About This Artwork

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas
French, 1834-1917

The Ballet Master, c. 1872

Watercolor and oil paint, with graphite and touches of pen and brown and black ink, on buff laid paper, ruled at center in charcoal, laid down on Japanese paper
450 x 262 mm (sheet)
Gift of Robert Sonnenschein, II, 1951.110B

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

St. Louis, Mo., St. Louis Art Museum, "Drawings by Degas," 1966-1967, cat. 66, cat. by Jean Sutherland Boggs; traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Degas in The Art Institute of Chicago," July 19-September 23, 1984, pp. 58-60, cat. 23 (ill.), cat. by Richard Brettell and Suzanne Folds McCullagh.

Washington, D.C., The National Gallery of Art, "Degas: The Dancers," November 22, 1984-March 10, 1985, cat. 12, cat. by George T. M. Shackelford.

Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, "Degas," cat. 132; only shown at Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada, June 16-August 28, 1988, and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 27, 1988-January 3, 1989.

Publication History

P. A. Lemoisne, Degas et son Oeuvre (Paris, 1946), no. 367 bis (ill.).

Lillian Browse, Degas Dancers (London, 1949), no. 40a.

Fiorella Minervino and Franco Russoli, L’Opera completa di Degas (Milan, 1970), no. 483 (ill.).

Theodore Reff, "The Technical Aspects of Degas’ Art," Metropolitan Museum Journal, 4 (1971), p. 149 (ill.).

Theodore Reff, Degas: The Artist’s Mind (New York, 1976), p. 282 (ill.).

Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century 2 (Chicago, 1979), p. 43, no. 2G1.

Ownership History

Estate of the artist [Lugt 657]; sold, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, July 2-4, 1919, lot 206b. Given by Robert Sonnenschein, II, New Freedom, Wis., to the Art Institute, 1951.