When Edgar Degas exhibited his series of women bathing in the late 1890s, critics were startled by their intimacy and unusual vantage points. Woman with a Towel, painted in 1896, belongs to this late period when Degas, nearly blind, worked obsessively in pastel and mixed media, often reworking the same subject dozens of times. The art dealer Ambroise Vollard recalled that Degas would "lock himself away for days, drawing women as if he were spying on them through a keyhole." This series was not a commission, but a personal obsession, and its frankness challenged the conventions of the Impressionist circle and the public alike. The woman in Woman with a Towel is caught in a private moment, her back turned, absorbed in the act of drying herself.

The composition is cropped tightly, as if the viewer has stumbled upon the scene uninvited, with the figure’s form rendered in broad, energetic strokes. The towel, a simple domestic object, becomes the focus, its white contrasting with the warm tones of skin and the muted background. Unlike the polished nudes of Ingres or the mythic bathers of Renoir, Degas’s subject is anonymous, her gesture unposed, her body real and unidealized.

The light, diffuse and gentle, softens the edges, emphasizing the everyday nature of the ritual. The precise medium of Woman with a Towel is uncertain, as Degas frequently combined pastel, charcoal, and even traces of oil in his late works, layering textures to achieve a sense of immediacy. This painting remained in Degas’s studio until his death in 1917, after which it entered the market through Vollard’s hands, like many of his late bathers. Today, the work is recognized as a key example of Degas’s radical approach to the nude and his innovative technique in his final decades.

It stands as part of a larger group of bathing women now dispersed across major museums, offering a glimpse into the artist’s lifelong fascination with movement, privacy, and the unseen moments of daily life.