Beach at Low Tide (Mouth of the River)

Prints and Drawings

1869

Edgar Degas
French, 1834–1917

Edgar Degas visited the coast of Normandy in the autumn of 1869 and was inspired to create over 40 small-scale landscape pastels. This particular sheet is one of the very best of this group: clearly articulated and unusual in being signed and dated, it is the only seascape that Degas relinquished during his lifetime.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas
Title: Beach at Low Tide (Mouth of the River)
Origin: France
Date: 1869
Medium: Pastel on light brown wove paper
Inscriptions: Signed and dated, lower right, in graphite: “Degas 69”
Dimensions: 232 × 307 mm
Credit Line: Regenstein Acquisition Fund
Reference Number: 2013.164
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P.A. Lemoisne, Degas et son Oeuvre (Paris, 1946), II:106–107, no. 200 (ill.).
Jacques Lassaigne and Fiorella Minervino, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Degas (Milan, 1974), p. 100, no. 315 (ill.).
Richard Kendall, Degas Landscapes, exh. cat. (New Haven, 1993), p. 282, note 11.

London, Alex. Reid & Lefevre, Ltd. (The Lefevre Galleries), Important Pictures by Nineteenth Century French Masters, May–June 1924, cat. 6, as Embouchure de Riviere (price £850 [catalogue was revised June 23, 1924].
London, Alex. Reid & Lefevre, Ltd. (The Lefevre Galleries), Exhibition of Works by Degas, June 1928, p. 14, cat. 16; shown also in Glasgow in May 1928.
New York, Bignou Gallery, An Exhibition of English and French Landscapes by 19th Century French Painters, January 1941, no. 7.
Los Angeles, County Museum of Art, Degas Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture, March 1958, hors cat.
Palo Alto, Stanford University Gallery, on extended loan.
Los Angeles, County Museum of Art, on extended loan.
San Francisco, The Fine Arts Museum, on extended loan.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Master Drawings Unveiled: 25 Years of Major Acquisitions,” August 27, 2016–January 29, 2017, no cat.

Given by the artist to Dr. Camus, Paris, 1869 [Lemoisne 1946 notes that the drawing “was given by Degas to Dr. C.,” presumably Dr. Camus]. Lefevre Galleries (Alex. Reid & Lefevre), Glasgow and London, by June 1924 [London 1924]. David William Trail Cargill (1872–1939), Stanmore, Lanark, Scotland, probably by 1928 [London 1928]; by descent to the Cargill Trust, 1939; consigned for sale to Bignou Gallery, New York, July 24, 1940 [email from Emily Down, Tate, May 2, 2013, in curatorial file]. Joseph Martin, Jr. (1915–2000), San Francisco. Sold, Christie’s, New York, November 19, 1998, lot 211, to a private collector. Sold by Ben Elwes Elwes Fine Art, London, to the Art Institute, 2013.

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