Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Lot 338 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE IMPORTANT EUROPEAN COLLECTION

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Portrait d'homme d'après un maître flamand

Closed24 June 2015

Price Realised

GBP 98,500

More Information

How to sell

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Portrait d'homme d'après un maître flamand
with the estate stamp 'ATELIER ED. DEGAS' (Lugt 657; on the reverse)
oil on paper laid down on board
11 3/4 x 10 1/4 in. (29.9 x 25.9 cm.)
Executed circa 1870

The artist's estate.
Anonymous sale, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 24 March 1955, lot 229.
Probably acquired at the above sale by the grandfather of the present owners.

Specialist note

Professor Theodore Reff has stated that in his opinion this work is by Edgar Degas.


‘Together with Ingrès, Delacroix and Cézanne, Degas was one of the most passionate and convinced copyists of his time….He was a follower of the Old Masters – and at the same time a founder of ‘modern’ painting; and in Degas this is not a contradiction. It would not be right to see him as a Janus figure, looking straight back and straight ahead; rather, keeping within the ‘ground rules’ of painting as laid down by the Old Masters, he managed to unearth the principles of the new.’
E. Maurer, “Degas’s Copies”, in Degas Portraits, exh. cat., London, 1994, p. 151.