Woman with a Towel
Edgar Degas·1896
Historical Context
Woman with a Towel belongs to Degas's extensive bather series, in which women dry, rub, and wrap themselves in towels in the private spaces of the bathroom or tub alcove. The towel as a motif interested Degas for both formal and social reasons: the act of drying involves the kind of absorbed, automatic physical movement he found most paintable, and the domestic bathtub setting was emphatically modern and unheroic compared with the traditional nude in landscape. This work belongs to the mature phase of the series, likely 1880s–1890s.
Technical Analysis
Degas renders the white towel as a major compositional element, the woman's body partially obscured by the fabric as she dries herself. His pastel or oil handling creates the texture of thick cotton through dense, variously directional strokes, while the flesh visible above and below the towel is treated with the warm, broken colour of his bather series.
