After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself

[1] Degas's nude works, including After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself, continue to spark controversy among art critics.

[9] The art historian Carol Armstrong argues that the series differs from the work of other artists depicting female nudity in the sense that Degas contorts women's bodies in unusual positions to make viewers uncomfortable.

[10] This discomfort causes viewers to avert their gaze to respect the privacy of the subject depicted in this highly vulnerable, exposing moment.

"[4] Degas is believed to have frequently documented the lives of Parisian women in brothels; therefore, he works to preserve their anonymity with the extensive use of shadows.

[12] The work had a considerable influence on Francis Bacon, most noticeably on his triptychs Three Figures in a Room (1964, Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Three Studies of the Male Back (1970, Kunsthaus Zürich).

It epitomised Degas's approach to a larger obsession the two artists shared with the plasticity of the body, its potential for the most varied forms of articulation, in movement and repose.

"[citation needed] The work was one of three central nudes chosen by Bacon in his "The Artist's Choice" exhibition at the National Gallery in 1985, shown between Velázquez's Rokeby Venus and Michelangelo's Entombment.

Some critics believed that works from Degas's Impressionist series, including After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself, were tactless in their depiction of the female nude.

[2] Other critics, namely Octave Mirbeau,[2] commended Degas for his bold break from the conventional artistic style of works at the Salon (Paris).

He praised Degas for rejecting the temptation to portray these women in an unrealistically idealised light; in which case, his works would have been widely commercially successful in their unchallenging state of capitalising on the beauty of the female nude body.