Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Professor Theodore Reff has suggested that the sitter in Portrait d'’homme may be Gustave Caillebotte, as there are similarities between the features that Degas has captured here and photographs showing his fellow artist from approximately that period. Degas appears to have known Caillebotte as early as 1867-- in his notebooks used between 1867 and 1874, he cites Caillebotte's address as 77 rue Miromesnil, an address to which the artist and his family moved that year (see T. Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas, Oxford, 1976, I, p. 115). The artists would both become important members of the Impressionist group as contributors and as organisers, and both would also use their own independent wealth to help the movement over the years; Caillebotte'’s patronage and sponsorship of Monet and Renoir as well as the others, enabled the artists to continue painting, while his collection, bequeathed to the French State after his death, was to become the cornerstone for wider public appreciation of the Impressionists.