Friday, November 13, 2026

Work

Bertha Wegmann
Woman Sewing
1891
oil on canvas
private collection


Caroline Walker
Canvassing
2019
oil on linen
private collection

Édouard Vuillard
L’Aiguillée
1893
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Thomas Wyck
The Lacemaker
before 1677
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Charles Angrand
The Seamstresses
ca. 1891
drawing
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Suzanne Valadon
La Couturière
1914
oil on canvas
Musée national d'art moderne (Centre Pompidou), Paris

Louis Valtat
L'Atelier de Couture Parisien
ca. 1923
oil on canvas
private collection

Louis Valtat
Les Couturières
1918
oil on canvas
private collection

Carl Wilhelmson
Women making Fishing-Nets in Bohuslän
1894
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Janet Delaney
Bay Casket Company, 1020 Folsom Street, San Francisco
1980
pigment print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Ilse Bing
Woman at a Loom
1928
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Gustav Wentzel
At the Loom
1890
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Elisabeth Geertruida Wassenbergh
Woman at the Washtub
1751
oil on panel
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Adam Töpffer
Washerwomen in a Grotto
ca. 1825-30
oil on panel
private collection

Rosario Velasco Belausteguigoitia
Lavanderas
1934
oil on canvas
private collection

Ettore Tito
Lavandaie sul Garda
1888
oil on canvas
private collection

Iain Stewart
Laundry Worker
1981
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

The Fountain

Feathers up fast, and steeples; then in clods
Thuds into its first basin; thence as surf
Smokes up and hangs; irregularly slops
Into its second, tattered like a shawl;
There, chill as rain, stipples a darker green,
Where urgent tritons lob their heavy jets.

For Berkeley this was human thought, that mounts
From bland assumptions to inquiring skies,
There glints with wit, fumes into fancies, plays
With its negations, and at last descends,
As by a law of nature, to its bowl
Of thus enlightened but still common sense.

We who have no such confidence must gaze
With all the more affection on these forms,
These spires, these plumes, these calm reflections, these
Graceful returns upon acceptances. 
We ask of fountains only that they play,

Though that was not what Berkeley meant at all.

– Donald Davie (1957)