Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure')
- Artist: Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
- Date: about 1896
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
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About this artwork
This is the Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure') painted in the late work of French artist Edgar Degas. A maid, wearing her servant's uniform, combs the hair of her seated mistress, who is not yet fully dressed and may also be pregnant. The mistress raises her right hand to her head as if in pain or just to steady herself.
The composition is sketched in with bold sweeps of the brush, mainly limiting colours to variations of a fiery orange-red painted over a creamy white ground. Some areas are more defined than others – the objects on the table look unfinished, suggesting Degas may have planned further work but left it incomplete in his studio.
Degas's use of colour is expressive and symbolic, rather than naturalistic or descriptive. He introduces other tonally related colours to relieve the intensity of the orange-reds, creating a feeling of almost claustrophobic intensity in this ordinary domestic scene.
See it in person
Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure') hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
