Degas Cotton Office In New Orleans: Introduction

At the front of A Cotton Office in New Orleans, an older man bends over a little tuft of cotton. His hands are close together, testing something the viewer cannot test: the fiber's quality. Behind him, cotton spreads across a long table and passes between other hands. One man offers a sample, another appears to consider it, and others read, watch or work farther back. Degas has made the white material the brightest recurring presence in a busy room. The painting invites us to look at the merchants' activity, but it also raises a question the room cannot answer on its own: whose work brought the cotton there? ^{[1][2][3] [10]}

The man in front is Michel Musson, the artist's maternal uncle. Degas stayed with the Musson family during his visit to New Orleans in 1872–73. The picture includes his brothers René and Achille and, according to art historian Michelle Foa, their relative William Bell. It is a family-connected group portrait and a painting about trade at the same time. Those two subjects cannot be pulled neatly apart. The figures' relationships gave Degas access to this workplace, while the workplace gave him a way to arrange people around the commodity on which the family's business depended. ^[2][3]

At a glance

• ArtistEdgar Degas
• TitleA Cotton Office in New Orleans; Pau's French title is Un bureau de coton à La Nouvelle-Orléans
• Date1873
• MediumOil on canvas
• Size73 × 92 cm
• CollectionMusée des Beaux-Arts de Pau; owned by the city of Pau
• Inventory878.1.2 in the museum's detailed object record
• First major displaySecond Impressionist exhibition, Paris, 1876
• Museum acquisitionPurchased for Pau in 1878

Contents

1. Introduction
2. At a Glance
3. A family visit became a subject
4. Who is in the office?
5. How Degas built the room
6. What happens to the cotton?
7. Two paintings made in New Orleans
8. An intended buyer and an unexpected museum
9. Looking again

These object facts come from the owning museum's detailed record, supported by the National Gallery of Victoria's later exhibition labels. The exact inventory number matters because Degas made another New Orleans cotton-office painting in the same year. The second work, now at Harvard, is a different object. ^[1][4]

A family visit became a subject

Degas's mother, Marie Célestine Musson, came from New Orleans. He travelled there with his brother René in 1872 and lived among his mother's relatives until early 1873. René and Achille were already involved in the city's cotton trade. Foa, speaking in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Manet/Degas guide, distinguishes their roles from that of their uncle: the brothers bought cotton on behalf of French merchants, while Michel Musson acted as a factor for southern planters. A factor was an intermediary who handled planters' crops and sales. The painting brings these connected forms of commercial work into one family room. ^[3][5]

The trip offered Degas an unfamiliar setting without taking him away from people he knew. He tried to make portraits of relatives but complained in letters about the difficulty of arranging sittings and about the light. His New Orleans letters also mention cotton repeatedly. The National Gallery of Victoria quotes a December 1872 letter to Henri Rouart in which Degas says life there turns on cotton. By February 1873 he was writing to James Tissot about a large office picture and another, simpler version. These letters are unusually valuable: they tell us what projects the artist described while he was there. They do not provide a full account of every stage of making either canvas. ^[2][4][5]

The Pau painting was more than a souvenir of a family visit. Degas described a substantial picture with roughly fifteen people concerned with a cotton-covered table. That description fits the ambition of a carefully organized multi-figure scene. The National Gallery of Victoria calls the finished work a group portrait of fourteen men. We need not make the difference between a number in a working letter and the curator's count into a mystery. One describes a project in progress; the other counts figures in the work as seen. What matters for looking is the unusually wide range of small actions packed into an interior of modest size. ^[2][4]

Who is in the office?

Michel Musson occupies the foreground. His dark suit and tall hat form a heavy shape against the lighter floor and cotton. Although he is nearest to us, the picture does not grant him a conventional frontal portrait. His head tilts down and his fingers work with a sample. He is identified through an action associated with his business. The detail matters because it begins the viewer's movement through the painting: his small piece of fiber leads to the mass of cotton on the table behind him. ^[2][3]

René De Gas sits near the center reading a newspaper. Pau identifies it as the Daily Picayune. The text is not a readable newspaper article in the source reproduction, and the paper's presence does not by itself establish what story he was reading. Pau's feature mentions a bankruptcy report dated 1 February 1873, but without an independently checked issue it would be unsafe to turn the small painted page into evidence of a precise report. The visible fact is more modest and more useful: one family member attends to printed news while others handle the commodity in front of him. ^[2]

Achille leans against the glazed partition on the left. His dark clothing almost merges with the recess behind him, but his pale face and hands keep him visible. Unlike the central men, he seems to be watching rather than inspecting a sample. Foa identifies another relative, William Bell, half seated near the cotton-covered table, encouraging a potential buyer to examine the fiber. Her identification adds a social relation to what we can see. It does not license names for every figure in the back rooms. Some remain workers or visitors within the painting whose exact identities are not necessary for understanding its arrangement. ^[2][3]

