Bather Drying Herself

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

Rooted in Degas's early training in the academic style of the formidable French painter Ingres, this sketch portrays a bather viewed from behind. The motif of the idealized female bather has been treated throughout the history of Western art, but Degas's sketch emphasizes the mundane act of a woman drying her body. He places his subject in a naturalistic pose, crouching and reaching, and focuses on portraying the movement and effort required to bathe rather than staging a static pose.

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