Degas: pastel technique
Woman in a Tub (Degas)
Pastel by Edgar Degas
Woman in a Tub (or The Tub) is one of a suite of pastels on paper created by the French painter Edgar Degas in the s and is in the collection of the Hill-Stead Museum in Connecticut. The suite of pastels all featured nude women "bathing, washing, drying, wiping themselves, combing their hair or having it combed" and were created in readiness for the sixth and final Impressionist Exhibition of [1]
The work demonstrates Degas' mastery of pastel drawing and, like the other works in the suite, portrays a woman engaged in a mundane private activity, in this case spongeing down her bathtub.
The same bathtub featured in several of the works in the series and, together with the model's red hair, suggested the women were of the working class, possibly even prostitutes, In their defence Degas retorted "my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations it is as if you were looking through a keyhole" emphasising the innocence of the models and the voyeurism of the predominantly male viewing public.[2]
Associated works
Woman in a tub, , Glasgow Museums[3]
Woman Drying Herself after the Bath, c, Norton Simon Museum, California [4]
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub, , Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [5]
The Tub, , Musee d'Orsay[6]
A Woman in the Tub, –, Hiroshima Museum of Art[7]
Woman in a Tub, –, Glasgow Museums[8]