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Degas did over twenty pictures of milliners. It was a subject that Eva Gonzalez had already painted before him. Paris was a great metropolis of Fashion, and Degas was glad to accompany Mary Cassatt to the milliners' and seamstresses' studios. What resulted was not psychological studies but searching scrutiny of an unfamiliar way of life.
In the present pastel on paper, Degas shows a customer examining herself in a new hat. The mirror divides up the composition.
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