Three Fisherwomen of Berck (Trois Pêcheuses de Berck)

Albert Besnard’s work emerged from a context of uneasy and decadent post-Impressionism quite remote from the manner of Camille Pissarro. This print nevertheless shares with Pissarro’s La St-Martin a formal and expressive concern with female bodies which, over time, become stooped by toil. In this scene of Berck, a fishing village on the coast of Normandy, the woman at left carries shellfish in her apron while the one at center sorts them in a basket.