Throughout his life Degas was fascinated with the motif of a woman at her toilet – getting out of the bath, rubbing herself dry, dressing. He liked working in pastels, drawing with charcoal, engraving and making sculptures, boldly experimenting and constantly finding new compositional possibilities in ordinary everyday subjects.
A soft charcoal line and blurred pastel prove splendidly capable of conveying a lush head of hair that is difficult to comb out. There are brushes on the table as well, but they are unlikely to be any better help with the woman’s badly tangled locks.
The artist conveys the bristles of the brushes in a very schematic manner and uses the same sort of vertical lines for the surface of the wall and to show the patches of the chair’s upholstery poking out from beneath the sheet tossed over its back. At the same time, the nightdress is indicated only by contour lines running across a blank space. This sort of contrast between a dense surface and a light, transparent figure emphasizes still more the living strength of the long, ungovernable tresses.
Author:
Title:
Toilet of a Woman
Place:
Date:
Material:
Technique:
pastel and charcoal
Dimensions:
54,5x58,4 cm
Acquisition date:
Entered the Hermitage in 1948; handed over from the State Museum of New Western Art
Inventory Number:
ОР-43788
Category:
Collection:
Subcollection:
