Portrait de femme

The present pastel is exceptional among Degas' portraits in several respects. It depicts the head of the sitter en face, a rare view-point in the artist's portraiture, and moreover, the scale of the head relative to the sheet size is unusually large. The purpose of this drawing — whether it was intended as an independent work, or a study in preparation for another picture — has not been established, and the identity of the young woman remains unknown. Her costume and hairstyle are similar to those in several female portraits that Degas executed in the mid- and late 1870s, including Mme Jeantaud devant un miroir, circa 1875 (Lemoisne, vol. II, no. 371; coll. Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Chester Dale, the great American collector of Impressionist and Modern art, was an early owner of this pastel. Of the eight pictures by Degas in his collection, six, including the present pastel, were portraits.