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Lot Essay
During the 1890s Degas's worsening eyesight prevented him from observing the modern scene with his accustomed acuity. As a result, he turned from the wide variety of subjects drawn from modern life that had preoccupied him earlier in his career, and concentrated instead mainly on his familiar dancers and bathers, with less frequent forays into portraiture and the landscape (see lot 407). An offshoot of the bather theme, a domestic activity he could still observe at close quarters, was the subject of a woman combing her hair, or having it brushed by a maid. Richard Kendall has written: 'The subject of the coiffure... inspired some of the finest pictorial inventions of Degas's last years. Though it featured briefly in his earlier repertoire, the theme seized Degas's 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' (in Degas: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat., The National Gallery, London, 1996, p. 218 )
Degas admired paintings by earlier masters on this theme, such as Titian's Lady at her toilet in the Louvre, and Ingres' Le bain turc, which was held in Paris collections and was widely published before and after it was sold to the Louvre in 1911. Degas was also familiar with Japanese prints showing women of the pleasure-houses of old Edo (Tokyo) engaged in brushing their hair. Kendall has observed, '...the act of combing, brushing or attending to the hair is one of the most banal and wearisome of daily routines, associated with personal hygiene as much as glamour from the beginning of history. In Degas's day such rituals were still doubly oppressive for women, whose hair was typically kept long, yet was endlessly lifted and coiled, pinned and often kept out of sight for work or public presentation' (ibid., p. 219). A woman's long hair has been, of course, a nearly universal fetishistic object of male attention, and the intimate feminine ritual of hair-brushing, usually practiced out-of-sight from a gentleman's gaze, carried strong sensual and erotic connotations. This subject attracted other artists in Degas' day, both male and female, including Puvis de Chavannes, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Degas executed the present Femme se coiffant as one in a series of drawings in pastel and charcoal, in which he studied the contrapposto of the woman's uplifted arms, and the cascade of her abundant, unbound hair (see Lemoisne, nos. 1163-1165). Degas's sequential method was based on the creation of form through line, through the basic act of drawing. He was now reaching toward a more broadly expressive style, in which the individual character of this models and details of costume or accessories were less important than previously. He aimed to capture and emphasize the powerful gestures of the human form in motion. To this end Degas put aside his pencils, Conté crayons, pens and ink that he had used as a young man, and he now preferred to sketch almost exclusively in charcoal, as seen in the under-drawing in the present work. Applied in broad and heavy strokes, charcoal was easier for the artist to see in the light of his studio, and it was capable of rendering a linear armature that would continue to assert its defining contours even with the substantial overlay of pastel. Working in charcoal also facilitated tracing and transfer, techniques that Degas employed with increasing frequency as he worked in series, adapting and altering his subjects from one sheet to the next.
Degas expanded on Femme se coiffant to create two large pastels that utilize a similar pose, also executed circa 1894, Femme en peignoir jaune se coiffant (Lemoisne, no. 1160) and Femme à sa toilette (Lemoisne, no. 1161; fig. 1). The illustration of the present work in the second Atelier Degas sale catalogue, which appears to have been used in the Lemoisne catalogue as well, bears witness to this process. It shows two pieces of paper that Degas added to the original sheet after he had completed the drawing - a narrow strip along the top, and another wide sheet joined to the right side. Degas probably intended in the latter addition to work on a study for the maid who appears at the right side in both of the large pastels. The artist ended up leaving these added sections blank, however, and they were removed following the Atelier Degas sale in 1918 to allow for proper framing of the image, as seen here.
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Femme à sa toilette, circa 1894 (Tate Gallery, London).
© TATE London, 2006
Degas admired paintings by earlier masters on this theme, such as Titian's Lady at her toilet in the Louvre, and Ingres' Le bain turc, which was held in Paris collections and was widely published before and after it was sold to the Louvre in 1911. Degas was also familiar with Japanese prints showing women of the pleasure-houses of old Edo (Tokyo) engaged in brushing their hair. Kendall has observed, '...the act of combing, brushing or attending to the hair is one of the most banal and wearisome of daily routines, associated with personal hygiene as much as glamour from the beginning of history. In Degas's day such rituals were still doubly oppressive for women, whose hair was typically kept long, yet was endlessly lifted and coiled, pinned and often kept out of sight for work or public presentation' (ibid., p. 219). A woman's long hair has been, of course, a nearly universal fetishistic object of male attention, and the intimate feminine ritual of hair-brushing, usually practiced out-of-sight from a gentleman's gaze, carried strong sensual and erotic connotations. This subject attracted other artists in Degas' day, both male and female, including Puvis de Chavannes, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Degas executed the present Femme se coiffant as one in a series of drawings in pastel and charcoal, in which he studied the contrapposto of the woman's uplifted arms, and the cascade of her abundant, unbound hair (see Lemoisne, nos. 1163-1165). Degas's sequential method was based on the creation of form through line, through the basic act of drawing. He was now reaching toward a more broadly expressive style, in which the individual character of this models and details of costume or accessories were less important than previously. He aimed to capture and emphasize the powerful gestures of the human form in motion. To this end Degas put aside his pencils, Conté crayons, pens and ink that he had used as a young man, and he now preferred to sketch almost exclusively in charcoal, as seen in the under-drawing in the present work. Applied in broad and heavy strokes, charcoal was easier for the artist to see in the light of his studio, and it was capable of rendering a linear armature that would continue to assert its defining contours even with the substantial overlay of pastel. Working in charcoal also facilitated tracing and transfer, techniques that Degas employed with increasing frequency as he worked in series, adapting and altering his subjects from one sheet to the next.
Degas expanded on Femme se coiffant to create two large pastels that utilize a similar pose, also executed circa 1894, Femme en peignoir jaune se coiffant (Lemoisne, no. 1160) and Femme à sa toilette (Lemoisne, no. 1161; fig. 1). The illustration of the present work in the second Atelier Degas sale catalogue, which appears to have been used in the Lemoisne catalogue as well, bears witness to this process. It shows two pieces of paper that Degas added to the original sheet after he had completed the drawing - a narrow strip along the top, and another wide sheet joined to the right side. Degas probably intended in the latter addition to work on a study for the maid who appears at the right side in both of the large pastels. The artist ended up leaving these added sections blank, however, and they were removed following the Atelier Degas sale in 1918 to allow for proper framing of the image, as seen here.
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Femme à sa toilette, circa 1894 (Tate Gallery, London).
© TATE London, 2006