This book, published in conjunction with the technical study of Edgar Degas's painting "In the Millinery," accompanies an exhibition that showcases the process and results of the study, which will take place in Room 33 of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum.
from November 18, 2025 to March 1, 2026.
Degas dedicated much of his work to observing the women of his time, whether working women—laundresses, opera dancers, music hall singers—or bourgeois women. Among them, milliners and their clients occupy an important place. "In the Millinery" was the first pastel of a milliner's shop purchased from Degas, in June 1882, by his art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, and the first to be exhibited (in July 1882, at a London gallery).
The milliner figure that appears in other pastels is absent here. A customer—for whom the painter Mary Cassatt posed—is trying on a hat, gazing into a mirror we cannot see, but whose light illuminates her face. With her back to us, another woman observes the process. On the back wall, another mirror with a gilt frame reflects the street light, casting the figures in silhouette. Between them and the viewer, Degas places a table or counter displaying the fabric or straw hats, decorated in reds, blues, and whites.
The scene evokes the classic theme of a woman's toilette before a mirror, a recurring motif from mythological and allegorical images of Venus to moralizing versions in Dutch genre painting and the voyeurism of the French Rococo. But now the theme takes on a new meaning, referring to the emancipation of women in modern urban life. The two women appear alone in a private setting, rehearsing together the image they will present in the public sphere. The protagonist tries on a hat—essaye un chapeau, as the French expression goes—just as Degas's dancers rehearse a pose backstage: in preparation for a public performance. Degas's emphasis on the backstage and rehearsals expresses his conception of art as a practice that demands training and discipline, as a process of constant experimentation and refinement.
One of the hats, hanging very high, rivals the women's heads. The hats on the table form an abstract pictorial composition. Two of them, with their touches of color, resemble a painter's palette. At this time, small milliners were disappearing, displaced by factory production and sales in department stores. And it would seem that Degas pays tribute to the craft of these artisans by comparing it to that of the painter. The novelist and critic Joris-Karl Huysmans spoke of Degas as "an excellent 'hamper'" ("un excellent 'modiste'"), with "his great skill in rendering fabrics." If the painter is a bit of a milliner, the milliner is
She's a bit of a painter.
The museum's Restoration Department, led by Alejandra Martos, has undertaken a comprehensive technical study of the work, comparing it with other Degas pastels to examine his methods and materials and understand how the painting was created, from the cardboard support to the final stroke. The analyses have also confirmed the extreme fragility of this pastel, providing valuable technical information for its proper conservation.
Authors: Alejandra Martos, María Victoria Bescansa, Andrés Sánchez Ledesma, María Isasi Calvo, Maite Jover de Celis and Susana Pérez.
Format: 16.8 x 23 cm
56 full-color printed pages
Full-color printed cover
Paperback binding, sewn with thread
ISBN: 9791387729127
