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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 Woman Having Her Hair Combed: Introduction
A woman in a loose blue garment leans back while another woman draws her long red hair toward the right. An orange wall fills the space behind them, and a blue-covered surface carries small objects in front. In Edgar Degas's Woman Having Her Hair Combed, the action is ordinary but the arrangement is charged. The hair forms a visible link between two people whose roles are unequal: one sits and receives attention, while the other stands and performs the work. The image holds stillness and a tug of movement in the same nearly square field. [1][2][5]
The work discussed here is the private-collection pastel Christie’s catalogues as La Coiffure (La Toilette), Lemoisne no. 1129. It dates from about 1892–95 and measures 55.2 × 56.5 cm. The pastel is on joined tracing paper laid down on card and then on board. Its blue-clothed woman and orange interior distinguish it from the Metropolitan Museum's vertical nude with an attendant and the National Gallery's later, predominantly red oil. [1][2][3][4]
At a glance
ArtistEdgar Degas
Route titleWoman Having Her Hair Combed
Catalogue titleLa Coiffure (La Toilette)
DateAbout 1892–95
MediumPastel on joined tracing paper laid down on card and board
Dimensions55.2 × 56.5 cm
Catalogue referenceLemoisne 1129
CollectionPrivate collection, per Christie's later sale catalogue
The medium and scale make this a different object from two better documented public-museum works. The Met's Woman Having Her Hair Combed, accession 29.100.35, is a vertical pastel from about 1886–88 showing a nude seated woman. London's National Gallery owns Combing the Hair (La Coiffure), NG4865, a horizontal oil about 1896 with a largely red palette. Both are useful comparisons, but neither supplies the facts for the square pastel discussed here. Its Lemoisne number, material and date distinguish it from those paintings. [1][3][4]
Two women joined by hair
The seated woman reclines with one arm raised toward her head. Her hair extends toward the standing figure, who holds or brushes it. This long red band is not only an anatomical detail; it is the connection that structures the scene. Follow it from the seated head across to the worker's hands, and the eye crosses the space between the two bodies. The action could be described in a few words, yet Degas makes it the central visual event. [1][2]
Christie's calls the standing woman a maidservant. Her posture and task support that reading, but the catalogue does not identify her by name. We can understand the image as one person being served by another without pretending to know the sitter's household or biography. The seated woman wears a blue dressing gown; the other stands in plainer clothing. Those differences suggest a relation of service, but the painting presents the act of combing more directly than it presents a complete social history of either figure. [1][2]
The seated pose may at first look comfortable. The woman leans back, her body supported, one arm arcing over her head. The line of hair suggests a pull, however, and the action of brushing can involve resistance. We cannot know from the image alone whether she experiences relief, discomfort or simply routine. It is more accurate to describe how Degas has made the gesture tense than to assign a private feeling. The standing figure's hands have a task; the seated figure's body responds visibly. That relation is enough to give the scene energy. [1]
The picture is nearly square. Its shape keeps the two women in a relatively close field, unlike a wide theatrical scene that would let them spread apart. The hair crosses this compact space, and the warm wall presses behind them. The viewer is close to a domestic action yet not invited into either woman's thoughts. This proximity and distance can coexist. We see the mechanics of the task very clearly, while the social and emotional meanings remain less certain. [1][2]
The near-square shape also prevents a conventional division into a foreground portrait and a background helper. The standing attendant reaches nearly to the top of the sheet, and the seated figure extends toward the left. Their scale is comparable enough that we must attend to both. The line of hair crosses the centre rather than disappearing into an accessory at the edge. That decision keeps the work itself, and the relationship it requires, in the middle of the picture. The viewer is therefore asked to look at a task shared across two bodies, not to isolate a single sitter from the person who attends to her. [1]
The raised arm of the seated woman may help steady her hair or reflect the brushing motion. It also balances the attendant's working arms on the opposite side. Degas makes the two figures answer each other through gesture. One reaches up; the other reaches across. The hair connects these directions like a taut ribbon. The composition works through bodies and color before it becomes a story with named characters. [1]
Blue garment, orange room
