Italian Head

Prints and Drawings

c. 1856

Edgar Degas
French, 1834-1917

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas
Title: Italian Head
Origin: France
Date: 1846–1917
Medium: Charcoal, with stumping, heightened with touches of white chalk, on ivory wove paper
Inscriptions: Inscribed recto, lower right, in graphite: "Rome"
Dimensions: 384 × 260 mm
Credit Line: Margaret Day Blake Collection
Reference Number: 1945.37

Hans Tietze, European Master Drawings in the United States (New York, 1947), pp. 284-285, no. 142 (ill.).
Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century 2 (Chicago, 1979), p. 35, no. 2E1.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, Degas (Chicago, 1996), pp. 11, 73 (ill.), and 107, pl. 2.
Jodi Hauptman, et. al, A Strange New Beauty, (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016), p. 65, fig. 3 (ill.).

Buenos Aires, “Edgar Degas Exhibition,” 1934.
New York, Weyhe Gallery, “Sculptors’ Drawings and Paintings,” 1942.
New York, Buchholz Gallery, “Edgar Degas: Bronzes, Drawings, Pastels,” January 3-27, 1945, cat. 51.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Drawings Old and New,” 1946, p. 12, cat 14, pl. XVI, cat. by Carl Schniewind.
Washington, D.C., Phillips Memorial Gallery, “Loan Exhibition of Drawings and Pastels by Degas, (1834-1917),” March 30-April 30, 1947, cat. 3.
New York, Wildenstein and Company, “Master Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago,” October 17-November 30, 1963, cat. 101.
Saint Louis, Mo., City Art Museum of Saint Louis, “Drawings by Degas,” January 20-February 26, 1967, cat. 6, cat. by Jean Sutherland Boggs.
Philadelphia, Pa., The Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Drawings by Degas,” March 10-April 30, 1967.
Minneapolis, Minn., The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, “Drawings by Degas,” May 18-June 25, 1967.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “A Quarter Century of Collecting: Drawings Given to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1944-1970 by Margaret Day Blake,” April 28-June 7, 1970, n.p., cat. 31 (ill.).
Urbana-Champaign, Ill., Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Drawings from the Collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, April 23–May 14, 1972.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Degas in The Art Institute of Chicago,” July 19-September 23, 1984, pp. 18-19, cat. 2 (ill.), cat. by Richard R. Brettell and Suzanne Folds McCullagh.

René Degas (1845-1926) Paris. Gustave Pellet (died 1919), Paris; by descent to his son-in-law, Maurice Exsteens (died 1962), Paris [according to New York 1945 auc. cat. and Klipstein and Kornfeld “Archives de la maison Gustave Pellet,” 1962 auc.cat.]. Justin K. Thannhauser (1892-1976), New York; sold, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, April 12, 1945, lot 58, to Durlacher Brothers, New York; sold to the Art Institute, 1945.

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