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Lot Essay
The subject of the female bather consumed Edgar Degas from the mid-1880s throughout the rest of his career. This preoccupation is masterfully demonstrated in the present work. Using pastel – his favoured medium at this time – Degas has pictured the figure in the midst of drying herself. Though she appears in the domestic realm of her toilette, this space is abstracted through a kaleidoscopic array of lines, patterns and colour.
Of his contemporaries, no artist is more associated with pastel than Degas. By the beginning of the 1890s, this had become the artist’s preferred medium, which allowed him to achieve the accuracy and refinement of drawing, and at the same time the expressiveness of paint. ‘I am a colourist with line,’ he once declared (quoted in R. Kendall, ed., Degas by Himself, Boston, 1987, p. 319). As a result, his bathers not only dazzle with radical chromatic contrasts but are depicted with meticulous verisimilitude, as Degas captured the nude form with anatomical precision. He also explored the female bather in three-dimensional form, in a number of sculptures, including Le Tub.
In Femme s'essuyant les cheveux, the figure sits upon a cloth rendered with a haze of delicate luminescent blue. She holds a towel which is coloured with rippling lines of blue that seemingly cascade from her head, these loose forms echoing the undulating curve of her spine and the outline of her breast, waist and hips. In the background, frenzied strokes overlay areas of coral pink, while a softer rose tone frames the woman’s hair, piled atop her head. These areas of glowing colour stand in contrast to the woman’s body. The light falls across her outstretched back, with soft cross-hatching used to depict the musculature of her torso. This work is closely related to Après le bain (La sortie de bain) (Lemoisne, no. 815), which is now housed in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
A subject rich with art historical precedent, the bather appears in the work of artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Ingres, for whom Degas had great admiration. With a keen interest in art history, Degas, as well as Renoir and Cézanne, often turned to the subject of the bather. However, it was Degas who placed the female bather firmly in his own time, creating a thoroughly modern conception of this traditional subject.
Freed from literary or mythological associations, and separated from societal context, the nude bathers in Degas’s work presented a radically revised view of the female body. The art critic Théodore Duret wrote that Degas ‘[had] found new situations for the nude, in interiors, among rich fabrics and cushioned furniture. He has no goddesses to offer, none of the legendary heroines of tradition, but woman as she is, occupied with her ordinary habits of life or of the toilette…’ (quoted in R. Kendall, Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The National Gallery of Art, London, 1996, p. 150).
The motif of a woman drying herself was one of Degas’s favourite, appearing frequently in a variety of settings within his oeuvre. This pose enabled him to create some of his most dynamic compositions: seated, bent over, and with the figure’s arms raised, as in the present work, or outstretched, Degas was able to construct sophisticated compositions, always maintaining the integrity of the human form. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has written, ‘The movement of the figures is always vigorous, and the feeling of concentration and self-absorption is always intense’ (Degas, exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1988, p. 473).
Of his contemporaries, no artist is more associated with pastel than Degas. By the beginning of the 1890s, this had become the artist’s preferred medium, which allowed him to achieve the accuracy and refinement of drawing, and at the same time the expressiveness of paint. ‘I am a colourist with line,’ he once declared (quoted in R. Kendall, ed., Degas by Himself, Boston, 1987, p. 319). As a result, his bathers not only dazzle with radical chromatic contrasts but are depicted with meticulous verisimilitude, as Degas captured the nude form with anatomical precision. He also explored the female bather in three-dimensional form, in a number of sculptures, including Le Tub.
In Femme s'essuyant les cheveux, the figure sits upon a cloth rendered with a haze of delicate luminescent blue. She holds a towel which is coloured with rippling lines of blue that seemingly cascade from her head, these loose forms echoing the undulating curve of her spine and the outline of her breast, waist and hips. In the background, frenzied strokes overlay areas of coral pink, while a softer rose tone frames the woman’s hair, piled atop her head. These areas of glowing colour stand in contrast to the woman’s body. The light falls across her outstretched back, with soft cross-hatching used to depict the musculature of her torso. This work is closely related to Après le bain (La sortie de bain) (Lemoisne, no. 815), which is now housed in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.
A subject rich with art historical precedent, the bather appears in the work of artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Ingres, for whom Degas had great admiration. With a keen interest in art history, Degas, as well as Renoir and Cézanne, often turned to the subject of the bather. However, it was Degas who placed the female bather firmly in his own time, creating a thoroughly modern conception of this traditional subject.
Freed from literary or mythological associations, and separated from societal context, the nude bathers in Degas’s work presented a radically revised view of the female body. The art critic Théodore Duret wrote that Degas ‘[had] found new situations for the nude, in interiors, among rich fabrics and cushioned furniture. He has no goddesses to offer, none of the legendary heroines of tradition, but woman as she is, occupied with her ordinary habits of life or of the toilette…’ (quoted in R. Kendall, Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The National Gallery of Art, London, 1996, p. 150).
The motif of a woman drying herself was one of Degas’s favourite, appearing frequently in a variety of settings within his oeuvre. This pose enabled him to create some of his most dynamic compositions: seated, bent over, and with the figure’s arms raised, as in the present work, or outstretched, Degas was able to construct sophisticated compositions, always maintaining the integrity of the human form. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has written, ‘The movement of the figures is always vigorous, and the feeling of concentration and self-absorption is always intense’ (Degas, exh. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1988, p. 473).