Working Woman with Blue Shawl (1903): Art, History and Details

Working Woman with Blue Shawl (1903) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945).

The work and its context

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

Käthe Kollwitz favored printmaking because she saw it as a democratic medium, affordable and capable of reaching all social classes. In prints such as this portrait of a female worker, she depicted Berlin’s most disenfranchised inhabitants. The sitter’s direct gaze and exhausted pose suggest not only her difficult living and working conditions but also her dignity.

Object facts

• Title: Working Woman with Blue Shawl
• Date: 1903
• Creator attribution: Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945)
• Culture: Germany, 20th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: color lithograph
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1932.320

A detail from the museum

Käthe Kollwitz's husband was a doctor who treated the working poor in Berlin, giving her firsthand experience with their struggles.

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of an exhibition of the art of lithography : commemorating the sesquicentennial of its invention, 1798-1948. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 11, 1948-January 2, 1949.
• Salsbury, Britany. "A Lasting Impression: To mark the Print Club of Cleveland's centennial, a new exhibition highlights some of the group's major donations.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 59, no. 2 (March/April 2019): 34-35.

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.