Victoria Dubourg

Although this portrait seems to present “slice of life” informality, Edgar Degas went to great lengths to compose the painting to his satisfaction. His effort to work out specific details as well as the overall composition is recorded in a sketchbook sheet and three other known drawings. Degas’s revisions can also be seen on the canvas itself. On the wall above the woman’s head, you might be able to make out the two framed pictures that Degas decided to remove by reworking the paint surface.

The woman depicted in the portrait, Victoria Dubourg (1840–1926), was an acquaintance of Degas’s. A painter herself, she met the artist Henri Fantin-Latour while they both were sketching in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. They became engaged in 1869, eventually marrying in 1878. Dubourg moved in a circle of artists and writers and earned a modest reputation for her still life paintings, to which Degas no doubt alludes by including a vase of lilacs.