Edgar Degas

Ambroise Vollard, Paris

Mme de Galea, Paris (acquired from the above)

Galerie de l'Elysée, Paris (acquired from the above)

Acquired from the above in 1955

Good and stable condition, without losses or planar distortions. The paper is mounted upon a secondary paper support in turn lined with canvas and stretched on a stretcher in the manner of an oil painting. There is one tear at the center-bottom edge that has been proficiently repaired and is now very discrete. A horizontal line near the bottom edge appears original to the creation of the work. Likely the paper was sitting on top of another sheet of paper or support when the drawing was executed causing a palimpsest impression. Visually, the paper appears clean and aside from a minor surface abrasion in the lower-right quadrant, the medium appears undisturbed.
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The present work belongs to a group of pastels treating one of Degas' signature themes, that of a female figure at her toilette.  His rendering of this subject here focuses on the movement of the body as the model pulls a comb through her hair.  The drawing references the space beyond the physical boundaries of his composition, with the model's elbow extending to the edge of the sheet and the abrupt cropping of her leg at the ankle.  Because he was interested primarily in depicting the human form in a variety of rituals and movements, Degas rarely concentrated on the identity of his models and often obscured their faces, as he has in the present work.

Richard Kendall wrote about the artist's works on this theme: "The subject of coiffure [...] inspired some of the finest pictorial inventions of Degas' last years.  Though it had featured briefly in his earlier repertoire, the theme seized Degas's imagination afresh in the 1890s and prompted a profusion of drawings, pastels and oil paintings, even lithographs and wax sculptures.  Many were linked by the process of tracing or serial extension, but all demonstrated the artist's extraordinary ability to find visual and psychological drama in the humblest incidents of everyday life.  Some models appear in their domestic surroundings, others against stark, anonymous walls; some are seen close-to, others from a distance, from above or from an oblique angle; most are decorously clothed, but occasionally a figure appears naked; almost all are solemnly engaged with their toilette, but, again, this can seem serene or indolent, hasty or near-desperate in its intensity" (R. Kendall, Degas, Beyond Impressionism (ex. cat.), The National Gallery, London, 1996, p. 218).