The Millinery Shop by Edgar Degas

A young woman bends over a hat, a pin between her lips, while a crowd of bright hats on stands seems to take over the room. Degas's largest painting of milliners leaves one question open: is she the one who makes them, or the one who buys?

The story behind the painting

Degas painted The Millinery Shop between 1879 and 1886. Paris had just been rebuilt in a great urban renewal campaign, the economy was lively, and people with money to spend bought fashionable goods such as hats. The millinery trade was booming, and Degas, who wanted to catch fleeting moments of modern city life, returned to it again and again. According to the art historians Simon Kelly and Esther Bell, millinery was a central element in his study of Parisian modern life, fashion and commerce. He even compared the artist's studio to a milliner's shop, seeing in hat making a creative process close to his own.

What to look for

We look down at the woman from an unusually high angle, as if standing above her. The hats take up more of the canvas than she does, giving the scene a deliberate imbalance, and the bare floor and walls make them stand out even more. Kelly and Bell note that they show the very latest fashions for spring and summer in the early 1880s, in a wide range of fabrics and materials. Notice the abrupt cropping, the asymmetry and the bold greens, yellows and blues. At 100 by 110.7 cm it is the largest work Degas made on the subject of milliners.

Meaning and intent

Who is she? The Art Institute of Chicago suggests her identity was left unclear on purpose. Gloria Groom sees her concentrating as if at work, her lips pursed around a pin. Richard Brettell and Suzanne McCullagh argue more firmly that she is a milliner: the yellow hat placed just above her head sets her beside the results of her labour, which she is destined not to wear. Yet X rays show that Degas first painted her in an ornate hat and a dress with lace sleeves, and an early pastel study, At the Milliner's, gives her an elegant yellow hat. She may have begun as a customer and become a worker as the picture changed.

Legacy

Degas sold the painting to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1913, the best result he ever had for a work on the milliner theme. Durand-Ruel later sold it to the Chicago patent lawyer Lewis L. Coburn in January 1932, and in 1933 it was given to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is today. The changes hidden beneath its surface, from customer to possible worker, still invite visitors to look closely at her face and her hands and decide for themselves who she is.