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

1879–80

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 690

This copperplate is the matrix for one of Degas’s most celebrated prints, "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery" (2025.761). 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

Object Information

Overview

Provenance

Exhibition History

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: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2024
Object Number: 2024.633
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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