composition, the oval shape of the bath, disappearing behind a colourful screen, beautifully echoes the curve of the woman’s body. The lower half of her figure is partially hidden by the towel she is holding, which is in turn echoed by the robe casually thrown over the sofa in the background. The extraordinary energy of the present work is derived from the highly abstracted treatment of the surface, blending the fabric of the wall-paper, curtain, screen, floor, robe and towel into a continuous decorative pattern. Whilst the contours of the woman’s body, the armchair and the bathtub are clearly delineated, the rest of the composition is coloured in spontaneous strokes of bright pigment. The background is depicted with a degree of abstraction, with accentuated horizontal and vertical lines which provide a contrast to the curving line of the woman and the bath. Such a decorative treatment of the background, and the intimate character of the composition were highly influential to the avant-garde painters over the following decades, particularly the intimiste interiors of Pierre Bonnard. The particularly patterned surfaces seen in the present work, with the profusion of fabrics and textures playing as a foil to the intensely studied modelling of the body, show this pastel to date from around 1895. Close comparisons may be made with the Après le bain, femme s’essuyant la nuque, in the Musée d’Orsay and the Petit déjeuner après le bain in the Kunstmuseum, Winterthur, both dating from this same period and having the same deep and multilayered range of colours. In the catalogue of the recent exhibition held at the Musée d’Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, George Shackleford writes of the pastels of these years, describing the way in which Degas specifically utilises, with great inventiveness, the various prop materials, as well as creating a subtle telescoping of the spaces defined by the deep and very large bath, the ample sofa-effects - maybe inspired by the Japanese prints hashira-e which Degas admired - as here, in particular, the folding screen into which the bath seems almost to disappear 3 . Degas made numerous studies for this particular composition, twelve of these can be traced through the Estate sales 4 , the most closely related of which is a virtually actual size detail of the nude woman in the pastel, executed in charcoal and brown pastel on tracing paper, and now in a private collection in Dallas (fig.1) 5 . Après le bain, femme s’essuyant remained in the artist’s collection until his death in 1917, and was included in the first of four auctions of the contents of Degas’s studio, held in Paris the following year. It was subsequently acquired by Roger G. Gompel, a renowned collector of Impressionist art in France at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was the director of the Paris-France Society, the company that owned several department stores including Les Trois Quartiers and Aux Dames de France. Gompel’s collection was particularly strong in works by Degas and several major pastels which belonged to him are now located in important museums such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. This work remained in Gompel’s family until it’s very recent sale. 148
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