shoreline help to identify the location––laundresses routinely worked in the freshwater streams that appeared on the town’s beaches at low tide.

Image Caption

Gustave Courbet, Laundresses at Low Tide, Étretat, 1866 or 1869, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.527

Provenance

Gustave Arosa, Paris (until 1878, his sale, Drouot, Paris, 25 Feb. 1878, no. 19, as Marée montante);¹ Mary Cassatt, Paris (possibly from 1878; d. 1926);² Mr. and Mrs. Horace Binney Hare, Philadelphia (probably from 1926);³ [Wildenstein, New York, sold to Clark, 12 June 1944, as The Seaweed Gatherers]; Robert Sterling Clark (1944–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. 1. The dimensions in the sale catalogue are given as 33 x 65 cm. An unpublished album of the Arosa sale in the Frick Art Reference Library, however, clearly illustrates this painting, suggesting that the dimensions were printed incorrectly. 2. Erica E. Hirshler, in Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, 1998, p. 179, states that Cassatt bought this picture from the Galerie Georges Petit in February 1878. If this is the case, Georges Petit, who was one of the organizers of the Arosa sale, might have acquired it from the sale on behalf of Cassatt. There is no annotation in the copy of the sale catalogue at the Frick indicating a buyer. 3. Mrs. Horace Binney Hare was the former Ellen Mary Cassatt, niece of Mary Cassatt. She and her two siblings were the primary beneficiaries of Cassatt’s will; it therefore seems likely that she inherited this painting directly from her aunt.