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Title: Interior, or: The Rape

Year: 1868 or 1869

Medium: Oil paint, canvas

Location: Philadelphia Museum of Art

Dimensions: H: 32 x W: 45 in

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After painting this piece, Degas let it sit in his studio for 36 years, until he put it up for sale at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1905. It’s first public showing was in Cambridge Massachusetts six years later. It now sits in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas (1834-1917), born in Paris, France, was a painter and a sculptor during the impressionist movement. His best know works are The Ballet Class and The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.

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While Degas is considered one of the founders of Impressionism, he preferred to be called a realist, as he hated the practice of painting en plein air. He chose to depict scenes from modern life, such as dancers, milliners, laundresses, prostitutes, and cabaret singers.

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Degas practiced in many materials, with his drawings using ink, pencil, chalk, pastel, charcoal, and oil on paper, often in tandem, while his paintings were in watercolor, gouache, distemper, metallic pigments, and oils, on surfaces including card, silk, ceramic, tile, and wood panel, as well as canvases that varied in texture. He often experimented with perspective and made sure to leave a sense of ambiguity in his work.

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A man and a woman are in a dimly lit bedroom. The man is on the right, leaning against a door, legs wide and hands in his pockets. He is obstructed by shadow, and his own creeps up the wall. The woman is on the left, sitting on a chair, partially undressed as the lamp illuminates her. The woman is facing away from the man, and she appears to be crying.

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There is a table between the two of them with a lamp and a sewing box with cloth inside. There’s a white corset on the floor. The bed behind them is neatly made with a hat and coat resting at the foot. In the far back is a fireplace with a mirror hanging above it, and the man’s top hat rests on top of a dresser. Two picture frames and a map hang on the flowery walls.

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Like many of Degas’ paintings, Interior captures a moment in time that tells little of the past or future, keeping it firmly in the present. This leaves room for any number of interpretations. Clues like the corset, the woman’s exposed shoulder, her crouched position facing away from the man, suggest sexual violence. The dimly lit lamp that casts the looming shadow behind the man as he stares at the woman provides an unbreakable tension as the viewer decides for themselves what’s going on. As the painting pulls you in, it begs you not to look away for fear of what might happen once your back is turned.