A word that exists for one year

The record dates The Roubine du Roi Canal with Washerwomen to 1888. Canals are named in three titles in this catalogue and all of them are dated 1888. Water enters these titles late: the Seine accounts for eleven titles, every one dated 1887, and before the Paris years there is almost none.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 60 by 74 centimetres and the location is given as a private collection. The measured palette reads as green and blue.

Green and blue, and where they meet

This pairing is a late-decade reading. Green dominates sixty-five of the 135 works dated 1888 and blue twenty-six, both at or near their maxima in the same year; in 1885 the counts were twelve and one. The Arles period, which is a single year in this arrangement, therefore carries the highest measured concentration of both families in the whole catalogue. That is a statement about 610 records and their colour measurements, not about how the paintings looked in a room, and it should be read at that level. Who the washerwomen were is not in the record.