Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook

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). (Source: Art Institute of Chicago)