Laundress Analysis Essay

The Laundress painting appears to be an oil painting depicting the usage, of a laundry room. Interestingly enough most of the people (including the laundress), have their backs turned, stopping the viewers from seeing their faces. The artist choice to complement this by making each character with very soft forms, and blurred faces. You immediately get the sense that the area is very foggy. Most of the paint the artist chose to use gives off a Taupe color which puts most of the people in the background slowly fading away. It also causes the painting to feel warmer, as it blends back in space. We can tell from the colors and the massive amount of steam in the background, that the room is relatively hot. Most of the women working in the laundry room don’t seem too put off by this. This is clearly an everyday event. …show more content…
Her dress is a somewhat dull yellow color, making her seem filthy as if she has been working for long periods of time. This seems to draw the viewer's attention secondly to the red cloth,causing the viewers eyes to scroll from the bottom and loop back around once they’ve reached the top. The laundress appears to be washing someone's clothes while the woman next to her catches her attention.
The main areas of this painting seems to fall on two sections. Using an out of frame lightsource. The artist draws attention to first the man in the red blanket, and then to the laundress. The light starts from the top left of the frame and stretches down over both of them. This works well to contrast against the main background and bring the main two characters forward. It also clearly reveals that the two are connected in someway. It’s not clear on first glance what the connection is, but there's a connection