Degas and the Nude

The nude figure was critical to Degas' art throughout his life, and yet his work on this subject has been often overshadowed by his portraits and dancers. Degas and the Nude is the first book in a generation to explore the artist’s treatment of the nude from his early years in the 1850s to his last decades when the theme reigned over his work. Its lush full-colour images, range over more than half a century of achievement. With essays by leading American and French scholars, this groundbreaking book provides a new interpretation of Degas’s evolving conception of the nude, situating it in its context among his peers in nineteenth-century France. It explores how Degas exploited the body’s expressive possibilities; how his vision of the nude informed his notion of modernity; how he abandoned the classical or historical form in favour of a figure seen in her own time and setting – whether engaged in shockingly carnal acts or just stepping out of an ordinary bath; and how his late works transcend time and place. The chapters present a re-seeing of the subject in Degas’s paintings, pastels, drawings, prints and sculpture. Among the masterworks discussed is the most important of Degas’s early paintings, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which exerted a lifelong influence on the his treatment of the nude and includes poses repeated throughout his career. Also addressed are the incisive and ironic monotypes of the late 1870s; Degas’s most explicitly sexual depictions of women in Parisian brothels; and pictures portraying the daily life of women. George Shackelford has been Chair of the Art of Europe at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), since 1999, and was additionally named the Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art in 2004. A leading scholar of French art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was honoured with the title Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by France in 2005. Xavier Rey has been curator of paintings at the Musée d’Orsay since July 2010. Prior to joining the Orsay, Rey was a member of the Centre Pompidou/Musée national d’art moderne team that jointly organized the 2005–2006 exhibition Dada for Paris, Washington (National Gallery of Art) and New York (Museum of Modern Art).