About this work
*Le Tub* is an 1886 pastel on cardboard in which a nude woman crouches in a shallow tub, caught in the act of bathing as early morning light falls across her form. The eye lands immediately on the arc of her spine — compressed, self-contained, entirely unaware of being watched. Supporting herself with her left hand and raising a sponge to her neck with her right, the figure is positioned beside the hard vertical edge of a cupboard or dressing table, a line that intensifies the sense of a chance, unpremeditated glimpse — as though the viewer has paused momentarily in a doorway. Atop that dresser, a still life of two jugs, a wig, curling tongs, and a hairbrush provides a counterpoint whose curves and colors quietly echo the body's own rhythms.
The distorted, Japanese-inflected perspective and the steep plunging viewpoint make this one of the most formally audacious works in Degas's output.
Presented at the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886, *Le Tub* is one of a series of seven pastels Degas produced in the mid-1880s on the theme of women at their ablutions — a subject he described collectively as a *suite de nus de femmes*. His minute observation of intimate, everyday gesture is a deliberate departure from the romantic tradition of ladies at their toilette; the young woman's crouched posture, which some contemporary critics read as an expression of animality, is in fact derived from the ancient pose of the Crouching Aphrodite.
He exhibited *Le Tub* alongside the related nudes at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition, where the group was regarded as one of the highlights of the show. Degas himself spoke directly to his intent: he told a visitor that his women "are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... it is as though one were watching through a keyhole."
From about 1890 onward, these nudes grew popular among collectors and exerted a marked influence on other artists, with Paul Gauguin echoing their poses in his depictions of Tahitian women and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec adapting their compositional strategies in his own work.
As wall art, *Le Tub* rewards rooms with quiet authority — a study, a bedroom, a gallery wall where the gaze lingers rather than glances. Its warm flesh tones against cooler greys and blues make it sympathetic to linen, pale plaster, or dark-stained wood alike. The work speaks to viewers drawn to intimacy over spectacle: those who value the private moment, the unguarded posture, the small still life that nobody arranged for show.
