Camille Pissarro

Among the most complex prints in Degas’s collection were those by Pissarro and Mary Cassatt, whose accomplishments owed much to their association with Degas. Both were Degas’s main collaborators in a failed 1879 venture to produce a journal of prints to be called Le Jour et la nuit (Day and Night). If you look carefully, you will see that the color on this work was applied over a print. When the printing plate became flawed, the artist used a print from it as a starting point for a new work. Likely this idea came from Degas, who had regularly created new compositions using prints in this way.