Getty Museum
The Laundress (La Blanchisseuse)
Creator
Jean-Baptiste GreuzeFrench Artist · 1725–1805
All works by this person →> Courage, my friend Greuze, go ahead and moralize with your paintbrush, and always continue in this manner! > > --Denis Diderot After training in Lyon, Jean-Baptiste Greuze arrived in Paris in 1750, where he sporadically attended the Académie Royale. His 1755 Salon debut was a triumph, but the acclamation turned his head. He antagonized everyone, including fellow artists, which later proved disas
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1761
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Paintings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
"This little laundress is charming, but she's a rascal I wouldn't trust an inch," the critic Denis Diderot declared when this painting was first exhibited in 1761. Indeed, Jean-Baptiste Greuze stripped the traditional theme of the washerwoman of its association with the virtue of hard work and instead overlaid it with a titillating sensuality typical of Rococo art. In a room scattered with wet and drying laundry, a disheveled maidservant with an exposed stocking and slipper fixes the viewer with a provocative gaze. Greuze used a heavily loaded brush to apply patches of paint that describe texture and surface: the folds of the young woman's dress, the heaviness of wet cloth, the dull sheen on the pewter jug, and the grainy texture of wood.
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