Description
Year of creation: c. 1873
Original size: 19 cm x 25 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (inv. M.1979.05.P)
The Laundress – Edgar Degas
A young woman bends forward over an ironing table, seen from the side, her head lowered and her face turned down to the work. Her chestnut hair is twisted into a loose knot at the nape. Our hand painted version keeps that complete absorption in a task.
A body at work
She wears a white sleeveless shift with narrow straps, her arms bare, and below it a dark grey-green skirt. Both hands are clasped together, pressing a dark iron into the cloth. The whole force of the scene is in that pressure: the body is not displayed but occupied.
Linen holding half the canvas
The lower half of the canvas is taken by a wide pale expanse of linen in soft folds. Behind it runs a thinly painted wall in cream and grey strokes; at the upper left there are some dark marks, and beside the head stands a dark vertical. The signature is at the lower left.
The Paris that works
Degas painted laundresses in the same years as his café scenes. The same look at a person who does not know she is watched carries The Absinthe Drinker and The Collector of Prints – leisure there, work here, and neither with a story attached.
Our version
Our version is a hand-painted oil painting on canvas. Every canvas is painted individually, in the size and frame you choose. The painter works from the original with brush and oils, so the strokes and the layering stay visible – the part a print cannot reproduce.
