The Laundresses
Medium
Soft ground etching with aquatint and roulette from three plates on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 38.3 × 21.5 cm (15 1/8 × 8 1/2 in.); Plate: 39.4 × 22.8 cm (15 9/16 × 9 in.); Sheet: 45 × 25.4 cm (17 3/4 × 10 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
11582
Art Historical Context
In the late 19th century, artist Louis Auguste Lepère the everyday rhythms of urban life in *The Laundresses* (1894), a etching housed in the Art Institute of's Prints and Drawings collection. This intimate scene likely depicts women at work by the water's edge, reflecting the artist's fascination with ordinary laborers and the bustling streets of Paris. Created during a period when printmaking flourished as an accessible art form, Lepère's work the era's growing appreciation for Realism in graphic arts, bridging fine art and illustration. Lepère employed sophisticated techniques—soft ground ...
About the Artist
Louis Auguste Lepère · 1849–1918
Louis-Auguste Lepère (1849–1918) was born in Paris on November 30 to the sculptor François Lepère, immersing him early in the artistic world. At age thirteen, he apprenticed in the studio of the English wood engraver Joseph Burn-Smeeton, training there from 1862 to 1867, and later attended drawing courses under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran at the Petite École (now École nationale supérieure des art...