Day 320 - Degas nude


 November 17, 2022

Gallery 817 is devoted to pastels, mostly by Degas but also by Manet and Toulouse-Lautrec. Many of the Degas pastels depict women bathing. A placard notes that since these were first exhibited in 1886, they have been described as daring and revelatory or as voyeuristic and "shameless." 

I would never characterize his "Woman Having Her Hair Combed" as shameless, but it is undoubtedly sensuous.  If the last entry was all about the composition, this one is all about the subject. The pastel, which measures roughly 30 inches high and 26 inches across,  shows a nude young woman with luxuriantly long auburn hair sitting on the edge of a settee.  Her hands are on her hips, her shoulders and elbows thrown  back so that her breasts are thrust forward. Her head is also tilted back, her eyes closed, apparently in pleasure.  The young woman is clearly fleshier than modern tastes would dictate: her upper arms are plump,  and she can pinch at least an inch at the sides of her waist.

My eyes are so drawn to her face and her breasts that at first I don't even notice the truncated body of the woman behind her who is plying the comb and who is clad in a rose-colored blouse that echoes the young woman's red hair but in a lighter tint.  Degas sets these pink and red tones of hair, blouse, and flesh against the acid green of the settee.  

Is the work erotic? As a cis woman, I'm probably not the one to ask.  The subject seems to be totally absorbed in the enjoyable physical sensations of the moment. Maybe I can most liken it to the pleasure I feel when I get a massage.




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