Woman Combing Her Hair 1890

Edgar Degas made this pastel drawing of a woman combing her hair in France, during the late nineteenth century. It’s an intimate scene that invites reflection on how changing social attitudes toward women were affecting art. The female nude had long been a staple of academic painting. But whereas those works presented idealized figures in classical or mythological settings, Degas gives us a contemporary woman in a private moment of grooming. What does it mean to take a subject that was once the preserve of an elite, educated class and to democratize it? Is it progressive? Or is it simply another example of a male artist intruding on female space? These are difficult questions, and to answer them we need to consider everything from exhibition records to feminist writings about the male gaze. Art history is about understanding how social and institutional contexts shape the meaning of images.