Portrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hat

Portrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hat

Marcellin Desboutin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

For this informal portrait, Edgar Degas struck a pose like one of the dancers whom he frequently depicted. It dates from 1876, the year Desboutin first exhibited with the Impressionists at Degas’s invitation. Around the same time, Degas painted a portrait of Desboutin at work, alongside their mutual friend the printmaker Ludovic Lepic (Musée d'Orsay). In the second and final state of this portrait (22.63.66), Desboutin burnished out the lower half of Degas’s body in order to give the composition a more unfinished appearance.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hatPortrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hatPortrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hatPortrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hatPortrait of Edgar Degas, wearing a hat

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.