Landscape with Smokestacks

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

Pastel over monotype on textured cream wove paper, edge-mounted on board

Art Institute of Chicago

Landscape with Smokestacks is a pastel over monotype on textured cream wove paper, created by Edgar Degas around 1890. The work depicts a pastoral scene in which distant factory smokestacks rise against a hazy sky, blending the natural and industrial worlds in a characteristically brooding, atmospheric composition. Degas produced the work using his distinctive technique of applying pastel over a printed monotype impression, a process he pioneered in the 1870s that yielded uniquely luminous and evocative results. Though best known for his ballet scenes and urban subjects, Degas returned to landscape in the 1890s—often working from memory and imagination rather than direct observation—making this work a significant example of his experimental late practice.