After the Bath Woman Drying Herself

English

After the Bath Woman Drying Herself: Edgar Degas

Price: Price on Request
Art Type: Various Paintings
Size:
English Comments: 0
International Comments: 0
Creating Date:
Introduction and Works of Edgar Degas >>

Contemporary-Art.org

Reproduction

Enlarge

Edgar Degas Various Paintings - After the Bath Woman Drying Herself

Keywords: Bath, Woman, Drying, Herself

Work Overview: After the Bath (Woman Drying Herself)
Edgar Degas
Date: c.1895 - c.1900
Style: Impressionism
Genre: nude painting (nu)
Media: pastel
Location: Courtauld Gallery, London, UK

The last Impressionist exhibition, in 1886, was a turning point in Degas' career. Here he presented new works including a "suite of female nudes, bathing, washing, drying themselves, wiping themselves, combing their hair or having their hair combed", which included The Tub and Young Woman Dressing Herself. These two works, presented in this exhibition, are being shown together for the first time since 1886.
In this series, Degas fully exploits the expressive possibilities of pure pastel in his naturalist rendering of the body. The juxtaposition of countless strokes of pastel brings the flesh to life. Observed in the artificial light of the dressing room, the bodies fascinated champions of the Naturalist aesthetic. Huysmans admired "the supreme beauty of flesh tinted blue or rose by the water, […] real, living, undressed flesh" whereas Geffroy praised the boldness of the bathers' "frog-like postures".

Despite the ordinariness of the models and the mundane bathroom activities, Degas succeeds, in a synthesis of the classical forms of his predecessors, in giving his bathers a certain majesty and in "finding […] the true essence of the human form", as Mirbeau remarked. These works also impressed the public and other artists, such as Gauguin, who made sketches of the poses of the bathers in his notebook when the works were exhibited at the Galerie Boussod et Valadon in 1888.

Along with women at their toilette, dancers remained a favourite subject with Degas who seemed obsessed with capturing their movements, whether on stage, at the barre or in the wings. Following his classical training, he would first make a nude study, often sculpted. Half the examples here are original waxes found in Degas' studio after his death; half are bronzes cast posthumously from the original wax models.

Copyright Statement:
All the reproduction of any forms about this work unauthorized by Singing Palette including images, texts and so on will be deemed to be violating the Copyright Laws.
To cite this webpage, please link back here.

>> English Comments >> Chinese Comments >> French Comments >> German Comments >>Report

Edgar Degas

Work Overview