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拍品专文
Executed in a rich network of colourful strokes of pastel, Femme sortant du bain is an elegant example of the bold new motif that emerged within Edgar Degas’s oeuvre towards the end of the 1880s. At the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886, the artist had shown ten pastels which studied the uninhibited movements of the nude female bather in a contemporary domestic interior – ‘Suite de nuds [sic] de femmes se baignant, se lavant, se séchant, s’essuyant …’ (‘Suite of nudes of women bathing, washing, drying themselves …’). Fusing tradition with innovation, these scenes of the female nude à sa toilette were deemed scandalous by many contemporary viewers. While painting a bather as the mythical Diana or the biblical Susanna was de rigueur in the official Salon, as Degas remarked to his dealer Ambroise Vollard, ‘a woman undressing, never!’ (quoted in A. Vollard, Degas: An Intimate Portrait, New York, 1937, p. 48). Freed from literary, historic or mythological associations and separated from an easily legible societal context, Degas’s bathers thus presented a radically modern vision of the female body .
As the art critic Théodore Duret wrote, with these compositions Degas ‘[had] found new situations for the nude, in interiors, among rich fabrics and cushioned furniture. He has no goddesses to offer, none of the legendary heroines of tradition, but woman as she is, occupied with her ordinary habits of life or of the toilette…’ (quoted in R. Kendall, ed., Degas By Himself: Drawings, Prints, Paintings, Writings, London, 1987, p. 150). Despite Degas’s claims that his pictures appeared to be seen as though through a keyhole, like stolen glimpses, the artist was also more than willing to confess that his paintings, pastels and drawings were an act of deliberate artifice, created using models who posed for hours in his prop-filled studio. For Degas, an artist obsessed with the human form, and particularly the figure in movement, this subject offered a wealth of inspiration, as he tracked the various positions and their effect on the forms of the body at every stage of his bathers’ activities.
Focusing his eye on the daily rituals and activities of the woman’s toilette, Degas depicted his female figures in a range of seemingly instinctive, naturalistic poses that appear entirely unpremeditated – they are variously seen crouching, bent over or reclining, in the process of exiting and entering a tub, submerged in the water, washing and drying their bodies, or brushing her hair. In the present work, executed circa 1887-1890, the female character steadies herself with one hand on a nearby chair as she appears to step into the tub beside her, her right leg lifted high over its edge while she plants her weight firmly through her standing leg. There is an intense realism to the pose, as the woman’s body contracts and curves inwards on itself as she bends forward and balances on one leg, revealing the full expanse of her back to the viewer.
Femme sortant du bain is a powerful expression of Degas’s concentration and study, capturing the nuances of his female subject in motion. Subtle pentimenti reveal how Degas’s thinking shifted as he worked, leading him to make alterations around the hands and feet of the figure, while the surrounding walls are described in layers of short, dashed pigments, which create a dynamic, stimulating backdrop to the smooth, delicate tones of the woman’s skin. At this time, pastel was among Degas’s favourite materials, enabling him to marry both his innate love of colour with his deft draughtsmanship. ‘I am a colourist with line,’ he famously declared. ‘To colour is to pursue drawing into greater depth’ (quoted in R. Kendall, ed., Degas by Himself, New York, 1987, p. 319). Combining a myriad of different types of stroke, from staccato dashes to rhythmic networks of elongated lines, zig-zagging marks and patches of smudged, blended pigment, the work captures Degas’s vigorous, radical approach to colour and pastel at this time.
Femme sortant du bain was acquired directly from Degas by the Galeries Durand-Ruel et Cie in Paris, in February 1913. Apart from a short two year period between 1918-1920, when it was owned by the Boston-based collector Joseph. F. Flanagan, the work has remained with the Durand-Ruel family for more than a century, and was last seen at exhibition in 1945, at their galleries in New York.
As the art critic Théodore Duret wrote, with these compositions Degas ‘[had] found new situations for the nude, in interiors, among rich fabrics and cushioned furniture. He has no goddesses to offer, none of the legendary heroines of tradition, but woman as she is, occupied with her ordinary habits of life or of the toilette…’ (quoted in R. Kendall, ed., Degas By Himself: Drawings, Prints, Paintings, Writings, London, 1987, p. 150). Despite Degas’s claims that his pictures appeared to be seen as though through a keyhole, like stolen glimpses, the artist was also more than willing to confess that his paintings, pastels and drawings were an act of deliberate artifice, created using models who posed for hours in his prop-filled studio. For Degas, an artist obsessed with the human form, and particularly the figure in movement, this subject offered a wealth of inspiration, as he tracked the various positions and their effect on the forms of the body at every stage of his bathers’ activities.
Focusing his eye on the daily rituals and activities of the woman’s toilette, Degas depicted his female figures in a range of seemingly instinctive, naturalistic poses that appear entirely unpremeditated – they are variously seen crouching, bent over or reclining, in the process of exiting and entering a tub, submerged in the water, washing and drying their bodies, or brushing her hair. In the present work, executed circa 1887-1890, the female character steadies herself with one hand on a nearby chair as she appears to step into the tub beside her, her right leg lifted high over its edge while she plants her weight firmly through her standing leg. There is an intense realism to the pose, as the woman’s body contracts and curves inwards on itself as she bends forward and balances on one leg, revealing the full expanse of her back to the viewer.
Femme sortant du bain is a powerful expression of Degas’s concentration and study, capturing the nuances of his female subject in motion. Subtle pentimenti reveal how Degas’s thinking shifted as he worked, leading him to make alterations around the hands and feet of the figure, while the surrounding walls are described in layers of short, dashed pigments, which create a dynamic, stimulating backdrop to the smooth, delicate tones of the woman’s skin. At this time, pastel was among Degas’s favourite materials, enabling him to marry both his innate love of colour with his deft draughtsmanship. ‘I am a colourist with line,’ he famously declared. ‘To colour is to pursue drawing into greater depth’ (quoted in R. Kendall, ed., Degas by Himself, New York, 1987, p. 319). Combining a myriad of different types of stroke, from staccato dashes to rhythmic networks of elongated lines, zig-zagging marks and patches of smudged, blended pigment, the work captures Degas’s vigorous, radical approach to colour and pastel at this time.
Femme sortant du bain was acquired directly from Degas by the Galeries Durand-Ruel et Cie in Paris, in February 1913. Apart from a short two year period between 1918-1920, when it was owned by the Boston-based collector Joseph. F. Flanagan, the work has remained with the Durand-Ruel family for more than a century, and was last seen at exhibition in 1945, at their galleries in New York.