NEW ORLEANS (AP) – An exhibit about French artist Edgar Degas’ 4½-month stay in New Orleans, including a larger-than-painted reproduction of the most important work he did in the city, debuts on the 175th anniversary of his birth. Its first stop will be the Degas House, named for his 1872-73 stay there with the Mussons, relatives on his mother’s side of the family.
“We’re showcasing Degas House as the only home of Degas in the world open to the public,” said David Villarrubia, who owns and restored the house built in the early 1850s, speaking Friday. “We feel it’s up to us to do something interesting.”‘
Degas was born July 19, 1834. Anniversary plans for Sunday evening include a band, a birthday cake, and the exhibit – a set of four double-sided printed panels created by the Louisiana State Museum for free use by small museums, libraries and visitors’ centers.
Degas was 38 and not yet famous when he came to New Orleans, the city of his mother’s birth, after service in the Franco-Prussian War.
“He was in search of himself … He was in serious need of some rest and recuperation,” Villarrubia said.
The term “Impressionist” hadn’t yet been coined – it was invented in April 1874, as a snide description by a French critic who disliked the lack of detail and finesse in paintings shown by Degas and others who were breaking away from the academic style of the day.
By then Degas, a self-described “pronounced Parisian,” was back home in the city where he had begun, before his American excursion, to paint ballet dancers, racehorses and musicians.
The exhibit, paid for by an anonymous donor to the Degas House Foundation, is the second in a new series of traveling exhibits, Louisiana State Museum curator Jenelle Davis said Friday.
It shows about eight of the 18 paintings which Degas made in New Orleans; some photographs of his hosts, the Musson family, Degas and the house; reproductions of some of the five letters he wrote home during those months; some sheet music; and information about his life and work.
“We don’t intend to have paintings here,” Villarrubia said. “We don’t have the right climate control; we don’t have the right security. But we can tell the story here.”
Davis said the state museum used to have five or six traveling exhibits at any given time, but they became too worn to use.
The first produced since Hurricane Katrina, “The Voices of the Atchafalaya Basin,” began circulating a couple of months ago, and “Native Americans in Louisiana” is planned to start in October, Davis said.
The one to be shown at the Degas House bed and breakfast is actually a bit smaller than the traveling one will be, to accommodate the smaller size of what is essentially a private house, Davis said.
It’s still big enough that a reproduction of “A Cotton Office in New Orleans” – the first Impressionist painting bought by a museum and the only painting by Degas bought by a museum during his lifetime – will be about 40 inches across, almost four inches wider than the original.
The painting itself, lent by the museum that bought it in 1798, was the centerpiece of a 1999 exhibition of Degas’ work at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
“A lot of our work has been based on the catalog that came out for that,” Davis said.
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