Degas worked on card enlarged by 3-cm. strips above and below which are clearly visible due to the present state of conservation of the work.
At the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1886, he showed ten pastels with the title: Série de Nus de Femmes se Baignant, se Lavant, s’Essuyant ou se Faisant Peigner. It is well known that the female nude was one of the artist’s favorite topics; a classical subject, which Degas reworks in a way that is very much his own. Free of any Venetian connotation or of any lyricism, the female nude in Degas is the result of intense study of the body as a mere moving mechanism, so much so that Huysmans adopted a very critical approach, declaring that he had surrendered to misogynistic tendencies. While not entirely refuting this criticism, Valéry had a different understanding of what Degas was attempting to do: “Degas, toute sa vie, cherche dans le Nu, observé sous toutes ses faces, dans une quantité incroyable de poses, et jusqu’en pleine action, le système unique de lignes qui formule tel moment d’un corps avec la plus grand précision, mais aussi la plus grande généralité possible. La grâce ni la poésie apparente ne sont pas ses objets. Ses ouvrages ne chantent guère Il est des êtres qui n’ont pas la sensation d’agir, d’avoir accompli quoi que ce soit s’ils ne l’ont fait contre soi-même. C’est là peut-être le secret des hommes vraiment vertueux.” Only by being unaware of itself could the body reveal its potential being.
For the picture in question, there are many complementary studies and drawings which were inventoried by Lemoisne (1946-1949, III, pp. 448-449) and discussed again by Camesasca (1987, p. 92): four pastels (Lemoisne n. 788bis, 791, 792, 793) with similar poses and four with the same pose, although inverted, dated 1888 (Lemoisne n. 794, 794bis, 795, 795bis). Lemoisne has published, as well as these pastels, three drawings, also featured at the posthumous sale of Degas, one of them conserved at the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo, and this is probably the matrix for the spectacular series of pastels at the Masp, After Bath – Woman Drying Left Arm.
— Unknown authorship, 1998
