Museums can be places to look at not only art but also people. Here, Degas shows an elegantly dressed woman—likely his friend and fellow artist Mary Cassatt — at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The strips of yellow and orange in front of her are frames: she is inspecting paintings.

   But the works themselves, a blur of colors, are not Degas’s interest. His focus is on the figure. With this shift in emphasis, Degas asks us what it means to look and to be looked at. What does the woman see? With her back to us, does she know she is being observed? Can we ever know?

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   Shown from about the hips up, a woman whose pale face is deep in shadow stands with her back to us, wearing a black and gray dress and hat, in front of a colorful but loosely painted, indistinct background in this nearly square painting. She stands just to our right of center with her elbows bent, perhaps to clasp her hands in front of her. Her head is turned slightly toward us so we see the line of her forehead, nose, and chin almost in profile facing our left. Her auburn hair seems to be pulled up under a black hat that sits on the back of her head. Her high-necked, charcoal-gray vest-like bodice has a line of white at the neck, suggesting lace or an undershirt. The bodice covers a black shirt with ruffles that fall at least to her elbows, and the long dress drapes close along the contours of her legs. She looks to the far wall, which is painted with sketchy, visible brushstrokes in marigold orange, lemon-lime green, brown, black, and pale yellow to create the impression of paintings in gold frames. The artist signed the painting in dark red in the lower right corner: “Degas.”

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