Degas and the Nude at Museum of Fine Arts Boston on artrepublic.com

Assembled from the collections of more than 50 lenders from around the world are 160 works—140 by Degas—including paintings, pastels, drawings, monotypes, etchings, lithographs, and sculptures, many of which have never been on view in the United States.

The 19th-century French artist Edgar Degas (1834–1917), a founding member of the Impressionist group who gravitated toward realism, is acclaimed for his mastery of a wide range of genres, which he executed in all media using a variety of techniques. In addition to his famous depictions of ballet dancers or racing subjects, Degas’s work also included history paintings, portraits, landscapes, and scenes of urban leisure. This exhibition, however, focuses entirely on his nudes, illustrating the transformation of Degas’s treatment of the human form throughout half a century—from early life drawings in the 1850s, to overtly sexual imagery, to gritty realist nudes, and beyond to the lyrical and dynamic bodies of the last decade of his working life when the theme dominated his artistic production in all media.

Degas and the Nude draws from some of the finest collections in the world. In addition to the MFA and Musée d’Orsay—the single largest lender, with more than 60 works—these include the National Gallery and Courtauld Gallery, London; the Musée Andre Malraux, Le Havre; museums and private collections in Germany, Japan, and Switzerland; as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among many other museums and private collections in North America. The exhibition features such masterpieces as Young Spartans Exercising (1860-62, National Gallery, London) and Scene of War in the Middle Ages (1863–65, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), two of Degas’s greatest history paintings; and The Tub (about 1886, Musée d’Orsay), a pastel completed at the height of his career and presented at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. It also offers context to this exploration of the artist’s nudes by juxtaposing his works with those created by major artists who influenced—or were influenced by—Degas, including Caillebotte’s Man at his Bath (1884), a masterwork recently acquired by the MFA; Ingres’s Angelica Saved by Ruggiero (1819-39, National Gallery, London); and Picasso’s Nude on a Red Background (1906, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris).

OPENING HOURS: Mon & Tue 10.00 – 16.45, Wed – Fri 10.00 -21.45, Sat & Sun 10.00 – 16.45

Image Credits:

Nude Woman Lying on Her Back, Study for Scene of War in the Middle Ages, 1863-65, Musée d'Orsay

After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Neck, 1895-98, Musée d'Orsay

The Moon and Earth (Hina Tefatou), 1893, Paul Gauguin, The Museum of Modern Art