Drying Cloths

Harriet Backer's Drying Cloths (1886) is one of the Norwegian painter's domestic outdoor subjects — a scene of laundry drying on lines in a garden or outdoor space. Backer, primarily known for her intimate interior paintings, occasionally depicted outdoor domestic scenes that extended her documentary interest in women's work and domestic life. Laundry drying was a universal element of pre-industrial domestic life, and Backer's treatment gives this humble subject the formal attention that distinguished her from painters who would merely decorate it.

The laundry scene presents Backer with the challenge of rendering white or light-colored fabrics in outdoor light — the bleached cotton or linen of traditional laundry creating near-white areas that must be modeled to maintain form without losing the sense of freshly washed cloth. Her palette handles this through subtle warm and cool variations within the near-white — the specific quality of sunlight on damp linen. Her outdoor light handling here shows the same careful tonal observation as her interior work.