Hilaire de Gas

Degas was 22 when he painted this, spending the winter of 1857 in Naples with the old man in the chair, his grandfather Rene-Hilaire. The grandfather's story sits behind the calm portrait: as a young man he had fled France during the Revolution, when the Terror made his position dangerous, and rebuilt his life in Naples as a grain trader and banker, founding the fortune the family lived on. Here he is near 90, seated in the reception room of his villa above the bay, upright and a little severe in the warm afternoon light. Degas had come to Italy to study the old masters, drawing and copying for months on end, and portraits of relatives like this were where he practiced what he was learning. The old man died the following year, in 1858.