Woman Ironing by Edgar Degas

Woman Ironing by Edgar Degas, oil on canvas 1876-1887, is a painting of a French laundress ironing and pressing men’s shirts in the crowded interior space of a laundry shop through white soft, diffuse white light shines through the curtains and garments hanging around the room. The woman, in her long work dress and apron smock, is sympathetically drawn as slightly heavyset and completely engrossed in her work. Before her is a broad white work table covered in a white cloth that reflects the light from the curtains. In softly applied, painterly washes of oil colours, Degas carefully constructs the scene in tones that note the similarities and differences of local colours, light, and reflections in a slice of life, realistic depiction of life among the working people. Edgar Degas (Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, 1834 - 1917) was a French painter, draftsman, sculptor, printmaker, a founder of the school of Impressionism, and a classical painter of dancers and scenes from modern life. Degas began to paint early in life, and after meeting the French classicist J.A.D. Ingres, Degas studied drawing in the manner of Ingres at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Louis Lamothe. Degas lived for 3 years in Italy, where he made many copies after Michelangelo and the masters of the Italian Renaissance. Establishing his Paris studio, the artist exhibited as a history painter but began to turn to subject matter from contemporary life, under the influence of his friend Edouard Manet. Disenfranchised from the official Paris Salon, Degas joined ranks with the independent Impressionist group and exhibited at their first show in 1874, though his classical approach, lack of spontaneity, and disdain of plein-air easel painting left him little in common with much of the group. Degas painted many portraits with profound psychological insight, many scenes from contemporary life and genre paintings, and devoted half of his life's work to colourful pictures of ballet dancers and classical female figures. Degas' bold experiments in colour which crossed boundaries between Realism, Impressionism, and Modern painting, his original compositional methods, and his painstaking, calculated classical drawing combined with the artist's cantankerous rejection of rigid rules, combined to create one of the most original and beloved body of works in the history of art.