Detail of Cotton Office in New Orleans by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: A Cotton Office in New Orleans

Artist: Edgar Degas

Date: 1873

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 28 3/4 × 36 1/4 in. (73 × 92 cm)

Framed: 37 3/8 × 45 1/4 in. (95 × 115 cm)

Credit Line: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau (878.1.2)

Object No.: MD.171

During his sojourn in New Orleans, Degas painted the lively office of his family’s cotton business. The artist’s maternal uncle, pictured in the foreground, assesses the quality of the valuable commodity, while his brother René reads the local Daily Times-Picyune and his other brother Achille leans casually against a counter at left, looking on as employees busy themselves with activity. Degas had hoped to sell the painting to a cotton spinner in Manchester. Ultimately acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Pau in 1878, this work was the artist’s first to enter a public collection.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/manet-degas/exhibition-objects