Focus on this artwork and discuss the Subject and precedents.
The subject of laundresses and washerwomen attracted the French Impressionist painters who had begun to take an interest in the working lives of ordinary people. Both contemporary social concerns as well as themes of industrial modernity had informed such works in the decades preceding Wouter's The Ironer.Among painters who produced notable works on this theme were Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Berthe Morisot. Morisot had done Hanging the Laundry out to Dry in 1875 and The Farmer Hanging Laundry. The former uses softer pinks and blues than Wouter's, and the latter has a pale, subtle palette in contrast to Wouter's vibrant one.
Washerwomen had become one of Degas's favourite subjects between 1869 and 1895. His Repasseuses, the third of a series of four, shows one woman yawning and another leaning heavily on her iron.Compared with Wouter's Ironer, the French artists' laundresses are shown in a more commercial/industrial context.
George Washington Lambert had also produced The Laundresses about 1901 as well as La Blanchisseuse (The French Landlady) in the same year but without the expressive use of colour. The latter in particular was a formal group composition concerned with unity of effect in tones of black and white. In 1904, Pablo Picasso also painted the figure of a single Woman Ironing, in neutral tones of blue and gray. Whereas Wouter's is bright in mood and colour, in Picasso's the mood is melancholy. In the same year as De strijkster, Australian Vida Lahey produced a narrative painting of the domestic weekly washing routine which at the time, was normally done on Mondays. It showed the physicality of the work. She gave it the title ''Monday morning".
Vida Lahey Edgar Degas Berthe Morisot Picasso Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec George Washington Lambert Woman Ironing Pablo Picasso