S-shaped path in an abstracted landscape; greens; pinks in foreground, LLQ; rust-oranges in spots scattered throughout; pinkish-orange sky

Winding River, 1890

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Winding River is simultaneously a landscape and an abstraction. Colorful and poetic, it recalls Impressionism but was certainly not painted directly from nature. Rather, Edgar Degas relied on imagination and perhaps also memory, loosely basing this monotype on a Japanese color print made in 1856 by Utagawa Hiroshige, whose work Degas collected. As with many of the nearly fifty landscape monotypes he produced from 1890 onward, Degas began this work by painting in dilute oils on a smooth copper plate, then used a printing press to transfer the image to paper. Continuing to experiment, he turned to drawing and augmented the picture with pastel crayon.

Details
Title
Winding River
Artist Life
1834 - 1917
Role
Artist
Accession Number
2009.19.1
Provenance
Estate of the artist, Lugt 658 (until 1919; his sale, 4th sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, July 2-4, 1919, no. 42, for Fr 2,310, to Cottevieille); Collection Cottevieille, Paris. Sale, Hôtel George V, Paris, June 18, 1974, no. 1. Private collection, Paris. [C.G. Boerner, New York, and Galerie Terrades, Paris, by 2008-9; sold to MIA]
Catalogue Raisonne
Lemoisne no. 1050; Janis 287
Curator Approved

This record has been reviewed by our curatorial staff but may be incomplete. These records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about this object, please email collectionsdata@artsmia.org.

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S-shaped path in an abstracted landscape; greens; pinks in foreground, LLQ; rust-oranges in spots scattered throughout; pinkish-orange sky