"I have begun some washerwomen ... I think that it will work out all right this time. It is very soft and coloured, but luminous!
I have taken up again, never to abandon it, my old style, soft and light of touch ... It is quite different from my recent landscapes and from the monotonous portrait of your daughter. it's like the "Fishergirls' and the "Woman with a Fan", but with a slight finally put my hand on. It's nothing new, but rather a follow up to the paintings of the eighteenth century ... This is to give you some idea of my new and last manner of painting (like Fragonard, only not so good) ... I'm not comparing myself, believe me, to an eighteenth-century master. But I must explain the way I am working knew more about it than we do."
-Letters to Durand-Ruel, 1888