It is tempting to call the scene an instant of ordinary business, as if Degas had simply stood by and recorded everyone where he happened to be. The painting offers stronger evidence of design than of an unplanned instant. Musson is enlarged at the front, René reads at a conspicuous angle, Achille anchors the left edge, and each group occupies a different depth of the room. Degas distributes looking and handling so that no one action tells the whole story. The family members' recognized faces coexist with a wider picture of commercial roles. ^[3][4]

How Degas built the room

The long table makes a diagonal from the lower left toward the center. Its cotton is a broad, irregular band of light rather than a tidy stack of bales. Dark coats and hats break that band into separate encounters. On the right, the figure working at a desk is cut by the canvas edge; on the left, the seated foreground figure is also clipped by the frame. This cropping makes the pictured office feel as though its activity extends beyond what we can see. It is a choice in the painted composition, not proof that Degas copied a photographic snapshot. ^[2][4]

The viewpoint is slightly elevated. We look down onto the floor, table and the top of Musson's hat. The painted floor opens a large foreground space, while the narrow back room appears much smaller. Tall glass panels form another pattern: they separate the near figures from the people behind them, but let us see across the division. A reader can follow the painting in stages, from Musson's hands to the white fiber, from the center pair to René's paper, and then through the windows to the far work area. ^[1][4]

Pau draws attention to the limited colors: pale green walls, ochre floor, dark clothing and the brilliant white of cotton. These contrasts do real work. The fiber does not simply tell us the subject; it organizes the light and moves the eye. One pale patch of cotton is offered between two men, another mass covers the table, and smaller light shapes appear at the far right. The repeated white can make the room look orderly. Yet the people are not lined up for a single transaction. Their different scales and directions create a complex, somewhat unsettled rhythm. ^[2][4]

The National Gallery of Victoria has compared this group arrangement with older Dutch guild portraits. That is a productive formal comparison if kept bounded. Both kinds of picture can use a gathering of people at work to represent a collective activity, and Degas had studied older European art. But the comparison does not turn the New Orleans men into members of a guild or explain away the specific cotton economy around them. The office's distinctive features are the handled fiber, the glazed partition, the dispersed actions and the sharply cropped modern room. ^[4]

There is a useful difference between knowing where to look and being told what to think about each face. The painting gives a sequence of small tasks, but it does not supply a clear beginning or end to a transaction. Musson might continue testing, the men at the table might accept or reject a sample, and René might put down his paper. None of these later events is visible. Degas holds the room at a point where several processes are still open. That is why the scattered attention of the figures is important: the picture asks the viewer to assemble the office's activity from separate parts, rather than watching a single central drama unfold. ^[1][4]

The signature at the lower right includes New Orleans and 1873, as the Degas catalogue raisonné records. That inscription locates the work's making, but it does not make every figure a person Degas observed at the same hour. He had months among the Mussons and could draw on repeated visits to the office. His correspondence about a picture still in progress supports a period of work and revision. The painted room can therefore be understood as a composition formed from experience, while its exact sequence of studies remains a question for more specialized technical research. ^[2][4][9]

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What happens to the cotton?

Cotton in this room is being judged and traded. Musson pulls apart or feels a small amount; a central man presents another tuft; ledgers, papers and a newspaper share space with the fiber. The painting does not give us a diagram of every stage of a transaction. It shows enough to understand that the raw material's appearance and feel were economically important to these merchants. Before cotton became cloth, people had to grow it, harvest it, transport it, inspect it, price it and sell it. The visible actions belong to the commercial middle of that longer chain. ^[2][3]

The longer chain is crucial because cotton arrived in the New Orleans office from a southern agricultural economy shaped by slavery. Emancipation after the American Civil War changed the legal status of labor, but it did not create equal economic power. National Park Service histories describe how many freed people and their descendants worked under sharecropping arrangements. Those arrangements could give families some control over where and how they worked, while landowners and creditors used costs and debts to keep them dependent. The Met's account, through Foa, connects the Musson family business to both the prewar system and exploitation of sharecroppers afterward. ^[3][6][7]

No plantation picker appears in Degas's painting. Neither the picture nor the sources here tell us which field produced the exact fiber Musson holds. We should not invent a named worker or farm and attach it to this sample. We can, however, describe the relation between what the painting foregrounds and what it leaves outside. White merchants and their commercial judgments occupy the canvas; Black agricultural labor, central to cotton's production before and after emancipation, is absent from the office view. This is a historical limit to the scene's apparent completeness, not a flaw that can be solved by assigning the painting a simple hidden message. ^[3][6][7]

Degas's own letters acknowledge another kind of Black work in New Orleans: Black women caring for white children. Foa observes that this is the Black labor he chose to mention in his surviving account of the visit. She also reports that Musson and William Bell later joined the White League, an anti-Reconstruction white supremacist organization. The timing and attribution matter. These are facts about relatives in the city's political world, not a statement by Degas endorsing their later membership. The Met guide explicitly says that his letters do not tell us what he thought of it. The responsible way to read the canvas is to keep both the racial history of cotton and the limit of the evidence visible. ^[3]

