Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Monsieur and Madame Édouard Manet
Edgar Degas French
Not on view
Manet and Degas seem to have been especially close in the late 1860s. Degas captured the casual intimacy of their evenings together in this double portrait of Manet listening to his wife, Suzanne, at the piano, then gave the painting to his friend. For reasons still unknown, Manet slashed the right-hand side of the canvas, slicing off his wife’s profile. The angered Degas reclaimed the gift and then returned a small still life Manet had given him. Decades later, the cropped composition could still be seen conspicuously hung in Degas’s private apartment. It is unclear when or why the blank strip of canvas with the red atelier stamp was added, but some have speculated that in his seventies, Degas intended to repair the ruptured work.
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