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by Tom Gurney Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on September 28, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Degas After The Bath: Introduction
A woman sits low in a crowded room, turning to her left as both arms rise toward her hair. A white towel crosses the back of her neck. Behind her, an ochre chair and a green-yellow pattern interrupt the pale wall; a dark vertical shape closes the right edge. Edgar Degas made this pastel, Après le bain, femme nue s’essuyant la nuque (After the Bath: Nude Woman Drying Her Neck), in 1898, according to the Musée d’Orsay. It is a specific work in that museum, accession RF 4044, not a generic illustration of his bathers. [1][9]
The familiar short title After the Bath belongs to several Degas pictures. This page follows the one shown here: a nearly square pastel measuring 62.2 × 65 cm, on fine wove paper mounted to cardboard. The woman is seen from the side, with a towel near her neck and an armchair immediately behind her. Those details distinguish it from other pastels and oils described in English as After the Bath or Woman Drying Herself. The owner record, catalogue number and image need to stay together. [1][2]
The work at a glance
ArtistEdgar Degas (1834–1917)
Museum titleAprès le bain, femme nue s’essuyant la nuque
English titleAfter the Bath: Nude Woman Drying Her Neck
Date1898, Musée d’Orsay record
MediumPastel on fine wove paper mounted to cardboard
Size62.2 × 65 cm
CollectionMusée d’Orsay, Paris; not currently exhibited
The woman's elbows form the most arresting angles in the pastel. One forearm reaches across her face and head; the other is raised behind it. The towel's white folds occupy the small space between hair, hands and shoulder. Below those compressed shapes, the long curve of her back leads toward the seated body. Degas makes an everyday act of drying into an arrangement of crossing lines and broad colour areas. The viewer first reads a gesture and only gradually finds the figure's features. [1]
Her face is largely hidden by hair and arms. The image therefore gives little ground for a psychological portrait. It does not identify the model or tell us how she felt. The visible action is enough: she brings cloth to the back of her neck while sitting after a bath. Even that moment may be a carefully arranged studio pose rather than an event the artist witnessed by chance. The finished pastel tells us about a made image, not a transparent record of private life. [1][3]
The body occupies much of the sheet but leaves room for objects around it. The chair's warm, curved back rises just beyond her shoulder. At the left, a broad ochre area meets a dark vertical band. Yellow-green marks create a patterned patch above the chair, while a lighter grey surface appears at upper right. A dark shape at the far right hints at more furniture or a recess, but the reproduction does not identify it securely. These parts of the room make the action feel situated while withholding a clear floor plan. [1]
The lower edge cuts across the woman's seated legs and the dark support beneath her. We do not see a full standing figure or a conventional idealized nude. The partial view gives weight to the bend of the back and to the hands at work. The apparent closeness can feel intimate, even intrusive, but it is also a compositional decision: Degas cropped the body and the room so that the small motion of drying her neck became the centre of attention. [1][3]
The towel and the surrounding room
The towel is the brightest single form near the woman's head. Its white rises against brown hair and the coloured wall, then falls in narrower folds beside the back. We can follow it even where the arms overlap. It tells us what the figure is doing without turning the picture into a sequential story of bathing. There is no need to identify the bath she used, the time of day, or the person who might have prepared the room. The pastel names an action; it does not document a household routine. [1]
Colour also separates and joins the figure and setting. The body is worked in pale ochres and pinks, but cool blue-green and grey marks appear at its edges. The chair repeats the room's warm yellow and orange. The patterned patch behind the head is busier and cooler, lending a sense of texture without describing every surface. Rather than place a smoothly outlined body before an inert background, Degas lets strokes in flesh, towel, chair and wall compete for the eye. [1][4]
The result is an unstable space. The chair is recognisable, yet the room does not settle into a neat geometric interior. The dark band at left and dark mass at right press toward the central figure. The brighter upper wall gives her head a field of light; the lower grey plane supports the seated posture. Our eye moves between those broad zones and the tight knot of arms. The ordinary room matters because it helps the gesture appear both concentrated and temporary. [1]
The museum record notes a signature at the upper right. In the reproduction, the name appears above the lighter part of the background, apart from the body. Its presence supports the object identification, although a web image alone is no substitute for material authentication. It also reminds us that this seemingly unguarded scene is an authored artwork: the sitter, pose, crop, colour and final surface all belong to Degas's construction of the image. [1]
Pastel on paper and cardboard
The Musée d’Orsay describes RF 4044 precisely as pastel on fine wove paper mounted to cardboard. That is more informative than the loose phrase “a pastel painting.” Paper supplied the working surface; the cardboard is the support to which it was attached. The record does not state when or why the sheet was mounted, so the page should not invent a conservation history. The catalogue raisonné uses the shorter support label “cardboard” and dates the work approximately; it is describing the same RF 4044. [1][2]
