Woman in her Bath Sponging her Leg

In May 1886, at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in Paris, Degas hung a group of pastels of women bathing, washing and drying themselves, and this small sheet was among them. It had started a few years earlier as a monotype. Degas inked a metal plate, pulled a single print from it, and then worked over that faint image in pastel, so under the colour there is a layer of printer's ink. The woman lies back in a long bathtub, one leg raised, the sponge in her hand, seen from behind as if nobody else were in the room. By 1895 it had passed through the hands of the dealer Ambroise Vollard to the banker and collector Isaac de Camondo, whose notebook lists it plainly as a naked woman with a bathtub, bought for 1,100 francs. Camondo left his collection to the Louvre, and the pastel has belonged to the French state since 1911.