My nurse's cottage. The house of 'Mother Bazot' in Valmondois (Seine-et-Oise)

Charles-François Daubigny's My Nurse's Cottage (1874) is an unusually personal subject for a painter best known for expansive river landscapes — a record of the house of 'Mother Bazot' in Valmondois, a village in the Seine-et-Oise where Daubigny had strong connections and spent much of his later career. Daubigny's cottage and village subjects form a quieter, more intimate strand of his work alongside the river paintings, revealing his attachment to specific places and the people associated with them. Valmondois would later also attract Van Gogh's father-figure Daubigny's memory and Cézanne's associate.

The cottage is approached with the same direct naturalism as his river subjects — architecture integrated into landscape without idealization, the garden and surroundings painted with Daubigny's characteristic loose, confident touch. Warm tones in the walls and thatch contrast with the cooler greens of the garden foliage.