La sortie du bain (grand planche)

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An original Edgar Degas lithograph print.

(After the bath (large version))

1891-92

Original lithograph printed in black ink on laid paper.

A superb impression of Reed & Shapiro’s fifth and final state of this extremely scarce lithograph, printed after the image was transferred to a second, larger stone.  One of only approximately 20 impressions of this state that were printed.  Printed by Degas and Auguste Clot, Paris.  Annotated in pencil recto lower right “D. 64. La sortie du bain.”

Catalog: Delteil 64; Adhemar 68; Reed & Shapiro 66 v/v

Image Size: 11 1/2 x 12 1/8 inches

Degas’s interest in executing a series of lithographs is confirmed by two letters. In one, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien, April 25, 1891: “He [Degas] is making some lithographs. Mayer would like to have them, it is a rather important deal.” And on July 6, 1891 Degas indicated to his artist friend Evariste de Valernes: “I am hoping to do a suite of lithographs, a first series on nude women at their toilette and a second on nude dancers.”

The bather lithographs were Degas’s last great effort in printmaking. Degas focused in these works on the back of a model who performs her private ritual. In six separate lithographs he explored the same monumental pose and exaggerated gesture of a standing nude drying herself with a towel. In a number of drawings he drew and redrew this powerful image, directing attention to the bather’s flowing hair, jutting hip, and the long towel with folds. Degas’s friend in later life, Paul Valéry, the critic and poet, defined his working style: “He is like a writer striving to attain the utmost precision of form, drafting and redrafting, canceling, advancing by endless recapitulation, never admitting that his work has reached its final stage: from sheet to sheet, copy to copy, he continually revises his drawing, deepening, tightening, closing it up.”

In many of his paintings and sketches Degas was constantly attempting to demonstrate that the unposed figure, even while performing simple and homely acts, was beautiful – that the natural rhythms of the body, in unrehearsed movements or postures, was superior to the posed models of the Academy.

A succinct appraisal of his art was contained in a book which he once owned, a first edition of Pierre et Jean. There, in the handwriting of the author, was written: “To Edgar Degas, who paints life as I would have liked to be able to paint it.” This was dated 1888 and signed Guy de Maupassant.