Family Portrait painted by Degas restored thanks to Friends of Florence

The Family Portrait made by Edgar Degas and kept at the Musée d’Orsay has been restored thanks to Friends of Florence and until July 23, 2023, it will be displayed as part of the major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay dedicated to Manet and Degas. The exhibition curated by Isolde Pludermarcher and Stéphane Guégan, is co-organized by the Musée d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the exhibition will arrive from September 2023 to January 2024.

A love for Florence and Tuscany led the Friends of Florence foundation to leave Italy for Paris and support the restoration of a painting defined as a stylistic bridge between France and Florence: the Family Portrait by Edgar Degas, also known as La Famille Bellelli, a painting that arose from the artist’s experience of his trip to Florence between the summer of 1858 and the spring of the following year, which the young painter made with his aunt Laure de Gas and her husband Baron Gennaro Bellelli, then in exile in Florence itself. Before making the painting, and with a view to its execution, Degas, made numerous studies of his uncles and cousins that certainly served him well for the Family Portrait, a work on which he continued to work upon his return to Paris and which he finished for the exhibition at the Salon of 1867.

With the understanding that knowledge of art is an essential step in understanding the values of Western culture, Friends of Florence organizes special trips each year for in-depth study and education with art historians of international scope both in Italy and abroad.

In June 2022, the Foundation organized an itinerary for its donors to learn about Monet’s works in Normandy, Giverny and Paris, and it was at the Musée d’Orsay that, thanks to the synergy with the American Friends Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie and the Museum’s own management, the possibility of restoring Degas’ work opened up for Friends of Florence on that occasion.

“Friends of Florence is honored to have supported the restoration of such an important work of world art,” said President Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda. “The work bears witness in all its beauty to both the creative genius of Edgar Degas and the existence for the artist of a relationship between France and Florence where the painter lived between the summer of 1858 and the spring of 1859. Friends of Florence would like to thank the Musée d’Orsay, the curators of the exhibition, the restorers, and the American Friends Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, for allowing the Foundation to help preserve this painting. In addition, our heartfelt thanks also go to our generous donors, Janet and Jim Dicke II, whose gift made the intervention possible.”

The Family Portrait remained with Degas until 1913; it was then left on deposit with the dealer Durand-Ruel, and remained in the artist’s possession until his death in 1917. The work was acquired by the state in 1918, shortly before its posthumous sale.

The painting had, among other things, four large tears that occurred very early in the work’s history, restored using pieces of rintelo on the verso and stucco. Over time, these old restorations (visible to the naked eye) had become particularly prominent, causing further lifting problems in these areas. Uneven varnish had also caused loss of definition of the figures and motifs, shading, planes, and depth of composition. Re-lined before 1918, restored in 1984, no major work had been done on the painting for nearly four decades.

The restoration was preceded byextensive documentary research into its material history during the artist’s lifetime, up to its entry into the national collections in 1918.

At the same time, the work was entrusted to the Center for Research and Restoration of French Museums (C2RMF) to be analyzed with a view to its restoration. The history of previous interventions on the painting was studied, as well as its support and pictorial layer, thanks to the punctual examination of the four tears and other ancient alterations that occurred on the work.

A new campaign was carried out: in particular, a complete X-ray of the painting, infrared reflectography, infrared photography in false colors, and many details in direct light were taken. These elements, jointly analyzed by the teams of C2RMF (Bruno Mottin, Laurence Clivet, Eric Laval, Thomas Clot), Musée d’Orsay conservation (Anne Robbins, Isolde Pludermacher, Caroline Gaillard) and restorers (Bénédicte Trémolières , Laurence Mugniot, Christian Chatellier), made it possible to clarify the chronology of interventions on the painting, from its beginnings to the present day. Radiography, integrating the edges of the painting, confirmed the presence of many pentimenti, while infrared reflectography revealed the trace of preparatory drawings passing over the restoration stuccoes: crucial information, since it demonstrated the artist’s intervention on the already torn painting, and his involvement in the work’s restoration. Moreover, the discovery, on the frame of the painting, of the mark of the restorer Momper, active in Paris between 1843 and 1888, suggests that the latter was the author of these ancient operations.

The study of the drawings and preparatory studies of the painting allowed for a better understanding of the different stages of the elaboration of the composition, its additions and later modifications. Finally, X-ray fluorescence scans, a noninvasive process of analysis, led to a better characterization of the painter’s palette as well as a finer understanding of his artistic practices at this stage of his career.

The preliminary restoration study and initial varnish cleaning tests revealed that the work was dirty; the restorers proceeded to clean these varnishes, thus revealing the fineness of the pictorial material; brightness in its colors was restored to the painting. The work on the support revealed the presence of old newspapers used during its re-tinting on the edges of the work. This allowed the work’s rintelo to be dated around 1885.

Image: Edgar Degas, Family Portrait (1858-1859; oil on canvas, 249.5 x 201 cm; Paris, Musée d’Orsay)

Family Portrait painted by Degas restored thanks to Friends of Florence

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