While Pelez was the master of depicting what the late art historian, Linda Nochlin coined “misère”, he was also sympathetic. He never ignored or erased the inherent dignity of his subjects, as in our optimistic young laundress, who stands strong and determined.
Catalogue note
Laundresses were a common sight on the streets of 19th century Paris. These working-class women could be seen washing and ironing in shops open to the street or laden with heavy baskets or bundles of laundry. They provided new subject matter for the artists of the time, most famously for Edgar Degas who depicted approximately 30 artworks of laundresses throughout his entire career. The laundress also provided a literary source for one of the most popular novels of the time, Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir (1876). The story tells the doomed life of a laundress named Gervaise Macquart, who tries to lift herself out of poverty, abuse, and alcoholism by opening her own shop, only to end in tragedy.
It is in this context that Fernand Pelez’s laundress takes center stage. She was a frequent subject of his painting in the early 1880s, beginning with his large scale 1880 Salon entry, Au Lavoir, which depicted two robust laundresses hard at work as they scrub, rinse and wring out the contents of their baskets (Musée Malraux, Le Havre). This job was backbreaking and very poorly paid, often resulting in the workers need to supplement their income through prostitution. The laundress subject proved popular for Pelez as he repeated the theme often in his work.
Our painting depicts a statuesque young washerwoman, her labor clearly emphasized by a single word (graffiti style) in the upper left of the painting, LAVOIR, with an arrow pointing in the direction of the laundry. While Pelez was the master of depicting what the late art historian, Linda Nochlin coined “misère”, (Misère: The Visual Representation of Misery in the late 19th Century, London, Thames & Hudson, 2018), he was also sympathetic. He never ignored or erased the inherent dignity of his subjects, as in our optimistic young laundress, who stands strong and determined to resist the fate of Zola’s Gervaise Macquart.