Which painting by Honoré Daumier shows a laundress carrying laundry on a riverbank?

Which painting by Honoré Daumier shows a laundress carrying laundry on a riverbank? The answer is The Laundress.

Honoré Daumier’s The Laundress, or La Blanchisseuse, shows a washerwoman climbing from the Seine with a heavy bundle of clothes while accompanied by a child. Painted around 1863, the small oil-on-panel work turns an ordinary laborer into a monumental, dignified figure. Her bent posture conveys fatigue, but her sturdy body also suggests strength and endurance.

Daumier lived on the Quai d’Anjou on Paris’s Île Saint-Louis, giving him opportunities to observe washerwomen returning from riverside washing places, or lavoirs. His simplified, vigorous handling avoids a detailed anecdote and instead focuses attention on the physical demands of working-class life.

The title can cause confusion because the painting is also widely known as The Washerwoman. Daumier made several versions and replicas of the subject, including examples now in New York and Buffalo. The Louvre acquired the best-known version in 1927, and it has been displayed at the Musée d’Orsay since 1986. It is not The Third-Class Carriage, another Daumier work about social class and hardship.