Throughout his work Degas focused upon elevating the everyday. Depicting portraits of ballet dancers, bathers, horse riders and flaneurs, no subject was too humble or uninteresting. He created more than twenty drawings, paintings and pastels of millinery shops from the early 1880s to late 1890s, including the present work ‘Chez la modiste (modiste garnissant un chapeau)’.

Degas regularly visited milliners, accompanying friends such as Mary Cassatt as they picked out the latest fashions. The intimate setting, daily dramas and the rich array of coloured and textured fabrics provided Degas with a wealth of inspiration. There were thousands of millinery shops scattered throughout Paris, and with largely female employees they were emblematic of Modernity and the New Woman.

In ‘Chez la modiste’ a milliner lifts up a hat to admire her handiwork. Degas depicts her from a high angel giving a vantage point to the scene. The dashes of contrasting yellow and blue punctuate the page with vibrancy while the swift pastel strokes and dramatic cropping of the figure reflect the artist capturing a fleeting moment.

‘Chez la modiste’ is a study for a larger oil painting of the same name that is now hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago. In the present study, Degas has experimented with the expression of the woman and the angle of her body.

Other of Degas’ millinery pictures are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (‘At the Milliner’s’, 1882), Musée d’Orsay, Paris (‘Chez la modiste’, 1882), J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (The Milliners, 1905) and Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (‘At the Milliner’s’, 1882).So impressive are these breadth of works, that in 2017 the Legion of Honor in San Fancisco held an exhibition dedicated to Degas’ millinery works entitled ‘Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade’.