'Sexy, lush but serious' - The Financial Times
'The reproductions in this volume are of the highest quality'
- Venue Magazine
With essays by leading American and French critics, this book explores how Degas exploited all of the body's expressive possibilities, how his vision of the nude informed his notion of modernity, and how he abandoned the classical or historical form in favour of a figure seen in her own time and setting - whether engaged in overtly carnal acts or just stepping out of an ordinary bath.
More than 200 lushly rendered full-coluor images present a re-seeing of Degas' subject in paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, and sculpture.
Among them are the most important of Degas' early paintings of nudes, illustrating Degas' most explicitly sexual depictions of women in Parisian brothels; and a number of pictures portraying the daily life of women wherever they may reside. Together these iterations present a groundbreaking look at the evolution of this master artist.