The Bather (La Baigneuse)

The theme of women at their bath appealed to Degas as means to work out ideas in repeated drawings and studies and to focus on the domestic realm. This work embodies an observation made in 1886 by art critic Théodore Duret, who wrote that the artist, “has found new situations for the nude, in interiors, among rich fabrics and cushioned furniture. He has no goddesses to offer, none of the legendary heroines of tradition, but the woman as she is, occupied with her ordinary habits of life of the toilette.”