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Lot Essay
The identity of the sitter in the present portrait is unknown, and Lemoisne did not venture to name her. The catalogues to the 1965 Delgado Museum and the 1971 Fogg Art Museum exhibitions proposed that this painting was done during Degas' stay in Louisiana from the fall 1872 to spring 1873; the latter stated that "the woman is seated in a horse-drawn carriage. Her head and shoulders are framed by the carriage rear-window which opens out onto a lush New Orleans landscape" (op. cit., p. 48). The sitter was thought to be Mme Elina Ducros or her daughter Mme Millaudon, close friends of the Musson family, who were related to Degas' mother and lived in New Orleans. Lemoisne published several paintings in which Degas portrayed Mme Ducros while she was visiting Rome in 1857-1858 (Lemoisne, nos. 41-43).
Other information has come to light since 1971 that constitutes strong evidence that this painting was actually done prior to Degas' trip to New Orleans. In 1976 Theodore Reff published the contents of the 38 Degas notebooks currently in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris and other sources. Notebook 22 contains two drawings that are directly related to the present painting on pages 107 and 108; the first shows the features of the sitter, while the second is a sketch of her arms and hands holding the folded fan. In Notebook 21, page 18v there is a drawing in which Degas sketched out the composition of this portrait. Reff states that these sketchbooks were used in Paris in 1867-1874 and 1865-1868 respectively. The dating of these related drawings must therefore fall in the years 1867-1868, four or five years before Degas' trip to America. This dating is consistent with the beginning of Lemoisne's ascribed time span for this painting. Moreover, the existence of two other drawings, Notebook 23, p. 34 and Notebook 22, p.119, also from this period, points to the likelihood that two of the paintings that presumably include the figure of Mme Ducros (Lemoisne, nos. 41 and 42), were not done in Rome as Lemoisne had supposed, but in Paris a decade later, around the time of the present portrait.
In the catalogue for the 1999 New Orleans Museum of Art exhibition, Jean Sutherland Boggs raises the possibility that members of the Millaudon and Ducros family may have travelled to Europe in the late 1860s, drawing on a large inheritance from the recent death of the family patriarch, and that Degas could have painted either the mother or daughter during a stay in Paris. A photograph from circa 1895 exists, which both Byrne and Boggs illustrate in their catalogues, showing a very old Mme. Ducros and Mme. Millaudon in late middle age. However, it is difficult to imagine their appearance almost twenty years earlier for a comparison with the Notebook portrait drawing, and in the final analysis the identity of the subject in the present painting cannot be firmly established.
In any case, the painting in this state more clearly reveals the artist's innovative method of building his compositions from flat zones of color, which in turn points significantly to his growing interest in Asian art. The design of the present painting owes much to the flatness of Japanese prints, and perhaps even reflects the shallow and vertical conception of space seen in Chinese portrait painting. In the context of these sources this painting may have been finished enough for the artist's own intents and purposes. "On the whole his handling is so thin, so abbreviated, and so calligraphic that much of the modeling in the pencil notebook drawing is lost and something faintly exotic and oriental remains. She is allusive, enigmatic, and mysterious, with the wisp of a smile" (J.S. Boggs, op. cit., p. 151).
Other information has come to light since 1971 that constitutes strong evidence that this painting was actually done prior to Degas' trip to New Orleans. In 1976 Theodore Reff published the contents of the 38 Degas notebooks currently in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris and other sources. Notebook 22 contains two drawings that are directly related to the present painting on pages 107 and 108; the first shows the features of the sitter, while the second is a sketch of her arms and hands holding the folded fan. In Notebook 21, page 18v there is a drawing in which Degas sketched out the composition of this portrait. Reff states that these sketchbooks were used in Paris in 1867-1874 and 1865-1868 respectively. The dating of these related drawings must therefore fall in the years 1867-1868, four or five years before Degas' trip to America. This dating is consistent with the beginning of Lemoisne's ascribed time span for this painting. Moreover, the existence of two other drawings, Notebook 23, p. 34 and Notebook 22, p.119, also from this period, points to the likelihood that two of the paintings that presumably include the figure of Mme Ducros (Lemoisne, nos. 41 and 42), were not done in Rome as Lemoisne had supposed, but in Paris a decade later, around the time of the present portrait.
In the catalogue for the 1999 New Orleans Museum of Art exhibition, Jean Sutherland Boggs raises the possibility that members of the Millaudon and Ducros family may have travelled to Europe in the late 1860s, drawing on a large inheritance from the recent death of the family patriarch, and that Degas could have painted either the mother or daughter during a stay in Paris. A photograph from circa 1895 exists, which both Byrne and Boggs illustrate in their catalogues, showing a very old Mme. Ducros and Mme. Millaudon in late middle age. However, it is difficult to imagine their appearance almost twenty years earlier for a comparison with the Notebook portrait drawing, and in the final analysis the identity of the subject in the present painting cannot be firmly established.
In any case, the painting in this state more clearly reveals the artist's innovative method of building his compositions from flat zones of color, which in turn points significantly to his growing interest in Asian art. The design of the present painting owes much to the flatness of Japanese prints, and perhaps even reflects the shallow and vertical conception of space seen in Chinese portrait painting. In the context of these sources this painting may have been finished enough for the artist's own intents and purposes. "On the whole his handling is so thin, so abbreviated, and so calligraphic that much of the modeling in the pencil notebook drawing is lost and something faintly exotic and oriental remains. She is allusive, enigmatic, and mysterious, with the wisp of a smile" (J.S. Boggs, op. cit., p. 151).