A Woman's Work
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
unframed: 80.3 × 65.4 cm · framed: 97.2 × 82.2 × 6.4 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
American Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Amelia Elizabeth White
Accession Number
1964.160
Tags
About this artwork
Trained as a journalist, the young Sloan explored social issues more vigorously than most of the painters of his time, portraying working-class urbanites engaged in ordinary activities. He observed this particular scene through a rear window of his Manhattan apartment. Perched on a narrow fire escape, a woman hangs fresh laundry to dry on clotheslines strung between tenements. As evidenced by the painting, the labors of American women at the turn of the 1900s were most often confined to the dome...