# Woman and Child at the Well

- By: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903)
- Date: 1882
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 81.5 × 66.4 cm (32 1/8 × 26 1/8 in.); Framed: 98.5 × 81.6 × 6.1 cm (38 3/4 × 32 1/8 × 2 3/8 in.)
- Culture: France
- Credit line: Potter Palmer Collection
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/81552)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/a2ddbd89-d864-8877-37bc-cd3dce12c37c/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

By the 1880s, Camille Pissarro, like most of his Impressionist colleagues, sought an alternative to the style he had employed over the previous decade, deciding to focus on figures rather than landscapes. Of the 36 paintings he showed at the seventh Impressionist exhibition, in the spring of 1882, 27 were figural. Woman and Child at the Well is one of a series of works depicting peasant girls taking a break from their chores, their poses and gestures suggesting narratives that remain ambiguous. As the model for the boy in this composition, Pissarro used his fourth son, Ludovic-Rodolphe, who was four years old at the time.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0