Provenance

Mme Jacques Lefébure

French

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A woman with peachy skin stands facing our left in profile ironing a pale blue shirt on a white surface, possibly a table, with a line of pastel-colored shirts hanging in front of curtained windows opposite us in this vertical painting. We seem to look slightly down onto the woman’s shoulders and onto the surface of the table. The white tabletop takes up most of the bottom half of the composition, and, seen from the knees up, the woman leans in from the lower right corner. The woman’s chestnut-brown hair is pulled up into a bun, and she wears a dark earring in her left ear. Her denim-blue dress is speckled with white dots and highlighted with strokes of blush pink. Her sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and a dusty rose-pink apron covers her brown skirt. She presses down on the iron with her right hand, farther from us, and uses her left hand to straighten the fabric of the shirt collar. The iron has a thick handle and a flat, narrow, triangular surface used to press out wrinkles. A small, empty, bronze-colored bowl and crisply starched and folded porcelain-white shirt lie on the table to her left, closer to us. A row of hanging garments in pale crepe pink, flaxen gold, teal, and lavender purple soften the light coming into the room from three vertical windows, which are covered with sheer, ivory-white curtains. The artist’s feathery brushstrokes give the painting a hazy quality. The artist signed the work with olive-green letters near the lower left corner: “Degas.”
Edgar Degas, Woman Ironing, begun c. 1876, completed c. 1887, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1972.74.1

Woman Ironing

Edgar Degas · begun c. 1876, completed c. 1887 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1972.74.1