Ашиль Де Га в форме кадета

In July 1856 Degas left Paris for Italy. He was 22, and had given up law for painting two years earlier. His younger brother Achille, born in 1838, had taken the steadier road and entered the French naval school before he turned 17. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, which owns the portrait, dates it 1856 or 1857, and the smooth careful handling of the head follows Ingres, the painter Degas admired above all others. The uniform did not hold Achille long. He left the navy for the family cotton business in New Orleans, where Degas painted him again in 1873, and in August 1875, on the steps of the Paris stock exchange, he was struck with a cane by the husband of a former mistress and fired five shots after the man as he ran.