The contrast between office work and field work also changes how we read the painting's calm. The men in the picture can inspect samples and consult papers in a sheltered interior. A cotton crop elsewhere required far more labor under unequal conditions. This observation does not ask a reader to ignore the quality of the painted space. It asks for a fuller description of what the space represents. The white fiber is simultaneously a visual highlight, a product being priced and the result of labor that the composition does not picture. Those three descriptions can coexist without treating the canvas as a complete history lesson or an innocent view of commerce. ^[3][6][7]

Two paintings made in New Orleans

Degas made another painting of cotton merchants during the same stay. Cotton Merchants in New Orleans, now at the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, is dated 1873, painted in oil on linen and catalogued as 1929.90. It is smaller than the Pau oil on canvas. In his letter to Tissot, Degas described the additional version as less complicated, with summer clothing, white walls and a sea of cotton on the tables. The National Gallery of Victoria's labels identify this description with the Harvard painting. These distinctions are especially useful online, where similar English titles have sometimes caused images of the two works to be swapped. ^[4][8]

The comparison shows that Degas did not have only one way to paint the office. The Pau work has a darkly dressed foreground figure, sharply divided spaces and many different gestures. The Harvard version offers a lighter atmosphere and a less densely staged encounter. Both arise from the same New Orleans visit, but neither is merely a close-up or detail of the other. Their supports, dimensions, current collections and compositions are different. When a reproduction is labelled “cotton office,” check whether it shows the seated Musson dominating the front and René reading at the center. Those are reliable visual clues to the Pau canvas discussed here. ^[1][4][8]

The two pictures also caution against taking the first one as a transparent social record. Once Degas is known to have tried another arrangement, it is easier to see the decisions in each. He could crowd the room or open it, push one relative forward or reduce the dominance of a single figure, emphasize dark coats or pale summer dress. Those choices do not make the business unreal. They make the painted account selective. The artist worked with observations of a real office and with the freedoms of composition. ^[2][4]

An intended buyer and an unexpected museum

Degas did not make the Pau canvas as a securely documented completed commission. His letter about it describes a hope that the dealer Agnew might place it in Manchester, a center of the British textile industry. Pau's interpretive feature opens with wording that suggests a commission from an English manufacturer, but its later account says the work was painted in hope of a sale to William Cottrill and that the sale failed. The Met guide likewise says the British sale did not occur. The difference matters: a buyer imagined while the artist is working is not the same as someone who ordered and bought the finished painting. ^[2][3][4]

The picture instead entered public view in Paris at the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876. That exhibition context placed a group of New Orleans merchants among works by artists associated with the independent shows. Foa notes that Degas showed cotton office near his laundress pictures, making a suggestive connection between southern cotton and French textiles. We should not pretend to know what every visitor made of the pairing. The placement shows a possible line of thought through the exhibit: the raw fiber sold across the Atlantic and fabric worked in Paris belonged to a connected economy. ^[1][3]

Two years later the painting was shown in Pau. The museum's account says the 1878 exhibition listed it as number 87 and that the city bought it for 2,000 francs. Pau had a fund supported by Émile Noulibos, a donor whose family came from the textile industry; the museum suggests that this background helped make the subject appealing to its committee. That is an institutional interpretation of the purchase, not a document in which every committee member states a personal reason. The secure event is the 1878 acquisition. ^[1][2]

Degas wrote to the museum's curator Charles Le Cœur on 31 March 1878 to thank him for a distinction he said a museum had never before given him. The letter conveys surprise and pleasure at institutional recognition. We can read it alongside the failed Manchester hope without turning the Pau sale into an inevitable triumph. The painting had been made several years earlier for an uncertain market. Its later destination gave it a public life that the prospective English buyer had not provided. ^[2][3]

Looking again

Return to Musson's small tuft of cotton. The painting's nearest action is not a grand gesture but a test made between fingers. Follow the white material back across the diagonal table, notice René's newspaper and Achille's pause at the partition, then look at how the distant figures keep working beyond them. Degas gives each part of the room a different pace. That variety makes a crowded office legible without reducing it to a single anecdote. ^[2][3][4]

Then ask where the cotton came from and who is outside the picture. The canvas cannot show an entire transatlantic industry, and its subject is the merchant office. Still, its white commodity and the named family's business place it within a history that extends from southern fields to New Orleans buyers and European mills. Looking closely means holding the pleasure of Degas's precise arrangement alongside that larger context. The image becomes more specific when we know both what it depicts and what it leaves beyond the frame. ^[3][6][7]

For other sides of Degas's practice, see the paintings overview, the biography and the portraiture guide. Each provides a different route into the question this painting makes unusually clear: how a modern scene can be at once an observed social world and a deliberately constructed work of art.

