Memory of Velazquez by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: Memory of Velázquez

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

Date: ca. 1858

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 12 3/16 × 9 15/16 in. (31 × 25.2 cm)
Framed: 21 7/16 × 19 5/16 × 2 9/16 in. (54.5 × 49 × 6.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen - Neue Pinakothek, Munich (12760)

Degas’s attention to Spanish art was ultimately less sustained than Manet’s, but this oil sketch shows that Velázquez was among his pantheon of artists. It belongs to a small group of works depicting the lives of great painters that he planned while in Rome in 1857–58. Showing Velázquez at work on a large canvas at left, the composition refers to Las Meninas (1656), a renowned group portrait made at the Spanish court, which Degas would have known only through reproductive prints and photographs.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844730