Retrato de Léon Bonnat

Degas painted this in 1863, when he and Léon Bonnat were young men who had met in Rome a few years earlier, both studying the old masters far from home. They stayed friends, though their careers pulled apart. Bonnat became one of the most sought-after portraitists in Paris and a powerful teacher, with a queue of wealthy sitters. Degas took a very different road toward the loose, modern scenes he is now known for. Bonnat was also a serious collector, and he built a museum in Bayonne, the town where he was born. That is where this portrait hangs today, an early, unguarded likeness of the man by a friend who knew him before either of them was famous.