Artworks directory

A selected index of documented works, combining owner records with entries sampled across Michel Schulman’s digital catalogue raisonné. It is not a complete catalogue. View the full catalogue

406 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Sculpture Reset

Name	Date	Medium
>Group of dancers (MS 77)	1893	Pastel
[Self-Portrait with Christine and Yvonne Lerolle]	probably 1895–96	Photograph
A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?)	1865	Oil painting
Achille de Gas as midshipman (MS 718)	1857	Painting
Achille Degas (MS 715)	1864	Painting
After the bath - Woman Drying Herself (MS 1038)	1888—1892	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1037)	1893	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1046)	1905	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1060)	1895	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1061)	1898	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1062)	1895	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1063)	1896	Painting
After the bath (MS 1064)	1896	Painting
After the bath (MS 1065)	1896	Painting
After the bath (MS 1391)	1900	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1402)	1888	Pastel
After the bath (MS 1744)	1886	Pastel
Arlequin et danseuses (MS 2224)	1884	Pastel
At the café Châteaudun (MS 1913)	1869—1871	Painting
At the horse track (MS 1929)	1869—1872	Painting
At the Milliner's	1881	Pastel
At the milliner's (MS 2587)	1882—1885	Painting
At the milliner's (MS 562)	1882	Pastel
At the milliner's (MS 565)	1882	Pastel
At the milliner's (MS 567)	1885	Painting
At the races (MS 85)	1861	Painting
At the races - Jockeys (MS 92)	1868	Painting
At the races - The start. (MS 98)	1860	Painting
Auguste de Gas (MS 1243)	1857	Painting
Autumn landscape (MS 1403)	1890	Pastel
Ballet Dancers in the Wings	c. 1890–1900	Pastel
Ballet scene (MS 452)	1885	Painting
Ballet scene (MS 454)	1896	Painting
Ballet scene (MS 458)	1887—1890	Pastel
Bather Drying Herself	c. 1883–84	Pastel
Beach at low tide (MS 1730)	1869	Pastel
Beach at low tide (MS 1742)	1869	Pastel
Beach at low tide (MS 1907)	1869	Pastel
Beach at low tide (MS 1915)	1869	Pastel
Beach at low tide (MS 2070)	1869	Pastel
Before the race (MS 73)	1882	Painting
Before the race (MS 74)	1882	Painting
Before the race (MS 81)	1884	Pastel
Before the race (MS 82)	1885	Pastel
Before the race (MS 86)	1884	Painting
Before the start (MS 78)	1885	Pastel
Boat at low tide (MS 1407)	1869	Pastel
Breakfast after the bath (MS 1039)	1890	Pastel
Breakfast after the bath (MS 1565)	1895—1898	Pastel
Bust of a woman (MS 869)	1887—1890	Painting
By the seashore (MS 1917)	1869	Pastel
Calm sea seen from a cliff (MS 1741)	1869	Painting
Chatting (MS 2061)	1882—1885	Pastel
Cliff on the seashore (MS 1230)	1869	Pastel
Cliff on the seashore (MS 671)	1869	Pastel
Copy after "The Finding of Moses" by Véronèse (MS 1401)	1860	Painting
Criminals physiognomies (MS 858)	1881	Pastel
Crouching nude woman from behind (MS 1235)	1876	Pastel
Dance exercises (MS 270)	1891	Pastel
Dancer (MS 282)	1899	Pastel
Dancer (MS 492)	1880—1885	Pastel
Dancer adjusting her bodice (MS 1576)	1875	Painting
Dancer adjusting her bodice (MS 293)	1890	Painting
Dancer adjusting her shoulder strap (MS 283)	1899	Pastel
Dancer adjusting her shoulder strap (MS 285)	1889—1896	Pastel
Dancer adjusting her shoulder straps (MS 275)	1896—1899	Pastel
Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper	1873	Graphite and chalk
Dancer adjusting her slipper (MS 1588)	1887	Pastel
Dancer adjusting her slipppers (MS 1581)	1880	Pastel
Dancer at the barre (MS 1731)	1895—1898	Pastel
Dancer at the barre (MS 2073)	1874	Pastel
Dancer at the barre (MS 2570)	1885	Pastel
Dancer bending (MS 486)	1874—1879	Pastel
Dancer bowing on her knee (MS 494)	1895	Pastel
Dancer combing her hair (MS 1390)	1879	Painting
Dancer dressing (MS 1745)	1889	Pastel
Dancer exercising (MS 483)	1874	Pastel
Dancer fastening her shoe (MS 2077)	1887	Pastel
Dancer in blue (MS 2349)	1902	Pastel
Dancer in bust (MS 1726)	1897	Pastel
Dancer in bust (MS 277)	1895—1899	Pastel
Dancer in green (MS 2608)	1897—1901	Pastel
Dancer in green (MS 273)	1878	Pastel
Dancer in pink bowing (MS 1418)	1878	Pastel
Dancer in red (MS 280)	1893	Pastel
Dancer in Ukrainian Dress	1899	Pastel
Dancer leaning (MS 2585)	1874—1879	Pastel
Dancer Moving Forward, Arms Raised	c. 1885–90	Sculpture
Dancer nude study (MS 2348)	1902	Pastel
Dancer on stage (MS 1415)	1879	Painting
Dancer on stage (MS 478)	1881—1885	Pastel
Dancer Putting on Her Stocking	1890s/1911	Sculpture
Dancer reading (MS 165)	1879	Pastel
Dancer seated (MS 121)	1872	Painting
Dancer seen from behind (MS 2211)	1889	Pastel
Dancer seen from the back (MS 171)	1874	Painting
Dancer tilting (MS 423)	1883	Pastel
Dancer with a fan (MS 2592)	1876	Pastel
Dancer with arms crossed (MS 274)	1872	Painting
Dancer with arms raised (MS 1743)	1891	Pastel
Dancer with green bodice (MS 2345)	1902	Pastel