The seated woman's blue gown stands against a warm orange wall. A blue-covered surface returns in the foreground, so the cool color appears both on her body and before it. Her red hair crosses those blue notes and meets the warmer background. The result is a strong play of color around an otherwise simple task. Christie’s later lot essay specifically notices the sumptuous blue peignoir, a dressing gown associated with hair care, and the force of the brushing in the arrangement. [1]
The orange background does not map a precise room. It gives heat and pressure to the scene. Pale lines and marks interrupt it, but the main experience is of a warm field against which the women and the pulled hair become legible. At the lower edge, blue and small objects suggest the practical surroundings of grooming. One can notice a brush-like form or container without using a 400-pixel legacy image to identify every item as a particular cosmetic or tool. The picture's color and gesture are more secure than a detailed inventory of an imagined dressing table. [1][2]
The blue does two jobs. It marks the seated woman's garment, making her body a large cool shape. It also stabilizes the lower part of the composition, where scattered items and strokes could otherwise dissolve into the orange. Degas draws the eye between these areas. The warm wall and hair might dominate, but the gown and foreground answer them. This exchange helps make the image feel active even though both figures remain within a small domestic space. [1]
Pastel permits the marks to remain visible as colored strokes. The hair can look dense and directional, while the wall and garment have different textures of application. The catalogue identifies the medium and support; it does not provide a layer-by-layer conservation account. A modest reproduction can show broad changes in handling, not the exact sequence of every pigment application. It is enough to see that color is not merely filling pre-drawn outlines. It helps organize the force between the figures. [1][2]
The scene's apparent informality should not be mistaken for an unplanned glimpse. Degas chose where the figures, hair and objects sit within the square. The work is built on joined tracing paper, later laid down on card and board, according to Christie's. That physical description reveals a constructed support. It does not tell us which sheet was joined first or why each join was made. The secure fact is that the finished image came from a worked, assembled surface rather than one untouched piece of paper. [1][2]
The joined support is especially relevant to an image of hair being handled. The picture seems to focus on a fleeting gesture, yet its paper was materially extended or combined. Degas could adjust the field in which the gesture appears. We do not need to invent the exact sequence of joins to recognize a broader point: an image that feels momentary may depend on repeated decisions about its physical edges. The visible act of grooming and the invisible labor of making the sheet remain distinct, but both resist the idea that this is merely a spontaneous snapshot. [1][2]
The task and the person doing it
Hair care is a familiar activity, but the picture gives it a social structure. One woman is attended to; another does the attending. This may be a maid and her employer, as the auction catalogue interprets the standing figure, but we should avoid making her simply a pair of hands. Her body is fully visible enough to shape the composition. The standing figure occupies the right side, directs the action and gives the long hair its diagonal pull. The seated woman is the focus of care, yet the worker has considerable pictorial agency. [1][2]
This is one reason the pastel differs from the Met's earlier nude. In the Met work, the attendant is only partly seen, and the nude woman receives the principal attention. Here the attendant is prominent and clothed, standing beside a seated woman who is also clothed. Both works involve hair being combed, but their framing changes how labor appears. A generic title can conceal that difference between the two visible figures and their relation. [1][3]
The action also blurs care and force. Brushing hair can be a service, a routine and a physical pull. Degas does not show an exchange of words or a clear reaction that settles its meaning. The seated figure's raised arm and backward tilt register the action. The standing figure's grip gives it direction. A reader can notice the asymmetry of who does the work without assuming that either figure feels a particular emotion. Such restraint preserves the complexity of a scene that is visually precise but narratively incomplete. [1]
Christie's later essay sets the pastel among Degas's 1890s scenes of women absorbed in bathing, dressing and grooming. That context is helpful, but the two figures here should not be treated as interchangeable with every woman in those pictures. The blue gown, square support, open view of the attendant and red hair across the composition define this version. The subject is recurring; the object is specific. [1]
