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Degas and Henri Rouart were at school together at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, lost each other for 20 years, and met again in 1870 in an artillery unit defending Paris from the Prussians, where Rouart turned out to be Degas's commanding officer. Five years later Degas painted him standing in a top hat in front of the works he owned.

Rouart was an engineer who made his money in metal and in the new business of mechanical refrigeration, and Degas said plainly that he admired him for it. The railway lines behind him converge on a vanishing point just past his head, tying the man to the source of his wealth in the same piece of perspective. Rouart painted as well, and he showed in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions while quietly buying his friends' work when almost nobody else would.