SUSAN STEIN: Degas rendered this nude with countless strokes of pastel, each subtly nuanced to bring the body into relief.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: Curator Susan Stein discusses Edgar Degas’s “Woman Having Her Hair Combed:”

SUSAN STEIN: He worked in a gamut of colors, applied in layers, varying the direction of the strokes, as seen especially in the rug with its rose red base and passages of green and turquoise blue. He exploited the full potential of contrast, accentuating her opalescent skin and soft cloud of hair against the acid colors and bolder hatching in the décor. The bather is shown in three-quarter view. She's seated amid drapery and dreamily self-absorbed while being attended to by a servant. Highly finessed, exquisitely worked, this pastel belongs to a series of bathers that Degas intended to exhibit at the 1886 Impressionist Exhibition. He described the group as women bathing, washing themselves, drying themselves, toweling themselves, combing their hair, or having their hair combed. But, curiously, not one reviewer mentioned this pastel. Either Degas did not finish it in time, which is entirely understandable in view of its meticulous technique or he excluded it for some other reason. Perhaps he felt the nude was too refined, too classical in conception, that it lacked the edgier appeal of the other works in the series.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: Degas’s nude is entirely unself-conscious, absorbed in her own thoughts. In some ways she recalls—though in a modern, domestic vein—Rembrandt’s moving depiction of the biblical story of Bathsheba at her bath. Degas certainly knew this painting, which is now in the Louvre, for it was owned by a family friend.