The Laundress

1877/79

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
French, 1841-1919

This canvas is Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s earliest painting of a laundress, a prevalent figure in the visual and literary culture of middle-class France in the 19th century. The model for the figure was Nini Lopez, a resident of Montmartre, the Parisian quarter to which Renoir moved in the summer of 1876. Lopez was characterized by writer and art critic Georges Rivière as the ideal model, for she was “punctual, serious, [and] discreet.” But while Lopez can be identified in The Laundress, this is not a portrait; her features are generalized and dissolve into a frenzy of brushstrokes. Instead, Renoir depicted a Parisian type—in this case, a young, working-class girl. When he painted this canvas, Renoir had recently finished four illustrations for Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir (The Drunkard), a gritty novel about the downfall of a laundress in the brutal and degrading world of working-class Paris. Renoir’s vibrant portrayal of the laundress in this canvas is markedly different from the laundress’s illustrated appearance, for which the Art Institute has a preparatory drawing.

Status: On View, Gallery 201
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Title: The Laundress
Place: France (Artist's nationality)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1877–1879
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower left: Renoir
Dimensions: 80.8 × 56.5 cm (31 13/16 × 22 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
Reference Number: 1947.102
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/59944/manifest.json

Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition A. Renoir, exh. cat. (Imp. de l’Art, E. Ménard et Cie, 1892), p. 37, cat. 8.
“Renoir Painting Sold for $7,000,” New York Times, Jan. 6, 1923, p. 13.
New American Art Galleries, Paintings and Pastels by the Barbizon Masters, Their Contemporaries the French Impressionists, and Modern French Painters Forming the Private Collection of Mr. Meyer Goodfriend New York–Paris, sale cat. (New American Art Galleries, Jan. 4–5, 1923), lot 109.
Toledo Museum of Art, Paintings by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, exh. cat. (Toledo Museum of Art, 1937), n.pag., cat. 30 (ill.).
Daniel Catton Rich, Catalogue of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection of Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings (Lakeside, 1938), pp. 77–78; pl. 46/cat. 80.
Edith Weigle, “Gift of Art,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 25, 1947, p. C6 (ill.).
“Donor to Get Honor Degree at Art Institute,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 13, 1947, p. 21.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Complete List of Works,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 41, 5 [pt. 3] (Sept.–Oct. 1947), p. 63.
Art Institute of Chicago, “The Magnificent Worcester Gift,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, 42, 2, pt. 3 (Feb. 1948), p. 4 (ill.).
Frederick A. Sweet, “The Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection,” Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 50, 3 (Sept. 15, 1956), p. 44.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961; reissue, 1968), p. 396.
Frederick A. Sweet, “Great Chicago Collectors,” Apollo 84, 55 (Sept. 1966), p. 203.
François Daulte, Renoir: A Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of the American Association of Museums in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Renoir’s Death, exh. cat. (Wildenstein, 1969), cat. 37 (ill.).
François Daulte, Auguste Renoir: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, vol. 1, Figures, 1860–1890 (Durand-Ruel, 1971), pp. 254–55, cat. 348 (ill.); 416.
Elda Fezzi, L’opera completa di Renoir, nel periodo impressionista, 1869–1883, Classici dell’arte 59 (Rizzoli, 1972), p. 108, cat. 434 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings by Renoir, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1973), pp. 26; 86; 90–91, cat. 31 (ill.).
Sophie Monneret, Renoir, Profils de l’art (Chêne, 1989), p. 153, cat. 8 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Treasures of 19th- and 20th-Century Painting: The Art Institute of Chicago, with an introduction by James N. Wood (Art Institute of Chicago/Abbeville, 1993), p. 79 (ill.).
Gerhard Gruitrooy, Renoir: A Master of Impressionism (Todtri Productions, 1994), p. 109 (ill.).
Douglas W. Druick, Renoir, Artists in Focus (Art Institute of Chicago/Abrams, 1997), pp. 30; 37–38; 87, pl. 6; 108 (detail).
Katsunori Fukaya, “The Laundress,” in Bridgestone Museum of Art and Nagoya City Art Museum, Renoir: From Outsider to Old Master, 1870–1892, exh. cat. (Bridgestone Museum of Art/Nagoya City Art Museum/Chunichi Shimbun, 2001), pp. 82–83, cat. 13 (ill.).
Paul Hayes Tucker, “Renoir in the 1870s and ’80s: Modernity, Tradition, and Individuality,” in Bridgestone Museum of Art and Nagoya City Art Museum, Renoir: From Outsider to Old Master, 1870–1892, trans. Yumiko Yamazaki and Yuko Tatsuno, exh. cat. (Bridgestone Museum of Art/Nagoya City Art Museum/Chunichi Shimbun, 2001), pp. 37–38, 223.
Ann Dumas and John Collins, Renoir’s Women, exh. cat. (Columbus Museum of Art/Merrell, 2005), pp. 11, fig. 2; 118.
Guy-Patrice Dauberville and Michel Dauberville, with the collaboration of Camille Frémontier-Murphy, Renoir: Catalogue raisonné des tableaux, pastels, dessins et aquarelles, 1858–1881, vol. 1 (Bernheim-Jeune, 2007), p. 409, cat. 382 (ill.).
Gloria Groom and Douglas Druick, with the assistance of Dorota Chudzicka and Jill Shaw, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago/Kimbell Art Museum, 2008), pp. 17; 68–69, cat. 25 (ill.). Simultaneously published as Gloria Groom and Douglas Druick, with the assistance of Dorota Chudzicka and Jill Shaw, The Age of Impressionism at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale Unversity Press, 2008), pp. 17; 68-69, cat. 25 (ill.).
Anne Distel, Renoir, Les Phares (Citadelles et Mazenod, 2009), pp. 158–59, ill. 142; 310.
“Cat. 6: The Laundress, 1877/79,” in Renoir Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Gloria Groom and Jill Shaw (Art Institute of Chicago, 2014), https://publications.artic.edu/renoir/reader/paintingsanddrawings/section/138973.

Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition A. Renoir, May 1892, cat. 8, as Laveuse.
Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Worcester Collection, July 24–Sept. 23, 1923, no cat.
Toledo Museum of Art, Paintings by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Nov. 7–Dec. 12, 1937, cat. 30 (ill.).
New York, Wildenstein, Renoir: A Loan Exhibition for the Benefit of the American Association of Museums in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Renoir’s Death, Mar. 27–May 3, 1969, cat. 37 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings by Renoir, Feb. 3–Apr. 1, 1973, cat. 31 (ill.).
Atlanta, High Museum of Art, May 25, 1984–May 30, 1985, no cat.
Tokyo, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Renoir: From Outsider to Old Master, 1870–1892, Feb. 10–Apr. 15, 2001, cat. 13 (ill.); Nagoya City Art Museum, Apr. 21–June 24, 2001.
Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art, Renoir’s Women, Sept. 23, 2005–Jan. 8, 2006, cat. 2.
Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Art Museum, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–Nov. 2, 2008, cat. 25 (ill.).

The artist (d. 1919); possibly sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, June 15, 1882 [per Durand-Ruel Archives, Paris, stock book for 1880–84 (no. 2464), and for 1891 (no. 1520), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 5, 2010, curatorial object file]; sold to Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, Aug. 3, 1905, for 8,500 francs [per Durand-Ruel Archives, Paris, stock book 1901 (no. 1520), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 5, 2010, curatorial object file]; sold to the Prince de Wagram (Alexandre Berthier, 4th Prince de Wagram), Paris, by Feb. 24, 1906 [this and the two following per Dauberville and Dauberville 2007)]; sold back to Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, Feb. 24, 1906, for 9,000 francs; possibly sold to Léon Orosdi, Paris (d. 1922), Mar. 2, 1906. Galérie Barbazanges, Paris, by Jan. 4, 1923. [this and the following per New American Art Galleries sale cat., January 4–5, 1923, lot 109]; sold to Meyer Goodfriend, New York and Paris, by Jan. 4, 1923; Meyer Goodfriend sale, New York and Paris, New American Art Galleries, New York, Jan. 5, 1923, lot 109, to John Levy Galleries, New York, for $2,000. [According to an annotated copy of New York, New American Art Galleries sale cat., Jan. 4–5, 1923, lot 109, photocopy in curatorial object file]. Howard Young, New York, by Mar. 28, 1923. [this and the following per verso of an archival photograph of The Laundress inscribed by Howard Young and dated Mar. 28, 1923, curatorial object file]; sold to Charles H. Worcester (d. 1956), Chicago, by Mar. 28, 1923; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1947.

Cat. 6 The Laundress, 1877/79

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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