Edgar Degas, After the Bath II (La sortie du bain II), c. 1891–92, lithograph, transfer, crayon, and scraping in black ink on wove paper. The Clark, 1962.34

The Clark’s collection includes several works sharing the title After the Bath, which provide an opportunity to study Degas’s penchant for technical experimentation that led him to produce several compositions using the sole motif of a female figure wiping herself dry after a bath. While the figure’s postures and gestures are nearly identical, she appears in different media—first charcoal, then several distinct lithographic printings—and the setting around her shifts, depending on how Degas adds to or subtracts from the composition. For example, a maidservant seen offering the bather a towel is elsewhere reduced to a set of fingertips or disappears entirely. Degas was somewhat unusual in producing multiple states for his lithographs; these test proofs marking changes to a composition were generally more common in intaglio printing, since alterations to a copperplate were more labor-intensive and harder to see than on a lithographic stone.