At the Milliner’s

A seated milliner works at a hat in a shop interior, while a customer tries on a bonnet before a mirror — one of the scenes of modern Parisian life to which Edgar Degas returned throughout his career. Degas drew the milliner’s shop in pastel, a medium that by 1882 had become almost his exclusive means of color work, and the soft dry strokes of the chalk capture the textures of the hats and the women’s dress as exactly as any of his oils of the decade. The composition, seen from close and slightly above, shows the casual cropping and modern subject for which the artist was admired.