About this work
A pastel on paper made in 1889, *In Front of the Mirror* draws you immediately into a moment of private ritual. Degas's model is not washing but carefully adjusting her hat and hair so that they look just right — a gesture so ordinary it feels almost stolen. A combination of quick hatches and long strokes of pastel make up the composition, and reflected in the mirror are a brush and bottles, though the young woman herself is conspicuously absent from that reflection — only a few swatches of white suggest where she would sit. The palette is dominated by blue and cream, colours that arrest the eye at once.
Distinctive cropping brings the viewer seemingly very close to the subject , collapsing the distance between observer and observed in the way only Degas could manage.
The work gathers several preoccupations that defined Degas's late career: women at their toilette, millinery, and the use of a mirror to distort and destabilise pictorial space.
The pastel dates to the same year in which Mary Cassatt began work on her related print *La Toilette*, which similarly shows a woman preparing herself in front of a mirror with her face carefully concealed — suggesting these ideas were alive and in dialogue among the circle Degas moved in. It is the figure in front of the mirror who is the true subject, not the mirror itself, which explains why so much more detail inhabits the world outside the glass than within it. That asymmetry is quietly radical: Degas refuses the mirror its conventional role as revealer, making the act of looking — not the reflection — the real event. The work exhibits characteristics more aligned with Realism than pure Impressionism, retaining loose mark-making and an emphasis on light effects while leaning toward precise depiction rather than fleeting impression.
On the wall, this piece rewards a calm, well-lit interior — a bedroom, dressing room, or any space where the private and the curated coexist. Its prevailing blue tones settle beautifully against warm neutrals or deep greiges, while the intimate scale of the original (approximately 49 × 64 cm) means the print carries an air of confidence without demanding the room. It speaks to the viewer who is drawn to psychological undercurrent beneath elegant surfaces — someone who looks at a woman adjusting her hat and wonders what she sees, or chooses not to see, looking back.
