Edgar Degas - Interior [c.1868]

Edgar Degas - Interior [c.1868], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

After years of ambitious if equivocal attempts at monumental paintings on grand historical themes, by the late 1860s Edgar Degas increasingly turned to depictions of modern subjects. The dramatic play of artificial light and evening shadow in this painting, and the palpable sense of anxiety it transmits, are unique in Degas's scenes of private life. 

Although it is not without discrepancies in detail, the most convincing identification of the subject, proposed by the Degas scholar Theodore Reff, is that it illustrates a scene from Emile Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin (1867). Reunited on their wedding night, one year after they have killed Thérèse's husband, the lovers are overwhelmed by the enormity of their crime and retreat from one another into bitter isolation. 

Degas himself referred to it as "my genre picture," and it may have been intended for British collectors who appreciated the psychological tension in narratives painted by artists such as Sir John Everett Millais and Degas's friend James Tissot. The alternate title, The Rape, by which the picture also has long been known, does not seem to derive from Degas himself. 

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 114.3 cm]