La Lessiveuse (The Lye-Washer),

ca. 1852–53

In the early 1850s, Jean-François Millet developed his realist style in peasant scenes that often featured village or country women engaged in forms of solitary labor. Here, he represents not the washing of laundry but the leaching process that produces lye, an alkaline solution of potash traditionally used as a detergent and ingredient for soap. The stolid peasant woman pours boiling water from a cauldron into a cloth-lined barrel presumably filled with wood ash. The lye solution produced as the water filters through the ash pours from a spout into a smaller container below. Thoroughly absorbed in her work and placed iconically in the center of the composition, the solitary lye-washer has little sentimental or anecdotal appeal, her features muted and expressionless. Millet concentrates on describing her bodily action, both steady and tentative as she balances her right arm with her left and leans over the barrel, carefully avoiding any direct contact with the ash and steam. Although this large-format drawing functioned as a preparatory study for a painting in the Louvre (ca. 1852–53), it is also a meticulously crafted work in its own right, exhibiting Millet’s refined, variegated graphic technique and mastery of subtle value relations.