Women Ironing

Edgar Degas's Women Ironing, dated 1884, shows two working-class women at the task of pressing white linen. It belongs to a group of versions on this subject that Degas returned to over several years, alongside other recurring motifs in his work such as dancers and women bathing. The first version, from 1874, was commissioned by the baritone and collector Jean-Baptiste Faure, who agreed to lend it to the Impressionist exhibition of 1876. Dissatisfied with that result, Degas painted this second version directly onto the canvas without the usual priming layer, giving the surface a rough texture and a deliberately unpolished look.

What drew the most attention from contemporaries was the women's demeanour. One of the ironers yawns and scratches her neck, a bottle of wine beside her suggesting weariness and boredom, while the other concentrates on smoothing a shirt. Degas thus moved away from any idealisation of popular life, in the line of Courbet and Daumier, presenting his figures without polite manners or refinement. The yawn provoked near-universal rejection: some read it as laziness, others as vulgarity or an affront to good behaviour. Critics were divided, from the sharp irony of those who pointed to the roughness of the whole to the praise of those who saw in the gesture a fair and vigorous observation.

Pictorially, the work pairs quick handling with solid drawing, visible in the arms and faces. The steam from the irons creates a damp, hazy atmosphere that the artist seems to have sought to capture. Light enters from the right and falls on the woman in the pink shirt, while the yawning figure sits in deeper shadow. The palette is dominated by blues, touched with white, green, brown and pink. More than an anecdotal scene, the painting is a study of the fatigue and routine of women's work.

Painter

Edgar Degas

Date

1884

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

76 × 82 cm

Museum

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Genre

genre art

Depicts

ironing, woman, bottle

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