Edgar Degas
Through all his life, Degas wanted to understand the bodies under the clothes before he could put clothes on the bodies. The women he depicted often aren't very graceful. They are full of the awkwardnesses of real life. They almost always have their backs to us, so their faces, their identities, remain mysterious and private.
His interest in the motif of a nude entering the water apparently dates to his student days, when he copied the figure of a man scrambling over a riverbank from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi after Michelangelo.
This is one of seven pastels in which Degas ventured a modern version of the subject. The woman, her arms and legs splayed precariously against a zinc bathtub, powerfully manifests the combination of physical awkwardness and sensuality that characterizes the artist’s depictions of bathers.