Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, 'Head of a Woman', about 1873

This tiny portrait is of an unknown woman. She is turned away from us so we do not see her eyes directly, but her gaze is distant and unfocused, as if she is deep in thought. Delicate colouring blended over the high cheekbone and straight nose gives the skin a fine texture, soft to touch. The neckline of her black dress is decorated with the suggestion of a frill of fine net that almost fades into the pale flesh where it catches the light.

In one of his notebooks, Degas wrote that he ‘easily remembers the colour of certain hair…real hair with its flexibility and suppleness, or its hardness and heaviness’. Whether from memory or first-hand, he has caught the rich dark auburn of this woman’s nest of hair with its subtle gradations of colour. Drawn back into a loose but heavy chignon, it is maybe more casually arranged than middle-class etiquette required. Wisps and tendrils escape here and there, drifting onto her forehead and against her neck, slightly blurring the contour. At the crown, it looks as if it has been flattened. Perhaps a hat has been tossed aside.

The painting tells us a little about the woman and quite a lot about the emotion she is feeling. But Degas also wrote about hair that he sometimes took ‘a certain pleasure in untidiness’, finding it ‘more graceful than pure grace itself’, thus revealing a great deal about himself.

From what we can surmise about this woman and her place in society, it seems most likely that she was one of the artist’s many models. Dancers, actors, laundrywomen and others often took to modelling to augment their meagre wages. At about this time, Degas was making a number of small studies of female figures on the theme of different moods and feelings. They were part of his project for recording various aspects of women’s experience at home and in public. Perhaps an actor’s skills would have fulfilled Degas’s need for these portrayals of emotions.

If so, what emotion does the unknown woman represent? The mood of the painting is not a happy one. She seems thoughtful, but perhaps more than that there is an air of melancholy about her. Her head tilts slightly to one side, making the sensitive mouth droop a little. But is she rueful, disappointed or just weary?

A more accurate interpretation might be possible if the painting had not been cut down at some time. It seems that it may have been part of a larger picture that is now lost. In a more detailed setting, or with other figures included, the whole ambience and meaning of the picture might have changed. Degas presumably destroyed the rest of the image but chose to keep this section of it. He often kept canvases to rework them, part of his passion for solving problems in his painting. He must have seen the worth in this exquisite portrait that we can now share and wonder about.