Corot's landscapes from the 1870s are the culmination of a lifetime love and understanding of his natural surroundings. As he wrote in a letter to his friend, the painter La Rochenoire in February 1871: "I have turned out more work than usual. The plight of our country, it seems, has driven me to take cover under the vault of heaven and a roof of leafage, and to hunt out the best places for listening to the concert of the birds." (quoted in J. Leymarie, Corot, Geneva, 1985, p. 143). Painted circa 1872, Les Vachères à la Fontaine is one of Corot's last, important landscape paintings. Most likely painted directly from nature, it depicts two milkmaids conversing at a well while their cows quietly walk off into the distance towards a small hillside village. With its sweeping brushstrokes and suggestion of forms, this landscape reveals that Corot has become an Impressionist painter at the end of his life. Corot gave this painting to Daubigny, possibly around the time that the two artists met in Dunkirk to paint together in July 1873.

This painting has been examined and authenticated by Martin Dieterle.