Lorenzo Pagans y Auguste de Gas

Around 1871 Degas painted two people he knew well in the same room. In front is Lorenzo Pagans, a Catalan tenor who was a fixture of the Paris musical evenings Degas loved, caught in the act of singing over his guitar. Behind him, half in shadow, sits Degas's own father Auguste, listening. These recitals happened in the family drawing room and at the house of Degas's friend the painter Manet, and Degas clearly wanted to hold on to the feeling of them. He never sold this canvas. He kept it hanging in his bedroom, above his bed, until he died in 1917.