Degas IN NEW ORLEANS.

• Author: FEIGENBAUM, GAIL
• Position: New Orleans Museum of Art

The French Impressionist's visit to Louisiana in 1872-73 inspired a series of memorable, sometimes haunting portraits of his New Orleans family, as well as stunning scenes of life in one of America's most beautiful cities.

EDGAR DEGAS is widely regarded as the quintessential Parisian painter of ballet dancers, bathers, and laundresses, as well as the racetrack and theater. In October, 1872, the not-yet-famous artist left Paris for a journey to America. His destination was New Orleans, birthplace of his mother. There he would spend the winter with his relatives in a handsome mansion on Esplanade Avenue. He had come from France by steamer to New York, where he boarded a train for the four-day journey to Louisiana. A small group of doting relatives was on hand to greet him at the train depot on Lake Pontchartrain, tot. as the artist liked to say, he was almost a "son of Louisiana."

The story of Degas and New Orleans, though, is larger than this brief stay on his mother's native soil. Although his visit was short, Louisiana played a considerable and sustained role in his life. It is a richly documented, personal, family saga, one that is inextricably bound up with the wider scope of history--economics, war, and epidemics. It is a remarkable illustration of the interconnection between French-Creole Louisiana and France.

The account of Degas' visit to New Orleans has been told and retold. Each time, it looks different, according to the author's view, new evidence, and the corrections of old errors. That he was the only member of the French Impressionists to have worked in North America is a fact that still takes many people by surprise.

In every important respect, Degas' New Orleans visit was a family one, and family would be his subject while in America. His letters describe the exotic sights of the city: steamboats on the Mississippi, beautiful women of African descent, white mansions with fluted columns, and orange and banana trees. However, he complained that the bright light hurt his ailing eyes and remained more often indoors, basking in the warm domesticity of his adoring relatives.

"Family portraits. You have to do them to the taste of the family, in impossible light, with many interruptions, with models who are very affectionate but a bit free and easy with you, and who take you much less seriously because you are their nephew or their cousin," Degas wrote. Despite such tribulations, Degas, arguably among the greatest of portraitists...