Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism

An exploration of Edgar Degas’s laundress works and their significance within broader debates art, urban life, and women’s work in the nineteenth century

Edgar Degas’s depictions of Parisian laundresses are some of the famed Impressionist’s most revolutionary works. In paintings, drawings, and prints throughout his long career, Degas emphasized the strenuousness of women’s labor and highlighted social-class divides in his idiosyncratic avant-garde style. Laundresses washing, ironing, and c...