Photo of the Day

Finding yourself.

It is 1872.

And in Paris, the artist Edgar Degas, age thirty-eight, is a demoralized former soldier in the French National Guard.

The Guard had been charged with the defense of Paris against the onslaught of German troops under the leadership of the Prussian Army.

But, despite four months of heroic effort, the Guard had failed to break the Prussian Army’s siege of the city.

Paris had fallen and the victorious Prussian Army had paraded through its streets.

The four-month siege of Paris by German forces under the leadership of Prussia ended in January 1871 with the German capture of the city. The siege was a part of the Franco-Prussian War. France was defeated in the war, its emperor Napoleon III was captured and its government collapsed. Left: a company of the French National Guard. Right: German soldiers march through Paris, March 1871.

The emperor, Napoleon III, had been captured and the French government had fallen.

Paris was in turmoil as the French people struggled to stand up a new government.

Left: Paris destruction after the siege. Right: street barricade erected by a faction of the French Communard movement, 1871.

But Edgar’s younger brother René had come home from New Orleans to visit his family.

A happy interlude.

René had gone to New Orleans seven years earlier, right after the US Civil War, to work in the cotton trading business the Degas extended family operated there.

Canal Street, New Orleans, c. 1870.

Edgar took René to the places where he had fought the Germans and they had talked.

As his visit came to an end, René asked Edgar to come with him to New Orleans.

It was a tempting suggestion.

Edgar’s art works were not what we now think of when someone mentions ‘Degas.’

His work ‘had gone stale,’ he said.

He was in search of a style that was fresh and meaningful yet drawn from everyday life.

Not the romanticized style of the times.

So, Edgar took up René’s suggestion and accompanied him to New Orleans.

The Degas House on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans.

From October 1872 until March of the next year, Edgar stayed with his extended family in a rented house on Esplanade Avenue and spent time in the family cotton trading business.

It was run by Edgar’s uncles and had been established by his grandfather, a Haitian of French descent, who had come to New Orleans in the early 1800s.

Edgar’s mother had been born in the city.

William Waud, The Federal Fleet at Anchor in the River, April 25, 1862. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 25, 1862.

New Orleans was then in the Reconstruction Period following the Civil War.

It was a tumultuous time.

The city was still occupied by Federal troops, who had been there since the city’s capture in 1862.

But Edgar found the city a visual feast.

From a letter to a friend:

“Nothing pleases me more than the Black women of all shades, holding little white babies that are oh so white in their arms,

“in white houses with fluted wooden columns surrounded by orange-trees and magnolia gardens.

“The ladies in muslin in front of their little houses

New Orleans, 1872.

“and the steamboats with two smokestacks, as high as the twin chimneys of factories

“and the fruit merchants with shops full to overflowing.

“And the lovely pure-blooded ladies and the beautifully planted quadroons.”

Edgar quickly went to work.

Edgar Degas, The Song Rehearsal, 1872–1873.

He painted portraits of his New Orleans family members,

Edgar Degas, A Cotton Office in New Orleans or The Cotton Exchange, 1873. This work was the only Degas painting to be displayed in a museum during Degas’s lifetime.

and two scenes from the cotton trading office.

Eighteen paintings in total, plus a few drawings.

Edgar Degas, Cotton Merchants in New Orleans, 1873.

And when he left New Orleans, Edgar knew he had found the way forward.

Edgar Degas, The Dance Class, 1874.

Back in Paris, the critics said his new works were “inventive.”

In art, that’s a good thing.

Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage, 1874. This work was presented in the first impressionist exhibition in 1874.

Edgar served as one of the leading organizers of the first Impressionist art exhibition.

He displayed art works depicting dancers and racehorses and they were well received.

His art career took off.

In 1960s hippie talk, Edgar had “found himself.”

Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917).

In New Orleans!

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda