Woman at Her Toilette

About this artwork

Edgar Degas captured an intimate moment: a woman drying herself after a bath. At right, a curtain conceals the woman’s lower body as she bends forward. Degas’s loose handling of pastel and use of warm hues of yellow, orange, and red throughout the drawing visually connect the woman’s body with her surroundings, though specific details like the woman’s face and emotions are obscured from view.

Art Historical Context

In the intimate "Woman at Her Toilette created by Edgar Degas in May 1900, we glimpse the artist's late-career fascination with everyday feminine rituals. Degas, a French master associated with Impressionism yet renowned for his realist precision and innovative compositions, captures a woman seated at her dressing table, lost in private reverie. This large-scale pastel on tracing paper—measuring 75 × 72.5 cm—exemplifies his shift toward softer, more atmospheric works as his eyesight declined in his later years. Degas was a pastel virtuoso, layering pigments for vibrant, luminous effects that tracing paper's translucency enhances, allowing light to interplay dynamically. These "toilette" scenes, a recurring motif from the 1880s onward, reflect his voyeuristic yet respectful gaze on modern women, drawing from ballet dancers and laundresses to bourgeois interiors. The medium's fragility underscores the piece's ephemerality, housed today in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings Department. This work highlights Degas' enduring influence on capturing fleeting moments with psychological depth, bridging Impressionist spontaneity and Symbolist introspection—a gem for visitors pondering the artistry of the ordinary.

About the Artist

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas · 1834–1917

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, born on July 19, 1834, in Paris to a prosperous banking family, was the eldest of five children. His mother, Célestine Musson, a Creole from New Orleans whose father Germain Musson had roots in Haiti, died when Degas was thirteen, leaving his father Augustin and unmarried uncles to guide him. Educated at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he earned a baccalauréat in...