Edgar Degas

At the Milliner's, 1881. Edgar Degas. Pastel on five pieces of wove paper, backed with paper, and laid down on canvas. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1997, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002.
Two customers in nearly identical dresses—perhaps a mother and daughter or two sisters—are seen from behind in a millinery shop. This pastel may have been conceived originally as a picture of a shopgirl (at left) adjusting a hat on a stand. However, once Degas drew the woman underneath the hat at the right and added the back of the sofa, the identity of the figure at the left was transformed; shopgirls were not allowed to sit.