Woman at a Window

This calm picture of a woman by a window belongs to one of the hungriest winters Paris ever knew. From the autumn of 1870 into 1871 a Prussian army held the city under siege, supplies ran out, and Parisians ate horses, cats, and worse to get through it. Degas worked here in essence, oil thinned right down with turpentine until it behaves almost like watercolour. The English painter Walter Sickert, who knew him, later told the story that Degas paid his model with a lump of meat, and that she was so starved she devoured it raw. The colour is brushed on so sparingly that in places the bare paper still shows through the woman and the pale light around her.