Degas and Other Sketches

After dinner with his friends, Edgar Degas would often pull out his sketchbook to draw. He also passed it around, allowing others to make quick caricatures on its pages. On this sheet, the composer Ernest Reyer seems to have turned the tables, making the artist himself the subject in his own book. Reyer was a friend of Degas, and he himself appears in other drawings in this book. Ludovic Halévy added the inscription at the bottom: Degas par [Ernest] Reyer (Degas by Reyer).