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The Laundresses
Edgar Degas1879–80
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States
The Impressionist artist Edgar Degas explored etching briefly, from about 1875 through 1880. Created during this period,<em> The Laundresses</em> 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.
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Details
- Title: The Laundresses
- Creator: Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
- Date Created: 1879–80
- Physical Dimensions: Image: 11.6 x 15.7 cm (4 9/16 x 6 3/16 in.); Sheet: 21 x 23.8 cm (8 1/4 x 9 3/8 in.)
- Provenance: Studio of the artist, Paris, (his sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, November 22-23, 1918, no. 95), (sale, Kornfeld and Klipstein, Bern, Switzerland, June 20, 1973, no. 161), (Artemis Group/David Carritt Limited, London), Josefowitz Collection, Lausanne, Switzerland, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Type: Print
- Rights: CC0
- External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/2020.223
- Medium: etching and aquatint
- State of work: IV/IV
- Inscriptions: stamped, on verso, in red ink: ATELIER / ED DEGAS [Lugt 657]; lower right, in plate: Schneider / 9 Berlin
- 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.
- Department: Prints
- Culture: France, 19th century
- Credit Line: Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
- Collection: PR - Etching
- Accession Number: 2020.223
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