Mrs. Degas

One day a young woman appears at the door of the aging painter's house in Paris. Officially to help the blind Edgar Degas organize his collection of writings and artwork. He speaks with the accent of the French in New Orleans and his insistent questions open a Pandora's box of memories in the bitter old man of a time when his life was full of emotion and light. In sorting through the layers of the past, Degas's thoughts and narrative return to the time when, as a young artist, he and his famous contemporaries were touring the Parisian art salons in the mid-19th century, drawing ballerinas at the opera and horse races, when he fell fatally in love for the first and last time, and when, in his artistic exuberance, he was unable to make the right decision. < br> Arthur Japin in the biographical novel Mrs. Degas almost visually, based on the letters, diary entries, official documents, contemporary testimonies and sketches of the famous painter, it engagingly reconstructs Degas's artistic groping and maturation, life's victories and losses, including his unforgettable trip to New Orleans, which was recovering from the effects of the abolition of slavery after the American Civil War, and where the only woman in his life lived, that even bore his last name, it never belonged to him.