Degas’s late pastels of bathers drying and combing their hair are among the most sensuous—and the most bewilderingly abstract—works he ever produced. After half a century’s assiduous study (making copies of Renaissance and modern masters in his youth, producing countless life drawings of professional models, ballet dancers, and prostitutes in his maturity), Degas had come to know the contours of the nude by heart. Here those contours are engulfed by a thicket of terse, scribbling strokes, layer after layer of color, applied with an electric swiftness. These strokes lend vitality to the body they describe but also insist on the artist’s own dynamic process and on the flatness of the picture’s surface.
Details
- Artist Name: Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
- Title: Woman Drying Her Hair
- Date: c. 1900-1908
- Medium: Pastel on paper
- Dimensions: 28 x 24-1/2 in. (71.1 x 62.2 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1969.06.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
[Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock no. 11370, sold 8 March 1958 to];
René Beck.
[?Charles Durand-Ruel, Paris, to];
[Sam Salz, New York, to];
[Reid & Lefevre, Ltd., London, offered by 9 December 1968, and subsequently sold 25 January 1969 to];
Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art, Los Angeles (sale, New York, Christie's, 19 May 1982, lot 15, ill., as Femme s’essuyant les cheveux, unsold);
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Foundation
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1974-10-19 to 1976-06-15
Maheux, Anne, Degas Pastels, figs. 14, 14a
Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, cat. 570 p. 313
Kendall, Richard, Edgar Degas: Defining the Modernist Edge, fig. 18 p.62
Thomson, Richard, Degas: The Nudes, p. 211, 218
Dumas, Ann, and others, Degas e gli italiani a Parigi, fig. 82 pp. 162-163
Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, p. 151
Museum of Art and History, Geneva, Dessins fraçais, collections du Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève, fig. 1 pp. 136-137
Norton Simon Museum, Selected Paintings at the Norton Simon Museum, p. 111
Lemoisne, Paul-André, Degas et son oeuvre, no. 1454
Marmor, Michael F. and James G. Ravin, The Artist's Eyes: Vision and the History of Art, fig. 38.4c p. 205
Apollo, p. xliii
Russoli, Franco; and Fiorella Minervino, L'opera completa di Degas, under no. 1053 p. 133
Campbell, Sara et al., Degas in the Norton Simon Museum, Fig. 30 pp. 45, 218
The Open University, Art of the Avant-Gardes, Plate 4.11 pp. 119-122
Degas by Himself: Drawings, prints, paintings, writings, p. 280
Carmen Fernández Jacob, La Patalogía Ocular en la Pintura a Través de la Clínica Oftalmológica, Fig. 25, Fig. 28 pp. 115-117
Additional Artwork by Artist
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