Edgar Degas

Sale: Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1ère vente Atelier Edgar Degas, 8th May 1918, lot 224
Jacques Seligmann, Paris and New York (purchased at the above sale; sale: American Art Galleries, New York, 22nd January 1921, lot 49)
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (purchased at the above sale)
Max Kaganovitch, Paris
Acquired from the above by the late owner in 1959

This intimate work from around 1892 belongs to a group of closely related pictures that Degas executed at the end of the 19th century. The series includes nine pastels in which he rendered the model in the same pose, but varied the composition by adding water-jugs, towels, drapery and even a picture on the background wall. The present work is more compositionally complete than many of the others in this series and includes realistic details like the twisted towel, wrung-out and ready for the bather to use.

At the time he executed this composition, Degas was very interested in photography, and the abrupt cropping of the image is evidence of his photographic eye. He expanded this composition at a later point by using strips of card around the periphery, showing his sensitivity to the span of the pictorial space. Degas had used the technique earlier in his career, as seen, for example, in his depiction of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre of circa 1880. Twenty years later, the technique takes on an even greater significance in its similarity to the readjustment of the photographic lense of a camera.

Richard Kendall wrote about this particular series of bathers: 'The woman depicted is involved in the most commonplace process of washing known to Degas and his contemporaries. She has undressed in the privacy of her bedroom (not bathroom) and stands in front of a table or wash-stand, sponging herself with water from a metal or ceramic bowl' (R. Kendall in Degas, Images of Women (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1989, p. 61).

Fig. 1, Edgar Degas, Nude (Drying Herself), 1895-96, gelatin silver print, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles