Au repos après le bain

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Artist: Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
Medium: Charcoal and pastel, on tracing paper, mounted on board
Size: 38.7 × 33 cm (15 1/4 × 13 in.)
Culture: French
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Crouching on a chaise longue, with her right knee tucked beneath her and her left elbow overhead, Degas’s bather strikes a wildly unnatural pose. Is she drying her side? Stretching her back? Or simply exposing a swath of skin to the artist’s watchful eye? Described by the great Degas specialist Jean Sutherland Boggs as “a poignant blend of eroticism and anguish,” this pose sums up all that is most appealing—and disquieting—in the artist’s treatment of the female nude.

The same figure is repeated quite precisely in several oil paintings and at least one pastel; it was likely modeled on a photograph today in the Getty collection (84.XM.495.2). Despite the existence of various more “finished” versions of this subject, however, Degas plainly considered the proposed sheet a worthy representation of his talents, selecting it from hundreds of drawings in his studio to sign and published with just nineteen others in the 1897 book Degas: Vingt Dessins.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.