Woman Drying Herself
1895
Degas was famously obsessed with capturing women in their most private, unguarded moments—like this figure drying off after a bath. Unlike the polished, idealized nudes of the past, she looks like a real person caught mid-movement, almost like an animal grooming itself. The striking reddish-brown pastel in her hair pops against the soft, smudgy charcoal lines, showing how the artist was moving toward a rawer, more expressive style as his eyesight began to fail in his later years. He often said he wanted to paint humans as if they were animals, stripping away the vanity of portraiture.
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