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DEGAS Edgar

Price on request

[After the Toilet - Seated Nude Woman]. Circa 1885. Monotype in black ink. 277 x 378 mm [351 x 510]. Ref: Adhémar et Cachin not described. Not present in the reference exhibition Degas Monotypes (Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, 1968); not present in the recent exhibition Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty (MoMA, 2016). Second proof on watermarked laid paper ("MA" escutcheon), covered on the back with the artist's red studio stamp (Lugt n°657), and a number in blue pencil. Degas' monotypes occupy a special place in the master's graphic work. Experimental in nature and reserved for an intimate circle, they were only rediscovered in 1918, at the sale of the artist's estate, where they created a surprise. In the magazine Les Arts, collector and critic Arsène Alexandre wrote: "His monotypes are one of the parts of his work where he showed himself to be the freest, the most driven, the most frenzied. He remembered no precedent even among his other works, and was not embarrassed by any rules." Remaining unpublished, the monotype we present is characteristic of the formal radicalism and freedom developed by Degas from 1875-1880 onwards. As usual, the artist uses a great economy of means: brushing his subject with finger and pad, he portrays a nude woman slumped on a sofa, perhaps reading. Behind her, we can make out the frame of a window or door. The scene remains rather enigmatic, however, the second printing of the plate having weakened the contrasts. The setting and the posture of the figure can be compared to another series of intimate scenes, notably La liseuse (Adhémar et Cachin n°165) and La lecture après le bain (Adhémar et Cachin n°166). The similarity of their dimensions (277 x 378 mm) suggests, in all likelihood, that Degas used a single plate for these three monotypes.

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