The Washerwomen (Les laveuses)
1889
Medium
lithograph (zinc) on yellow wove paper
Dimensions
image: 21.1 × 26.5 cm (8 5/16 × 10 7/16 in.) sheet: 31 × 45.4 cm (12 3/16 × 17 7/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Print Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection)
Accession Number
1985.7.1
Art Historical Context
In 1889, Paul Gauguin created *The Washerwomen ( laveuses)*, a striking zinc lithograph printed on warm yellow wove. This intimate print, measuring about 21 x 26 cm, captures Breton life during Gauguin's time in-Aven, France. Amid his Post-Impressionist experiments, Gauguin depicted everyday scenes of women washing clothes by a riverbank, blending bold outlines and flat colors in his emerging Synthetist style—a departure from Impressionism's fleeting light toward symbolic, decorative forms inspired by folk art and Japanese prints. The medium holds special significance: lithography on zinc all...
About the Artist
Paul Gauguin · 1848–1903
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose bold experiments with color, form, and subject matter made him one of the most influential figures in the transition from 19th-century art to modernism. His rejection of European civilization for the perceived authenticity of 'primitive' cultures established an archetype of artistic exile that continues to resonate. Gauguin's ...