Pastel gave Degas colour that could be applied in visible strokes without the drying interval of oil paint. The Musée d’Orsay's account of Degas and the Nude notes that this made revision possible and that pastel became a major medium in his later treatment of bathers. In this image, patches of colour and broken marks keep the surface active. The towel is not simply a smooth white shape; the wall and chair are made from many uneven touches. We can discuss those visible effects without asserting a precise order for each layer. [3][4]
The medium also affects display. The Musée d’Orsay describes its pastel holdings as fragile works presented in rotation. Its RF 4044 object record currently says the picture is not exhibited in the museum. That is a current display status, not a statement about whether the museum owns it. The pastel has long been part of France's national collections and has appeared in numerous exhibitions. A reader hoping to see the original should check the museum's present display information rather than assume that a collection page guarantees a work on the wall. [1][4]
A reproduction cannot settle every question about the physical sheet. How thickly did Degas apply each area? Which marks were smudged, left open or later reinforced? What might close looking reveal about the paper texture beneath the pastel? Those questions need the object or a technical study. The visible image is still rich enough for a grounded reading of pose, crop and the relationship between warm flesh and patterned surroundings. [1][4]
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Degas's bathers form a long-running subject, not a single fixed series with one date. The Musée d’Orsay's Degas et le nu exhibition places women bathing, washing, drying and combing their hair across several phases of his career. In the last Impressionist exhibition of 1886, Degas presented a group of nude women engaged in such actions. That public showing helped establish the theme, but RF 4044 is dated 1898 by its owner and was not one of those 1886 works. The earlier suite is context for an interest he continued to develop. [1][3]
A comparison with the Musée d’Orsay’s Le Tub clarifies the development without making the two works a pair. Le Tub belonged to the 1886 group and places a bather within a pronounced circular basin seen from above. RF 4044 leaves the basin itself outside the clear centre of the composition and brings the upper body, towel and chair forward. Both turn a routine act into a problem of viewpoint and bodily shape, yet their different dates and arrangements prevent us from reading one as a simple preliminary version of the other. The comparison shows how Degas could return to bathing while changing the viewer’s position and the balance between figure and surrounding objects. [1][3]
The 1898 pastel holds a particular place in that continuity. It is not a large historical nude or a portrait of a named woman. An ordinary action organizes the figure. The arms rise in a complicated shape; the body's weight settles lower down. Such a contrast between movement and rest is a recurring problem in Degas's dancers as well as his bathers, though the social worlds of performance and toilette are different. Here, a towel and chair, rather than a costume or stage, locate the subject. [1][3]
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Musée d’Orsay organized Degas and the Nude to trace the subject from his early career through later work in paintings, pastels, drawings, prints and sculpture. That breadth resists a simple story in which a single late pastel stands for all his bathers. RF 4044 can be read as one highly developed answer to the problem of representing a body in motion and an interior at once. It should not be described as the first or final version of the motif without an object-specific source. [3][8]
A viewer may feel that the model is unaware of being watched. The turned face and close viewpoint produce that effect. It is a property of the picture's presentation, not proof that Degas secretly observed a bath. The distinction matters because the work concerns a person whose identity and circumstances are not recorded here. We can examine how the image offers us access, how it crops the figure and how it withholds a reciprocal gaze without claiming knowledge of an unrecorded encounter. [1][3]
Date and the route through collections
The Musée d’Orsay dates the pastel 1898. Michel Schulman's Degas catalogue gives circa 1895 for MS1215 while identifying the same Orsay accession and Lemoisne number. Both sources agree on the object; their dates differ. The museum's 1898 date controls the main label because it owns the work and provides the detailed material record. “Circa 1895” remains a documented alternative estimate, not a reason to change its image or confuse it with a separate bather. [1][2]
The catalogue records the work in Degas's studio and with Durand-Ruel & Cie in Paris by May 1898, under stock number 4682. The owner record lists the Durand-Ruel collection and then Count Isaac de Camondo, who held it until 1911. The French state accepted Camondo's bequest that year and assigned the pastel to the Louvre. It later moved to the Musée d’Orsay's collection. This route from artist and dealer to private collector and public museum gives RF 4044 a traceable history, though it does not tell us how every viewer encountered it. [1][2]
The Musée d’Orsay's record lists exhibitions including Degas shows at the Orangerie, pastel surveys at the Louvre, Degas and the Nude in Boston and Paris in 2011–12, and the museum's pastel exhibition in 2023. These appearances demonstrate that curators have repeatedly returned to the work. They are historical records; none overrides the museum's present notice that the pastel is not currently on display. [1]
Camondo's bequest also explains why the work bears a Musée d’Orsay accession beginning “RF” despite earlier time in the Louvre. RF 4044 is an inventory identity, not a statement that the same physical pastel exists in two collections. The owner record fixes its current place of conservation as Musée d’Orsay. Keeping that number with the title helps readers navigate French collection catalogues, where older titles may describe a woman drying her neck or simply “after the bath.” [1]
Which After the Bath?
The National Gallery in London owns another Degas pastel titled After the Bath, Woman drying herself (NG6295). It shows a different pose and has its own date and acquisition history. The Courtauld Gallery's After the Bath – Woman Drying Herself (D.1932.SC.27) is another distinct work, made with charcoal and pastel on tracing paper. MuMa Le Havre records yet another nude drying herself. A shared translated title can help a reader find related images, but it cannot establish that the works have the same owner, measurements or support. [1][5][6][7]
RF 4044 is recognisable through the seated left-facing body, lifted arms and white towel, ochre chair, patterned yellow-green patch and signature at upper right. The Musée d’Orsay's 62.2 × 65 cm dimensions and fine wove paper mounted to cardboard provide further checks. A caption that says only “After the Bath by Degas” would hide the features that make this page exact. The fuller title lets us discuss this object and compare the other bathers without absorbing them into it. [1]
Looking again
Start with the white towel and trace the two arms around it. Follow the dark hair downward, then the curve of the back to the seated legs. Look next at the chair's warm edge and the patterned patch behind the head. The picture repeatedly shifts attention between a small movement and the room that contains it. Degas turns drying one's neck into a complex encounter between body, cloth, colour and crop. [1]
The precise record matters as much as the close look. This is Orsay RF 4044, a pastel on fine paper mounted to cardboard, dated 1898 by the museum and given a different approximate date in a catalogue raisonné. It passed through Durand-Ruel and Camondo before entering the national collection. Those facts let us see the work clearly as one of Degas's bathers while leaving its model and exact moment unclaimed. [1][2]
Artworks directory
A selected index of documented works, combining owner records with entries sampled across Michel Schulman’s digital catalogue raisonné. It is not a complete catalogue. View the full catalogue
How do the chair and patterned wall shape the space around the bather?
Open Question
Which object details distinguish RF 4044 from other works called After the Bath?
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References
Musée d’Orsay, Après le bain, femme nue s’essuyant la nuque, RF 4044, owner record for title, date, medium, size, collection, signature, provenance and exhibitions. View source
Michel Schulman, Degas digital catalogue raisonné, Après le bain – Femme nue s’essuyant la nuque, MS1215, catalogue identity, alternative approximate date, Lemoisne concordance and Durand-Ruel stock. View source
Musée d’Orsay, Degas et le nu exhibition, Degas's nude subjects and 1886 suite as broad context. View source
National Gallery, London, After the Bath, Woman drying herself, NG6295, distinct pastel. View source
Courtauld Gallery, After the Bath – Woman Drying Herself, D.1932.SC.27, distinct pastel and charcoal work. View source
MuMa Le Havre, After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself, distinct pastel. View source
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Degas and the Nude, survey of Degas's nude across media. View source
Splash image: Edgar Degas, After the Bath: Nude Woman Drying Her Neck, 1898, pastel on fine wove paper mounted to cardboard. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 4044. Collection record. View source
Tom Gurney is an art history expert. He received a BSc (Hons) degree from Salford University, UK, and has also studied famous artists and art movements for over 20 years.
Tom has also published a number of books related to art history and continues to contribute to a number of different art websites. You can read more on Tom Gurney here.
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