Edgar Degas

Sale: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, Atelier Edgar Degas 2me Vente, December 11-13, 1918, lot 158
Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York, 1973
Robert Wiener (sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, May 21, 1975, lot 109)
Edward M. Gilbert
Private Collection, Paris
Private Collection, Paris (until 1985)
Browse and Darby, London
Sale: Christie's, London, June 22, 2006, lot 418
Acquired from the above sale

London, Browse & Darby, Edgar Degas 1834-1917, 1989, no. 16

Paul André Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, 1883-1908, vol. lll, Paris, 1946, no. 1162, illustrated p. 677 (without the atelier stamp)

Very good condition. The work appears to have been laid down on cardboard, extended at the top and right edges and then trimmed--all of this work appears to have been done by the artist. There are a few small losses along the bottom edge, particularly at center. The sheet may be slightly time darkened.
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Femme se coiffant belongs to a small series of pastels and charcoals featuring a woman combing her hair. The most highly-finished of this series is La toilette, now in the Tate Gallery in London (Fig. 1). While Lemoisne dates this series to circa 1894, Richard Kendall dates it to circa 1896-99 (see: Richard Kendall, Degas, Beyond Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery, London and The Art Institute of Chicago, 1996-97, pp. 226-28). In the present work, as in La Toilette, Degas was able to transform an everyday experience into a powerful symbol of feminine sensuality.

As Richard Kendall suggested, 'the subject of the coiffure, where a solitary woman combs her hair or has it brushed by a maid, inspired some of the finest pictorial inventions of Degas' last years. Though it had featured briefly in his early repertoire, the theme seized Degas' imagination afresh in the 1890s and prompted a profusion of drawings, pastels and oil paintings, even lithographs and wax sculptures... All demonstrated the artist's extraordinary ability to find visual and psychological drama in the humblest incidents of everyday life' (R. Kendall, op. cit., p. 218).

FIG. I, Edgar Degas, La Toilette, circa 1894, pastel on paper, the Tate Gallery, London