A Soft Touch on Rough Canvas: Degas's Women Ironing

This painting is set in a Paris laundry. Laundries are gradually disappearing today, but in the late 19th century, anywhere from a fifth to a third of the population in and around Paris worked in the laundry trade — a genuinely booming industry at the time. Women doing laundry work were a common sight on the streets of Paris, which is why Degas and many other painters alike turned to the subject so often.

Of the two women in this painting, the one on the right works hard at her ironing while the woman on the left yawns, taking a break with a bottle of wine in one hand. Degas rendered the working woman in a tense, rigid posture, and the resting woman with a slack, languid one. That contrast was only possible because Degas understood the body so well — the hunched, drawn-in shoulders of the woman at work are especially striking.

The canvas itself deserves attention too. Look closely between the brushstrokes and you can see a brown fabric showing through — unrefined canvas that hadn't yet gone through the processing that would turn it white. Degas used this coarse, unfinished canvas deliberately. It might seem natural to assume he chose it to emphasize the harsh reality of laborers' lives, but look again — that's not really what's happening here. If anything, the canvas's rough texture makes the laundresses' pastel-colored clothing feel even more alive by contrast, and the women's bodies, rendered with soft, careful brushwork, stand out all the more delicately against that same coarse surface.