Plate for "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery"

1879–80

Not on view

This copperplate is the matrix for one of Degas’s most celebrated prints, "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery." It dates from his most experimental phase of intaglio printmaking around 1879 when he was collaborating with Cassatt and other Impressionist artists on a print publication. Degas based this composition on another etching, "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery" (19.29.2). By overlapping the standing figure of Cassatt with the seated figure of her sister reading a guidebook and adding a cropped threshold to the foreground, Degas transformed the format and setting of his earlier work. The dealer and publisher Ambrose Vollard acquired a group of Degas’s cancelled etching plates from the artist prior to his death and published a posthumous edition of unknown size around 1919. The dealer Frank Perls took additional impressions from the plate in 1959.

Artwork Details

Overview

Provenance

References

Title: Plate for "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery"
Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)
Date: 1879–80
Medium: Copperplate, etched and aquantinted, gold-plated
Dimensions: 11 7/8 × 4 7/8 in. (30.2 × 12.4 cm)
Classification: Plates
Credit Line: Purchase, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2024
Object Number: 2024.633
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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