Évariste de Valernes

A small plaque on the frame still says, in French, that the Office of Private Property assigned this painting to the Louvre in 1950. Degas signed and dated the portrait in 1868, at the lower right. His sitter, Évariste de Valernes, was a painter from Provence, 18 years older and a close friend, leaning back here against red upholstery. Valernes owned the canvas until the artist bought it back to help him when he was in need. It stayed in the studio until the sale after Degas died, and it passed to a Paris collector. When that collection was auctioned in occupied Paris in December 1942, a dealer bought it for a client and later claimed the Germans took it the same day. In June 1943 it was sold to the Bavarian state galleries in Munich, and after the war the Allies recovered it there.