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The Laundress

A work made of oil on canvas.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of oil on canvas.

Date:

1877/79

Artist:

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)

About this artwork

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s model for The Laundress was Nini Lopez, whom he painted regularly between 1874 and 1880 in his scenes of modern life. He made this canvas shortly after completing the illustrations for Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir (The Drunkard), a gritty novel about the downfall of a laundress in the brutal and degrading world of working-class Paris. Unlike those illustrations , this painting lacks any portrayal of backbreaking labor or social oppression. Renoir chose instead to visually reference the 19th-century stereotype of laundresses being promiscuous, signaled in this and other contemporary depictions of such figures by the sleeve slipping off the shoulder. This young woman appears artfully disheveled and rosy-cheeked as she tends to the laundry in her affluent employer’s home, standing next to a basket of linens and a stove used to heat irons.

Status

On View, Gallery 201

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Title

The Laundress

Place

France (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1877–1879

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Inscribed lower left: Renoir

Dimensions

80.8 × 56.5 cm (31 13/16 × 22 1/4 in.); Framed: 100.4 × 79.4 × 9.6 cm (39 1/2 × 31 1/4 × 3 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

Reference Number

1947.102

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/59944/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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