La Sortie du bain [Leaving the Bath]

Depicting scenes of a woman bathing, usually in the guise of a classical goddess or biblical heroine, is a long-held tradition in Western art, simultaneously satisfying the presumably male viewer’s prurient interests while conveying a moral lesson about women’s virtue. Edgar Degas’s interpretations of the subject, however, were anything but idealized or conventional. Daring in his composition, Degas here has given us an essentially empty center formed by the white towel held behind the bather and a raking perspective that accentuates the awkwardness of the model. Unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, including fellow Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Degas delighted in showing women as imperfect beings and frequently focused on what he perceived to be their “beastly” traits. He once admitted, “Perhaps I have considered woman too much as an animal.” Along with horses and dancers, bathers were a favorite subject of the artist. Degas never meant La sortie du bain to be published or commercially distributed. It was instead a personal essay the artist worked and reworked over the course of a year. There are twenty-two states of this plate, variously done in etching, engraving, and aquatint. Recently, the museum acquired a very good impression of the cancelled plate as further demonstration of Degas’s variation upon the theme.