🇨🇭 Washerwomen scrub linen on a stone bank, a boat brings more bundles, and a wooden washhouse with a heavy red roof floats on the Rhône. Behind it, the old town of Geneva climbs to the towers of Saint-Pierre Cathedral, with the Salève in the distance.
Geneva's first floating washhouse, or bateau-lavoir, was set up in 1691 by the merchant Théophile Thelusson to give the washerwomen shelter. Laundry was done on the Rhône this way until 1918.
The English watercolourist Samuel Prout drew the scene on stone. The print was then hand-coloured; the Swiss National Library dates it to 1839.
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