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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Edgar Degas

At the Milliner's

1882
Pastel on Paper.
75.5 x 85.5 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
516
(
1978.10
)
Room 33
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 19th Century. The Impressionist Period 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Degas, who always regarded himself as a realist painter, strove to depict the reality around him in his works and chiefly drew inspiration from Parisian life. It is therefore not surprising that he should have developed an interest in the incipient world of shops in the French capital. His visits to fashion boutiques accompanying his friend Mme Straus or the American painter Mary Cassatt led him to paint a group of works that explore haute couture Paris and the world of the new department stores that was brilliantly immortalised by Émile Zola in The Ladies’ Paradise.

At the Milliner’s is, as Ronald Pickvance points out, the first in the series of pastel works devoted to the Paris milliners’ shops to be shown publicly at a small exhibition organised by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in London in 1882. Even back then it was enthusiastically received by more than one critic, such as the anonymous writer who referred to an “astonishing picture of two fashionable young women trying on bonnets in a milliners’ shop [...]” and underlined how “silk and feather, satin and straw, are indicated swiftly, decisively, with the most brilliant touch.” Shortly afterwards it was sold by Durand-Ruel to Degas’s friend the painter and collector Henri Rouart (1833–1912).

The artist uses a markedly diagonal composition that draws attention to the table on which the luxurious hats lie, adorned with red, blue and white trimmings. The exquisite care with which these accessories are painted recalls his delicate manner of rendering dancers’ skirts and headdresses. However, Degas was much more interested in painting people in movement than inanimate objects, and although the hats are granted considerable prominence, the two women in the painting and their gestures and poses are the full focus of his attention.

The scene, captured from behind the table in such a way that one of the ladies has her back to the viewer, gazing at the other one who tries on the hat, once again recalls the manner of photographic framing that is so characteristic of Degas. The spectator does not view the shop from outside but is situated inside the room, behind the counter, in the spot where the milliner would be attending to her customers. On the background wall the glass shop window with a gilt frame is the only element that lends depth to the painting while allowing the outside light to enter the shop. Degas replaced the luminosity of the Impressionists, the outside light that envelops the whole painting, with partial illumination or spotlighting that was better suited to the theme of city life.

Paloma Alarcó
19th Centurys. XIX - Pintura europea. ImpresionismoWork on paperPastelPaper
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At the Milliner's. En la sombrerería, 1882
At the Milliner's
Edgar Degas

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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At the Milliner's. En la sombrerería, 1882
At the Milliner's
Edgar Degas

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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