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Portraits at the Stock Exchange

ca. 1878–79
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 816
Degas presents a glimpse of the busy commerce at the Paris stock exchange. Financier and art collector Ernest May (1845–1925), wearing spectacles, receives a document for perusal, as an associate, identified as Monsieur Bolâtre, leans over his shoulder. The artist made this pastel as a study for an oil painting of 1878–79 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). At the time, May was in his early thirties, and just beginning to expand his acquisitions from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pictures to works by Degas, Manet, and their colleagues.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Portraits at the Stock Exchange
  • Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)
  • Date: ca. 1878–79
  • Medium: Pastel on paper, pieced, and laid down on canvas
  • Dimensions: 28 3/8 x 22 7/8 in. (72.1 x 58.1 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Janice H. Levin, 1991
  • Object Number: 1991.277.1
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

More Artwork

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Woman Having Her Hair Combed, Edgar Degas French, Pastel on light green wove paper, now discolored to warm gray, affixed to original pulpboard mount
Woman Having Her Hair Combed
Edgar Degas
ca. 1886–88
Ceramic Horn, Glazed pottery, French
Ceramic Horn
French
late 18th or early 19th century
Nurse and Child, Mary Cassatt American, Pastel on wove paper (originally blue), mounted on canvas, American
Nurse and Child
Mary Cassatt
1896–97
Dancer in the Role of Harlequin, Edgar Degas French, Bronze, French
Dancer in the Role of Harlequin
Edgar Degas
Founder Cast by A.-A. Hébrard et Cie
modeled probably ca. 1884–85, cast 1920
The Dance Class, Edgar Degas French, Oil on canvas
The Dance Class
Edgar Degas
1874

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