Washerwomen at the edges of the pool before the storm

Washerwomen at the edges of the pool before the storm, oil on panel, signed Joseph Foxcroft Cole (1837-1892).
American School XIXth century.

Our painting is directly inspired by the movement of the Barbizon School.

Joseph Foxcroft Cole began his artistic career as an apprentice lithographer at the publishing house of J. H. Bufford & Sons, Boston, in 1855. From 1860 to 1863 Joseph Foxcroft Cole studied art in France under the Normandy landscape painter, Emile Lambinet. He spent the following summer with the Barbizon group of painters at Cernay-la-Ville and in 1865 worked in the Paris studio of Charles Jacques. Joseph Foxcroft Cole's art was exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon in 1866, 1867, 1873 and 1874 and at London's Royal Academy in 1875.
Joseph Foxcroft Cole was much influenced by the art of Charles Jacques and other great Barbizon landscape masters. Along with William Morris Hunt, John Foxcroft Cole was most influential in promoting Barbizon art in America. It was French Barbizon art, in fact, which provided a major catalyst for the great American landscape movements of the nineteenth century, such as the Hudson River School.