![Camille Corot - A Woman Gathering Faggots at Ville-d’Avray [c.1871-74]](http://c7.staticflickr.com/1/472/31303620550_44d7261b14_b.jpg)
Ville-d'Avray, a town on the outskirts of Paris where Corot's family had owned a house and property since 1817, was among the artist's favorite motifs. This work is one of several paintings he made of the property's pond seen through a delicate screen of trees. Alfred Robaut, Corot's friend and biographer, ascribed this canvas to the last five years of the artist's life, when he painted many variations on earlier themes. The silvery, cool tonality of this work may have been influenced by Corot's study of the contemporary medium of photography. The blurred appearance of the trees in the foreground, for example, is similar to the effect of foliage in motion as captured in nineteenth-century photographs.
[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 72.1 x 57.2 cm]