Edgar DegasFrench, 1834–1917The Millinery Shop by Edgar Degas
The Millinery Shop
May one see it?
Yes, receiving visitors
Art Institute of Chicago
Room226Chicago, United States
On public display.
- Checked
- 5 hours ago
- In this state since
- Aug 16, 2026
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the painting
The Millinery Shop is an oil on canvas painting by the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas created between 1879 and 1886. It illustrates a young woman, perhaps a hat-maker or a shop customer, seated at a table examining a hat in her hands and additional hats on wooden stands. The colorful and fashionable hats take up most the frame. At 100 x 110.7 cm, it is the largest work Degas created on the subject of milliners. The painting is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Particulars
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago: the museum's own open data · fetched 4 days ago
- Image: Wikimedia Commons — Public domain (PD-Art)
Meanwhile, in the life of Edgar Degas
The whole life1870s
From “de Gas” back to plain “Degas”
The archives disproved the legend of an ancient noble line: the artist's paternal ancestors were bakers, and the name “de Gas” was invented by his father, who commissioned a false genealogy. In the 1870s Edgar returned to the plain spelling, Degas.
second half of the 1870s
Pastel becomes his main medium
Degas increasingly chose pastel, often combining it with monotype, lithography, etching or gouache. To keep the colour from darkening under ordinary fixatives he devised his own method of fixing and applied pastel in layers.
1877
Friendship with Mary Cassatt
Degas invited Mary Cassatt to show in the third Impressionist exhibition, having admired her portrait “Ida” at the Salon of 1874. He introduced her to pastel and engraving, while she helped him sell paintings and promoted his reputation in the United States.
autumn 1879 – April 1880
The prints journal: Degas abruptly withdraws
In the autumn and winter of 1879–1880 Degas and Cassatt worked closely together on a prints journal; he owned a small printing press. In April 1880 Degas abruptly withdrew, and without his support the project folded.
by 1880
The end of his financial crisis
By 1880 Degas had fully overcome his financial crisis and become a respected figure in the Paris art world; the Impressionist exhibitions, which proved commercially useful to him, helped.
1881
“The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years” on show
The nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and a cloth tutu, modelled on Marie van Goethem, provoked a strong reaction: critics found its realism extraordinary, but many denounced the dancer as ugly. It was the only sculpture Degas showed in his lifetime.
