Famous work · not an exact-location map point
Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste de Gas
The Spanish singer Lorenzo Pagans playing guitar while Degas's father listens — a musical evening in the Degas family apartment in Paris.
No single real-world viewpoint
A domestic double portrait of a singer and the artist's father; no depicted real place — the coordinate is the whole city of Paris.
Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste de Gas — at a glance
- Artist
- Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
- Year
- c. 1871–1872
- Movement
- Impressionism / Realism
- Place
- The Degas family apartment, Paris
- Viewpoint
- A corner of a private domestic interior — not an identifiable public site; not preserved
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 54 × 40 cm
- Now at
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Overview
This intimate double portrait by Edgar Degas, painted about 1871–72, records the musical evenings held in his family's Paris apartment. In the foreground the Catalan singer and guitarist Lorenzo Pagans, a regular guest, sits playing, sheet music on a stand; behind him, half in shadow, Degas's elderly father, Auguste De Gas, sits with his head bowed, listening. It is oil on canvas, about 54 by 40 cm, and it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Degas kept the picture in his own bedroom until his death.
Where was Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste de Gas painted?
Scholarship The setting is a room in the apartment of Degas's father, a banker, in central Paris, where musicians and friends gathered in the evenings. The picture shows only a corner — a wall with a gilt-framed picture, a curtain, the music stand — rather than an identifiable, public location; the apartment is not preserved as it was. It is tied to Paris as a private domestic interior and a family memory.
What is in the painting?
Pagans, dark-bearded, in evening dress, sits well forward, guitar across his knee, fingers on the strings, looking at his music on a stand at the left. Behind and above him, smaller in the picture, Auguste De Gas sits in an armchair, grey-haired, hands together, head inclined, absorbed in the music. A patterned wall, a framed picture and a fall of curtain fill the background. Warm lamplight.
Look closely
Pagans at the guitar
The singer sits well forward, guitar across his knee, eyes on the music stand at the left.
Auguste De Gas listening
The artist's grey-haired father sits back in an armchair, head bowed, hands together, absorbed.
The framed picture behind
A gilt-framed painting and a fall of curtain fill the patterned wall.
Analysis
Composition and technique
The performer large and close in the foreground, the listening father set back and smaller — hearing made visible.
Scholarship Degas gives the musician the active foreground and pushes the old man back into a quieter, dimmer register, so the picture is really about listening — the father's bowed, inward attention. The cropping and the off-centre placement are characteristic.
History & provenance
Degas kept the painting privately; after his death it entered the French national collections and hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. He also made a later version.
Sources
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris — collection entry for Edgar Degas, ‘Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste De Gas’ (c. 1871–72)
- Jean Sutherland Boggs et al., ‘Degas’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988)
Related paintings
More by Edgar Degas
L'Absinthe
A Cotton Office in New Orleans
Young Spartans Exercising
