Woman at Her Toilette

Prints and Drawings

1900/05

Edgar Degas
French, 1834-1917

Edgar Degas captured an intimate moment: a woman drying herself after a bath. At right, a curtain conceals the woman’s lower body as she bends forward. Degas’s loose handling of pastel and use of warm hues of yellow, orange, and red throughout the drawing visually connect the woman’s body with her surroundings, though specific details like the woman’s face and emotions are obscured from view.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas
Title: Woman at Her Toilette
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1900–1905
Medium: Pastel on tracing paper
Inscriptions: Signed lower left, in red: "Degas"
Dimensions: 75 × 72.5 cm (29 9/16 × 28 9/16 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1937.1033
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/25845/manifest.json

J. B. Manson, Life and Works of Edgar Degas (London, 1927), p. 47.
George Slocombe, “Artist and Misanthrope,” Coronet 3 (April 1938), p. 21 (ill.).
P. A. Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre 3 (Paris, 1946), p. 816-817, no. 1426 (ill.).
Daniel Catton Rich, Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas (New York, 1951), pp. 124-125 (ill.).
Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), pp. 122 and 285 (ill.).
El Mundo de los Museos, The Art Institute of Chicago (Madrid, 1967), p. 57 (ill.).
Alfred Werner, Degas: Pastels (New York, 1968), p. 82, no. 32 (ill.).
William Gaunt, Impressionism: A Visual History (New York, 1970), pp. 188-189, pl. 67.
Sandra Grung, Supplement to Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1971), p. 28.
Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century 2 (Chicago, 1979), pp. 45-46, no. 2G10.
Michael Edward Shapiro, “Three Late Works by Edgar Degas,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 8 (1982), pp. 12-16 (ill.).
Lois Fichner-Rathus, Understanding Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1986), p. 70, fig. 3-7.
Degas, exh. cat. (Paris, 1988), p. 597, fig. 333.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas (Chicago, 1996), pp. 65, 67 (ill. detail), 105 (ill.), and 111, pl. 34.
Joseph Czestochowski and Anne Pingeot, Degas Sculptures: Catalogue Raisonné of the Bronzes, exh. cat. (Memphis, 2002), pp. 45-46, fig. 11.
George T.M. Shackelford, Xavier Rey, et. al. ” Degas and The Nude” (Boston, 2011-2012), pp. 218-219,
fig. 241
Nicholas Wadley, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Drawing (Lawrence King Ltd., 1991), p. 115 (ill.).

Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, “Degas,” 1937, cat. 165, pl. 27.
Toledo, Ohio, Toledo Museum of Art, “Paintings by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists,” November 4-December 13, 1937.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Degas in The Art Institute of Chicago,” July 19-September 23, 1984, pp. 184-185, cat. 89 (ill.), cat. by Richard R. Brettell and Suzanne Folds McCullagh.
London, National Gallery, “Degas: Beyond Impressionism,” May 22-August 26, 1996, pp. 251 and 302, cat. 66 (ill.), cat. by Richard Kendall; traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, September 28, 1996-January 5, 1997.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Undressed: The Fashion of Privacy”, June 22-September 29, 2013

Estate of the artist; sold, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 6-8, 1918, lot 127. Georges Bernheim, Paris, April 1920 [registrar documentation]. Paul Rosenberg, Paris [Lemoisne 1946]. Martin Ryerson (1856-1932), by November 17, 1920 [invoice]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1937.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.