Washerwomen by a Pond

Richet’s best known landscapes are those set in the forest Fountainbleau where Richet depicts a figure on a tree-lined path or standing by a lake or pond. In these paintings we can very easily sense that, passionately inspired by Diaz’s work, Richet strove to capture the profoundly agrarian aspect of nature, and that he sought to study the effects of light in much the same way the Impressionists would do only a few years later.