Nude Woman Standing, Drying Herself

More than any other artist since Rembrandt, Edgar Degas treated the nude as a naked body rather than as an idealized figure. To 19th-century observers, this appeared revolutionary, a rejection of academic tradition based on the sculpture of ancient Greece and Rome. Female bathers, often in natural but awkward poses that to some seemed inappropriate for public display, formed a large part of his artistic production. In his hands, lithography also took on the casual appearance of a sketch rather than a highly finished drawing.