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View of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme

1896–98
Not on view
Degas’s provençal painting of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, a medieval town on the Picardy coast northwest of Paris, surveys the site from an elevated vantage point, lending a view of rooftops and façades as well as backyards and gardens. This landscape was not painted on site, but later in the artist’s studio where he experimented with the structure of his many pictures of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme. The particularly ambiguous foreground and fractured elements in the background may result from the synthesis of two separate drawings sketched on site, the left half aligning with one sketch and the right another. Degas once advised: “A painting is something that requires as much trickery, malice, and vice as the perpetration of a crime, so create falsely and add a touch from nature.”

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: View of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme
  • Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)
  • Date: 1896–98
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm)
    Framed: 28 7/8 × 33 in. (73.3 × 83.8 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
  • Object Number: 1975.1.167
  • Curatorial Department: The Robert Lehman Collection

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