Description
Year of creation: 1887
Original size: 57 cm x 82 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Pastel on paper mounted on cardboard
Located: Musée d’Orsay, Paris (inv. RF 1942 13)
The woman sits turned away from us, bare to the waist, a white cloth falling across her lap and legs. She has drawn her long chestnut hair forward over her right shoulder; with her right hand she holds it at the crown, with her left she grips the comb further down. Her face stays hidden.
The colours are laid in large fields: a turquoise hanging at the upper right, pale blue and white at the upper left, the ochre-olive wall, and a patch of pink-lilac along the left edge. The pastel strokes stay visible as separate lines and nowhere melt into a smooth surface.
The scene is not a pose for the viewer. The woman is doing something ordinary and does not notice us – which is exactly what interested Degas in his bathers.
Our version is a hand-painted oil painting on canvas. Every canvas is painted individually, in the size and frame you choose.
