Henri Degas and His Niece Lucie Degas (The Artist's Uncle and Cousin)

Edgar Degas seldom accepted commissions. His portrait subjects were usually close friends and family members—especially those from the Italian side of his family in Florence and Naples, where he frequently visited. He most likely painted this double portrait in 1875 during a four-month stay in Naples. It depicts his orphaned first cousin, Lucie, and their uncle Henri, in whose care the girl had recently been placed. In this painting, Degas showed two people, separated by many years in age, tentatively accepting the circumstances of their new relationship. Having recently lost his own father, the artist addressed subjects such as this with candor and sensitivity.

Areas of thin paint and unresolved details suggest that the work was never completed. Nonetheless, the spare treatment of the background eff ectively emphasizes the fi gures’ heads and upper bodies. Degas expressed their connection through the similar tilt of their heads and their black mourning clothes. At the same time, the edge of a French door in the background and the back of Henri’s chair divide the characters into separate sections of the canvas, creating a subtle allusion to their psychological discomfort. At once intimate and distant, casual and guarded, the portrait expresses the fragility and necessity of family ties, not only between the two people depicted but also with the third relative who painted them from the other side of the paper-laden table.