Dancer with raised arms (MS 475)	1870	Painting
Dancer with tambourine (MS 2053)	1882	Pastel
Dancer with tambourine (MS 450)	1883	Painting
Dancer with tambourine (MS 465)	1897	Painting
Dancers (MS 2215)	1878	Painting
Dancers (MS 2217)	1890	Pastel
Dancers (MS 2362)	1904—1906	Pastel
Dancers (MS 294)	1890	Pastel
Dancers (MS 471)	1878	Pastel
Dancers adjusting their hair (MS 286)	1897	Pastel
Dancers at rest (MS 1228)	1898	Pastel
Dancers at rest (MS 224)	1874	Painting
Dancers at the barre (MS 266)	1877	Pastel
Dancers at the barre (MS 267)	1880	Pastel
Dancers at the barre (MS 268)	1900	Painting
Dancers at the barre (MS 269)	1900	Pastel
Dancers Backstage	1876/1883	Oil painting
Dancers backstage (MS 271)	1890	Painting
Dancers behind the wings (MS 288)	1880	Pastel
Dancers bowing (MS 453)	1885	Pastel
Dancers in a landscape setting (MS 466)	1895—1898	Pastel
Dancers in pink (MS 1738)	1900	Pastel
Dancers in pink (MS 2364)	1904	Pastel
Dancers in red skirts (MS 451)	1884	Painting
Dancers in white (MS 1748)	1878	Pastel
Dancers in yellow skirts (MS 2359)	1903	Pastel
Dancers on stage (MS 1417)	1881	Pastel
Dancers on stage (MS 460)	1880	Pastel
Dancers on stage (MS 474)	1884	Pastel
Dancers resting (MS 2604)	1890—1895	Pastel
Dancers with fans (MS 291)	1890	Pastel
Dancers, Pink and Green	c. 1890	Oil painting
Dante and Virgil at the Entrance of Hell (MS 2072)	1857—1860	Painting
Degas in studio smock (MS 688)	1862	Painting
Dunes along the sea (MS 1905)	1869	Pastel
Edmond Duranty (MS 732)	1879	Pastel
Elena et Camilla Primicile Carafa di Mantejasi (MS 695)	1867	Painting
Estelle Musson Balfour (MS 704)	1872	Painting
Estelle Musson Balfour (MS 710)	1863—1865	Painting
Fallen jockey (MS 1388)	1870	Painting
Farm at the foot of a cliff (MS 1918)	1869	Pastel
Four dancers (MS 1728)	1885	Pastel
Four dancers (MS 2365)	1905	Pastel
Four dancers (MS 287)	1899	Painting
Four dancers in blue (MS 2355)	1903	Pastel
Four dancers in the wings (MS 2356)	1903	Pastel
Four dancers on stage (MS 473)	1897—1900	Pastel
Germain Musson (MS 700)	1853	Painting
Getting off the bath (MS 1057)	1884	Pastel
Getting out of the bath (MS 1398)	1898	Pastel
Getting out of the bath (MS 1583)	1879	Pastel
Getting out of the bath (MS 1725)	1900	Pastel
Getting out of the bath (MS 2343)	1901	Pastel
Getting out of the bath (MS 2607)	1895—1898	Pastel
Giovanna Bellelli (MS 1242)	1856	Painting
Giulia Bellelli (MS 722)	1858	Painting
Green dancers (MS 469)	1878	Pastel
Hairdressing (MS 1387)	1895	Painting
Head of a woman (MS 290)	1865	Pastel
Head of a woman (MS 861)	1873—1875	Painting
Henri Degas and his niece Lucie Degas (MS 701)	1875—1876	Painting
Henri Rouart in front of his factory (MS 759)	1875	Painting
Horse races (MS 1928)	1869—1872	Painting
Horse races at Longchamp (MS 87)	1873	Painting
Horse riders in a lanscape (MS 2079)	1860—1861	Painting
Horse turned to the right (MS 95)	1881—1885	Pastel
Horse Walking	possibly early 1870s	Sculpture
Horsemen riding on the sea shore (MS 1914)	1868	Pastel
Horseride (MS 80)	1890—1895	Painting
Horses and jockeys (MS 84)	1890	Painting
Horses in a medow (MS 2076)	1871	Painting
Houses along a cliff (MS 1587)	1880—1890	Painting
Houses on a cliff overlooking the sea (MS 1925)	1869	Pastel
Houses on the sea shore (MS 1408)	1869	Pastel
In the dance foyer (MS 2575)	1897	Pastel
James Tissot (MS 762)	1867	Painting
Jeantaud, Linet et Laîné (MS 859)	1871	Painting
Jockey (MS 2213)	1889	Pastel
Jockey in a red cap (MS 1931)	1868	Painting
Jockeys (MS 75)	1877	Painting
Jockeys (MS 83)	1890	Painting
Jockeys at Epsom (MS 97)	1860	Painting
Jules Perrot (MS 755)	1875	Painting
L'arlequin (MS 2223)	1890	Pastel
La Savoisienne (MS 863)	1860—1862	Painting
Lady with a parasol (MS 93)	1870—1872	Painting
Landscape	c. 1877–79	Monotype
Landscape	1892	Monotype with pastel
Landscape (MS 1572)	1892	Pastel
Landscape (MS 2233)	1890—1893	Painting
Landscape (MS 2234)	1890—1893	Pastel
Landscape with houses (MS 2567)	1885—1890	Pastel
Landscape with path leading to a copse of trees (MS 2610)	1890—1892	Painting
Laundress carrying linen (MS 2351)	1902	Pastel
Laundresses and horse (MS 2350)	1902	Pastel
Laundresses carrying baskets (MS 2352)	1902	Pastel
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen	1878–81	Sculpture
Little girl carrying flowers in her apron (MS 855)	1862	Painting
Lyda (MS 91)	1870	Painting
Marguerite de Gas (MS 713)	1853—1854	Painting
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery	1879–80	Print
Mathilde Musson Bell (MS 706)	1872—1873	Pastel
Meadow along a stream (MS 1934)	1870—1875	Pastel
Meadow bordering a river (MS 1577)		Pastel
Mlle Bécat at the Ambassadeurs (MS 1410)	1885	Pastel
Morning toilette (MS 2078)	1894	Pastel
Mountain lake (MS 2229)	1890—1893	Pastel
Mountainous landscape (MS 2227)	1890—1893	Pastel
Mountainous landscape (MS 2230)	1890—1893	Pastel
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Rouart (MS 2358)	1904	Pastel
