Hanging the Laundry out to Dry

1875

Berthe Morisot

Artist, French, 1841 - 1895

We look down onto a landscape where several laundry lines have been draped mostly with white sheets or cloth to dry in a flat, grassy yard in front of a rustic house and a distant town in this horizontal painting. The scene is created entirely with thick, visible brushstrokes that creates a sense of texture on the canvas’s surface and makes many details difficult to make out. The forms of at least three women wearing skirts hang laundry out along the lines, and a person wearing trousers tends to a flat piece of green ground near the lower left corner. A few pieces of white cloth have been draped over the wooden fence that runs along the bottom edge of the canvas. A dove-gray cart with wooden carriage wheels rests, tipped forward, at the center of the laundry lines. To our right and just beyond the laundry lines, a two-story ivory and slate-blue house with a gray peaked roof sits behind a grove of emerald-green trees. The laundry field and the grassy plane beyond is painted with a pale celery green with long, horizontal strokes. Dabs of moss green and a white streak interrupt the field in the distance. Beyond that, touches of steel and silvery-gray paint suggest smokestacks and smoke in a town along the horizon, which comes about three-quarters of the way up this composition. A few patches of vivid blue sky peek through a screen of shell-pink and cream-white clouds above. The artist signed the work in brick-red paint in the lower left corner, “Berthe Morisot.”

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 33 x 40.6 cm (13 x 16 in.)
    framed: 49.85 × 57.47 × 7.62 cm (19 5/8 × 22 5/8 × 3 in.)

  • Accession

    1985.64.28

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased 1876 by Dr. Georges de Bellio [1828-1894], Paris; by inheritance his daughter, Mme Ernest Donop de Monchy [née Victorine de Bellio, 1863 - 1958], Paris. (Paul Rosenberg and Co., London, New York and Paris); sold 1950 to Mr. Paul Mellon, Upperville, VA; gift 1985 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1876

  • Le 2e Exposition de Peinture [Second Impressionist Exhibition], Paris, 1876, no. 175 as Un percher de blanchisseuse

1929

  • Exposition d'oeuvres de Berthe Morisot, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1929, no. 33

1950

  • The 19th Century Heritage, Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, 1950, no. 18, repro.

1986

  • Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1986, unnumbered checklist, repro.

  • The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1986, no. 33, repro.

1987

  • Berthe Morisot, Impressionist. National Gallery of Art; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA, 1987-1988

1995

  • Landscapes of France: Impressionism and its rivals, Hayward Gallery, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1995-1996, no. 80, repro., as Laundresses Hanging out the Wash.

2000

  • Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1890, National Gallery, London; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2000-2001, fig. 102.

2002

  • Berthe Morisot, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille; Fondation Pierre Gianadda Martigny, Switzerland, 2002, no. 24, repro. (shown only in Lille).

2007

  • Hommage á Georges de Bellio, Musée Marmottan-Claude Monet, Paris, 2007-2008, no. 25, repro. (catalogue titled A l'apogée de l'Impressionnisme: la collection Georges de Bellio).

2008

  • Woman Impressionists: Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Fine Arts Museusm of San Francisco, 2008, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2012

  • Berthe Morisot, 1841-1895, Musée Marmottan-Claude Monet, Paris, 2012, no. 17, repro.

  • Berthe Morisot: den store kvindelige impressionst [Berthe Morisot: The Great Female Impressionist], Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, 2012-2013, no. 4.

2014

  • Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market [Paul Durand-Ruel: Le Pari de l'Impressionnisme], Musée du Luxembourg, Paris; The National Gallery, London; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014-2015, French cat., no. 65, repro; English cat., no. 59, repro.

2018

  • Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec City; Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Dallas Museum of Art; Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 2018-2019 (shown only in Québec City and Philadelphia), no. 123 (French catalogue); no. 49 (English catalogue), repro.

Bibliography

1961

  • Bataille, M.L., and Georges Wildenstein. Berthe Morisot, catalogue des peintures, pastels et aquarelles. Paris, 1961: no.45.

Inscriptions

lower left: Berthe Morisot

Wikidata ID

Q20188790

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