This is the only etching that Degas produced in this narrow format, making it a notable stylistic development within his body of work. The size and elongated vertical shape of The Paintings Gallery is similar to the standard size and shape of Japanese chu-tanzaku prints. There were many affinities between the pleasures and entertainments of modern Paris and Edo’s Floating World: the red-light districts of Montmartre in Paris and Yoshiwara in Tokyo (formerly Edo), the theatrical performances at the Opéra and the Folies-Bergère cabaret in Paris and at kabuki theaters in Tokyo and Kyoto, and leisurely activities like strolling through the Louvre or attending a play.ĭegas frequently quoted the stylistic and formal qualities of Japanese prints in his own graphic work, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in The Paintings Gallery. Ukiyo-e prints, or “pictures of the Floating World,” from the Edo period (1615–1868) were especially popular among Western artists Degas, for instance, had a personal collection of ukiyo-e prints.
Late 19th-century artists like Degas and Cassatt admired Japanese prints for their flat fields of color and patterns, innovative framing devices, and asymmetrical compositions. The term japonisme, first coined by art critic Philippe Burty in 1872, refers to “the craze for Japanese art and design that swept France and elsewhere after trade with Japan resumed in the 1850s.” In France, growing interest in Japanese art and culture influenced countless artists to appropriate formal qualities of Japanese art for use in their own work and inspired them to see the world in new ways.
Several stylistic elements of The Paintings Gallery reflect Degas’s interest in Japanese prints and the general prominence of japonisme in the Impressionist group. A wide marble doorjamb frames the left side of the print, partially obscuring the figures of Mary and Lydia Cassatt. Cassatt’s sister, Lydia, is seated by the entryway holding a book and looking toward the wall of paintings. Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre depicts Degas’s close friend and artistic collaborator, the American expatriate artist Mary Cassatt, walking through a gallery of paintings in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Cohen Gallery 234), is one of the finest examples of Degas’s admiration for Japanese art and his engagement with the stylistic qualities of Japanese prints. Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre of 1879–1880, currently on view in Impressionism and Beyond (Gallery 235 and the Sidney S. Over the course of nearly four decades, Degas produced 66 graphic works and around 400 impressions of his prints.
Impressionist artist Edgar Degas was known foremost as a painter and pastelist through much of his career, but he was also a skilled and prolific printmaker.
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