1882
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
The Millinery Shop is a 1882 oil by Edgar Degas, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
The woman sits in a hat shop, examining a wide-brimmed hat. She's dressed in a green wool dress, looking elegant. The painting shows a quiet moment, with the woman lost in thought. The artist made many drawings and pastels of this scene, perfecting the woman's pose. He experimented with her outfit, trying different hats and clothes. This careful planning shows in the final painting. The artist's attention to detail is notable. Check out the work of Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas to see more examples.
The Millinery Shop is the largest of Edgar Degas’s paintings focused on milliners, or hatmakers. He arranged the composition carefully, making multiple drawings and pastels of the lone figure, perfecting the woman’s pose and experimenting with her outfit. The final composition highlights the visual ambiguities of class identity that arose in France in the late nineteenth century. The woman sits in a hat shop examining a wide-brimmed hat. She wears a fashionable green wool dress with long, elegant gloves that were just as likely to be worn by wealthy clients as by the employees of the shop. At…
Sold by the artist to Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris on February 22, 1913 for 50,000 francs [see Durand-Ruel stock no. 10253; this and the following information according to Paris 1988]; sent to Durand-Ruel Gallery in New York, 1917; sold to Mrs. Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn (died 1932), Chicago on January 19, 1932 for $36,000 or $35,000 [see Durand-Ruel stock no. 4114; the date 1932 given in the Durand-Ruel stockbook contradicts a loan receipt, dated January 23, 1930, for a “Millinery Shop, 1882” from Mrs. L.L. Coburn to the Art Institute of Chicago, copy in curatorial file]; bequeathed to the…
The Art Institute of Chicago, Mrs. L.L. Coburn Collection: Modern Paintings and Water Colors, April 6, 1932-October 9, 1932, cat. 9 (ill.). The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1933, cat. 286, pl. 53. Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, Edgar Degas, November 28-Deceber 18, 1933, cat. 8 (ill.). The Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1934, cat. 202. Toledo, Ohio, Museum of Art, French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, November 1934,…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on 19 July 1834 in Paris, Edgar Degas came from an affluent banking family with aristocratic roots and spent his childhood among the cultivated circles of the French capital.
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