Sale: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 2ème Vente Atelier Edgar Degas, 11th-13th December 1918, lot 207
Ambroise Vollard, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London
Acquired from the above by the present owner on Octoܫber 8th, 1956

Paul-André Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, Paris, 1946, vol. III,ಞ no. 1409, illustrated 🏅p. 813

Femme nue assise is a striking example of Degas’ fascination with the female nude. The artist focuses his attention on the figure, delineating her with a strong black contour. Depicted in an almost athletic pose, the nude in the present work is possibly a study for a ballet dancer resting, or a woman at her toilette. In his series of nude studies, Degas wanted to capture the spontaneity and naturalness of his dancers and bathers. Instead of using classical poses, the artist depicted his models in contorted and twisted positions, either performing the everyday tasks of their toilette or resting during a ballet rehearsal. As Gustave Geffroy remarked at the time of the 1886 Impressionist exhibition, "Degas has wanted to represent the woman who doesn’t know she is being looked at. As one would see her hidden behind a curtain or through a keyhole" (R. Thomson, Degas, The Nudes, London, 1988, p. 138).

In the present work the pose of the figure appears simultaneously graceful and awkward, natural and complex. Degas often sought this combination of effects as a way of overcoming the limitations of academic art. As he once explained to a visitor, "Until now the nude has always been presented in poses which assume the presence of an audience, but these women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition. It is as though one were watching through a key hole" (quoted in G. Adriani, Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings, London, p. 86). Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge identify what was simultaneously so novel and arresting about the theme: "It takes an effort of imagination to grasp what these pictures of bathers can have looked like when they first appeared. The camera has made us so familiar with images of people who do not know that they are being watched that many of the disturbing overtones of Degas’s pastels have vanished… Degas’s bathers went behind the public aspect of women as it was habitually maintained in social behaviour or art. His bathers did not project a style of femininity, nor was his treatment of them tinted by sentimentality or idealisation or prurience" (R. Gordon & A. Forge, Degas, London, 1988, p. 223).

comp: 169D06009_COMP     FIG.1, Edgar Degas, Une Coryphée au repos, circa 1880-82, pastel on paper, Philedelphia Mu⛄seum o🐬f Art