The Tub 1888 - 1920

This bronze sculpture of a woman in a tub was made by Edgar Degas, though the exact date is unknown. The material itself is such an important part of how we read the work. You can see the marks of the artist's hand, the process of building up the form with clay and then casting it in bronze. It’s a very physical thing. Looking at the way the light catches on the surface, the curves and the angles of the body, it feels both intimate and distant, almost like we're glimpsing a private moment. Note how the artist’s hand has formed this figure, the way the bronze has a life of its own in the folds of flesh. Degas was interested in the real, the unposed, and you can feel that here. There’s a real sense of life, and an interest in the everyday. I see something of Rodin's raw expressiveness in Degas’s work, a shared concern with movement, texture, and the human form. It’s like a conversation across time.