Two Women Drying Themselves
1895
Medium
Soft ground etching with foul biting in black on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 29.9 × 20 cm (11 13/16 × 7 7/8 in.); Sheet: 44 × 34.1 cm (17 3/8 × 13 7/16 in.)
Classification
soft-ground etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
3425
Art Historical Context
Suzanne Valadon's *Two Women Drying Themselves* (1895) captures an intimate, everyday moment of two women toweling off after bathing, rendered with her characteristic boldness and realism. A pioneering female artist in late 19th-century Paris, Valadon rose from modeling for masters like Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas to forge her own path in Post-Impressionism. Her works often celebrated the female body from a woman's gaze, challenging the male-dominated gaze of her era and emphasizing natural forms without idealization. This print is a soft-ground etching with foul biting in black ink...