When Edgar Degas died in 1917, his enormous art collection, consisting of several thousand paintings, drawings, and prints, came to light. This remarkable assemblage included great numbers of works by the French nineteenth-century masters whom Degas revered - Delacroix, Ingres, and Daumier - and at the same time demonstrated Degas's profound interest in the art of certain of his contemporaries, particularly Manet, Cezanne, Gauguin, and Mary Cassatt.

Dispersed when it was sold at auction in 1918 during the bombardment of Paris, the collection is now the subject of both an illuminating exhibition and this accompanying catalogue. In a series of essays, some previously published and some written for this book, major scholars discuss, from various perspectives, Degas's collection and its relation to his own art.