The Bathers
1885/95
Medium
Pastel and charcoal on tan wove paper
Dimensions
113.4 × 115.7 cm (44 11/16 × 45 9/16 in.)
Classification
pastel
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
83644
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This pastel marks one of Degas's most ambitious projects during the last decade of his life. Evoking four bathers each at distinct points in the bathing process, this vision was created by suspending layers of pastel in fixative on translucent tracing paper, which the artist pieced together and mounted. Like many of his best works, this ephemeral creation was discovered in Degas's studio at the time of his death, perhaps deliberately unfinished.
About the Artist
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas · 1834–1917
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, born on July 19, 1834, in Paris to a prosperous banking family, was the eldest of five children. His mother, Célestine Musson, a Creole from New Orleans whose father Germain Musson had roots in Haiti, died when Degas was thirteen, leaving his father Augustin and unmarried uncles to guide him. Educated at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he earned a baccalauréat in...