Madame Camus

Edgar Degas

National Gallery of Art

Dominated by tones of red and fire orange, this nearly square painting shows a seated woman leaning forward in a high-backed chair, holding a round, flat, leaf-shaped fan. She sits to our left facing our right in profile, so the back of the chair is cropped by the left edge of the composition. The coral-red wall behind the woman spans the width of the painting, and the skirt of her long ruby-red dress extends almost to the bottom right corner of the canvas. Her brown hair is pulled up, and her face is in shadow. The flat disk of the fan rests on its edge on her lap, almost at the center of this painting. A few objects cropped by the right edge of the painting break up the suffused red palette, including a black sculpture of a person with arms raised overhead, a footstool, and a triangular white form, perhaps a lamp shade.