Mr. and Mrs. Louis Rouart (MS 2357)	1904	Pastel
Mr. and Mrs. Louis Rouart (MS 2360)	1904	Pastel
Mrs Alexis Rouart and her children (MS 1396)	1905	Pastel
Mrs Camus (MS 1908)	1869	Pastel
Naked woman at rest (MS 1557)	1880	Pastel
Naked woman drying herself (MS 1045)	1900	Pastel
Naked woman drying herself (MS 1058)	1886	Pastel
Naked woman warming up (MS 2065)	1880	Pastel
Nude woman combing her hair (MS 1245)	1877—1879	Pastel
Nude woman combing her hair (MS 2353)	1903	Pastel
Olive trees in a mountaineous landscape (MS 1574)	1892	Pastel
Porrtaits of women (MS 857)	1868	Painting
Portrait of a man (MS 1733)	1864	Painting
Portrait of a Man (MS 2220)	1890	Pastel
Portrait of a man [Portrait of man in an armchair] (MS 853)	1866	Painting
Portrait of a woman (Attributed) (MS 1404)	1867	Painting
Portrait of a woman (MS 2067)	1885	Painting
Portrait of a woman (MS 862)	1878—1889	Pastel
Portrait of a woman (MS 868)	1884	Painting
Portrait of a woman (MS 873)	1867—1868	Painting
Portrait of a woman before a piano (MS 2060)	1882—1885	Pastel
Portrait of a woman with a hat (MS 872)	1884	Pastel
Portrait of a woman with hat (MS 870)	1887—1890	Painting
Portrait of a young girl (MS 1901)	1868	Painting
Portrait of a young lady (MS 867)	1878	Painting
Portrait of a young woman after a D-drawing attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (MS 875)	1858	Painting
Portrait of Brandon (MS 2084)	1874—1878	Painting
Portrait of Elena Carafa (MS 696)	1875	Painting
Portrait of Henry Michel-Lévy (MS 1414)	1873	Painting
Portrait of the artist (MS 690)	1863	Painting
Preparation for the dance class (MS 247)	1890	Pastel
Program for the artistic evening of May 15, 1884 at the Ponsin Gallery (MS 2071)	1884	Pastel
Race Horses	c. 1885–88	Pastel
Race horses (MS 76)	1880	Pastel
Races in the country (MS 96)	1869	Painting
Reclining nude woman (MS 2342)	1901	Pastel
René de Gas (MS 720)	1855	Painting
René de Gas with a inkwell (MS 719)	1855	Painting
Resting on field (MS 2055)	1882	Pastel
Riverbank (MS 1571)	1890	Pastel
Riverbank (MS 2083)	1870—1875	Pastel
Road in a forest (MS 1932)	1870—1875	Pastel
Road in a forest (MS 1933)	1870—1873	Pastel
Rocky coast (MS 1413)	1890—1893	Pastel
Rocky landscape (MS 2228)	1890—1893	Painting
Rue du Quesnoy at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme (MS 2069)	1895—1898	Pastel
Ruins of a bridge over a river (MS 1394)	1892	Pastel
Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey	1866, reworked 1880–81 and c. 1897	Oil painting
Sea at low tide (MS 1916)	1869	Pastel
Sea shore (MS 1920)	1869	Pastel
Sea shore (MS 1921)	1869	Pastel
Sea shore (MS 1924)	1869	Pastel
Seascape (MS 1906)	1869	Pastel
Seated nude woman combing her hair (MS 1236)	1890	Pastel
Seated woman brushing her hair (MS 2600)	1887—1890	Pastel
Self-Portrait	c. 1855	Drawing
Self-Portrait (MS 689)	1862	Painting
Self-Portrait (MS 691)	1856—1858	Painting
Self-Portrait (MS 693)	1857—1858	Painting
Self-Portrait (MS 694)	1857	Painting
Self-Portrait with White Collar	c. 1857	Oil on paper on canvas
Sitting woman combing her hair (MS 2568)	1887—1890	Pastel
Standing man in a bowler hat (MS 717)	1874	Painting
Standing nude woman (MS 1237)	1880	Pastel
Standing nude woman (MS 2218)	1890	Pastel
Standing woman (MS 1737)	1866	Painting
Stream in the undergrowth (MS 1935)	1870—1875	Painting
Studies of a woman's head and a seated dancer (MS 481)	1879	Pastel
Study for Mr and Mrs Louis Rouart (MS 1750)	1904	Pastel
Study for Mrs Camus at the piano (MS 2573)	1869	Pastel
Study of a Nude (Dancer at the Barre)	1884–1900	Drawing
Study of dancers (MS 2344)	1901	Painting
Study of folds of a hooded cloak (MS 2074)	1861—1864	Painting
Study of nude woman (MS 2059)	1884	Pastel
Study of sky (MS 1923)	1869	Pastel
The ball (MS 1248)	1879	Painting
The ballet rehearsal (MS 298)	1877	Painting
The bath (MS 1586)	1900—1905	Pastel
The bath (MS 2222)	1890	Drawing
The cellist Pilet (MS 1253)	1868	Painting
The child in blue (MS 854)	1854	Painting
The chocolate cup after the bath (MS 1247)	1905—1907	Pastel
The convalescent (MS 702)	1872—1873	Painting
The conversation (MS 1570)	1895	Pastel
The cup of chocolate (MS 1564)	1900—1905	Pastel
The Dance Class	1874	Oil on canvas
The dance class (MS 1406)	1876	Pastel
The dance class (MS 2068)	1876	Pastel
The Dance Lesson	c. 1879	Oil painting
The dance lesson or ballet class (MS 212)	1875	Pastel
The dance lesson or ballet class (MS 215)	1878	Painting
The dancer's rest (MS 1724)	1885	Pastel
The Duchess Montejasi and her Daughters Elena and Camilla (MS 699)	1881	Painting
The Duchess of Montejasi-Cicerale (MS 698)	1868	Painting
The duet (MS 1393)	1877—1879	Pastel
The duet (MS 1416)	1877	Pastel
The Extras or The chorus (MS 1254)	1877	Pastel
The false start (MS 99)	1870	Painting
The Fireside	c. 1876–77	Monotype
The Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli Sisters (MS 721)	1865	Painting
The Holy Family - Copy. (MS 1903)	1868—1872	Painting
