Portraits at the Stock Exchange
Degas presents a glimpse of the busy commerce at the Paris stock exchange. Financier and art collector Ernest May (1845–1925), wearing spectacles, receives a document for perusal, as an associate, identified as Monsieur Bolâtre, leans over his shoulder. The artist made this pastel as a study for an oil painting of 1878–79 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). At the time, May was in his early thirties, and just beginning to expand his acquisitions from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pictures to works by Degas, Manet, and their colleagues.
Artwork Details
- Title: Portraits at the Stock Exchange
- Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)
- Date: ca. 1878–79
- Medium: Pastel on paper, pieced, and laid down on canvas
- Dimensions: 28 3/8 x 22 7/8 in. (72.1 x 58.1 cm)
- Classification: Drawings
- Credit Line: Gift of Janice H. Levin, 1991
- Object Number: 1991.277.1
- Curatorial Department: European Paintings
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