At The Well 1911

Curator: Lepère's "At The Well," held here at the Harvard Art Museums, strikes me immediately as a scene plucked from a dream. The details are impressionistic. Editor: It feels timeless, doesn't it? The woman at the well is so absorbed in her task, it’s like the whole world is hushed around her. There’s a certain stillness. Curator: Yes, there's that wonderful domesticity, that sense of daily life rendered heroic that was so appealing to the late 19th-century art world. The way he captures light with those swirling lines... it's almost like he’s painting with acid. Editor: Do you think the rural subject speaks to a yearning for simpler times amidst rapid industrialization? Curator: Absolutely. Lepère, along with many of his contemporaries, was deeply interested in the image of rural life and the peasant. Editor: It’s funny how art can distill a moment into something that echoes across centuries. I could stare at this all day, imagining the stories that well could tell. Curator: Indeed. It’s a window into another time, another way of being, captured with such delicate intensity.