The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 25, 2024
The Laundress: La Blanchisseuse de la place Dauphine
1894
(American, 1834–1903)
publisher
(British, 1861–1913)
Image: 23 x 15.7 cm (9 1/16 x 6 3/16 in.); Sheet: 27.5 x 20.1 cm (10 13/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King 1924.17
Catalogue raisonné: Way 58; AIC 93
Location: not on view
Description
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.”- Salsbury, Britany. Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Reproduced: p. 124, no. 17
- Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 8, 2023-January 14, 2024).
- {{cite web|title=The Laundress: La Blanchisseuse de la place Dauphine|url=false|author=James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Robert Way|year=1894|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1924.17