Woman Ironing (1892): Art, History and Details

Woman Ironing (1892) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This spare painting depicts a woman ironing a garment, while a sliver of light illuminates the side of her face and the cup held in her left hand. The subject belongs to a series of paintings of women ironing or sewing inspired by Édouard Vuillard’s close observation of his mother and sister making corsets and dresses in their crowded Parisian apartment.

Object facts

• Title: Woman Ironing
• Date: 1892
• Creator attribution: Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on board
• Dimensions: Unframed: 21.4 x 25.4 cm (8 7/16 x 10 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2020.119

A detail from the museum

In 1888, Vuillard wrote in his journal: "A form or a color exists only in relation to another. Form does not exist on its own. We can only conceive of the relations."

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Georgel, Pierre. Édouard Vuillard, K.-X. Roussel. Haus der Kunst, Munich, 16 mars-12 mai 1968. Orangerie des Tuileries, 28 mai-16 septembre 1968. Paris, France: Réunion des Musées nationaux, 1968.
• Salomon, Antoine, Guy Cogeval, and Mathias Chivot. Vuillard, the Inexhaustible Glance: Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels. Milan, Italy: Skira, 2003.
• Groom, Gloria. "Edouard Vuillard." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 76-101. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.