Marguerite De Gas, the Artist's Sister

Marguerite De Gas, the Artist's Sister

Edgar Degas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exquisite, intimate portrait of the artist’s sister, Marguerite De Gas, dates from shortly after Degas’s return to Paris following a three-year sojourn in Italy. It demonstrates his increasing sophistication with the medium of etching, which he had begun to explore in earnest while abroad. Portraiture dominated Degas’s practice in this period, and his earliest work in the genre focused naturally on his family members. This is the only extant impression of the second state of the etching and the most successful of the six states he printed. Degas indicated his preference for it by approving the production of a heliogravure (photographic print) based on this impression after he ruined the plate by overworking it.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marguerite De Gas, the Artist's SisterMarguerite De Gas, the Artist's SisterMarguerite De Gas, the Artist's SisterMarguerite De Gas, the Artist's SisterMarguerite De Gas, the Artist's Sister

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.