The Laundress
French: Une petite femme s'occupant à savonner
The Hermitage version
ArtistJean Siméon Chardin[1]
Year1733[2]
LocationHermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

The Laundress (French: La Blanchisseuse[3]) or A Young Girl Doing Laundry (Une petite femme s'occupant à savonner) is the title of three oil paintings by the French artist Jean Siméon Chardin.[4] The subject of laundresses, also known as washerwomen, was a popular one in art, especially in France.[5]

Versions

Signed in the top left, the prime version of The Laundress dates to between 1733 and 1740.[6] It formed part of the Crozat collection, which was mostly acquired by Catherine II of Russia on the advice of Denis Diderot in 1772, and so is now in the Hermitage Museum. It measures 38 by 48 cm.

A second version is now in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm; it is smaller (37.5 by 42.5 cm) and is signed in the centre on the stool under the tub. That version was exhibited at the 1737 Paris Salon and engraved by Cochin in 1739.[7]

A third version (35 by 41 cm) was said to be mentioned in the inventory of Chardin's property compiled on the artist's death in 1779. It was in the Henri de Rothschild collection but was destroyed during the Second World War.[7]

References

  1. ^ Colin B. Bailey (2000). Jean-Baptiste Greuze: The Laundress. Getty Publications. pp. 35–. ISBN 978-0-89236-564-7.
  2. ^ Rose-Marie Hagen; Rainer Hagen (2003). What Great Paintings Say. Taschen. pp. 275–. ISBN 978-3-8228-1372-0.
  3. ^ John Murray (1927). Murray's Handbook of Travel-talk: Being a Collection of Questions, Phrases, and Vocabularies in English, French, German, & Italian. Macmillan.
  4. ^ Katharine Baetjer (15 April 2019). French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 130–. ISBN 978-1-58839-661-7.
  5. ^ Malcolmson, Patricia (1986). English laundresses: a social history, 1850-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-252-01293-3. OCLC 12808522.
  6. ^ Elisabeth Foucart-Walter; Pierre Rosenberg (1988). The Painted Cat: The Cat in Western Painting from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century. Random House Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-8478-0995-0.
  7. ^ a b Rosenberg, P., Bruyant, F., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain) & Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York N.Y.). (1999). Chardin. Royal Academy of Arts: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-300-08348-4.

Bibliography

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