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Secrets and other curiosities

Detalle de la obra de Degas, "En la sombrerería"

The turquoise-blue back

Image of the reverse side of Degas' painting, “At the Milliner's”
Imagen del reverso de la obra de Degas, “En la sombrerería”

For this work “At the Milliner’s”, Degas used a semi-industrially mounted support consisting of an ordinary paperboard base some 7 mm thick, reinforced on both sides with turquoise or blue-green paper.

This technique was used to prevent paperboard from warping when employed as a support for an artwork, in bookbinding or for other similar purposes. Sheets of paper were glued to both sides to pull it flat and prevent it from warping or buckling when, as in this case, the paper to be painted on was added.

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Patent document for the fixative created by painter Luigi Chialiva
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Degas and the secret of his pastels

Underlying the technique employed in Edgar Degas’s At the Milliners is an unprecedented formula. The artist sought to master the pastel medium by creating successive layers of colour, transparencies and contrasts. To achieve this, he needed a fixative that would allow him to work without smudging the colours. But there was a problem... he did not like the fixatives available on the market because they altered the tones.
Detail of the visible image of the painting “At the Milliner's”, by Edgar Degas
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Mastery of colour in Degas

The pastel is superbly executed “At the Milliner’s”. Degas recreates the different textures of the hats and the women’s clothing, in which feathers, flowers and raffia are distinguishable, in a lively and vibrant manner using these coloured sticks. We can also see how the colours are applied in various layers without mixing, even though our eyes perceive them to be blended.
Detail of the X-ray of the painting by Degas, “At the Milliner's”
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A button "At the Milliner’s"

X-radiography detected a very curious element trapped in this work: a button.

In the nineteenth century paperboards were produced using a coarse wood pulp.  The mixture could contain traces of other materials such as cloth, esparto grass, straw, or even fishing nets.
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