Edgar Degas

Sale: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 2e Vente Degas, 11th-13th December 1918, lot 26
M. & Mme A. Friedmann, Paris (purchased at the above sale)
Thence by descent to the present owners

Degas achieved his first artistic success in the genre of portraiture, and continued painting his friends and family members throughout his career. Dating from 1887, Portrait de femme assise depicts an unidentified woman who, as Degas almost never made commissioned portraits, can be presumed to be an acquaintance from his circle of friends. As he did not need to make portraits for a living, Degas approached them with the same passion as his paintings of ballerinas and horse races. The fact that he knew his sitters meant that Degas could depict them with a familiarity and directness that is rarely present in commissioned portraits. His treatment of this genre changed throughout his career, from the stern, penetrating self-portraits of the 1850s, to the freer, Impressionist ones of his later years. Accounting for about one fifth of his entire artistic production, Degas’ portraits are now considered to be more subtle and varied than any other painter’s in France in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Discussing Degas’ portraiture of the 1880s, Jean Sutherland Boggs commented: ‘His sitters had always inevitably been his friends but now he did not subject them to the same penetrating analyses as in the past. Nor did he look down at them from a height; instead he confronted them directly and amicably. He was no longer witty at their expense. Thirdly, he seldom gave his sitters a setting, such as would place them in the social fabric of France in the 1880s’ (J. S. Boggs, ‘Degas as a Portraitist’, in Degas Portraits (exhibition catalogue), Kunsthaus, Zurich, 1994, p. 65). Although the setting of the present work is not clearly identified, the artist offers some visual clues as to the social status of his sitter. She is seated in a spacious, well-lit room, in front of what appears to be a large mirror. With her clothes, hairstyle and her elegant posture, she can be identified as a member of the privileged class. Whilst looking slightly away from the viewer in a contained, discreet manner characteristic of Degas’ late portraits, her figure nevertheless stands out against the bright background.