The Holy Family after Sebastiano del Piombo (MS 1751)	1857	Drawing
The march (MS 56)	1866	Painting
The pedicure (MS 1251)	1873	Painting
The racecourse - Amateur jockeys near a carriage (MS 1249)	1878	Painting
The Races	1871–72	Oil painting
The rehearsal of the ballet (MS 2057)	1881	Painting
The singer (MS 2591)	1877—1880	Pastel
The Tub	c. 1889	Sculpture
The tub (MS 1252)	1886	Pastel
The violist (MS 2569)	1880	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 1585)	1889	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 2064)	1879	Painting
Three dancers (MS 2210)	1889	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 2216)	1899	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 2354)	1903	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 2614)	1899	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 467)	1895—1898	Pastel
Three dancers (MS 468)	1890	Pastel
Three dancers in salmon pink skirts (MS 2363)	1904—1906	Pastel
Three heads of men (MS 860)	1871	Painting
Three jockeys (MS 79)	1900	Pastel
Three study of dancers (MS 482)	1879—1880	Pastel
Two bathers (MS 2347)	1902	Pastel
Two Dancers	1873	Drawing
Two dancers (MS 1722)	1880—1885	Pastel
Two dancers (MS 2611)	1880	Pastel
Two dancers (MS 295)	1890	Pastel
Two dancers (MS 296)	1890	Pastel
Two dancers at rest or Dancers in blue (MS 1229)	1898	Pastel
Two Dancers in bust (MS 2561)	1897	Pastel
Two harlequins (MS 396)	1885	Pastel
Two sitting dancers (MS 1736)	1896	Pastel
Two Women	c. 1878/1880	Pastel
Two women at their bath (MS 1568)	1895	Pastel
Valleys (MS 2232)	1890—1893	Pastel
View of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme (MS 2560)	1896	Painting
Walter Sickert, Daniel Halévy, Ludovic Halévy, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Gervex, Boulanger-Cavé (MS 856)	1885	Pastel
Wheat field and line of trees (MS 2225)	1890—1892	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 1041)	1890—1894	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 1048)	1903	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 1050)	1900	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 1559)	1892	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 1561)	1905—1907	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 2346)	1902	Pastel
Woman at her toilette (MS 2565)	1895—1903	Pastel
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub	1885	Pastel
Woman before a mirror (MS 370)	1885—1886	Pastel
Woman cleaning her left foot (MS 1232)	1886	Pastel
Woman combing her hair (MS 1746)	1894	Pastel
Woman combing her hair (MS 1238)	1887—1890	Pastel
Woman combing her hair (MS 1560)	1892—1895	Pastel
Woman combing her hair (MS 1727)	1890	Pastel
Woman combing her hair (MS 2237)	1890—1895	Pastel
Woman combing her hair before a mirror (MS 1250)	1870—1875	Painting
Woman comnbing her hair (MS 2209)	1885	Pastel
Woman drying erself after the bath (MS 2236)	1890—1895	Pastel
Woman drying her hair (MS 1042)	1894	Pastel
Woman drying her hair (MS 1044)	1897	Pastel
Woman drying her hair (MS 1569)	1900	Pastel
Woman drying her hair (MS 1729)	1900—1903	Pastel
Woman drying her hair (MS 1732)	1885	Pastel
Woman drying her left arm (MS 1055)	1884	Pastel
Woman drying her left arm (MS 1056)	1884	Pastel
Woman drying her right arm (MS 1052)	1884	Pastel
Woman drying herself (MS 1053)	1884	Pastel
Woman drying herself (MS 1059)	1886	Pastel
Woman drying herself (MS 1397)	1888	Pastel
Woman drying herself after the bath (MS 1562)	1895	Pastel
Woman Drying herself after the bath (MS 1563)	1883	Pastel
Woman drying herself after the bath wearing yellow mules (MS 2208)	1889	Pastel
Woman getting out of the bath (MS 1240)	1881	Pastel
Woman Having Her Hair Combed	c. 1886–88	Pastel
Woman in her bath washing her left leg (MS 1234)	1883	Pastel
Woman in mauve dress seated in an armchair or Mrs Alexis Rouart and Her Children (MS 2366)	1905	Pastel
Woman in red dressing gown combing her hair (MS 2207)	1880	Pastel
Woman Ironing	begun c. 1876, completed c. 1887	Oil painting
Woman looking through opera glasses (MS 89)	1881	Painting
Woman sitting on a lawn (MS 2056)	1882	Pastel
Woman washing up in her tub (MS 1239)	1892	Pastel
Woman with a dog (MS 865)	1875—1880	Painting
Woman with a white apron (MS 94)	1855	Drawing
Woman with an umbrella (Mrs Jeantaud) (MS 866)	1877—1880	Painting
Woman with blue hat (MS 1558)	1889	Pastel
Woman with opera glasses (MS 90)	1877	Painting
Women ironing (MS 587)	1875	Painting
Women on the terrace of a café (MS 1241)	1877	Pastel
Young girl with white shawl (MS 874)	1871	Painting
Young spartan girls challenging boys (MS 1412)	1860	Painting
Young woman (MS 871)	1890	Painting
Young woman in black (MS 879)	1861—1865	Painting
Young woman in her bath (MS 1566)	1890	Pastel
Young woman standing by a table (MS 1739)	1855	Painting
Young woman tying the ribbons of her hat (MS 1244)	1882	Pastel
Young woman with her hand facing her mouth (MS 864)	1875	Painting

