Woman Ironing 1886

Edgar Degas painted this image of a Woman Ironing in France, sometime around the late 19th century. It’s an image which speaks to the shifting social landscape of the time. The artist’s focus on a working woman, performing labor often invisible to the upper classes, is telling. The flattened perspective and asymmetrical composition draws from Japanese prints. The image is neither flattering nor sentimental; it is a slice of working class life. Degas presents the working woman, not as an idealized form, but as a real person engaged in unglamorous labor. When approaching a work like this, we must ask questions about the social conditions of its making. What were the dominant notions of work? How were women represented at the time? Examining sources like newspapers, photographs, and literature, we can better understand the world that shaped both the subject and the artist. By placing art within its social and institutional context, we appreciate its power to reflect, reinforce, and even challenge the norms of its time.