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Lot Essay
In an 1894 article, the art critic Théodore Duret wrote of the novel ways Edgar Degas was addressing the female figure, observing that the artist placed his women “in interiors, among rich fabrics and cushioned furniture. He has no goddesses to offer, none of the legendary heroines of tradition, but the woman as she is, occupied with her ordinary habits of life or of the toilette” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1996, p. 150). Duret’s comment reveals one of the pictorial obsessions that guided Degas’s art from the 1890s onwards: the representation of a woman at her toilette, nude or clothed, quietly and completely consumed by the ritualistic act of bathing, dressing, or, as in the striking La Coiffure (La Toilette), styling her hair.
Closely related to the oil painting of the same subject, La Coiffure (Lemoisne, no. 1128), which now hangs in The National Gallery in London and was formerly owned by Henri Matisse, La Coiffure (La Toilette) depicts a woman reclining in her chair as a maidservant brushes out her hair, the young woman’s head pulled back by the force of the brush. Her right hand is raised to her scalp, in an effort to relieve the tension from her attendant’s combing, and her left arm is elevated, her fingers clenched, betraying the physical toll of this part of her toilette. She is robed in a sumptuous blue peignoir, a luxurious dressing-gown designed specifically for this purpose, the name of the garment deriving from the French verb “peigner” meaning “to comb.” Various accessories are arrayed on the nearby table, including ribbons, hairbrushes, combs, scissors, and a bottle of ointment.
The motif of a woman combing her hair has been explored by a diverse range of artists throughout history, from Bellini and Titian, to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Beyond western art historical traditions, the image also appeared in Japanese art, particularly in, Ukiyo-e woodcut prints, of which Degas was a major collector. The idealized women in these compositions were often shown in the company of servants as, for centuries, women of certain classes were rarely alone. What makes Degas’s works so radical, however, are the way his women are indifferent to the viewer’s gaze. Instead, he portrays his subjects as wholly absorbed in their own worlds.
Although this theme predominantly occupied the artist in the later stages of his career, and indeed, for Richard Kendall “inspired some of the finest pictorial inventions of Degas’s last years,” the subject briefly emerged in some of his earlier works (ibid., p. 218). He first depicted the styling of hair in two large canvases from the mid-1870s: Femmes se peignant, a beach scene (1875-1876; Lemoisne, no. 376; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), and Bains de mer, where a nursemaid tends to a child’s hair (1876-1877; Lemoisne, no. 406; The National Gallery, London). The artist had a long-standing interest in hair and its representation. In a notebook he used from 1868-1874, he wrote: “I can readily call to mind the color of certain tresses, for example, because I associate it with the color of gleaming walnut or of hemp, or indeed of horse chestnuts; real hair, with its shimmering flow and its lightness, or its coarseness and its weight” (quoted in J. Sutherland Boggs et al, Degas, exh. cat., Galeries National du Grand Palais, Paris, 1988, p. 255).
In La Coiffure (La Toilette), Degas deftly evokes the thick texture of the young woman’s auburn hair through his masterful layering of pastel. He further heightened the intensity of an otherwise quotidian activity by having the woman touch her forehead with a dramatic gesture, “as if she were suffering from migraine; the anguish is physical” (ibid., 1988, p. 553). Such force is underscored by the bold, saturated tonalities that make up the present composition and, indeed, many of Degas’s late pastels were characterized by their dazzling chromatic juxtapositions. In La Coiffure (La Toilette), this can be seen in the vivid contrast between the glacial blue peignoir and the young woman’s blazing red hair, together evoking what Joris-Karl Huysmans called Degas’s “neologisms of color” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1996, p. 100). “No artist since Delacroix,” the writer went on to note, “has understood like M. Degas the marriage and the adultery of colors” (ibid.).
Closely related to the oil painting of the same subject, La Coiffure (Lemoisne, no. 1128), which now hangs in The National Gallery in London and was formerly owned by Henri Matisse, La Coiffure (La Toilette) depicts a woman reclining in her chair as a maidservant brushes out her hair, the young woman’s head pulled back by the force of the brush. Her right hand is raised to her scalp, in an effort to relieve the tension from her attendant’s combing, and her left arm is elevated, her fingers clenched, betraying the physical toll of this part of her toilette. She is robed in a sumptuous blue peignoir, a luxurious dressing-gown designed specifically for this purpose, the name of the garment deriving from the French verb “peigner” meaning “to comb.” Various accessories are arrayed on the nearby table, including ribbons, hairbrushes, combs, scissors, and a bottle of ointment.
The motif of a woman combing her hair has been explored by a diverse range of artists throughout history, from Bellini and Titian, to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Beyond western art historical traditions, the image also appeared in Japanese art, particularly in, Ukiyo-e woodcut prints, of which Degas was a major collector. The idealized women in these compositions were often shown in the company of servants as, for centuries, women of certain classes were rarely alone. What makes Degas’s works so radical, however, are the way his women are indifferent to the viewer’s gaze. Instead, he portrays his subjects as wholly absorbed in their own worlds.
Although this theme predominantly occupied the artist in the later stages of his career, and indeed, for Richard Kendall “inspired some of the finest pictorial inventions of Degas’s last years,” the subject briefly emerged in some of his earlier works (ibid., p. 218). He first depicted the styling of hair in two large canvases from the mid-1870s: Femmes se peignant, a beach scene (1875-1876; Lemoisne, no. 376; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), and Bains de mer, where a nursemaid tends to a child’s hair (1876-1877; Lemoisne, no. 406; The National Gallery, London). The artist had a long-standing interest in hair and its representation. In a notebook he used from 1868-1874, he wrote: “I can readily call to mind the color of certain tresses, for example, because I associate it with the color of gleaming walnut or of hemp, or indeed of horse chestnuts; real hair, with its shimmering flow and its lightness, or its coarseness and its weight” (quoted in J. Sutherland Boggs et al, Degas, exh. cat., Galeries National du Grand Palais, Paris, 1988, p. 255).
In La Coiffure (La Toilette), Degas deftly evokes the thick texture of the young woman’s auburn hair through his masterful layering of pastel. He further heightened the intensity of an otherwise quotidian activity by having the woman touch her forehead with a dramatic gesture, “as if she were suffering from migraine; the anguish is physical” (ibid., 1988, p. 553). Such force is underscored by the bold, saturated tonalities that make up the present composition and, indeed, many of Degas’s late pastels were characterized by their dazzling chromatic juxtapositions. In La Coiffure (La Toilette), this can be seen in the vivid contrast between the glacial blue peignoir and the young woman’s blazing red hair, together evoking what Joris-Karl Huysmans called Degas’s “neologisms of color” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 1996, p. 100). “No artist since Delacroix,” the writer went on to note, “has understood like M. Degas the marriage and the adultery of colors” (ibid.).