Realism in France

Honoré Daumier

The Laundress

about 1863

Oil on wood, 48.9 × 33 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A washerwoman with a heavy bundle helps a child up the steps from the Seine.

• Daumier could see laundresses returning from the river's laundry boats from his studio on the quai d'Anjou.
• The paint has decayed, so the final digit of the date can no longer be read.
• The figure is a dark mass against a bright city wall, a type of the urban laborer rather than a portrait.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Public Domain (Met Open Access)