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Lot Essay
The theme of the bather occupies a central position in Degas's oeuvre, alongside other representations of modern life such as the laundress, the horse race, and the ballet dancer. From the late 1870s through the end of his career, the bather enjoyed a persistent hold over Degas's artistic imagination; hundreds of drawings, etchings, monotypes, and pastels, along with ten sculptural compositions, bear witness to the artist's fascination with the intimate actions of the woman at her toilette. Degas depicts the woman stepping into her bath or kneeling in the tub; then washing, sponging, and drying her body; finally combing and dressing her hair. Degas's explorations of the bather capture postures at once graceful and awkward, natural and complex, their momentary and unaffected character helping to create the appearance of intimacy which the artist sought. As he once explained to a visitor:
Until now the nude has always been presented in poses which assume the presence of an audience, but these women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... It is as though one were watching through a key hole (quoted in G. Adriani, Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings, London, 1985, p. 86).
The present sculpture is a masterful example of Degas's depictions of the bather. The contours of the figure are supple and robust, the flesh sensitively modeled; the light plays gently across the bather's belly and breasts. The weight of the statue lends it an air of classical authority, while the bold cropping of the figure asserts the work's modernity; the pose at once suggests motion and stasis, a figure caught in the momentary act of balancing.
The motif depicted, a woman sponging the small of her back, is one that Degas explored in at least five works on paper as well. In all five, the figure is seen from behind, as though she were unaware of the gaze of artist and viewer. The earliest of the works is a small, square study in charcoal and pastel, dated by Lemoisne circa 1885, which shows the figure from the buttocks up, set against a blank ground (L856). This drawing establishes the essential elements of the pose: the right arm bent at a sharp angle, elbow protruding, hand flexed atop the sponge; the torso bowed to one side in a graceful C-curve, body tilted slightly forward; the head facing down, neck outstretched, hair cascading to the ground in a tangled rope. In this version, the bather bends to the right, sponging the fleshy folds near her waistline; in later drawings and in the sculpted rendition, she bends instead to the left, sponging the portion of her torso where the skin stretches taut. The next use of the pose comes circa 1887, in a pair of larger pastels, rectangular in format, in which the bather stands in a deep, oblong tub (L915-916). She leans further forward now, her upper and lower body forming nearly a right angle, and grasps the edge of the tub for balance. The final renderings of the motif date to 1888-1892: two complex and richly worked pastels which show the bather leaning over a shallow basin, a towel falling from her buttocks (L. 967-968; fig. 1).
That Degas should have rendered the same motif in both two and three dimensions is not surprising. He often returned to a certain pose again and again, exploring slight variations of stance and gesture, both in his images of bathers and dancers; and he frequently depicted the same posture from various angles, as though he were circling a live model -- or a sculpted representation. Moreover, in the clarity of their contours and confident modeling of their forms, Degas's bather pastels have a sculptural character which has been noted ever since the artist first exhibited them at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition. In a review of that show, the critic Octave Mirbeau wrote, "The woman crouching in a tub, pressing a sponge to her back, the one bent over, her back horizontal, rubbing her feet -- have, in their individuality, the beauty and the strength of gothic statues" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, New York, 1988, p. 236). And Charles du Bos wrote of this group, "It is out of stone that these monumental nudes seem hewn -- balanced blocks, of an absolute internal coherence" (quoted in ibid., p. 267). Modern scholars too have commented upon the sculptural quality of Degas's bather pastels. According to Boggs and Maheux, "His exploration was that of a sculptor" (Degas Pastels, London, 1992, p. 13); and Kendall has written, "Such figures might well...recall classical statuary" (Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 1996, p. 142).
The date that Degas executed the original wax model of the present sculpture remains disputed by scholars. Rewald includes Femme se frottant among the artist's late sculptures, conceived after 1896; Millard, in contrast, believes the work to have been modeled circa 1881-1883 (op. cit., pp. 15 and 70). Thomson has proposed a date for the sculpture of circa 1889 on the basis of its compositional similarity to the monotype Torse de femme (fig. 2); he argues that the monotype represents a reaction to Titian's Temptation of Adam and Eve, which Degas saw in the Prado in the summer of 1889. Indeed, there exist close parallels between Degas's monotype and the present sculpture. The sway of the torso is nearly identical in each, as are the full, undulating forms of the belly and breasts and the play of light over the surface of the flesh; additionally, the two works are nearly the same height (the sculpture 43.9 cm., the print 48.5 cm.). Yet the date of the monotype is itself uncertain, with Adhémar and Cachin placing it circa 1885 (Degas: The Complete Etching, Lithographs and Monotypes, London, 1974, no. 162); moreover, the similarities between the sculpture and the monotype do not necessarily imply that they were executed at the same time. Broadly speaking, however, a date for the sculpture in the later 1880s would correspond to that of the works in pastel which explore the same motif, a woman sponging the small of her back.
