"Negroe Women Occupied by Washing Laundry" (caption translation). Three women washing clothes at a tub (left), and two others, one carrying her infant on her back, ironing (right). Benoit described how "the washerwomen are almost always black, and they achieve a degree of perfection that is rarely surpassed elsewhere" (p. 22). Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782-1854) was a Belgian artist, who visited the Dutch colony of Suriname on his own initiative for several months in 1831. He stayed in Paramaribo, but visited plantations, maroon communities and indigenous villages inland.

"Figure 34" in Pierre Jacques Benoit, Voyage à Surinam; description des possessions néerlandaises dans la Guyane (Bruxelles: Société des Beaux-Arts de Wasme et Laurent, 1839).

Benoit, Pierre Jacques

French

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

BEN17a

South America--Suriname--Paramaribo

"Nègresses occupés à laver du linge", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed March 20, 2023, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2360