Landscape with Washerwomen

This 1723 Landscape with Washerwomen at the Courtauld Gallery depicts rural women at work in a river landscape, one of Magnasco's gentler subjects that contrasts with the asceticism and darkness of his monastic paintings. The Courtauld Gallery's collection, originally assembled around Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, includes earlier European works that provide historical context for its core strengths, and this Magnasco demonstrates the range of the collection beyond its defining holdings. The washerwomen at their riverside work represented the rural labor economy that supported both the monasteries and the aristocratic households that occupied Magnasco's landscapes, giving this domestic labor subject an economic dimension within his broader social panorama.

The landscape and working figures are rendered with Magnasco's recognizable rapid brushwork, the water and vegetation animated with the same energetic handling that characterizes his more dramatic compositions.