The Laundress: La Blanchisseuse de la place Dauphine

This print is one of several in which James McNeill Whistler depicted a laundry shop on Paris’s historic place Dauphine, near Notre Dame cathedral. As an American expatriate, Whistler was fascinated by the city’s storefronts and recorded them often. Here, he presents a scene that captivated many urban dwellers at the time: laundresses are seen through a doorway, their sleeves pushed up for work. The subject reflects a practice that Edgar Degas himself favored and which had become recognizable in his work, described by an early biographer as “strolling in the shadow of Paris’s streets, stop[ping] . . . before the boutiques of laundresses populating his neighborhood.”

A vertically oriented print in loose gray strokes on beige paper depicts the front window of a laundry shop, the open door revealing loosely shaded people working in dresses with dark tops and light skirts. Two, back to back, turn to look out the door at us while another two, seen through the window on the right, work over a table. Above the shop, a person leans over the edge of a balcony.

The Laundress: La Blanchisseuse de la place Dauphine

1894

James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Robert Way

(American, 1834–1903), (British, 1861–1913)

America

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