''De strijkster'' (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

: ''The Ironer'') is a painting by

Rik Wouters Hendrik Emil (Rik) Wouters (21 August 1882 – 11 July 1916) was a Belgium, Belgian painter, sculptor and draughtsman. Wouters produced 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures in his 34 years before his illness-caused death. he died partway th ...

in the

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (Dutch: ''Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen'', ''KMSKA'') is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, founded in 1810, that houses a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the fourteenth t ...

(

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

: ''Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen''). It is one of many scenes from daily life from which the painter found inspiration and took as a subject. His wife,

muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...

and favourite model was Hélène Duerinckx (Nel). The picture shows a woman in a comfortable domestic setting bending over a table ironing a blue garment. She wears a pink dress over a white shirt and is looking up from her work at the viewer.

Style

The colours in the work are strong; the brushwork is loose and expressive. In style it has links to

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

Fauvism Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' (French language, French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the Representation (arts), repr ...

and

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

and all these approaches have been referenced in regard to this work. In 1912, the time of this painting, Wouters had been staying in Paris, where he discovered the colours of Cézanne and

Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...

Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

's landscapes, and

Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Re ...

's women. His own palette became brighter and more vibrant; its intensity and the turbulence of the surface recalling Fauvism. In the same year, he also travelled to Cologne and Düsseldorf where he admired the works of

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...

and

German Expressionism German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...

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 Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is es ...

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the ...

, and

Berthe Morisot Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (; January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a French painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. In 1864, Morisot exhibited for the first time in the highly es ...

. 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 George Washington Thomas Lambert (13 September 1873 – 29 May 1930) was an Australian artist, known principally for portrait painting and as a war artist during the First World War. Early life Lambert was born in St Petersburg, Russia, th ...

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 Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

also painted the figure of a single ''

Woman Ironing ''Woman Ironing'' (French: ''La repasseuse'') is a 1904 oil painting by Pablo Picasso that was completed during the artist's Blue Period (1901—1904). This evocative image, painted in neutral tones of blue and gray, depicts an emaciated woman wi ...

,'' 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 Frances Vida Lahey MBE (1882—1968) was a prominent artist in Queensland, Australia. She exhibited widely from 1902 until 1965. Early life Frances Vida Lahey was born on 26 August 1882 at Pimpama, Queensland, the daughter of David Lahey and h ...

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".

References

{{Reflist Belgian paintings 1912 paintings category:Paintings in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp