3-035-498 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

After the Bath, about 1895. Degas depicted the woman lying on a divan, while her maid dries or combs her hair. With her back pushed to the extreme foreground of the images, she seems to hold the viewer at bay. Bracing herself with her left arm, the woman uncomfortably raises her left leg against the edge of the bathtub. Such unnatural poses have perplexed critics of Degas's time, as they do viewers today. Some see these poses as an attempt to depict human movement not in idealized forms, but in ordinary, private behavior.