Description
Year of creation: c. 1869
Original size: 73.5 cm x 92.5 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: Bavarian State Painting Collections, Munich (inv. 14310)
Woman Ironing – Edgar Degas
A young woman stands behind an ironing board, seen from the waist up, looking straight at us. Her dark hair is pinned high and a few strands have slipped down beside her face. The face is pale, the gaze calm and immovable. Our hand-painted canvas painting keeps exactly that look, which interrupts the work for a single moment.
Both hands on the board
She wears a loose white shirt with a wide neckline and short sleeves, and a dark blue-grey apron at the waist. Both arms are stretched down and forward onto the board; the right hand presses a dark iron, the left braces against the edge. The weight of the body is in the arms, not the legs – this is the posture of work, not the posture of a model.
Linen as a large plane
The lower half of the canvas is taken by a broad plane of pale linen, laid on very thinly. Behind it, linen hangs on the wall in white, grey and pink strokes, and above it runs a dark green band. The background is left as a sketch, while the face and the shirt are finished – Degas painted exactly as much as the scene needs.
Work as a subject
Degas painted laundresses and ironers for years; the same work at another moment is shown by The Laundress, and a middle-class room without work by Interior. The signature is at the lower right. The canvas measures 73.5 x 92.5 cm and is in the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich.
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.
