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]
^Malcolmson, Patricia (1986). English laundresses: a social history, 1850-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 6.
ISBN0-252-01293-3.
OCLC12808522.
^
abRosenberg, 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.
ISBN978-0-300-08348-4.
Nemilova, Inna (June 1975). "Contemporary French Art in Eighteenth-Century Russia". Apollo. 101 (160): 428–442.
Nemilova, I. S. (1982). Французская живопись XVIII века в Эрмитаже (La peinture française du XVIIIe siècle, Musée de L'Ermitage: catalogue raisonné) [French Painting of the 18th centrty in the Hermitage Museum: Scientific Catalogue]. Leningrad: Iskusstvo. pp. 295–296, cat. no. 364.
OCLC63466759.
Nemilova, I. S. (1985). A. S. Kantor-Gukovskaya (ed.). Французская живопись. XVIII век [French Painting: the 18th Century]. Государственный Эрмитаж. Собрание западноевропейской живописи: научный каталог в 16 томах (in Russian). Vol. 10. Leningrad: Iskusstvo. pp. 66–67; cat. no. 26.
OCLC22896528.
Stuffmann, Margret (July–September 1968). "Les tableaux de la collection de Pierre Crozat: historique et destinée d'un ensemble célèbre établis en partant d'un inventaire après décès inédit 30 mai 1740". Gazette des Beaux-Arts (in French). 72: 11–144.
OCLC888303109.
Yakimovich, A. K.[in Russian] (1981). Шарден и французское Просвещение [Chardin and the French Age of Enlightenment]. Moscow: Iskusstvo. p. 84.
OCLC8430616.