Fragonard, Jean-Honoré (1732-1806)
Les blanchisseuses (The Laundresses)
c.1756–1761
Oil on canvas, 73 x 61.5 cm
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
Two women in bright white and yellow form the focal point of this composition. They toil within a stifling atmosphere of dense steam clouds in a laundry. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, a favorite artist at court, often chose working class people as subjects. Here he captures the demanding physical labor that washing required, most notably in the figure carrying a heavy bundle. The artist makes visible the intense heat of the kettle; contemporary laundry treatises recommended a seventeen-hour process with temperatures near boiling. (SLAM)