Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English–Language Arts
Time Required: 3–5–Part Lesson
Five class periods
Author: Ethel Tracey (Art Resource Teacher); Bobbie Vasquez; Helen Gonzales; Christina Torres; and Julie Sylber, (Teachers) 92nd Street School, Los Angeles Unified School District

Lesson Overview

Students explore the concept of work, and work typically assigned to women, through artwork depicting laundresses.

Learning Objectives

Students should be able to:
• discuss the value of work typically assigned to women.
• compare and contrast different visual representations of the same subject.
• discuss the artist's role in the human activity, social issues, and conditions of their day.

Materials

• Tape recorder
• In addition to the Getty Museum's Laundress, other images of women doing laundry and ironing should be used for comparison. Artists who have explored the subject include Honoré Daumier, Robert Henri, Edgar Degas, Jacob Lawrence, and John Outterbridge. Find these images on the Internet by searching for these artist's names, or by searching on "laundress" and "art."
• (optional) A book about Greuze's laundress is available at the Getty online bookstore. Jean-Baptiste Greuze: The Laundress.

Lesson Steps

1. Have students view Greuze's painting The Laundress and discuss.
What do you see? What is going on in this image? Where does this image take place? What does the title tell you about the image? What colors, lines, and shapes do you see? How is movement created?

2. Have students read excerpts about Greuze and the artwork.

3. As students discuss the image, write a list of vocabulary terms describing the painting on the chalkboard.

4. Discuss what the artist might have wanted to communicate with the painting:
What did he want people to understand? What can you learn about the process of doing laundry in the 17th-century from this picture? What textures does the artist use to create interest in the image? How is the laundress dressed? What emotion does the image make you feel? What colors, lines, and shapes help to give that emotion? How is movement created?

5. Next, look at laundresses depicted at different periods in history by other artists, such as Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Jacob Lawrence, and John Outerbridge. Use a Venn diagram to chart how these are similar to and different from the Greuze painting.

6. Have students make a timeline for the artworks they have studied.

7. Discuss the different representations of the same subject over history.

Why have different artists represented the subject of the laundress over time? How do more recent works on the subject differ from earlier versions? What do the more recent versions tell us about how the nature of the work has changed or remained the same? Why is tending to laundry typically work that women do? What is the nature of this work?

8. Have students prepare to meet and interview a community member who works as a laundress. First brainstorm about what they want to learn from their subject and then draft questions to ask during the interview.

9. Invite a community member who is, or has worked as a laundress into the classroom. Use a tape recorder to record the interview.

10. Have students write an essay about what they learned from the person they interviewed, and compare that person's experience to the way laundry is done at their home.

Standards Addressed

Language Arts Standards for California Public Schools
Grade 5
Writing
1.0 Students write clear, coherent, and focused essays. The writing exhibits students' awareness of the audience and purpose. Essays contain formal introductions, supporting evidence, and conclusions. Students progress through the stages of the writing process as needed.
2.3 Write research reports about important ideas, issues, or events by using the following guidelines:

a. Frame questions that direct the investigations.
b. Establish a controlling idea or topic.
c. Develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples and explanations.

Listening and Speaking
1.1 Ask questions that seek information not already discussed.
1.2 Interpret a speaker's verbal and nonverbal messages, purpose, and perspectives.
1.3 Make inferences and draw conclusions based on an oral report.

Visual Arts Standards for California Public Schools
Grade 5
Artistic Perception
1.0 Students perceive and respond to works of art, objects in nature, events, and the environment. They use the vocabulary of the visual arts to express their observations.