A red painting is one where the red does the main work: it tells you where to look first, or it changes what the scene means.
Red is the oldest color in painting. Ochre went onto cave walls about 40,000 years ago. Later, vermilion came from cinnabar, crimson from crushed insects, softer reds from madder roots.
Red carries across a room better than almost any color. The twelve below run from Roman wall painting to early abstraction.
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I kept a painting if it passed one of two tests. Its red carries the subject, so another color would change the meaning. Or the painting is remembered for its red, through its commission, its reception or its name.
Rank follows what the red does, never how much canvas it covers.
12. Edgar Degas, Combing the Hair, or La Coiffure (about 1896)
A woman in a red dress leans back in her chair while a maid in a pink blouse pulls a comb through her long red hair. Edgar Degas painted Combing the Hair, also called La Coiffure, around 1896. The canvas belongs to the National Gallery in London.
Almost everything in the room is the same fiery orange red: the wall, the curtain on the left, the dress, the hair. Degas laid these reds over a creamy white ground in broad, fast sweeps of the brush.
Only a few things break the color. There's the maid's pink blouse, the pale tablecloth, and a yellow comb and brush waiting on the table.
Women combing their hair, or having it combed, come back again and again in Degas's late work. This canvas is one of his boldest takes on the subject.
His preparatory drawings suggest he first thought of posing his own maid, Zoé Closier, for the servant. The woman in the finished picture was probably a professional model.
Degas put in the final contours with quick strokes of black paint that contain charcoal. Some parts never got further than that, the objects on the table above all. The canvas stayed in his studio, unfinished, until his death in 1917.
It was sold at the first auction of his studio, in Paris in May 1918. In February 1921, Henri Matisse bought it from the Galerie Barbazanges.
The detail that sold me on this picture is the woman's hand pressed to her head, holding her hair at the root against the pull of the comb. With the whole room in hot red, that small wince is the part I remember.
At a Glance
Artist: Edgar Degas (French, born 1834, died 1917)
Made: about 1896, Paris, France
Medium: Oil on canvas, 114.3 x 146.7 cm
Where to see it: National Gallery, London (NG4865)
FAQ
How long did Matisse own Degas's Combing the Hair?
Henri Matisse owned Combing the Hair for about fifteen years. He sold it to his son, the New York dealer Pierre Matisse, around 1936, and the National Gallery in London bought it from the Matisse Gallery in 1937.
Is Degas's Combing the Hair a pastel?
No, Degas's Combing the Hair in London is an oil painting on canvas. Degas also treated women combing their hair many times in pastel, which is why the titles are easy to mix up.
11. Claude Monet, Poppy Field near Argenteuil (1873)
Red poppies scatter across a grassy hillside in Claude Monet's Poppy Field near Argenteuil, painted in 1873 and now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
In the right foreground, a woman with a blue parasol and a small boy walk through the grass. They are probably Monet's wife Camille and their son Jean.