‘What disbelief when it was announced that Mr de Blaas's entry depicted a laundress! A laundress? Are you pulling our leg, Mr de Blaas? A laundress, this beautiful donnina, so fresh and clean? And in such a charming pose? Is she not a lady, disguised as a laundress? She is definitely not a genuine washerwoman!’
No artist celebrates the romantic life of nineteenth century Venice more than Eugen von Blaas. Whilst the great titans of the Italian Renaissance and later artist travelers like Turner or Monet capitalized on the cities iconic views, von Blaas delved into the colourful daily life of its inhabitants. Here, a young washerwoman looks innocently at the viewer in a moment of respite. Her beauty is enhanced by the embroidered corset and the soft curls framing her face.
As tourism developed in the nineteenth century, with Venice high on the list of desirable destinations, artists from across Europe sought to bring the ‘harmless joie de vivre’ into people’s homes. As the artist's biographer Thomas Wassibauer points out, to some degree his compositions are fantasies, figures frozen in time who are 'blissfully unaware that Venice will continue to crumble and age and modern nineteenth-century society will continue to propel ever forward' (Wassibauer, p. 20).
No detail is unimportant, either in the figure or the twisted clothes on the steps, with everything the painter depicts handled with the same care and attention, a precursor to the modern conception of photography. In contrast to the ease of taking snapshot photographs nowadays, in the nineteenth century capturing the moment was a largely staged concept in the studio, having little or no connection with people's lives. Eugen von Blaas, however, succeeds brilliantly in creating the illusion of a moment glimpsed. The artist’s virtuosos ability is seen equally in his treatment of the brick walls and stone steps as in his rendering of the washerwoman’s voluminous wrapped skirt dress and voluptuous physique.