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The Laundress

painter: Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725-1805)
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Alternative Title
La Blanchisseuse
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.3/22997
Description
"This little laundress is charming, but she's a rascal I wouldn't trust an inch," the critic Denis Diderot declared when this painting was first exhibited in 1761. Indeed, Jean-Baptiste Greuze stripped the traditional theme of the washerwoman of its association with the virtue of hard work and instead overlaid it with a titillating sensuality typical of Rococo art. In a room scattered with wet and drying laundry, a disheveled maidservant with an exposed stocking and slipper fixes the viewer with a provocative gaze. Greuze used a heavily loaded brush to apply patches of paint that describe texture and surface: the folds of the young woman's dress, the heaviness of wet cloth, the dull sheen on the pewter jug, and the grainy texture of wood. (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, website; http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o843.html; 10/20/2003)
 
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Type of Work
Oil painting
Subject
Drapery in art, Laundresses, Basins, Clotheslines, Ewers, Working class --France, Painting, French --18th century
Rights Statement
All rights reserved
Item is Part of
121010
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