In 1995 the Getty Museum acquired a sketchbook by the prolific artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Its images, dating from approximately 1877, embrace a variety of themes from everyday Parisian life the caf�, concert, brothels, and ballet and were created during Degas's weekly visits to the home of writer Ludovic Hal�vy, the first owner of the sketchbook. They show Degas's remarkable powers of observation, as well as the sureness and economy of his line.
Reproduced here are twenty-eight pages from the sketchbook, along with a brilliant essay that places Degas within the contexts of both the cultivated salon of the Hal�vy family and the larger world of late-nineteenth-century Paris, which the notoriously difficult artist both celebrated and shunned. In addition, the book features a transcript of a lively conversation about the sketchbook among artist David Hockney, Getty Museum director John Walsh, and Lee Hendrix, curator of drawings for the Getty Museum.
Reproduced here are twenty-eight pages from the sketchbook, along with a brilliant essay that places Degas within the contexts of both the cultivated salon of the Hal�vy family and the larger world of late-nineteenth-century Paris, which the notoriously difficult artist both celebrated and shunned. In addition, the book features a transcript of a lively conversation about the sketchbook among artist David Hockney, Getty Museum director John Walsh, and Lee Hendrix, curator of drawings for the Getty Museum.
