Girl in Red

Edgar Degas

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman in a voluminous rust-orange dress stands facing us in this vertical portrait painting. She looks toward us but slightly down with dark brown eyes under curved brows. She has a wide face, rounded cheeks, a broad nose, and closed, coral-pink lips over a deeply dimpled chin. Her chestnut-brown hair is pulled up and back. The orange dress has a band of charcoal gray across the shoulders and at the flaring cuffs. Wide, vertical pleats fall from under the band across her chest. White trim, perhaps lace or fur, is suggested by loosely painted cream white at the high neck. The poofy sleeves and cinched cuffs of her white shirt extend beyond the dress sleeves. Her right arm, to our left, hangs by her side and the other holds an indistinct, loosely painted light-colored object down in front of her. She seems to be in a corner with the wall behind thinly washed in muted brown and green and a sienna-brown wood panel wall to our right.