Lot Essay
J. Pecirka discusses Degas' drawings and the overriding importance of drawing to Degas: "No matter how enchanted we may be by the colours of Degas' oils and pastels, the essence of the art of Degas the painter is drawing. Ingres used to say to his pupils, 'Drawing is the honest substance of art. By drawing I do not mean only tracing the contours. A drawing itself does not depend only on a line. A drawing is also an expression, an inner form, a plan, modelling'. Ingres' pupil, Degas, enlarging upon his teacher's instructions (which he mastered perfectly) adds the following: 'A drawing alone is not a form, it is an experience of a form, or it is the means of seeing a form. It accents the form and pattern.' Degas' drawing is not ornamental, it is not calligraphical, it is not pretty; its beauty is in its veracity. And it is alive." (op. cit., pp. 21-3)
Under the influence of Ingres, Degas drew with a sharply pointed lead using precise, clear cut lines, but later in life he came to prefer pastels and charcoal with their softer contours and more painterly qualities. Women at their toilette or bathers became, in the 1890s, Degas' most favoured subjects and he constantly worked and reworked the same subject, striving for greater realism and truth.
The subject of bathers in a landscape is quite rare in Degas' oeuvre. Of the group of pastels and charcoals depicting this subject, Jean Sutherland Boggs writes: "An undated group of pastels by Degas seem dedicated to the enjoyment of nudity out of doors. Against landscapes of meadows with long grass, trees with trunks as fluid as Art Nouveau glass, and shallow pools of water, bathers indulge in the movement of their bodies in sun and air - figures thrust diagonally into the enveloping space....These compositions represent a departure from most of Degas' nudes since the 1860s in the variety of the actions of the bathers within a single pastel and in the contrasts of their often awkward positions" (Exh. cat., Paris, Ottawa and New York, Degas, 1988-9, pp. 554-7).
The present work was once part of the excellent Degas collection belonging to Dr. Georges Viau and is directly related to the pastel (L. 1071, see fig. 1) which is now in the Dallas Museum of Art (The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection). It is clear that Degas worked through several studies for this large composition (see L. 1072, 1073, 1074). Also, as Richard Brettell has suggested, this composition together with Bathers (L. 1079) which is now in the Art Institute of Chicago, were probably conceived as a pair.
Under the influence of Ingres, Degas drew with a sharply pointed lead using precise, clear cut lines, but later in life he came to prefer pastels and charcoal with their softer contours and more painterly qualities. Women at their toilette or bathers became, in the 1890s, Degas' most favoured subjects and he constantly worked and reworked the same subject, striving for greater realism and truth.
The subject of bathers in a landscape is quite rare in Degas' oeuvre. Of the group of pastels and charcoals depicting this subject, Jean Sutherland Boggs writes: "An undated group of pastels by Degas seem dedicated to the enjoyment of nudity out of doors. Against landscapes of meadows with long grass, trees with trunks as fluid as Art Nouveau glass, and shallow pools of water, bathers indulge in the movement of their bodies in sun and air - figures thrust diagonally into the enveloping space....These compositions represent a departure from most of Degas' nudes since the 1860s in the variety of the actions of the bathers within a single pastel and in the contrasts of their often awkward positions" (Exh. cat., Paris, Ottawa and New York, Degas, 1988-9, pp. 554-7).
The present work was once part of the excellent Degas collection belonging to Dr. Georges Viau and is directly related to the pastel (L. 1071, see fig. 1) which is now in the Dallas Museum of Art (The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection). It is clear that Degas worked through several studies for this large composition (see L. 1072, 1073, 1074). Also, as Richard Brettell has suggested, this composition together with Bathers (L. 1079) which is now in the Art Institute of Chicago, were probably conceived as a pair.