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].
Accession Number
1972.74.1
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.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting Canvas French
Background & Context
Background Story
Woman Ironing (c. 1869) belongs to Degas's series of paintings depicting working women—the laundresses, ironers, and other domestic workers whose labor sustained bourgeois Parisian life but whom conventional art typically ignored. The 1869 date places this among Degas's earliest treatments of the working-class subject, before the more famous laundress paintings that he would produce in the 1870s-80s. The ironing subject, like the laundress subject, allowed Degas to explore the figure in motion within a domestic setting—the woman's repetitive movement, her concentration on the work, and the specific quality of physical labor that ironing demanded. Degas's treatment of the ironing woman demonstrates his ability to find artistic significance in the most ordinary activities: the movement of the iron across the fabric, the woman's posture, and the steam rising from the ironed cloth create a composition of unexpected beauty from the most prosaic subject. The painting also reveals the social conditions that made bourgeois comfort possible: the woman ironing is performing the labor that produced the clean, pressed clothes that bourgeois society required, and Degas's attention to her work argues that this labor deserves the same artistic attention that more glamorous subjects receive. The woman's concentration, her physical effort, and the specific quality of her movement are rendered with the precision that Degas brought to all his figure subjects.
Cultural Impact
Degas's working-woman paintings influenced how domestic labor was represented in modern art, establishing the laundress and ironer as significant artistic subjects. The paintings influenced later Realist painters who similarly found subjects in working-class life. The Woman Ironing influenced how the relationship between bourgeois comfort and working-class labor was visually represented, connecting consumption to production.
Why It Matters
This painting matters because it reveals the labor that sustained bourgeois Parisian life—the ironing woman whose work produced the clean, pressed clothes that respectable society required. Degas's attention to her physical effort and concentration argues that domestic work deserves the same artistic attention that more glamorous subjects receive, and that modern art's responsibility includes showing the reality behind bourgeois comfort.
