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A woman with peachy skin stands facing our left in profile ironing a pale blue shirt on a white surface, possibly a table, with a line of pastel-colored shirts hanging in front of curtained windows opposite us in this vertical painting. We seem to look slightly down onto the woman’s shoulders and onto the surface of the table. The white tabletop takes up most of the bottom half of the composition, and, seen from the knees up, the woman leans in from the lower right corner. The woman’s chestnut-brown hair is pulled up into a bun, and she wears a dark earring in her left ear. Her denim-blue dress is speckled with white dots and highlighted with strokes of blush pink. Her sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and a dusty rose-pink apron covers her brown skirt. She presses down on the iron with her right hand, farther from us, and uses her left hand to straighten the fabric of the shirt collar. The iron has a thick handle and a flat, narrow, triangular surface used to press out wrinkles. A small, empty, bronze-colored bowl and crisply starched and folded porcelain-white shirt lie on the table to her left, closer to us. A row of hanging garments in pale crepe pink, flaxen gold, teal, and lavender purple soften the light coming into the room from three vertical windows, which are covered with sheer, ivory-white curtains. The artist’s feathery brushstrokes give the painting a hazy quality. The artist signed the work with olive-green letters near the lower left corner: “Degas.”

Edgar Degas

Woman Ironing, begun c. 1876, completed c. 1887

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 86

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 81.3 × 66 cm (32 × 26 in.)

framed: 98.74 × 82.87 × 7.94 cm (38 7/8 × 32 5/8 × 3 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

1972.74.1

Artists / Makers

Edgar Degas (artist) French, 1834 - 1917

Image Use

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Overview

Women at work provided inspiration for Degas. In addition to ballet dancers and cabaret singers, he also painted milliners and dressmakers, laundresses and ironers—such as the young woman here. Writer Edmond de Goncourt described a visit to Degas' studio when the artist showed him "washerwomen and still more washerwomen...." Degas was interested in their movements and postures, the patterns and rhythms of their work. Degas, de Goncourt continued, had gone about "speaking their language, explaining to us technically the downward pressing and circular strokes of the iron, etc...."

Laundresses also appeared as characters in newly popular realistic novels, which detailed the difficult lives of these women. They worked long, hot hours for low wages, and because they wore loose clothing and made deliveries to men's apartments, their morals were often questioned. Degas, however, seems not to have been interested in their social situation so much as in their characteristic gestures—in the line of his ironer's body as she leans into her work, in the soft curtain of color provided by the garments that hang around her, in the crisp shirt folded on the table.

Inscription

lower left: Degas

Provenance

Jean-Baptiste Faure [1830-1914], Paris. James F. Sutton [d. 1915]; (his sale, American Art Association, New York, 25 April 1895, no. 164); purchased by Georges Durand-Ruel [1866-1931], Paris, apparently for his private collection; widow, Mme. Georges Durand-Ruel, née Margaret Tierney, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France; to her niece, Mme. Jacques Lefébure, Paris.[1] (Wildenstein and Co., New York); sold 1972 to Mr. Paul Mellon, Upperville; gift 1972 to NGA.

[1]The painting probably remained in the Durand-Ruel family collection from Georges' death in 1931 until at least 1947, when it was exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in New York (other objects in the catalogue which were lent credited owners. No owner is listed for this painting). It was lent by Durand-Ruel to a 1936 exhibition in Philadelphia and published by Rewald in 1946 as in a private collection in Paris. The Lefébure family was related by marriage to the Durand-Ruels. In 1896 Joseph Durand-Ruel, Georges' brother, married Mary Jenny Lefébure [1868-1962].

Associated Names

American Art Association
Durand-Ruel, Georges
Durand-Ruel, Georges, Mme
Faure, Jean-Baptiste
Lefébure, Jacques, Mme
Mellon, Paul
Sutton, James Fountain
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

Exhibition History

1905: Pictures by Boudin, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Grafton Galleries, London, 1905, no. 68

1907: Modern French Paintings, The Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, England, 1907-1908, no. 176

1924: Exposition Degas au profit de la Ligue Franco-Anglo-Américaine contre le cancer: Peintures, pastels et dessins, sculptures, eaux-fortes, lithographies et monotypes, Galeries Georges Petit (sculpture shown at Galerie A.A. Hébrard), Paris, 1924, no. 68, as Repasseuse à contre-jour.

1932: Exhibition of French Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 456

1934: Quelques oeuvres importantes de Corot à Van Gogh, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1934, no. 8

1936: Degas 1834-1917, The Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1936, no. 39, repro.

1937: Exhibition of Masterpieces by Degas, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, 1937, no. 10

1940: The Four Great Impressionists: Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, Manet (Exhibition of Paintings for the Benefit of the American Friends of France), Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, 1940, no. 7, repro.

1943: Exhibition Celebrating One Hundred Fortieth Anniversary, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, 1943, no. 5, repro.

1947: Degas, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, 1947, no. 7

1982: Loan for display with permanent collection, Munch Museum, Oslo, 1982-1983.

1986: Capolavori Impressionisti dei Musei Americani, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1986-1987, no. 15, repro.

1986: Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, July-October 1986, unnumbered checklist.

1986: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, State Hermitage Museum, Leningrad; State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, January-May 1986, no. 8, repro.

1988: Degas, Grand Palais, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988-1989

1990: Französische Impressionisten und ihre Wegbereiter aus der National Gallery of Art, Washington und dem Cincinnati Art Museum, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1990, no. 17, repro.

1992: From El Greco to Cézanne: Masterpieces of European Painting from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metroplitan Museum of Art, New York, National Gallery of Greece, Athens, 1992-1993, no. 59, repro.

1996: Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 166-167, color repro.

1999: An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no cat.

1999: Around Impressionism: French Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999, no cat. (returned early to NGA for inclusion in An Enduring Legacy exhibition).

1999: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1999, no. 23, repro.

2005: Loan for display with permanent collection, The Kreeger Museum, Washington, D.C., 2005.

2006: Degas: o universo de um artista [Degas: The Universe of an Artist], Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, 2006, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2010: Picasso Looks at Degas, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 2010, no. 110, repro.

2011: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The National Art Center, Tokyo; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 2011, no. 15, repro.

2019: Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro and More, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2019, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 100, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 483, no. 711, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 123, repro.

1990: Französische Impressionisten und ihre Wegbereiter aus der National Gallery of Art, Washington und dem Cincinnati Art Museum. Exh. cat. Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1990: no. 17, repro.

1991: Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 277, 280, color repro.

1997: Kelder, Diane. The Great Book of French Impressionism, 1997, no. 274, repro.

1997: Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA: One Hundred Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association. St. Louis, 1997: 106-107, color repro.

2013: Lipiński, Filip. "Hopper wirtualny: Obrazy w pamiętającym spojrzeniu." Ph.D. dissertation. Uniwersytet Adam Mickiewicz, Poznań, 2013. Toruń, 2013: 257, 516, 578, color fig. 43.

2017: Hoenigswald, Ann, and Kimberly A. Jones. "The Question of Finish in the Work of Edgar Degas." In Degas, Daphne Barbour and Suzanne Quillen Lomax, eds. Facture. Conservation, Science, Art History 3 (2017): 20-49, esp. 30, 32-35, figs. 7, 8 (infrared reflectogram detail), 9 (infrared reflectogram detail).