Degas: A New Vision

Degas: A New Vision offers the most significant international survey in nearly 30 years of the work of Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834–1917). The reputation of this celebrated French artist has often focused on his ballet imagery, and yet Degas’s rich, complex, and abundant oeuvre spans the entire second half of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th.

The MFAH is the only U.S. venue for this exhibition, which assembles some 200 works from public and private collections around the world. Degas: A New Vision showcases the continuity of the artist’s abiding interests across painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture from the beginning to the end of his career.

Not since the landmark international retrospective Degas in 1988 has the artist's career been fully assessed. That exhibition led to a revival of interest in Degas, with dozens of shows focusing on individual subjects of his work—the bathers, the dancers, the jockeys, the portraits—or his influence on other artists. Degas: A New Vision benefits from that scholarship, puts Degas back together again, and offers an opportunity to see the artist anew.

The MFAH developed Degas: A New Vision with the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, site of the show’s June 2016 world premiere. The Houston installation features most of the works presented at the NGV, as well as some 60 additional loans exclusive to the MFAH, including major works such as Dancers, Pink and Green from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and preparatory drawings reunited with the iconic paintings that evolved from them.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

The exhibition catalog is available at the MFA bookstore