Marguerite De Gas, the Artist's Sister
Edgar Degas French
Not on view
This exquisite, intimate portrait of the artist’s sister, Marguerite De Gas, dates from shortly after Degas’s return to Paris following a three-year sojourn in Italy. It demonstrates his increasing sophistication with the medium of etching, which he had begun to explore in earnest while abroad. Portraiture dominated Degas’s practice in this period, and his earliest work in the genre focused naturally on his family members. This is the only extant impression of the second state of the etching and the most successful of the six states he printed. Degas indicated his preference for it by approving the production of a heliogravure (photographic print) based on this impression after he ruined the plate by overworking it.
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