Titles

Only one title has been suggested, but with varying punctuation:

• ‘La blanchisseuse; Dieppe’ (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). 1
• ‘La Blanchisseuse – Dieppe’ (1936, University of Glasgow). 2
• 'La Blanchisseuse, Dieppe' (1980, YMSM). 3

'La Blanchisseuse, Dieppe' is the preferred title.

Description

A shopfront, in vertical format. It shows two storeys of a building, and a section of road and pavement. On the first floor there is a narrow balcony in front of tall windows that are slightly open, the curtain at left pulled back slightly. The wall is painted yellow, with off-white round the window. The small shop below has an open door at left, in which two children, one a toddler in a red dress, are standing. To right are two adjoining windows, one being three panes wide and four high with a cafe curtain drawn back at an angle, the other two by four, also with a partly drawn curtain. In front of this stands a girl in a black dress talking to another person.

Site

It is recorded as being in the town of Dieppe in France. The Culture Grid website identified it as follows:

'This laundress's shop is probably in 21-23 rue Notre Dame, Dieppe, France. Located just off the main square, in 1994 'Blanchisserie' was still written in the fascia, although it was no longer in use as such. Whistler was much impressed by the way the Dieppe laundresses treated his linen ... This, along with the charm of the dilapidated shop front, probably influenced his choice of subject.' 4

Whistler had drawn a similar subject in Paris in 1894, the lithograph called The Laundress: 'La Blanchisseuse de la Place Dauphine' c093.