On February 18, 1873, Degas, who was visiting relatives in New Orleans, wrote to his friend the painter J.J. (James) Tissot

SÀAfter having lost time trying to do portraits of members of the family under the worst lighting conditions that I have ever found or imagined, I have settled down with a strong composition which I'm saving for Agnew [a dealer in London] who ought to be able to sell it to a Manchester collector : because if a textile manufacturer of cotton ever wished to find his painter I would make quite an impression. Interior of the cotton buyers' office in New Orleans.

"In the office there are about fifteen people whose attention is directed toward a table covered with the costly fabric; one man is bent over the table and another is sort of seated on it - the buyer and the broker are discussing a sample. A painting of a vernacular subject, if there is such a thing, and I think by a better hand than most others (a size 40 canvas, I think). I'm planning another less complicated and more surprising yet, better art, in which everyone is in summer dress, the walls white, and a sea of cotton on the tables. If Agnew wants both, so much the better.

"However, I don't want to drop my plans for Paris (it's my life style for the time being) with the nearly fifteen days that I think I'll spend here I'm going to put the finishing touches to The Cotton Buyers' Office. But I won't be able to take it with me. Boxed up for a long time, and away from air and light, a painting hardly dry will turn to chrome yellow number 3, as you know. I will not be able, therefore, to take it to London or to have it sent there until around April. Until then keep me in the good graces of these gentlemen. There is in Manchester a wealthy textile manufacturer, de Cottrell, who has quite a collection. A good fellow like that would suit me and would suit Agnew even better. But let's cross that bridge when we come to it and not speak indiscreetly" (translation based on M. Kay's in M. Guérin [ed.] and M. Kay [trans.], Degas Letters, Oxford, 1947, p. 29-30, no. 2).

The "size 40" canvas Degas mentioned must surely refer to the painting in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau. The whereabouts of the second picture described is not known; Degas may never have painted it. However, the sketch belonging to The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (P.A. Lemoisne, II, no. 321), is possibly a study for the projected second composition.

Neither Agnew nor the Manchester collector bought Portraits in an Office - The Cotton Exchange, New Orleans; in 1876 it appeared in the second Impressionist exhibition with the title Portraits dans un bureau (Nouvelle-Orléans) [Portraits in an Office (New Orleans)]. According to John Rewald (see Selected Bibliography) the models for the six men pictured were : in the foreground, Degas's maternal uncle, Michel Musson, who wears a top hat and is seated examining a sample; at the extreme right, John E. Livaudais, the accountant and one of Musson's partners; in profile on a high stool in the right middle ground, James S. Prestridge, Musson's other partner; seated before Prestridge and reading a newspaper, René Degas, the artist's brother and Musson's son-in-law; leaning on the window sill at the extreme left, Achille Degas, the artist's other brother; and finally, seated on the edge of the table in conversation with a customer, William Bell, another of Musson's sons-in-law. Rewald notes that Degas's brothers are not taking part in the activity and concludes that the scene is the offices of Michel Musson's firm, where the Degas brothers would have been visitors.

There are no known preparatory drawings or oil sketches for this work, contrary to the usual case with Degas The Bellelli Family (no. 9), for example. In some ways Portraits in an Office The Cotton Exchange, New Orleans can be interpreted as a modern version of the seventeenth-century Dutch group portraits of corporation officers for example, Rembrandt's The Sampling Officials of the Draper's Guild, 1662 (The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), which happens to depict a similar subject. Although the present picture is properly within a long tradition of group portraiture, the Impressionists were ridiculed for painting vernacular subjects. The critics were, of course, outraged when this canvas, equally daring in subject and composition, was shown in 1876. Even Zola, an admirer of the Impressionists, disparaged it : "The best thing he does are his sketches. As soon as he begins to polish a picture, his drawing grows weak and pitiable; the drawing in pictures like his Portraits in an Office (New Orleans) results in something between a marine painting and an engraving for an illustrated newspaper."

Signed and dated, lower right : Degas Nile Orléans - 1873

Musée des Beaux-Arts Pau, France Inventory no. 215; acquired in 1878

PROVENANCE

Painted in New Orleans during Degas's stay there, November 1872 - February 1873;

purchased by the City of Pau for its museum, March 1878, with funds from the Noulibos Foundation, after the exhibition of the Société des Amis des Arts de Pau. (Note : this was the first time that a French museum bought a work by Degas; it was only after the famous Caillebotte Bequest in 1894 that other works by Degas entered the Musée du Luxembourg.

The keeper of the Pau Museum in 1878 was Charles Le Cour. Probably the purchase was encouraged by one of Degas's friends, Alphonse Cherfils, a resident of Pau.)

1873

Oil on canvas