The Tub

Degas made this pastel in 1886, toward the end of his career. He was 52 and his eyesight was failing. He had stopped painting in oil and turned almost entirely to pastel, which allowed him to work in broad strokes without mixing on a palette. A woman sits in a shallow tub, her body turned to the right, one leg extended over the edge. A water pitcher sits on the floor beside her. The tub is tilted forward, as if seen from above. The room is spare: a piece of fabric on the floor, a towel draped over a chair. The pastel is roughly 24 by 33 inches, landscape format. The colors are warm: flesh tones, yellows, and blues, with the interior built in quick hatching. Degas exhibited this pastel at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in 1886, under the title "Suite of nudes of women bathing, washing themselves, getting out of the tub, drying themselves." The critics were divided. Some called the work crude. Others recognized that Degas was doing something new: painting women in private moments, without mythology or pretense. Degas had been making images of bathers since the 1870s. By 1886 he was producing them almost exclusively, along with dancers and racehorses. His late pastels are built in layers, with the colors mixed on the paper rather than on a palette. The surfaces are dense and textured, very different from the smooth finishes of his early portraits. Pastel on cardboard, 60 by 83 centimeters. Degas worked on cardboard supports for his larger pastels, which gave them more stability than paper. The pastel is applied in thick, overlapping strokes, with the flesh tones built in layers of pink, yellow, and blue. The tub and floor are sketched in quick lines of blue and black. This pastel works in a bathroom, bedroom, or dressing room. The warm tones and intimate subject suit a private space with soft lighting. The 16x20 framed version in a white frame is the most versatile size. The pastel is in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris. This is a public domain artwork, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.