About Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas was born on July 19, 1834, in Paris, France, and died there on September 27, 1917 — a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker prominent in the Impressionist group and widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life.
Although regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist, and did not paint outdoors as many Impressionists did. What set Degas apart was a rare fusion of classical discipline and radical modernity: he sought to capture fleeting moments in the flow of modern life, yet showed little interest in painting plein-air landscapes, favoring scenes in theaters and cafés illuminated by artificial light, which he used to clarify the contours of his figures.
A superb draftsman particularly masterly in depicting movement, he painted not only dancers but also racehorses and racing jockeys, as well as psychologically searching portraits.
His interest in ballet dancers intensified in the 1870s, and he eventually produced approximately 1,500 works on the subject — studies that address the movement of the human body, exploring the physicality and discipline of the dancers through contorted postures and unexpected vantage points. Key works include *The Dance Class* (1874), *Dancers Practicing at the Barre* (1877), and the wax sculpture *Little Dancer Aged Fourteen* (1881). Acknowledged as one of the finest draftsmen of his age, Degas experimented with a wide variety of media, including oil, pastel, gouache, etching, lithography, monotype, wax modeling, and photography.
Once marginalized as a "painter of dancers," Degas is now counted among the most complex and innovative figures of his generation, credited with influencing Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and many of the leading figurative artists of the 20th century.
Although he had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert; his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
What makes Degas's work so enduring as wall art is its quality of intimate observation — the sense that you have caught a private moment never meant to be seen. By 1870, Degas drew his
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.
