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Lot Essay
Degas published only four prints during his life: one as an illustration in a catalogue, two plates in a book, and one in a program for a cultural event. Only his closest friends were aware of his activities as a printmaker, and fewer still were ever admitted to his atelier to view his 'experiments' (essais) as he called them. Even the sales after his death shed little light on this aspect of his career - many of his lithographs, monotypes and 'impressions' were bundled together in large lots, and were bought by dealers, to disappear from view once again.
Degas was fascinated by the idea of producing unorthodox hybrids. He was both deeply wedded to tradition, and in love with experimentation and new technology, in particular photography of which he was an early exponent. For example, Mlle Bicat at the Café des Ambassadeurs (L. Delteil 50) began as a monotype, was transferred to a lithographic stone, reworked, printed, and then heightened with pastel. The present work began as a charcoal drawing, was then transferred to another sheet by being passed through a printing press face down on a blank piece of paper, and the result heightened with black crayon. It was a favoured method of allowing one image to be developed in two different directions, and other examples of this process are known.
One of the many contradictions of Degas' long life was the way in which he subverted the normal function of a print - since the time of Durer and Rubens, artists have used printmaking as means of spreading their fame and reputation farther than paintings could ever do. However, Degas, like Goya, chose printmaking to express his most intimate and personal thoughts. One subject that dominated these thoughts from the 1880s onwards was that of the female nude.
In contrast to his oil portraits of women, in which the faces are clearly delineated, and the sitters frequently identifiable, his late images of bathers show anonymous women bathing, washing, and drying themselves. They are cool, dispassionate depictions which concentrate on the sheer physicality of the human form, and many commentators have seen misogyny in this unflattering gaze. At the time they were viewed as vulgar, brutal and cynical depictions of a debased feminine ideal. But contemporary reactions were conditioned by the fashion for nudes to be shown in titillating poses, coyly aware of being on display. Degas rejected this altogether. His aim was to show women, and by extension humanity, as it exists: slightly awkward and self-absorbed. They should appear, in his famous phrase, as if they were being seen 'through a keyhole.' In so doing, Degas did nothing less than rescue the nude as a legitimate subject for art in the 20th century.
Degas was fascinated by the idea of producing unorthodox hybrids. He was both deeply wedded to tradition, and in love with experimentation and new technology, in particular photography of which he was an early exponent. For example, Mlle Bicat at the Café des Ambassadeurs (L. Delteil 50) began as a monotype, was transferred to a lithographic stone, reworked, printed, and then heightened with pastel. The present work began as a charcoal drawing, was then transferred to another sheet by being passed through a printing press face down on a blank piece of paper, and the result heightened with black crayon. It was a favoured method of allowing one image to be developed in two different directions, and other examples of this process are known.
One of the many contradictions of Degas' long life was the way in which he subverted the normal function of a print - since the time of Durer and Rubens, artists have used printmaking as means of spreading their fame and reputation farther than paintings could ever do. However, Degas, like Goya, chose printmaking to express his most intimate and personal thoughts. One subject that dominated these thoughts from the 1880s onwards was that of the female nude.
In contrast to his oil portraits of women, in which the faces are clearly delineated, and the sitters frequently identifiable, his late images of bathers show anonymous women bathing, washing, and drying themselves. They are cool, dispassionate depictions which concentrate on the sheer physicality of the human form, and many commentators have seen misogyny in this unflattering gaze. At the time they were viewed as vulgar, brutal and cynical depictions of a debased feminine ideal. But contemporary reactions were conditioned by the fashion for nudes to be shown in titillating poses, coyly aware of being on display. Degas rejected this altogether. His aim was to show women, and by extension humanity, as it exists: slightly awkward and self-absorbed. They should appear, in his famous phrase, as if they were being seen 'through a keyhole.' In so doing, Degas did nothing less than rescue the nude as a legitimate subject for art in the 20th century.