a painting

Edgar Degas, Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub, 1885

This painting turns its back—in more ways than one—on the conventions of Western art. Degas refrains from flaunting the female body with the frontal view popular in nudes from Titian to Manet. Instead, this woman bends over and slightly away from the spectator, her face invisible. The sense of anonymity is reinforced by the commonplace objects in the painting: a washbasin, a pitcher, a towel. The message is clear—we are not observing Diana at her bath, but she could be pretty much anyone else. Such unglamorous realism, accentuated by the bather’s awkward pose, dissolves the distance between viewer and viewed. In this image, life and art are almost touching.