Bookshelves, Study for "Edmond Duranty"

Bookshelves, Study for "Edmond Duranty" is a preparatory drawing created by Edgar Degas in 1879. This highly structural study, classified as a drawing, utilizes dark brown chalk, skillfully heightened with white chalk. The artist executed the work on blue laid paper, which has since softened and faded to a beige hue, demonstrating the natural aging process of 19th-century paper supports.

The purpose of this piece was to map the detailed background for Degas’s celebrated oil portrait of his friend, the influential art critic Louis Edmond Duranty. The final portrait depicts Duranty seated amidst the literary volumes of his private library. Degas used the Bookshelves, Study for "Edmond Duranty" to specifically focus on the architectural arrangement and the dense rows of books, emphasizing the environment as a symbolic reflection of Duranty’s intellectual life and profession.

The technique employed here highlights Degas's mastery of line and tone. The contrast between the dark brown chalk defining the shelving units and the white heightening used for reflective surfaces establishes volume and depth, expertly translating observed light and shadow into structural line work. This drawing is a critical example of Degas's intensive preparatory methods before committing to oil painting. This important piece from the Impressionist period currently resides in the extensive collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While the original drawing requires careful preservation, high-quality archival prints often allow greater public access to such key preliminary studies by the artist.