Location

not on view

Fun Fact

In addition to the needle traditionally used in etching, Edgar Degas employed unorthodox tools including a wire brush and a double-pointed steel accountant’s pen to make marks on the plate used for this print.

Description

The Impressionist artist Edgar Degas explored etching briefly, from about 1875 through 1880. Created during this period, The Laundresses depicts several young women working at a Parisian laundry shop, hanging washed clothing and ironing. It is Degas’s only intaglio print that focused on laundresses, a popular subject in contemporary novels. Through the women’s hunched postures and the scale of the laundry pile at lower right, the artist emphasized the difficulty of such work.

Inscriptions

Inscription

stamped, on verso, in red ink: ATELIER / ED DEGAS [Lugt 657]; lower right, in plate: Schneider / 9 Berlin

Edgar Degas

French painter, sculptor, 1834-1917

Provenance

1880-1918

Studio of the artist, Paris

1918

(his sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, November 22-23, 1918, no. 95)

1973

(sale, Kornfeld and Klipstein, Bern, Switzerland, June 20, 1973, no. 161)

by 1983-?

(Artemis Group/David Carritt Limited, London)

after 1983-2020

Josefowitz Collection, Lausanne, Switzerland, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

2020-

Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Catalogue des eaux-fortes, vernis-mous, aquatintes, lithographies et monotypes par Edgar Degas et provenant de son atelier. Paris: Galerie Manzi-Joyant, 1918. Mentioned: no. 95

Delteil, Loys. Le Peintre-Graveur Illustré. Vol. 9. Paris: Chez l’auteur, 1919 Mentioned: no. 37

Edgar Degas: 1834-1917. Exh. Cat. London: David Carritt Ltd., 1983. Mentioned and reproduced: no. 18

Reed, Sue Welsh, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Edgar Degas: The Painter As Printmaker. Exh. Cat. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984. Mentioned: no. 48

Richard Kendall, Anthea Callen, and Dillian Gordon. Degas: Images of Women. Exh. Cat. Liverpool: Tate, 1989. Mentioned: p. 40, no. 15

Minder, Nicole, Eric Gillis, and Richard R. Brettell. Degas & Pissarro: alchimie d'une rencontre. Exh. Cat. Vevey: Musée Jenisch, 1998. Mentioned: no. 51

Salsbury, Britany. Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Reproduced: p. 115, no. 12

Exhibition history

Edgar Degas, 1834-1917. David Carritt Limited, London (November 2 - December 9, 1983).

Degas: Images of Women. Tate Liverpool (September 21, 1989 - December 31, 1989).

Degas & Pissarro: Alchimie d'une rencontre. Cabinet cantonal des estampes, Musée Jenisch, Vevey, Switzerland (June 16 - August 22, 1999); Musée du Québec (May 5 - June 27, 1999); Israel Museum, Jerusalem (September - October 1999).

Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 8, 2023-January 14, 2024).