Through Sun 1/14
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s current special exhibit Degas and the Laundress, which opened last fall, explores his (and others of his contemporaries’) take on these lower-class working women who were ubiquitous in 19thcentury Paris. Poorly paid, many of the women did sex work on the side. Throughout his career Edgar Degas depicted these women in about 30 paintings and drawings.
This show not only features many of these works, it also features the work of other artists of the period — Caillebotte, Picasso, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and even legendary Paris photographer Eugene Atget — who depicted working women and their environment or whose work influenced Degas or was influenced by his. It also includes ephemera such as posters, books and notes that reveal more about the fascination many Parisians had for women whose lives were anything but glamorous.
The exhibit will be closing next week on Sunday January 14. With not much going on at this time of year, it’s the perfect time to stop down to see it.
Get tickets here.
degas-and-laundress-women-work-and-impressionism
Cleveland, OH 44106