1858 (ca.), Edgar Degas, Memory of Velazquez -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label: Degas's attention to Spanish art was ultimately less sustained than Manet's, but this oil sketch shows that Velázquez was among his pantheon of artists. It belongs to a small group of works depicting the lives of great painters that he planned while in Rome in 1857-58. Showing Velázquez at work on a large canvas at left, the composition refers to Las Meninas (1656), a renowned group portrait made at the Spanish court, which Degas would have known only through reproductive prints and photographs.
1858 (ca.), Edgar Degas, Memory of Velazquez -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label: Degas's attention to Spanish art was ultimately less sustained than Manet's, but this oil sketch shows that Velázquez was among his pantheon of artists. It belongs to a small group of works depicting the lives of great painters that he planned while in Rome in 1857-58. Showing Velázquez at work on a large canvas at left, the composition refers to Las Meninas (1656), a renowned group portrait made at the Spanish court, which Degas would have known only through reproductive prints and photographs.