The Laundress
1877–79
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
80.8 × 56.5 cm (31 13/16 × 22 1/4 in.); Framed: 100.4 × 79.4 × 9.6 cm (39 1/2 × 31 1/4 × 3 3/4 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
59944
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s model for The Laundress was Nini Lopez, whom he painted regularly between 1874 and 1880 in his scenes of modern life. He made this canvas shortly after completing the illustrations for Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir (The Drunkard), a gritty novel about the downfall of a laundress in the brutal and degrading world of working-class Paris. Unlike those illustrations , this painting lacks any portrayal of backbreaking labor or social oppression. Renoir chose instead to visually ref...
About the Artist
Pierre-Auguste Renoir · 1841–1919
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a founding figure of Impressionism whose luminous depictions of Parisian leisure, sensuous female forms, and sun-dappled landscapes made him one of the most beloved painters in Western art history. Born in Limoges to a working-class family, Renoir began as a porcelain painter before pursuing fine arts, and this early craft experience gave him facility with the...