Young Woman with Ibis - Edgar Degas (ca. 1857–1862)

Edgar Degas

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Young Woman with Ibis is an oil on canvas painting begun during Degas's second stay in Rome in 1857–58 and reworked in Paris around 1860–62. Originally conceived as a study of a pensive seated woman, the composition was transformed when Degas added an imaginary Middle Eastern cityscape, pink flowers, and two vivid red ibises, lending the work an air of mystery and exotic reverie. The painting reflects Degas's early ambition to be a history painter in the tradition of Ingres and Delacroix, drawing on classical figure conventions while experimenting with Orientalist imagery, a tendency also visible in his large contemporaneous canvas Semiramis Building Babylon. Like many of Degas's early works, the canvas remained unfinished and in the artist's possession until his death, with the freely sketched birds contrasting against the more meticulously rendered figure and drapery.