Venus born surrounded by colourful fish, in the element water, in a feeding frenzy by Turner’s Slave Ship, with mermaids, and brought ashore ready to eat.
Metsu
A stolen painting of a concert, a girl with a pearl earring, ladies with a maid and writing a letter, an astronomer and a geographer.
Washerwoman below stairs, a kitchen maid, haggling in the market, selling fish door-to-door, pouring milk, farming families, and drinking.
Maids toiling at food preparation and washing clothes in the sculleries and utility rooms in the basement. Among them is Vermeer’s Milkmaid, and some of Degas’ working women.
Examples of interiors by Gerard ter Borch, who liked open-ended narrative, Gabriël Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, and Jan Vermeer.
Washing and drying clothes have been important activities in many landmark paintings. Selection from Isabey, Boudin, Gauguin, Renoir and others.
From their genre roots in the Dutch Golden Age, through GĂ©ricault and Courbet, to the social realism of Millet, Manet, and most of all Lhermitte.
The majority of portraits and genre paintings of women washing clothes are thoroughly demur, without the slightest innuendo.
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