NARRATOR:
While visiting New Orleans in 1872, Edgar Degas wrote to the painter Jacques Joseph Tissot:
DEGAS (ACTOR):
“Everything is beautiful in this world of the people. But one Paris laundry girl, with bare arms, is worth it all for such a pronounced Parisian as I am.”
NARRATOR:
Paris was famous for its laundresses, who were skilled laborers in a demanding trade. Rich European families sent their linen to them from as far as Poland. French artists had overlooked this occupation as a subject for art—until Degas, and his friend, the novelist Emile Zola, began to take notice.
Here, Degas chose a moment that emphasizes the monotonous nature of ironing and comments on the condition of the working class. On the right, a flushed worker bends over—her head tucked in, her arms straining, using all her strength to press down a heavy iron. In contrast, the laundress on the left lifts a hand to her stiff neck and raises her arm, stretching her tired bones. Her yawn conveys her exhaustion and the tedium of her repetitive job. The wine bottle she grips was a fact of life for these women. They often suffered from ailments like bronchitis and tuberculosis, and many of them drank.
A pile of ironed-and starched shirts lies between them, and hanging laundry looms as a backdrop—both opportunities for Degas to experiment with subtle shades of white.
Degas painted and drew many ironers and washerwomen over a 30-year period. This is one of only a few large oil paintings—of any subject—he ever made.
Women Ironing
Begun c.1875-1876; reworked c.1882-1886
Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
On View
Once a private, domestic chore, laundry was big business in nineteenth-century Paris, where it employed roughly twenty-five percent of the female workforce. Steamy, dark storefronts, often open to the sidewalk, gave passersby a glimpse of women ironing, bare-armed in the heat. Born into an aristocratic family, Degas was fascinated by working women and by the increasingly porous distinctions between private and public, domestic and commercial in the modern city. His paintings of laundresses—none finer than the present example—reflect this fascination. Probably begun in the 1870s and reworked about a decade later, this picture suggests the brutalizing effects of hard labor. The women hunch, yawn, and drink over a pile of starched shirts, yet the peculiar delicacy of Degas’s touch—mimicking, in the flesh tones, his own work in pastels—reminds us of the laundresses’ youth and femininity.
Details
- Artist Name: Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
- Title: Women Ironing
- Date: Begun c.1875-1876; reworked c.1882-1886
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 32-1/4 x 29-3/4 in. (81.9 x 75.5 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1971.3.P/M.1979.17.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
The artist, sold 18 October 1902, as Les deux blanchisseuses, 1882, for Fr. 15,000 to;
[Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock no. 7184, sold 18 November 1902, for Ff 20,000, to];
Oscar Schmitz (1861-1933), Dresden, and Switzerland (1931-1933);
Schmitz heirs (Edouard Schmitz), still in 1935;
[Wildenstein Galleries, Paris, London and New York by 1936];
?Edith Dunn (Mrs. Alfred Chester) Beatty (d. 1952), by 1953 inheritance to;
Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968), London and Dublin, consigned 30 December 1958 to;
[Arthur Tooth & Sons, London; sold 7 April 1959 to];
Lucille Ellis, Norton and Robert Ellis Simon, in 1969 after Robert Simon's death to;
Norton Simon and The Norton Simon Foundation, 1971 to;
Norton Simon gave his half interest to NSAF;
Norton Simon Art Foundation and Norton Simon Foundation;
Norton Simon Foundation sold its 1/2 interest to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
[Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock no. 7184, sold 18 November 1902, for Ff 20,000, to];
Oscar Schmitz (1861-1933), Dresden, and Switzerland (1931-1933);
Schmitz heirs (Edouard Schmitz), still in 1935;
[Wildenstein Galleries, Paris, London and New York by 1936];
?Edith Dunn (Mrs. Alfred Chester) Beatty (d. 1952), by 1953 inheritance to;
Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968), London and Dublin, consigned 30 December 1958 to;
[Arthur Tooth & Sons, London; sold 7 April 1959 to];
Lucille Ellis, Norton and Robert Ellis Simon, in 1969 after Robert Simon's death to;
Norton Simon and The Norton Simon Foundation, 1971 to;
Norton Simon gave his half interest to NSAF;
Norton Simon Art Foundation and Norton Simon Foundation;
Norton Simon Foundation sold its 1/2 interest to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Foundation
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