Self-Portrait

Edgar Degas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Degas portrayed his aloof, slightly pouty, patrician features a number of times in the course of his career, particularly as a young man. This early example, executed when the artist was little more than twenty-years old, served as the model for a self-portrait etching he made in 1857, which reproduces the image in reverse. Both the pose and expression seen here relate closely to two nearly contemporaneous painted self-portraits by Degas. The shadowy contrast of light and dark may reflect his interest, at this particular moment of his career, in the work of Rembrandt.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art