Hilaire de Gas

Hilaire de Gas was born in 1770, so when his grandson painted him in 1857 he was well into his eighties. He sits at a table in a grey cap and glasses, reading a sheet of paper, a small dark box by his hand. The canvas is about 26 centimetres high, and the Musée d'Orsay lists it as unfinished. The background is two blocks of colour, rusty brown and blue, and the hands are only roughed in. That same year Degas painted him again in a larger, formal portrait, also at the Orsay. This small one stayed with Degas's brother René and was sold in Paris after his death, in 1927. After decades in New York collections it returned to France in 1981, a gift from the collectors Arnold Askin and his wife, made at the urging of John Rewald, the historian of Impressionism.