A Cotton Office in New Orleans

Edgar Degas

Oil on canvas

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Painted in early 1873 during Degas's only visit to the United States, A Cotton Office in New Orleans depicts the interior of his maternal uncle Michel Musson's cotton factoring firm on Carondelet Street in New Orleans. The composition functions simultaneously as a group portrait and a document of nineteenth-century commercial life: Musson examines raw cotton in the foreground, Degas's brother René reads a newspaper at center, and brother Achille leans against a window partition at left, while associates conduct business throughout the bustling office space. Degas employs a characteristic off-axis perspective and a restrained palette of blacks, whites, and neutral tones, achieving a naturalistic snapshot of modern working life that set him apart from both academic history painting and looser Impressionist handling. The painting stands as one of the most significant images of nineteenth-century capitalism in the history of Western art, praised at the 1876 Impressionist Exhibition in Paris for its relatively finished and carefully observed quality.