In 1859 Degas returned to Paris after a three-year stay in Italy. By the autumn of that year he had taken a sizable studio, which allowed him to work on large paintings for the first time. While continuing work on his portrait of the Bellelli family (Lemoisne, vol. II, no. 79; coll. Musée d'Orsay, Paris), he began the first of his great history paintings, La fille de Jephthah (Lemoisne, vol. II, no. 94; coll. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts), a biblical work which he intended to exhibit at the Salon.

The story is taken from the Book of Judges. The Israelites summoned Jephthah the Gileadite from exile to fight the Ammonites. To ensure victory, Jephthah vowed to sacrifice the person who first greeted him when he arrived home. He returned victorious, and was horrified to watch his daughter--his only child--come forth to meet him. The story, with its similarity to the classical legend of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, attracted many Romantic writers, and Degas probably refered to a contemporary poem on the subject by Vigny.

By the time he was working on La fille de Jephthah, Degas had moved away from the influence of Ingres towards a more Romantic outlook which in part stemmed from his interest in Delacroix, whose work Degas had come to know through his friend Gustave Moreau at the French Academy in Rome. The lower figure in this study is related to the trumpeteer who appears in the upper left corner of the final composition. The figure above him on the sheet is probably an early idea for the soldier who leads Jephthah's horse, depicted in the center of the painting.