Women Combing Their Hair

The Phillips Collection

In this painting executed in oil on paper, Degas shows three views of a young woman combing her hair. She stands, her long tresses hanging down the right side of her body; she is seated on a chair with her hair thrown over her head, and she sits on the ground, combing it over to the left side of her head. Barefoot and dressed in a chemise, she could be moving about her dressing room, but Degas completed the image by giving it a landscape setting, presumably a pure invention and one that unites the figures in time and space. The three positions suggest the model’s movement and the artist’s movement around her. In so doing, the work goes to the heart of an approach that would absorb the artist for the rest of his life, the challenge of conveying movement. Read more...