Degas IN NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans Museum of Art

The French Impressionist's visit to Louisiana in 1872-73 inspired a series of memorable, sometimes haunting portraits of his New Orleans family, as well as stunning scenes of life in one of America's most beautiful cities.

EDGAR DEGAS is widely regarded as the quintessential Parisian painter of ballet dancers, bathers, and laundresses, as well as the racetrack and theater. In October, 1872, the not-yet-famous artist left Paris for a journey to America. His destination was New Orleans, birthplace of his mother. There he would spend the winter with his relatives in a handsome mansion on Esplanade Avenue. He had come from France by steamer to New York, where he boarded a train for the four-day journey to Louisiana. A small group of doting relatives was on hand to greet him at the train depot on Lake Pontchartrain, tot. as the artist liked to say, he was almost a "son of Louisiana."

The story of Degas and New Orleans, though, is larger than this brief stay on his mother's native soil. Although his visit was short, Louisiana played a considerable and sustained role in his life. It is a richly documented, personal, family saga, one that is inextricably bound up with the wider scope of history--economics, war, and epidemics. It is a remarkable illustration of the interconnection between French-Creole Louisiana and France.

The account of Degas' visit to New Orleans has been told and retold. Each time, it looks different, according to the author's view, new evidence, and the corrections of old errors. That he was the only member of the French Impressionists to have worked in North America is a fact that still takes many people by surprise.

In every important respect, Degas' New Orleans visit was a family one, and family would be his subject while in America. His letters describe the exotic sights of the city: steamboats on the Mississippi, beautiful women of African descent, white mansions with fluted columns, and orange and banana trees. However, he complained that the bright light hurt his ailing eyes and remained more often indoors, basking in the warm domesticity of his adoring relatives.

"Family portraits. You have to do them to the taste of the family, in impossible light, with many interruptions, with models who are very affectionate but a bit free and easy with you, and who take you much less seriously because you are their nephew or their cousin," Degas wrote. Despite such tribulations, Degas, arguably among the greatest of portraitists, created a suite of unforgettable images of his New Orleans kin.

His two brothers, Rene and Achille, had already moved to New Orleans and set up an import-export business. Rene had married his first cousin Estelle, daughter of his uncle, Michel Musson, and they were raising a family in the Musson home on Esplanade Avenue. Edgar's cousin and sister-in-law was a favorite subject. Estelle had nearly lost her sight, and Degas chronicled the dignity with which she bore her infirmity. The cousins shared a love of music, and it is probably Estelle who appears singing a duet in "The Song Rehearsal," accompanied on the piano Rene had sent back from France. There are haunting portraits as well of Estelle's sister depicting her propped up weakly in a chair, reminders that illness was never far away during 19th-century New Orleans.

Degas' ties to the New World ran deep. His mother, Celestine Musson, was born to a prominent French-Creole family in New Orleans. Celestine's father, Germain Musson, who fled the uprisings in Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) and settled in New Orleans in 1809, married advantageously into one of the city's oldest Creole families, the Rillieux. When Germain's wife died at a young age in 1819, leaving five children, he packed them up, including the four-year-old Celestine, and moved to Paris. While providing for his children's education and upbringing in Paris, Germain continued to carry on business in America, dividing his time between the two continents. He was killed in 1853 when his coach overturned in Mexico, where he was attempting to make a fortune in silver mines.

Meanwhile, Germaine's daughter Celestine had married Auguste De Gas in 1832, thus providing their future son Edgar with an international background. The family spelled their name De Gas, the particle indicating nobility. The De Gas patent of nobility is, in fact, a false concoction, and it has been shown that the family was descended from bakers. Edgar changed the spelling to "Degas," eschewing the pretense to nobility. While Celestine's sister Anne and her brothers Henri and Eugene remained in Paris, her eldest brother, Michel Musson, studied law at the University at Gottingen, Germany, then the cotton business in England. Thus educated, he returned to America to establish himself in New Orleans as a businessman and raise his own family.

Michel Musson married Odile Longer of a prominent New Orleans family. In the 1830s, it wag said to be "unpardonable social ignorance" not to know the married names of the eight Longer sisters, through whom the Mussons became cousins of many of New Orleans' leading families, both French-Creole and American. This included a cousin, Emma Hermann, whom Edgar's brother Achille eventually married. Michel and Odile Musson had seven children, of which three daughters would survive into adulthood--Estelle, Desiree, and Mathilde. Their family would be the subject of most of the portraits made during Degas' visit to New Orleans.

In January, 1862, Estelle married Capt. Joseph Davis Balfour (nephew of Confederate States of America Pres. Jefferson Davis), who was killed within 10 months in the battle of Corinth. Three weeks later, their daughter, Estelle Josephine Balfour, called Joe, was born. In June, 1863, to escape the misery of New Orleans during Union occupation, Odile Longer Musson accompanied two of her daughters, Desiree and Estelle, as well as Estelle's baby daughter, on an extended visit to France.

When the women first arrived in France, Edgar and Rene showed them the sights of Paris. All evidence suggests that they were sweet-natured, charming, and brave in the face of the adversity that plagued them throughout their lives. The reciprocal affection between them and the children of Celestine was apparently instantaneous and genuine. The adoration among the cousins was such that the 18-year-old Rene seems to have fallen in love with Estelle and, within a month of the Mussons' arrival, had fixed on the idea of accompanying the family back to America. On June 17, 1869, Rene and Estelle married. When Edgar Degas arrived in New Orleans, he was in time to stand as godfather to their third child, Jeanne.

In New Orleans, Degas' moods varied. His earliest letters registered his initial excitement of the trip. He was ebullient at being reunited with his adored and adoring Louisiana family, the abundance of new nieces and nephews, and the novelties of the city. He described the sights, but he had to be careful out of doors as the strong, bright light of New Orleans hurt his eyes, which had been bothering him even before the trip. In fact, the weather conditions of the city proved difficult for Degas, who described a "climate that must be unbearable in the summer and is somehow deadening during the other seasons." The humidity took its toll. His inspiration to paint the exotic panorama of New Orleans was fleeting. By turns, lethargy, restlessness, and homesickness hung over his days. Degas' ennui seemed to accompany the realization that he was not the artist to paint the New World. He resolved to return to Paris and paint what he knew, maintaining that "One loves and gives art only to the things to which one is accustomed."

Degas' family had many friends and connections in New Orleans and, even with Estelle's confinement, there were visits and dinner parties. Family members and friends recalled stories of excursions made by the artist to the Millaudons' plantation and other homes of the Ducros and Beauregards, close friends of the Mussons and of the De Gas family in Paris. "All day long," wrote Degas, "I am among these dear folk, painting and drawing, making portraits of the family." Yet, he complained of the difficulty. The lighting was impossible, and his relatives did not take him quite seriously. Frustrating conditions aside, the family portraits from New orleans form a unique group, and virtually all the works from the trip are, on some level, family portraits.

Degas originally intended to stay just two months in New Orleans. His trunks were packed to leave in early January, 1873, but he reported that he had missed his train and the ship sailed without him. Had he left on time, he might never have painted "A Cotton Office in New Orleans." In any event, when Degas finally was ready to leave, he was anxious to make the return crossing on a French ship traveling via Havana. He was back in Paris by mid March, 1873.

The exhibition, "Degas and New Orleans: A French Impressionist in America," reassembles much of the fascinating work the artist created during his sojourn to Louisiana and offers the chance to see his paintings within the context of family drama and history. It is on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art through Aug. 29.

Gail Feigenbaum is curator of European painting, New Orleans (La.) Museum of Art.

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