Talk:The Laundress (Greuze)

Notes

edit
  • Bailey corrects the previous notion that the painting was acquired after the Salon, rather than before. See for example Fredericksen, 1997.
  • Rivers (1913) claims that Diderot's writings about Greuze's work (including this one) contributed to the modern style of art criticism.
  • Replicas and engravings: Fogg Art Museum (replica);
  • Much of the art and historical literature focusing on the image of the laundress in art portrays working class women as prostitutes. However, Simone de Beauvoir presents an altogether different perspective in The Second Sex, noting in a contrarian manner that before the revolution, working class women like the laundress in the ancien régime "enjoyed the most independence" and "great freedom of behavior" that was quashed by bourgeois men after the revolution.