When Edgar Degas first exhibited Woman Combing her Hair before a Mirror in 1877, critics were startled by its intimacy and informality—qualities that broke sharply with the conventions of academic painting in Paris. Rather than a mythological or historical subject, Degas offered a glimpse into a private, everyday ritual, a choice that some contemporaries found almost scandalous in its directness. This painting is one of several variations on the theme of women at their toilette that Degas returned to throughout the 1870s and 1880s, each time experimenting with composition and perspective.

The artist’s fascination with the subject was so well known that the poet Stéphane Mallarmé once remarked on Degas’s "obsession with the secret theatre of the boudoir." At the heart of the scene, a woman sits before her mirror, head tilted as she draws a comb through her hair. The mirror reflects only a fragment of her face, while her bare shoulders and the curve of her back dominate the composition, inviting the viewer into a moment of unguarded self-care. Degas’s loose, almost sketch-like brushwork gives the impression of movement—the hair not yet tamed, the gesture half-finished.

The choice to obscure the woman’s features and focus on her body’s posture suggests a tension between observation and privacy, a theme echoed in other works by Degas, such as After the Bath. Unlike Ingres, whose bathers are idealized and distant, Degas’s women are grounded in the real world, their physicality and vulnerability unmistakable. The precise provenance of Woman Combing her Hair before a Mirror is not fully documented, a common fate for many of Degas’s works depicting domestic interiors. It likely passed through the hands of Parisian dealers and private collectors before entering a public collection.

Today, the painting is recognized as a key example of Impressionism’s interest in modern life and the fleeting, everyday moments that define it. For Degas, this subject marked a departure from ballet scenes and racecourses, signaling his growing preoccupation with the private sphere and the complexities of seeing and being seen.