Let us now think of the charcoal drawings, pastels, monotypes, and bronzes of women. Sometimes they are presented as ballet dancers, sometimes as women at their toilette, sometimes (particularly in the monotypes) as prostitutes. Their presentation is unimportant: the ballet, the bathtub, or the bordel were, for Degas, only pretexts. This is why any critical discussion about a pictorial ‘scenario’ usually misses the point. Why was Degas so fascinated by women washing themselves? Was he a keyhole voyeur? Did he consider all women tarts? […] The truth is that Degas simply invented or used any occasion to pursue his study of the human body. It was usually women’s bodies because he was heterosexual and so women amazed him more than men, and amazement is what prompted his kind of drawing.

John Berger, Portraits (2016)