The Washerwoman

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The Washerwoman

Artist Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779)

Place of OriginFrance

Dateabout 1733-1739

DimensionsPainting: 15 3/4 × 12 1/2 in. (40 × 31.8 cm)
Frame: 22 × 18 1/2 × 2 1/2 in. (55.9 × 47 × 6.4 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

2006.3

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 27

Label TextPainted as a pair, The Washerwoman and The Woman Drawing Water at the Cistern (to the right) depict servants engaged in humble, domestic activities in the kitchen. In The Washerwoman the title figure scrubs laundry in a large wooden wash bucket. Jean-Siméon Chardin paints her gazing away from her work, as if something has distracted her attention—or as if she is captured in an idle daydream. The other composition features a woman in profile, her face hidden. She stoops to fill a jug of water from a large copper cistern, above which hangs a glistening side of meat. Both compositions, with their focus on domestic interiors and the effects of light on a variety of surfaces, owe much to 17th-century Dutch painting (see Galleries 23, 24, and 27). French critic and philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784) declared Chardin’s talent at handling paint “so magical as to induce despair.” This “magical” skill is especially obvious in the shifting, shimmering colors of the woman’s skirt in Woman Drawing Water at the Cistern and in the mastery with which Chardin describes every texture and surface—fabric, ceramic, glass, copper, meat, wood, skin, fur, stone, and liquid.Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, pp.192-93, repr. (col.).

Reich, Paula, Toledo Museum of Art: Map and Guide, London, Scala, 2009, pp. 24-25, repr. (col.).

Zafran, Eric, "French Eighteenth-century Paintings in American Museums", in Burlington Magazine, August 2017, vol. CLIX, p. 669.

Comparative ReferencesSee also Paris, Cleveland, Boston, 1979, Chardin 1699-1779, nos. 55 and 57 (Woman Drawing Water at the Cistern), and nos. 56 and 58 (The Washerwoman) (exhibition catalogue.)

See also Paris, Düsseldorf, London, NY, Chardin, 1999-2000, no. 34 (The Washerwoman). (exhibition catalogue)

See also [for the exhibition history of variants]: Chardin 1699-1779, exh. cat. (Paris, Cleveland, Boston, 1979), nos. 55 and 57 (Woman Drawing Water at the Cistern), nos. 56 and 58 (The Washerwoman);

See also Chardin, exh. cat. (Paris, Düsseldorf, London, NY, 1999-2000), no. 34 (The Washerwoman).