Lot Essay
"Degas' depictions of the toilette were part of his analytical, imaginative, and always self-conscious encounter with the female image. Just as he followed their public counterparts through the routines of a working or leisurely day, so Degas catalogued the private woman's progression through her most intimate actions. First stepping into her bath or kneeling in her tub, then washing, sponging and drying her body, the woman moves on to the dressing of her hair and the final ministrations of her maid" (R. Kendall, Degas: Images of Woman, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1989, p. 56). Degas himself wrote of these works: "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 keyhole" (G. Adriani, Degas pastels, oil sketches, drawings, London, 1985, p. 86).
"All the essentials are contained in those few words. As they suggest, the most important thing is that the model should feel unobserved. The keyhole view in question had always been the voyeur's vantage point, but in this case it became exclusively an opportunity for unusual themes and unfamiliar points of view. For Degas proximity had nothing to do with prying. His candour is never intrusive ... These nudes display plenty of individual features, but they are wholly identified with their activities ... These opulent, introverted symbols of female beauty ... have no male counterparts and are entirely concerned with themselves alone. Though close at hand they remain inaccessible ... Contact with an outside world appears to have been broken off. Even the spectator remains a casual witness of the event, an intruder into a hermetically sealed habitat.
"Never before had human shapelessness been so perfectly converted into pictorial excellence, nor had intimate behaviour been shown at such obvious close range, yet with the utmost accuracy and without unnecessary intrusion" (ibid p. 86).
"All the essentials are contained in those few words. As they suggest, the most important thing is that the model should feel unobserved. The keyhole view in question had always been the voyeur's vantage point, but in this case it became exclusively an opportunity for unusual themes and unfamiliar points of view. For Degas proximity had nothing to do with prying. His candour is never intrusive ... These nudes display plenty of individual features, but they are wholly identified with their activities ... These opulent, introverted symbols of female beauty ... have no male counterparts and are entirely concerned with themselves alone. Though close at hand they remain inaccessible ... Contact with an outside world appears to have been broken off. Even the spectator remains a casual witness of the event, an intruder into a hermetically sealed habitat.
"Never before had human shapelessness been so perfectly converted into pictorial excellence, nor had intimate behaviour been shown at such obvious close range, yet with the utmost accuracy and without unnecessary intrusion" (ibid p. 86).