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Acknowledgements
I delivered a version of this paper at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies conference in Knoxville in 2023. I am grateful to my supervisor Alison Syme for her guidance throughout this process.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “Yesterday I spent the afternoon in the studio of a painter called Degas … He showed me washerwomen and still more washerwomen … speaking their language and explaining the technicalities of different movements of pressing and ironing.”
2 “They don't understand that for me the dancer was a pretext for painting pretty fabrics and rendering movement.” Movement has been amply explored in Degas's works on the motif of dancers. See Kendall and Devonyar (Citation2011).
3 “For M. Degas, the repertoire of painting is thus enriched by gesture that would be otherwise disdained, that of a woman who, dressed in a slip and a chemise, bare arms and head lowered, pressing both hands firmly on her iron” (Jamot Citation1914).
4 Eunice Lipton's essay, which later became a chapter in her book Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of Women and Modern Life, was the first to address the motif of the laundress in Degas's oeuvre. Applying a feminist and socio-historical perspective, she broke new ground with readings of his work which challenged the then predominant views of Degas as a misogynist. See Lipton (Citation1980).
5 Marine Kisiel's essay on the motif entitled “Et vive donc la blanchisserie de fin en France!” most recently considered many of Degas's ironers across a range of media in the context of an exhibition in Caen on work and Impressionism in French rural and urban centers. See Kisiel (Citation2020).
6 The blanchisseuse de linge fin is a term that designated both the lavandières (professional washerwomen) and the repasseuses (ironers). See Moisy (Citation1884).
7 The working conditions of these women and the stereotype of the laundress as an alcoholic is epitomized in Émile Zola’s novel L’Assommoir, which traces the life of protagonist Gervaise, a laundress in working-class Paris. Zola ([Citation1877] Citation1995).
8 Carol Armstrong argues in her essay on Degas’s monotypes that “the unmitigated inkiness of the image also yields a bath of dark grease for the she-creature to bathe in, and the technical production of the print by wiping and scratching away ink is conflated with her gestures of sponging and scraping at herself” (Citation2016, 38).
9 Marilyn Brown, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, and Michelle Foa have examined the Degas family’s association with the trade of cotton in the South. Foa has more recently given a glimpse into the contextual weight of the cotton that produced both fabrics that the French utilized as well as supports (paper and canvas) used by the artist. See Brown (Citation1994); Foa (Citation2020); and Grigsby (Citation2023).
10 A monotype is a print that is made by applying ink or other pigment to a sheet of metal, plastic, or glass. The image is then transferred onto a piece of paper using a printing press, yielding a single good image (hence the name monotype). Second or third prints called cognates may be pulled from the same sheet though these are typically much lighter and faint than the first.
11 “Petite Dobigny, encore une séance et de suite si c’est possible. Demain matin à 9 heures, si la fête de Pille ne vous as pas tuée, je vous attendrai. Répondez moi” (Letter 15 to Emma Dobigny, Paris, 1868–1869). “Tu ne viens plus, petite Dobigny. Je n’ai point enterré l’enseigne, cependant. On lit toujours sur la porte : établissement de bouillon. Et je ne quitte pas encore le commerce. Ce soir je garderai la boutique jusqu’à six heures et demie. Tâche de me donner quelque séance. Ne me traite pas plus mal que Lévy” (Letter 16 to Emma Dobigny, Paris, 1868–1869). See Reff (Citation2020, vol. 1, 143–144; vol. 3, 18).
12 See Porcheron ([Citation1876] Citation1996, 175).
13 Alain Corbin notes in his book that “From 1839 there was a growing number of complaints in Paris about the use of coal, the operation of steam engines and the opening of bitumen and rubber factories. Smoke began to be a preoccupation, not now because of its smell, but because it was blackish and opaque, attacked the lungs, dirtied facades and darkened the atmosphere just when people were beginning to develop a concern for light” (Citation1995, 155).
14 Boggs, ed. (Citation1999, 289–296).
15 Grigsby (Citation2019).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Aleksandra Bursac
Aleksandra Bursac is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research explores how Edgar Degas used particular motifs to engage with media and materiality and to negotiate larger social questions, with a focus on depictions of laundresses. Her writing has been featured in the catalogue for the exhibition Degas and the Laundress at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2023). She is currently the curatorial intern in the department of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.