The original wax model of Femme se frottant has been destroyed. According to Rewald, the wax was cast in plaster by the founder Hébrard circa 1900 and the bronze edition cast from the plaster; the plaster version remains in the collection of Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Femme s'épongeant le dos, circa 1888-1892.
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.
(fig. 2) Edgar Degas, Torse de femme, circa 1885 or 1889
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Until now the nude has always been presented in poses which assume the presence of an audience, but these women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... It is as though one were watching through a key hole (quoted in G. Adriani, Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings, London, 1985, p. 86).
The present sculpture is a masterful example of Degas's depictions of the bather. The contours of the figure are supple and robust, the flesh sensitively modeled; the light plays gently across the bather's belly and breasts. The weight of the statue lends it an air of classical authority, while the bold cropping of the figure asserts the work's modernity; the pose at once suggests motion and stasis, a figure caught in the momentary act of balancing.
The motif depicted, a woman sponging the small of her back, is one that Degas explored in at least five works on paper as well. In all five, the figure is seen from behind, as though she were unaware of the gaze of artist and viewer. The earliest of the works is a small, square study in charcoal and pastel, dated by Lemoisne circa 1885, which shows the figure from the buttocks up, set against a blank ground (L856). This drawing establishes the essential elements of the pose: the right arm bent at a sharp angle, elbow protruding, hand flexed atop the sponge; the torso bowed to one side in a graceful C-curve, body tilted slightly forward; the head facing down, neck outstretched, hair cascading to the ground in a tangled rope. In this version, the bather bends to the right, sponging the fleshy folds near her waistline; in later drawings and in the sculpted rendition, she bends instead to the left, sponging the portion of her torso where the skin stretches taut. The next use of the pose comes circa 1887, in a pair of larger pastels, rectangular in format, in which the bather stands in a deep, oblong tub (L915-916). She leans further forward now, her upper and lower body forming nearly a right angle, and grasps the edge of the tub for balance. The final renderings of the motif date to 1888-1892: two complex and richly worked pastels which show the bather leaning over a shallow basin, a towel falling from her buttocks (L. 967-968; fig. 1).
That Degas should have rendered the same motif in both two and three dimensions is not surprising. He often returned to a certain pose again and again, exploring slight variations of stance and gesture, both in his images of bathers and dancers; and he frequently depicted the same posture from various angles, as though he were circling a live model -- or a sculpted representation. Moreover, in the clarity of their contours and confident modeling of their forms, Degas's bather pastels have a sculptural character which has been noted ever since the artist first exhibited them at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition. In a review of that show, the critic Octave Mirbeau wrote, "The woman crouching in a tub, pressing a sponge to her back, the one bent over, her back horizontal, rubbing her feet -- have, in their individuality, the beauty and the strength of gothic statues" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, New York, 1988, p. 236). And Charles du Bos wrote of this group, "It is out of stone that these monumental nudes seem hewn -- balanced blocks, of an absolute internal coherence" (quoted in ibid., p. 267). Modern scholars too have commented upon the sculptural quality of Degas's bather pastels. According to Boggs and Maheux, "His exploration was that of a sculptor" (Degas Pastels, London, 1992, p. 13); and Kendall has written, "Such figures might well...recall classical statuary" (Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 1996, p. 142).
The date that Degas executed the original wax model of the present sculpture remains disputed by scholars. Rewald includes Femme se frottant among the artist's late sculptures, conceived after 1896; Millard, in contrast, believes the work to have been modeled circa 1881-1883 (op. cit., pp. 15 and 70). Thomson has proposed a date for the sculpture of circa 1889 on the basis of its compositional similarity to the monotype Torse de femme (fig. 2); he argues that the monotype represents a reaction to Titian's Temptation of Adam and Eve, which Degas saw in the Prado in the summer of 1889. Indeed, there exist close parallels between Degas's monotype and the present sculpture. The sway of the torso is nearly identical in each, as are the full, undulating forms of the belly and breasts and the play of light over the surface of the flesh; additionally, the two works are nearly the same height (the sculpture 43.9 cm., the print 48.5 cm.). Yet the date of the monotype is itself uncertain, with Adhémar and Cachin placing it circa 1885 (Degas: The Complete Etching, Lithographs and Monotypes, London, 1974, no. 162); moreover, the similarities between the sculpture and the monotype do not necessarily imply that they were executed at the same time. Broadly speaking, however, a date for the sculpture in the later 1880s would correspond to that of the works in pastel which explore the same motif, a woman sponging the small of her back.
The original wax model of Femme se frottant has been destroyed. According to Rewald, the wax was cast in plaster by the founder Hébrard circa 1900 and the bronze edition cast from the plaster; the plaster version remains in the collection of Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia.
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Femme s'épongeant le dos, circa 1888-1892.
National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.
(fig. 2) Edgar Degas, Torse de femme, circa 1885 or 1889
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris