Leaving the Bath

On 11 June 1895 the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel bought this pastel straight from Degas, a woman stepping out of her bath, one of the many he drew in those years. Less than a year later Durand-Ruel sold it to Dresden, to Woldemar von Seidlitz, an art historian who worked for the Saxon royal collections and wrote a history of the Japanese colour woodcut.

From Dresden the sheet travelled east to Breslau, today Wrocław in Poland, and into the collection of Max Silberberg, an industrialist who gathered French painting of the 19th century. In June 1932, seven months before Hitler came to power, it was sold at auction in Paris at the Galerie Georges Petit. Silberberg, who was Jewish, later lost the rest of his collection in forced sales under the Nazis.

The buyer in 1932 was the Paris collector Victor Lyon. In 1961 he and his wife Hélène gave it to the Louvre, keeping the use of it for their son Édouard, and the pastel finally entered the museum in 1977.