Beach at Low Tide (Mouth of the River)
Medium
Pastel on light brown wove paper
Dimensions
23.2 × 30.7 cm (9 3/16 × 12 1/8 in.)
Classification
pastel
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
218848
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Edgar Degas visited the coast of Normandy in the autumn of 1869 and was inspired to create over 40 small-scale landscape pastels. This particular sheet is one of the very best of this group: clearly articulated and unusual in being signed and dated, it is the only seascape that Degas relinquished during his lifetime.
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...