Combing the Hair

Combing the Hair belongs to the intimate scenes Edgar Degas painted in the last phase of his career, when much of his work focused on women bathing, at the dressing table, and in everyday gestures of personal care. A maid brushes the long, reddish hair of a seated woman, who seems to flinch and shields her hairline with one hand to soften the pull. The thick hair acts as the thread that links the two figures and holds the composition together.

The relationship between them is ambiguous. The standing woman clearly belongs to the household staff, yet she is the figure who visually dominates the scene. The seated woman, still in her nightgown, has a noticeably rounded belly, which has led some viewers to wonder whether she might be pregnant. The routine morning ritual becomes unsettling and sensual, largely because of the color.

Degas built the picture almost entirely from reds and oranges, spread across the room, the curtain, the clothing and the hair. Only a few white areas, such as the woman's skin and the maid's apron, and yellow accents, such as the brush on the table, break this range and reinforce one another. The tablecloth in the foreground was not painted as such; the artist simply left the underlying canvas visible. The figures are outlined with energetic dark grey strokes, and some passages are more resolved than others. The objects on the table look almost unfinished, and changes are visible, as in the raised arm of the seated woman.

Degas never signed the work or considered it complete, and it stayed in his studio. After his death it was bought by Henri Matisse. It is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London, which acquired it in 1937.

Painter

Edgar Degas

Date

1896

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

114 × 147 cm

Museum

National Gallery, London

Genre

genre art

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