Edgar Degas

G. Benard, Paris (by July 27, 1921 and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 24, 1934, lot 100)

M Levy, Paris (acquired at the above sale)

Sale: Palais Galliéra, Paris, March 25, 1965, lot 22

Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above in 1966 and thence by descent

New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Degas, 1966, no. 5, illustrated in the catalogue

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994-99 (on loan)

John Rewald, Degas, Works in Sculpture, A Complete Catalogue, London, 1944, no. XXVII, illustration of the wax original pl. 78; illustration of another cast pls. 79 and 80

Degas (exhibition catalogue), Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh & Tate Gallery, London, 1952, another cast listed

John Rewald and Leonard von Matt, L'oeuvre sculpté de Degas, Zürich, 1957, no. XXVII, illustration of another cast pls. 76-78

John Rewald, Degas Sculpture, London, 1957, no. XXVII, illustration of another cast pls. 76-78

Franco Russoli and Fiorella Minervino, L'opera completa di Degas, Milan, 1970, no. S56, illustration of another cast p. 144

Charles W. Millard, The Sculpture of Degas, Princeton, 1976, fig. 92, illustration of the wax original

Ian Dunlop, Degas, London, 1979, fig. 199, illustration of another cast p. 214

Denys Sutton, Edgar Degas, Life and Work, New York, 1986, illustration of another cast p. 246

Anne Pingeot, Degas, Sculptures, Paris, 1991, no. 56, illustration of another cast pp. 118-119

Sara Campbell, "Degas, The Sculpture: A Catalogue Raisonné," Apollo, London, August 1995, no. 26, illustration of another cast p. 23 and illustration of the wax original p. 53

Joseph S. Czestochowski and Anne Pingeot, ed., Degas Sculptures, Iowa City, 2002, no. 26, illustration of another cast p. 172

Mixed brown patina. This work is in very good condition. Colors: There are more highlights to the patina than what appears in the catalogue illustration.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Degas' extraordinary Le Tub is a groundbreaking work of modern art that brings an entirely new perspective to the time-honored subject of the bather.  Second only to his renowned rendition of the fourteen-year old dancer, it is Degas' most critically acclaimed sculpture, recognized for its innovative use of found objects and its uncompromising representation of a woman in one of her most intimate moments.   Degas obsessively studied the expressive potential of the female body in a variety of media throughout his career, but for his sculpture he was able to create the form directly with his hands and without any intermediary tools.   Pinching and twisting his wax models, he could manipulate the body's musculature and the elegance of the anatomy in motion.  As opposed to his studies of ballerinas, his renditions of bathers were freed from social expectations and the choreographed poses of the stage.   Nowhere in the history of modern art is this exemplified more clearly than in Le Tub.  This sculpture disavows any pretense as it presents the bather reclining in soapy water, performing an event that is normally not intended for public spectacle.  Never before was the banality of bathing itself interpreted with such tantalizing realism for the unobstructed, voyeuristic pleasure of a contemporary audience.    

 

 

Degas created the model for this bronze in 1889, using a lead tub filled with poured plaster to create the effect of water (fig. 2).  Alongside the tub he placed some plaster-soaked rags to simulate wet bath linens, and in the tub itself he set a wax figure of a bather, lying on her back as she washes her foot.  The ingenuity of this assemblage presages Picasso's objects trouvés of the 20^th century, and was the catalyst for the many collage ensembles of the Cubists and their inheritors.  Ann Dumas has made the argument that Le Tub "was crucial to the development of cubist sculptural collages and the surrealists' magical concoctions of objects trouvés, and his experiments even touches artists in the later twentieth century, such as Robert Rauschenberg (fig. 5) and others who conjure the poetry of every day items" (A. Dumas, in J. S. Czestochowski and A. Pingeot, ed., Degas Sculptures, op. cit., p. 47).

The presentation of the bather, laid out before us on a platter, encourages us to see her from above – a vantage that was unprecedented in the sculpture of the 19^th century.  The nudity of Degas' bather was raw, without any sanitizing narrative context, and shamelessly available.    Future generations of artists, most notably Bonnard, would evoke this dramatic bird's-eye perspective in his bather paintings over half a century later (fig. 4).    Indeed, Degas' approach to portraying the female body was unlike that of any of his contemporaries.  Given that these women were understood to be prostitutes (since the women of the bourgeoisie did not practice the habitual act of full body immersion), Degas' bathers were provocative and confrontational in a manner that was wholly unlike that of the sanctified, academic depictions of the nude in the 1880s.   Dumas has given the following analysis of the impact of Le Tub on Degas' contemporaries:  "One can barely imagine the effect of this piece on the visitors to Degas's studio.  Although Degas' bather could be seen as a shockingly modern interpretation of Venus in her shell, she is ruthlessly stripped of all such idealizing conventions.  No classical goddess, but a contemporary parisienne is displayed unceremoniously on the ground.  We look down at her, lying on her back in a modest zinc tub, holding a sponge in her extended left hand....no direct equivalent for this astonishingly realistic pose is found in the pastels or paintings....the figure seen in The Tub is the most startling" (ibid., p. 46).

 

The origins of Le Tub can be loosely attributed to several art historical sources, including Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus, various voyeurist representations of bathers, including Peter Paul Rubens' Susanna and the Elders, and even Jacques-Louis David's infamous Death of Marat.  One unusual inspiration may have been the sculpture from antiquity of the Spinario (Boy with a Thorn), featuring a model in the same pose as Degas' figure for this sculpture.  His specific idea for Le Tub, however, must have taken shape around 1885, when he completed a series of pastels of nudes squatting in round basins (fig. 1). 

Although no definitive record exists of when he might have begun work on the sculpture, we know from correspondence that Degas finished the final model in the summer of 1889.   It was only after his death in 1917 that any plans for a bronze version were ever realized.  Degas' heirs authorized the casting of his original model for Le Tub in 1919 and the edition was not completed by the Hébrard Foundry, according to new research by Joseph S. Czestochowski and Anne Pingeot, until as late as the 1960s.  The present sculpture, which can be traced as far back as 1921, is one of the first bronze casts from the authorized edition and retains the sharpness of detail of Degas' original mixed-media rendition.

This bronze is also one of the few to examples of Le Tub to feature a dual patina.  The two complimentary patina tones for the base and for the figure and tub evidence the care that the foundry took in executing this work, and also highlight the variations among the different elements of the composition.  Other casts of Le Tub are in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; The National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; Museu de Arte de São Paulo and The Art Institute of Chicago.