Woman Reading a Book, c. 1879

Not on View

Medium

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

Dimensions

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

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Catalogue Raisonné

Lemoisne 1946, undescribed

Accession Number

1995.47.35

Artists / Makers

Edgar Degas (artist) French, 1834 - 1917

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

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

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

Galerie Georges Petit
Mellon, Paul
Mirisch, Harold, Mr. and Mrs.
Sotheby's, London

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.