Theodore Robinson was born in Irasburg, Vermont in 1852. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Design and later became a leading figure in the history of American Impressionism and an influential member of the Anglo-American art colony in Giverny, France.

Robinson was one of the few American Impressionists who concentrated on the figure. Most of his paintings exhibit a peasant woman engaged in daily activities. In 1895 he spent the summer in Townshed, Vermont near the small town where he had been born visiting his cousin at her rural New England home. Washing Day, 1895 is a scene that depicts his cousin, Agnes Cheney, washing linens. She is standing on the left wearing a pink dress, with a grey cat at her feet, holding a linen sheet. The triangular shaped white linen in her hands contrasts with the green, yellow, and brown loosely painted background.