A Woman Ironing

A Woman Ironing by Edgar Degas, completed around 1873, captures a rigorous moment of domestic labor characteristic of Parisian working-class life. This powerful oil on canvas piece demonstrates Degas’s commitment to capturing candid, unidealized figures in the midst of their daily tasks. The painting is a key holding within the comprehensive European painting collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The composition focuses on a single female subject, leaning heavily onto an ironing table. Her posture conveys extreme fatigue and the physical strain inherent in using heavy, traditional irons. Degas uses the figure of the working woman not as a romantic subject, but as a studied observation of modern manual labor. The subdued color palette and the careful placement of light emphasize the isolation of the worker within the enclosed interior space, lending the work a strong sense of gritty realism often associated with this period.

Degas was known for his dedication to depicting contemporary life, moving beyond historical and mythological subjects to focus on ballet dancers, bathers, and service workers. His objective study of women performing arduous tasks like ironing or millinery contrasted sharply with the more sentimental portrayals common in high society art. This work, along with others exploring domestic servitude, is central to understanding the shifting focus of late 19th-century French art toward documenting social reality. While the original is preserved at the Met, the enduring cultural influence of A Woman Ironing means that high-quality prints and studies of this masterwork are widely distributed, reflecting the entry of many of Degas's most famous compositions into the public domain.