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Your galleryThe Laundress
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Compare the model’s hands at her waist with the broad vertical apron, then look for the linen basket beside her.
Renoir’s frequent model Nini Lopez posed as the laundress. The basket of linen and nearby stove establish the work setting, but she pauses rather than performing a task. The picture asks us to look at a staged figure of a worker, not assume that it records an unobserved moment of labor.
Oil on canvas · 80.8 × 56.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Impressionism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Laundress
- Artist
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)
- Date
- 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.)
- Credit line
- Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.