Portrait of Mme Lisle and Mme Loubens
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
c. 1867
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 84 × 96.6 cm (33 1/16 × 38 in.); Framed: 101.6 × 115 × 8 cm (40 × 45 1/4 × 3 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Annie Laurie Ryerson in memory of Joseph Turner Ryerson
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Edgar Degas rarely accepted portrait commissions; his sitters were almost always family members or people within his social circle. The two women in this somber, unfinished painting were identified through preparatory drawings that label them as “Mme Lisle” (left) and “Mme Loubens” (right). Both were friends of artist Édouard Manet’s family; they likely met Degas at a gathering at Manet’s home. In an 1869 letter, artist Berthe Morisot lamented that Degas had abandoned her at one such soirée for the company of Madame Lisle and Madame Loubens, attesting to the group’s closeness.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
