EDGAR DEGAS
(1834-1917)
The subject of the nude woman at her toilet was a particular preoccupation of Degas, especially by the 1890s, when he drew little else. He saw commercial value in the aesthetic nature of the female nude. This image is just one of literally hundreds of drawings, pastels, prints, oil-paintings and sculptures that depict the undressed woman either drying, bathing or massaging her body in a variety of poses, all of which Degas designed to explore the sensual soft contours of the female body. This fourth state forms one of a sequence of six that demonstrate Degas’ inventive working methods. Of the twenty impressions known to exist of this state, only ten were signed, including this version.
When Degas exhibited his pastel versions of the female nude bather at Durand-Ruel’s exhibition of Impressionists in 1886, many critics were shocked, but this did not deter him from producing the lithographic series (from which this print comes) which he worked on between 1886 and 1892.
Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.
Extract taken from Prints, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery .