Woman Reading a Book

c. 1879

Edgar Degas

Artist, French, 1834 - 1917

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    charcoal and black chalk with stumping and erasing, heightened with white chalk, on blue wove paper

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 48.9 x 31.8 cm (19 1/4 x 12 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1995.47.35

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Lemoisne 1946, undescribed

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Third Degas sale, Paris, Georges Petit, 7-9 April 1919, no. 150.2); (French Pastels and Drawings from Clouet to Degas. Wildenstein, New York, February-March 1944, no. 113); (sale, London, Sotheby's, 1 July 1964, no. 62); Frank Perls; Mr. and Mrs. Harold Mirisch, Beverly Hills, by 1966;[1] (M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York); purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, VA; gift to NGA, 1995.
[1] See provenance information in exhibition catalogue, Jean Sutherland Boggs, Drawings By Degas. 1966, no. 86, p. 138.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1944

  • French Pastels and Drawings from Clouet to Degas. Wildenstein, New York, February-March 1944, no. 113.

1967

  • Drawings by Degas. City Art Museum of Saint Louis, and tour, 1966-1967, no. 86.

2012

  • Vernet to Villon: Nineteenth-Century French Master Drawings from the National Gallery of Art. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma. Norman, OK, 2012, no. 20.

2014

  • Degas/Cassatt, NGA, 2014, no.

2016

  • In Celebration of Paul Mellon, NGA, 2016.

Bibliography

1946

  • Lemoisne, Paul André. Degas et son oeuvre. 4 vols. Paris: Arts et metiers graphiques, 1946-1949. Vols. 2 and 3, 1946. Reprinted in 5 vols., New York and London, 1984.

1988

  • Gordon, Robert and Andrew Forge. Degas. New York, 1988: 122.

Inscriptions

lower left stamped in red: Degas (Lugt 658); upper center verso stamped in red: ATELIER / ED. DEGAS (Lugt 657); by later hand, center verso in blue pencil: Ph 1565

Wikidata ID

Q64556373

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