George Fuller (1822-1884) of Deerfield, Massachusetts, traveled through the Deep South as an itinerant portrait painter in the 1850s. Inspired by the work of the French artist Edouard Frere (1819-1886), Fuller also began seeking out what he called “the expressions of what we call lowly or everyday life.” He chose to focus on scenes of everyday life among enslaved people on plantations. This is one of three sketches Fuller produced of women working in an open-air laundry yard. Although he considered slavery “a very bad cause,” Fuller did not advertise his antislavery views while working in the South.