According to an anecdote recounted by the collector and friend of the artist Alexis Rouart, Degas began this important etching after being compelled to stay the night at his friend’s home due to freezing weather. The next morning he requested a copper plate and sketched the first state of Le sortie du bain. While he quickly established the essential elements, the woman getting out of the bath with a servant holding a towel to receive her, Degas continued to develop the composition through a series of minor alterations and adjustments in a total of twenty-two states, the largest number of any of his prints.

Each state was printed in a small number of impressions and never editioned. Reed & Shapiro record three impressions of the fourth state, excluding the present unrecorded example, two of which are in public collections (Art Institute of Chicago; Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).