We’re inclined to forget now that washing was (and in places still is) a huge part of women’s lives. Without electric washing machines, washing occupies at least one seventh of a woman’s week. It’s heavy, arduous, Sisyphean work.
The artworks below are mostly a celebration of washing work. In some, washing lines decorate the scenes, reminding us of the work that goes into civilisation. In some of these pictures, washing is a metonym for home, or rather, the welcoming mother working hard in the home to keep the family cohesive and ticking over without a hitch. Washing on the line, like pies on a windowsill, means all is well.
Francisco Fonseca, Portuguese Illustrator, Neighbours washingHome Coming by Norman Rockwell 1945
Monday’s Washing Day, Tuesday’s Soup, Wednesday’s Roast Beef, Thursday’s Shepherds Pie, Friday’s Fish Saturday’s Pay Day Sunday’s Church …is Everybody happy…you bet your life we are!
Roger McGough
March, a French postcard, part of a series showing the months. “P. F. B Serie 3213” (Paul Finkenrath, publisher, of Berlin)‘Wash Day.’ (1946) Rachel ReckettPeder Mørk Mønsted (1859-1941) washingMartin Lewis, Tree, Manhattan, 1930Lawren Stewart Harris (1885-1970) Morning,1921‘Winter Sunshine.’ (1932) Karl HagedornJames McIntosh Patrick, ‘A City Garden’, oil on canvas, 1940‘Clothes on a Line.’ (1902) Edvard Munch’s work depicts a domestic scene at Åsgårdstrand, a resort a few miles to the south of Oslo influenced by Van goghT.S. SULLIVANTAlice and Martin Provensen A Book of Seasons 19761882 The Laundress, Van Gogh. A woman lays washing out on the bleaching field.Arkady SherVenus Books 172 – Peggy Gaddis – Farmer’s Woman 1954 cover art by Rudy NappiFairfield Porter 1950sRobert Henderson Blyth (Scottish, 1919 – 1970) The Artist’s Wife Hanging out the Laundry, 1947Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914-2012, The Philippines) Lavanderas 1957Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (French, 1852 – 1929) Laundress, 1880Three Little (Fully Anthropomorphised) Kittens and Other Nursery StoriesMODERN PRISCILLA Magazine July 1930 chipso suds advertisement August Macke (1887 – 1914) Laundry in the Garden, 1907 London, a pilgrimage, Gustave Doré, 1869from ‘A Modern Man — The Average Guy Pin-Up Calendar’made with Wombo.artJoan of Arc by M.Boutet de MonvelIllustrator not found. Illustration of children is remininscent of E.H. Shepherd.Wash day, Bolton in 1937 by Humphrey SpenderEmmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban (1971)Margaret Bloy Graham for Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion (1957)Arthur Rutherston, Laundry Girls, 1906. The women are marking laundry with thread before it is sent out to be professionally cleaned.‘The Ironers’ by Georges Ferdinand
American artist Maud Humphrey was born in 1868 and died in 1940. She started illustrating children’s books as a teenager in Rochester, New York. She specialised in illustrations of children.
By 1900 she was one of the highest-paid commercial illustrators in America. Clients included Ivory Soap, Elgin watches, and the publishers of the Mother Goose rhymes.
At age 30 she married a doctor, Belmont Deforest Bogart. You may recognise the name of their son, Humphrey Bogart.
Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair (1912) by John French Sloan (1871-1951)John Falter Spring Storm Blowing In April 26, 1952Harry Clarke (1889 – 1931) 1923 Illustration for Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe The Man of the Crowd Barbara Cooney washing on the line on an island. There’s nothing like washing flapping to indicate wind.Edna Eicke (1919-1979) New Yorker Cover of washing on a line July 28 1956Wood block print by Brown County artist, Gustave Baumann, 1912 ‘November’. Illustration for “All The Year Round” by James Whitcomb Riley.‘Southwold, Suffolk’, Stanley Spencer, oil on canvas, 1937Look What I’ve Got By Anthony Browne, 1980Look What I’ve Got By Anthony Browne, 1980First Walk; ONE STEP, TWO . . . By Charlotte Zolotow. Illustrated by Roger Duvoisin 1955Edmund Blair Leighton – SeptemberEdward Wilkins Waite – A Surrey Cottage in JuneArthur Herbert Buckland – In a Cottage Garden 1910American Artist Illustrator John L Sloan 1912 A Womans Work NYC 1912 washingConte De Noel, Charles Dickens, illustrations by A.Pecoud (Paris 1952). In earlier times, before well-heated houses and the invention of dryers, it would have been common to hang washing to dry from the ceiling. We should probably see more of it in illustration.Charles Courtney Curran – Shadows‘The Maid Hanging Out Clothes’. Painted by Irish artist Sir John LaveryHilda Boswell washingArthur Rackham (English,1867-1939) – Girl in shawl with DucksPoor Cecco by Marjery William Bianco illustrated by Arthur Rackham Mrs WoodchuckFrozen Laundry Saturday Evening Post Cover, March 8, 1952 Giclee Print by Stevan DohanosLilla Cabot Perry (1848 – 1933) A snowy Monday, 1926
THE HILLMAN’S HOIST OF AUSTRALASIA
New Zealand and Australian yards are well-known for the Hillman’s Hoist, a rotary clothesline which can be wound up and down.
from Harry and Hopper‘Bottomley Potts covered in spots by Lynley Dodd washing line
New Zealand painter Nigel Brown makes sure to include the Hillman’s Hoist in his depictions of suburban New Zealand.
Suburban Clothesline by Nigel BrownNigel Brown Clothesline Painting Number 5Wash Day by N.C. Wyeth oil on canvas 1934English Woman July 12 1958, washing1909 Frank Pape, for Anatole France’s Penguin IslandGreat Grandmother Goose by Helen Cooper, illustrated by Krystyna Turska, Hamish Hamilton, London 1978Jip en Janneke spelen samen 2003The City By FRANS MASEREEL (London 1988 – originally published by Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich 1925 as DIE STADTV. Panov – The Snow QueenAnatoli Michailovich Eliseev, Story of the stupid mouse frog washingTide washing powder, Woman and Home May 19581954COUNTRY GENTLEMAN Magazine September 1947 The Swan’s Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Illustrated By Chris Riddell published by Walker Books Ltd, London 1997. An example of animism.Duz advertisement published in the August 1949 issue of McCall’s magazineThe Age, Melbourne, Australia, April 20, 1936 luxing my undies
When David Hockney's mother Laura first visited him in Beverly Hills, after two or three days out on the patio, she delivered her verdict on his lifestyle: “It’s strange – all this lovely weather and yet you never see any washing out.” pic.twitter.com/GAr2uQMRba
CONTEMPORARY FICTION SET IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (2023)
On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.
Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:
