La Blanchisseuse

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Honoré Daumier
La Blanchisseuse
vers 1863
huile sur bois
H. 49,0 ; L. 33,4 cm.
Achat en vente publique, 1927
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
Honoré Daumier
La Blanchisseuse
vers 1863
huile sur bois
H. 49,0 ; L. 33,4 cm.
Achat en vente publique, 1927
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
Honoré Daumier
La Blanchisseuse
vers 1863
huile sur bois
H. 49,0 ; L. 33,4 cm.
Achat en vente publique, 1927
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
Honoré Daumier (1808 - 1879)
Artwork not currently exhibited in the museum

Daumier often painted urban labourers under the Second Empire. Although famous for his caricatures, often published as lithographs, he was nonetheless an accomplished artist, both a painter and a sculptor.
There are three similar versions on the theme of the laundress, the first of which appeared in the Salon in 1861. At a time when Millet was turning his back on folklore and taking a fresh look at the peasant world in the 1850s, this painting offered a similar analysis of the plight of city workers. Stripped of the playful, gracious air that Boucher, Fragonard or Hubert Robert gave their washerwomen in the 18th century, Daumier's Laundress epitomises a social type characterised by gruelling repetitive toil.
The attention given to the figures reveals the toll it took on souls and bodies. There is a mixture of resignation and tenderness in the mother helping her child climb the high steps. Clutching a beater in her hand, the little girl seems destined to carry on her mother's task.
The houses along the quay in Paris in the background provide a luminous setting, no doubt precisely observed, but left unfinished to give the scene a powerful symbolic dimension.
The focus on humble folk is accompanied by a concern for force and monumentality reminiscent of Michelangelo, showing the spectator a sort of "real allegory".

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