Thérèse-Marthe-Françoise Cotard-Dupré

Private Collection, United Kingdom

Paris, Salon, 1910, no. 526

This work has recently been restored. The canvas is lined. The paint layer is clean and retouched. Retouches have been applied in the sky to reduce a pattern of cracking in the heavy white paint, and similar cracking can be seen in the white sheet in the center of the composition. There are two restored horizontal damages in the neck and hair of the girl on the right, which may either be scratches or thin breaks in the canvas. There are retouches in the same girl’s left ankle. There is also some thinness and retouching in the dark trees in the upper left. The retouches are very well applied, and the work should be hung as is.
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Thérèse-Marthe-Françoise Cotard-Dupré came from a family of artists.  She was the daughter of Julien Dupré (1851-1910) and niece of George Laugée (1853-1937), two leading French naturalist painters of the era.  As demonstrated by the present work, her subject and technique was deeply influenced by her father, but compositions like La lessive also suggest a personal familiarity with the domestic task at hand.  Indeed, while Julien Dupré was incredibly prolific, Cotard-Dupré’s production was limited by her responsibilities as wife to fellow artist Edmond Cotard and mother to Henri and François, who would both later become artists.  Cotard-Dupré's work entered the collections of only a few patrons and galleries during her lifetime and compositions as accomplished as La lessive have rarely been seen again.