Depicting the head and shoulders of a woman, The Laundress c.1901 is an early painting by George Lambert, completed the year after he departed for Europe upon receiving the first New South Wales Travelling Scholarship. Mrs Chalmers-Wright, a former owner of the painting, advised the National Gallery of Australia in 1970 that, until it was subsequently obscured by a backing board, the verso of The Laundress had shown the inscription: 'Painted in a tavern, Paris 1900'.1 As Anne Gray has pointed out, Lambert did not arrive in Paris until 1901.2 If the painting was indeed painted in Paris, then the nearest correct date must be 1901.

Endnotes

1. Mrs Chalmers-Wright, letter to NGA,  dated 1970, NGA file 71/1 464, 1.
2. Anne Gray, George Lambert 1873–1930 Catalogue Raisonne, Bonamy Press, Canberra, 1996, p.11.