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London's National Gallery calls its oil Combing the Hair (La Coiffure). It dates the painting about 1896, identifies it as oil on canvas and gives its much larger size as 114.3 × 146.7 cm. Its red-clothed seated figure and standing maid share a general action with the pastel, but the oil's dominant orange-red setting and wide dimensions change the effect. The National Gallery also notes that the oil remained in Degas's studio and later belonged to Henri Matisse. None of those later ownership facts applies to the private pastel. [4]
Christie's describes the pastel as closely related to the London oil and catalogues it separately as Lemoisne 1129, while the London painting is Lemoisne 1128. Those adjacent numbers and related subjects are easy to confuse. We can compare how the motif developed without claiming a simple one-way copy from one finished work to another. The auction catalogue's circa-1892–95 date for the pastel comes before the National Gallery's about-1896 date for the oil, but that chronology alone does not document every step of Degas's process. [1][4]
The Met's 29.100.35 has the same English title. Its object description connects that nude to the bathers Degas considered for the 1886 Impressionist exhibition. The square private-collection pastel was dated about 1892–95 by Christie’s; it cannot be presented as a work intended for the 1886 show. The two works differ in clothing, shape, support and date despite their shared title. [1][3]
The National Gallery's discussion of the London oil includes interpretations about its models and the seated woman's possible pregnancy. Those statements are tied to that painting and its own evidence. This pastel does not inherit them because it resembles the oil. Similarly, the Met's audio asks why its nude may not have appeared in 1886; that uncertainty should not become a story about the private 1890s sheet. Comparisons help only when their boundaries are clear. [3][4]
A documented private-collection history
The 2021 Christie's catalogue traces the pastel from Galerie Bernheim-Jeune to Paul Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery in 1899, then to its New York gallery in 1900. It entered Henry Ruben Ickelheimer's collection in 1931 and passed through the Isles family before its 2021 sale. A later Christie's catalogue records a subsequent private owner. These records give a traceable market and collection history, though they do not publicly name every current custodian. They also explain why a well-known Degas image may lack a stable public-museum accession. [1][2]
The same catalogue identifies the pastel in Lemoisne's 1946 catalogue as no. 1129 and lists numerous exhibitions. They include a 1967 Metropolitan Museum summer loan and the 1996–97 Degas: Beyond Impressionism exhibition in London and Chicago. A loan to the Met is not accession into its permanent collection. That distinction matters here because the Met today owns the different 29.100.35 work with the same broad English title. An exhibition record can connect a private picture to public viewing without changing who owns it. [2][3]
Looking once more
Begin at the seated woman's raised arm, then follow the red hair toward the attendant's hands. Look at how the orange wall amplifies that red line, while the blue gown and foreground keep the picture from becoming one warm field. Finally, look at both women's positions: one is supported by a chair, the other stands and works. The routine act of combing becomes an arrangement of physical connection, color and social relation. [1][2]
This private-collection pastel, La Coiffure (La Toilette), shows Degas returning to an intimate subject without making it simple. The two figures are close, but their feelings remain private. The hair joins them visibly, while their tasks differ. Its near-square format, joined paper and blue-orange color structure distinguish it from the Met nude and the later London oil. Lemoisne 1129 identifies this particular work. For a wider view of the medium and subject, see Degas's pastels and his bathers. [1][2]
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Share what you notice in Degas’s woman having her hair combed.
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Close Looking
How does the line of hair connect the two figures?
Context
What changes when you follow the orange and blue colour fields?
Open Question
Which details distinguish this pastel from the Met and London works?
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References
Christie's, La Coiffure (La Toilette), later lot 6559929, catalogue record and essay, search-indexed text consulted 27 September 2026. View source
Christie's, La Coiffure (La Toilette), 2021 lot 35C, object, provenance, literature and exhibition record, accessed 27 September 2026. View source
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Woman Having Her Hair Combed, 29.100.35, separate object record and audio transcript, accessed 27 September 2026. View source
National Gallery, London, Combing the Hair (La Coiffure), NG4865, separate oil painting record, accessed 27 September 2026. View source
Edgar Degas, La Coiffure (La Toilette), circa 1892–95, pastel on joined tracing paper laid down on card laid down on board. Private collection, Lemoisne 1129. 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.
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