About this work
The scene is intimate and immediate: a woman caught in the simple, sensual act of combing her hair, seen from behind, her nude figure rendered with a softness of form and a delicate handling of light and shadow. What arrests the eye is the palette — decidedly unnatural. Degas emphasized anti-natural chartreuses and greens in modeling the figure's pink flesh, perhaps inspired by the play of complementary color contrasts in the work of younger contemporaries such as Seurat or Van Gogh.
The composition is balanced yet dynamic, with the woman's arms raised and bent in the effort of grooming, creating flowing lines that pull the viewer's gaze upward through the figure. The work carries the quiet charge of something witnessed, not staged.
Dating to around 1888–90, the work is a pastel on light green wove paper — now discolored to warm gray — affixed to its original pulpboard mount.
It is the second of two variants of a composition created around 1885, and in this version Degas applied multiple layers of pastel, burnishing the pigment and rubbing the underlying paper until the fibers loosened, creating a distinctive texture that projects from the surface. This was Degas at his most technically restless — pushing pastel far beyond its conventional limits. Degas compared scenes like this to looking through a keyhole, making the viewer feel like a voyeur peering without knowledge or permission.
He brought viewers closer than any artist before him to the everyday lives of these women — bathing, dressing, ironing — letting us in on their most private activities, yet making them seem distant and mysterious. The work now resides in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This is a piece for rooms that reward close attention — a study, a dressing room, a bedroom with good north light. The warm, burnished tones sit comfortably against deep-toned walls: slate, olive, or a muted terracotta. The woman is absorbed in her own reflection, completely oblivious to our presence — which gives the image its lasting pull. It speaks to the viewer who values art that doesn't perform for its audience, work that holds still and waits to be found. There is nothing decorative about it in the shallow sense; it simply insists on being looked at.
