Washerwomen in a Willow Grove

1871

Corot visited the countryside near the small French town of Arras frequently, though he confessed that its flat terrain had “the reputation for not being very suitable for painters.” The landscape inspired images like this one, which shows washerwomen laying fabric on the grass to dry and bleach in the sun. Rustic laborers had essentially disappeared from the region by 1871, but the subject may have held nostalgic appeal for the artist’s urban patrons.

Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	15 x 18 3/16 in. (38.1 x 46.2 cm) Frame: 22 1/8 x 25 1/8 x 1 1/2 in. (56.2 x 63.8 x 3.8 cm)
Object Number	1955.526
Acquisition	Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status	Off View

Image Caption

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Washerwomen in a Willow Grove, 1871, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.526

Select Bibliography

Paris.. Exposition centennale de l'art Français.. 1889.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Five: French Paintings of the 19th Century. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1956. . Revue de l'exposition universelle de 1889. William Fleming.. Art and Ideas, 3rd ed.. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.. 1968.. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Robaut, Alfred. L'oeuvre de Corot, catalogue raisonné et illustré. Paris: Leonce Laget, 1905. Mowery, Elizabeth. Landscape Meditations: An Artist's Guide to Exploring Themes in Landscape Painting. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2005. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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EUROPEAN PAINTINGS CATALOGUE ENTRY

Provenance

Bollet; Émile Dehau (until 1885, his sale, Drouot, Paris, 21 Mar. 1885, no. 12, as Les prairies de Sainte-Catherine, a Arras); Tabourier (in 1889); Henri Heugel (possibly by 1895–1905, his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 26 May 1905, no. 3, ill., as Paysage d’Artois, sold to Boussod, Valadon);¹ [Boussod, Valadon, Paris, from 1905]; Count Cecil Charles Pecci-Blunt, Paris, on consignment to Seligmann (in Nov. 1940); [Jacques Seligmann, New York, sold to Clark, 2 Jan. 1941, as Paysage d’Artois]; Robert Sterling Clark (1941–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955. 1. The Clark copy of sale catalogue is annotated “Boussod c/ Bernheim jeune.”