Place de la Concorde (painting)
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Place de la Concorde |
Edgar Degas, 1875 |
oil on canvas |
78.4 × 117.5 cm |
Hermitage Museum |
Place de la Concorde or Viscount Lepic and his Daughters Crossing the Place de la Concorde or Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter is an 1875 oil by Edgar Degas. It depicts the cigar smoking Vicomte Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, his daughters, and his dog, and a solitary man on the left in Place de la Concorde in Paris. Tuileries Gardens can be seen in the background behind a stone wall. The Vicomte Lepic was an aristocrat, artist, and flâneur. Many art historians believe that the large amount of negative space, the cropping and the way in which the figures are facing in random directions was influenced by photography.
This signal artwork was considered lost for four decades following WWII, until the Russian authorities put it on exhibit at the Hermitage Museum, where it remains to this day. It was confiscated by the Red Army from the German collector Otto Gerstenberg during the post-WWII Soviet occupation of Germany.
Degas also painted the Viscount Lepic and His Daughters in separate 1870 painting.