Charles-François Daubigny, View on the Oise

On the right of this river view a washerwoman, a common motif in Daubigny’s river scenes, dips some blue cloth into the water. Close inspection reveals that she is kneeling in a box. These three-sided boxes, padded with straw, were commonly used by laundresses at the time to make prolonged periods of kneeling more comfortable and keep their own clothes dry. In front of the laundress the water is punctuated by rows of waterlilies. These were a well-known feature of the river Oise around Auvers, as described by the journalist Charles Yriarte: 'great carpets of waterlilies make the foreground to these ready-made pictures in front of which the painter has nothing to do but to sit down with his umbrella planted in the ground and his box of colours on his knees.’

Moored on the left is a flat-bottomed barge with a mast. Daubigny probably started this view down the centre of the river in the open air, and he may have been in his studio boat (for which see River Scene with Ducks). However, he carried out further work back in his proper studio, extensively altering the right bank of the river, moving it, the tree and the washerwoman further to the right. An original tree is still visible through the lighter sky paint, and the first figure of the washerwoman can be seen to the left of the final one.