Henri Degas and His Niece Lucie Degas (The Artist's Uncle and Cousin)

Two people sit together in a quiet room: an older man and a young girl, both dressed in black. They are Henri Degas and his niece Lucie, painted by the artist Edgar Degas, who was Henri's nephew and Lucie's first cousin. The canvas is large, about four feet wide and a little over three feet high, and it is painted in oil. Notice how much of the picture is left plain around the two figures. The background is spare, so your eye goes straight to their heads and upper bodies. A table covered with papers lies between them and the painter.

Start with the two heads. Both tilt in a similar way, which quietly links the man and the girl. Their black clothes do the same, since both are in mourning. Now look at what pulls them apart. In the background, the edge of a French door, which is a tall glass-paned door, runs behind the figures. The back of Henri's chair rises beside it. Together these lines split the canvas into separate sections, one for each person. Finally, look for places where the paint is thin and the details are left unresolved, as though the artist stopped before finishing.

Edgar Degas seldom accepted commissions. He usually painted close friends and family, especially relatives on the Italian side of his family, in Florence and Naples, where he often visited. He most likely painted this double portrait in 1875, during a four-month stay in Naples. Lucie was his orphaned first cousin, and she had recently been placed in the care of their uncle Henri. Degas himself had recently lost his own father. The thin paint and unfinished details suggest that he never completed the work, yet the plain background still serves the portrait well.

Degas shows two people many years apart in age, tentatively accepting their new life together. He treats the subject with candor and sensitivity. The picture feels both intimate and distant, casual and guarded. It speaks of how fragile family ties can be, and how necessary. That includes the tie to a third relative, Degas himself, who sits on the far side of the paper-covered table and paints them. Look once more at the space between Henri and Lucie, where the door edge and the chair back stand, and ask how close or how far apart they seem.