The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Vertically oriented print in loose grey strokes on beige paper of the front window of a laundry shop, the open door revealing people suggested by wavy lines 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 our 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

(American, 1834–1903)
publisher

Thomas Robert Way

(British, 1861–1913)
America
transfer lithograph
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).
    Drawings, Etchings and Lithographs by Whistler: Gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 18-March 11, 1924).
    Etchings and Lithographs by Whistler: Gifts and Loans of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-April 2, 1923).
  • {{cite web|title=The Laundress: La Blanchisseuse de la place Dauphine|url=false|author=James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Robert Way|year=1894|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1924.17