References

1. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, Un bureau de coton à La Nouvelle-Orléans, detailed object record, inventory 878.1.2. View source
2. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, “Edgar Degas”, interpretation of the painting, family visit, exhibition and 1878 acquisition; includes quoted letters to James Tissot and Charles Le Cœur. Its header inventory and opening “commission” wording conflict with the detailed record and its own later sale account. View source
3. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manet/Degas: A Podcast, chapter 4, “Degas in New Orleans”, transcript with Michelle Foa and historical interpretation. View source
4. National Gallery of Victoria, Degas: A New Vision, artwork labels, labels 99 and 101–102 (PDF pp. 100, 102–103), on the Pau and Harvard paintings and Degas's correspondence. View source
5. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Degas, 1834–1917, 1988 exhibition catalogue, chronology pp. 59–60. View source
6. US National Park Service, Reconstruction Era National Historic Landmark theme study, “Land and Labor,” p. 22. View source
7. US National Park Service, “African American History”, Cane River Creole National Historical Park; Louisiana plantation evidence for enslaved cotton labor and later sharecropping. View source
8. National Gallery of Victoria, Degas: A New Vision labels, label 101, identifying Harvard/Fogg Cotton Merchants in New Orleans (1929.90), with Harvard Art Museums' presentation on Google Arts & Culture for medium, dimensions and credit line. View source · View source
9. Edgar Degas: Digital Critical Catalogue, Cotton Merchants' Office in New Orleans (MS 837), recording the lower-right signature and date. The owning Pau record remains the authority for inventory and measurements. View source
10. Splash image: Edgar Degas, A Cotton Office in New Orleans, 1873, oil on canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, 878.1.2. Collection record. Wikimedia Commons; the current 2015 higher-resolution revision was uploaded by Jan Arkesteijn. The same Commons file's 2005 revision came from The Yorck Project. View source