Tip: move over the painting to use the lens.

Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook

Artist: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903)
Date: 1895
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 73 × 92 cm (28 1/2 × 36 in.); Framed: 95 × 113.1 × 12.4 cm (37 3/8 × 44 1/2 × 4 7/8 in.)
Made in: France
Style: Post-Impressionism
Where to see it: Art Institute of Chicago

A Millennium Gift of Sara Lee Corporation · CC0 Public Domain · Art Institute of Chicago · image via Wikimedia Commons · see it at the museum ↗

Notes from the museum

Camille Pissarro referred to this painting in a letter of November 1894, when he wrote to his son Lucien that he wanted to send him a picture of “a little peasant girl dipping her feet in the water.” At the time, he considered the work almost finished but still lacking “that little something,” exclaiming optimistically, “I think I will get it, I feel it!” His continued ruminations on the composition may explain its heavily encrusted surface. After finishing it, he painted a variation featuring a nude (a rarity for the artist) in the same pose and setting (1895; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Text: Art Institute of Chicago (open access). Our full story for this work is coming soon.

Slow Look

The whole picture Let your eyes wander. Where do they want to rest?
The light Find the brightest spot. What is it showing you?
The edges Look at what is half cut off at the borders.
One small detail Choose one tiny thing and stay with it for a while.
The whole picture again Step back. Has it changed for you?

About Camille Pissarro

Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.

Painter profile →