This handsomely illustrated book presents more than 70 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures by Edgar Degas (1834–1917) in Harvard University’s collections—one of the most important holdings of the artist’s work in the United States. In 1911, the Fogg Art Museum was the first museum to mount a one-man exhibition on Degas and was the only museum to do so during the artist’s lifetime. This book examines the history of Degas’s reception in the U.S., and in particular the pivotal role that Harvard played.

Marjorie Benedict Cohn offers a historical account of the formation of the prized collection of Degas’s works at the Fogg. Jean Sutherland Boggs provides an engaging personal recollection of her initial encounter in 1944 with the work of Degas and his champion at the Fogg, associate director Paul J. Sachs, who inspired not only Boggs’s later work on Degas but also that of many other art historians, museum directors, and curators.

Marjorie Benedict Cohn is the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints Emerita at the Harvard University Art Museums. Jean Sutherland Boggs, now retired, was formerly director of the National Gallery of Canada, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, and director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This catalogue is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Harvard University Art Museums at held at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (August 1–November 27, 2005).

Funding for the exhibition and catalogue has been generously provided by Mrs. Arthur K. Solomon, Manson Benedict, and the Edward A. Waters Publication Fund in the Andrew W. Mellon Publication Funds.

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