Pagans and Degas's Father

Auguste De Gas, the painter's father, died in Naples in 1874. Some 20 years later his son put him back into a picture, sitting once more beside the Spanish tenor Lorenzo Pagans and his guitar. Degas had painted the two men together around 1870, at the musical evenings of the family home, and this canvas returns to that scene long after the father and those evenings were gone. It is dated to about 1895 and is nearly square, about 81 by 84 centimetres. After Degas died it passed to his nephew Henri Fèvre, who also owned one of the earlier versions, and in June 1925 the two pictures were sold in the same Paris auction, one lot after the other. In 1996 this one went to London and Chicago for an exhibition of Degas's late work. Today it hangs at the Museum of Fine Arts on loan from a private collection, the Isabelle and Scott Black Collection, while the earlier version from that 1925 sale belongs to the museum itself.