Edgar Dega, Ploshchadʹ Soglasii͡a

The eminent scholar and curator of West European paintings at the Hermitage looks closely at a recently restored painting by Degas that came to the Hermitage from a German private collection in 1945. Place de la Concorde impresses Kostenevich not only as a masterpiece of Degas{u2019}s but as a key painting of the nineteenth century. Degas managed to work in a great tradition even as he experimented with new techniques of composition that harbingered modern art. The lack of contemporary records on how the work was received and the absence of any mention of the work by Degas leave many open questions that the author seeks to answer in this catalogue of a Hermitage exhibition. -- Summary written by John W. Emerich, Bronze Horseman Literary Agency.