Detail of Eugene Manet by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: Eugène Manet

Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

Date: 1874

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on paper laid down on board

Dimensions: 24 13/16 × 31 5/16 in. (63 × 79.5 cm)
Framed: 37 × 43 5/16 × 3 3/4 in., 17 lb. (94 × 110 × 9.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Private collection


Degas painted this portrait of Manet’s younger brother Eugène to mark the occasion of his marriage to Berthe Morisot and offered it to the couple as a wedding gift. It stands out among Degas’s portraits for placing the sitter in a landscape. Both the outdoor setting and his reclined posture recall Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863), for which Eugène had similarly posed, holding a walking stick. Degas exhibited this work at the second Impressionist exhibition, in 1876, along with the oil sketch of Eugène’s sister-in-law, Yves Gobillard, also on view in this gallery.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/875725