Jacques Claude Danzel made this print after a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, now held by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. When the painting was first exhibited in 1761, critics noticed the unconventionality of the subject. "This little laundress is charming, but she’s a rascal I wouldn’t trust an inch," Denis Diderot declared. Instead of upholding associations of the washerwoman with the virtue of hard work, Greuze overlaid his depiction of the laundress with titillating sensuality. In Danzel's printed image, as in the painting, the woman exposes her stocking and slipper and glances sideways at the viewer.