Landscape
Medium
Pastel, over color monotype, with wiping and incising, on pink wove paper, altered to tan
Dimensions
Image: 25.5 × 34.5 cm (10 1/16 × 13 5/8 in.); Sheet: 26.1 × 35 cm (10 5/16 × 13 13/16 in.)
Classification
prints and drawing
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
185850
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Although Degas’s depictions of nature are among his lesser-known works, he was a talented landscape artist, as this vibrant pastel indicates. The rich range of greens creates a velvet-like effect. Earth tones differentiate the undulating hills. The paper support, though discolored from pink to tan, still lends a sense of warmth. The pastel on this sheet covers a unique printed image made by the artist. Degas produced many color monotypes in this period. However, while some of the prints were nea...
Art Historical Context
In the twilight of his illustrious career, Edgar Degas crafted *Landscape* in 1892, a rare departure from his iconic depictions of ballerinas and modern life. This intimate work on pink wove paper—subtly altered to tan—captures the artist's fascination with the Normandy countryside, a motif he explored during summer retreats. Measuring just 25.5 × 34.5 cm, it exemplifies Degas's late-period experimentation, blending Impressionist spontaneity with meticulous control. Degas pioneered the color monotype technique here, inking a metal plate with vibrant hues, printing it onto paper, and then wiping, incising, and layering pastel for texture and depth. This hybrid process yielded one-of-a-kind images with luminous, painterly effects, pushing beyond traditional printmaking. Pastel, Degas's favored medium in his final decades, allowed soft, atmospheric modulation of light and form, evoking misty fields and horizons amid his failing eyesight. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Prints and Drawings department, *Landscape* highlights Degas's innovative spirit within French avant-garde circles. It invites visitors to appreciate how a master of the human figure found fresh poetry in nature's quiet drama.
About the Artist
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas · 1834–1917
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, born on July 19, 1834, in Paris to a prosperous banking family, was the eldest of five children. His mother, Célestine Musson, a Creole from New Orleans whose father Germain Musson had roots in Haiti, died when Degas was thirteen, leaving his father Augustin and unmarried uncles to guide him. Educated at the elite Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he earned a baccalauréat in...