Degas: Place de la Concorde. From the Masterpieces Reborn series
19 May 2012 – 17 January 2013
Hall No. 320 of the Winter Palace

On 19 May 2012, a new exhibition of the Masterpieces Reborn series was opened, featuring Edgar Degas' painting Place de la Concorde following restoration.

Place de la Concorde by Edgar Degas is a milestone in 19th century French painting. Recently this picture has been constantly referred to in various publications relating to the theme of the development of contemporary art, and it sharply differs from the vast majority of canvases painted in the 1870s in any European city.

This multiple person portrait involves solving a considerable number of puzzles. In essence, the circumstances of its painting are unknown. The painting is undated, but modern art historians are inclined to think it was painted in 1876, noting the increased volume of Degas creativity.

The painting was not commissioned and shows the artist's friends, writer Daniel Halevy and the artist Ludovic-Napoleon Lepic with his daughters. The artist has them participating in a casual scene at the famous Parisian square. Degas never painted any other picture with a similar composition. In need of money he sold his masterpiece to Vicomte Ludovic-Napoleon Lepic, and the painting remained unknown until the end of the century. It was not displayed anywhere and none of the preparation materials for the painting were preserved, apart from a small picture for the background. The painting was never alluded to in any of the painter's letters that have survived, nor in any reminiscences. Place de la Concorde as we have received it lacks any signature. The bottom part of the picture has been cut off.

The lack of a signature for a long time prevented the famous gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel from advantageously selling Place de la Concorde which he owned after Lepic, until the German collector Otto Gerstenberg became interested in the painting.

Following the fall of Berlin in 1945 the picture among other "trophy", or as they are now called "displaced", artworks was sent to the Soviet Union and turned up at the State Hermitage Museum. In 1997 a law was passed by the State Duma which declared that the picture and other works of art remaining in Russia following World War 2 are inalienable property of the Russian Federation.

From March 2010 until May 2011 the State Hermitage Museum undertook the restoration of the painting following attentive physical and chemical research of the canvas. It was x-rayed, macro-photographed, images were taken with ultraviolet and infrared rays, pictures in oblique light were also taken, etc. The restoration work itself was entrusted to V.Yu. Brovkin, who carried out a very careful, incremental job, constantly discussing each step with the State Hermitage Museum's Commission Restoring Easel Paintings.

A section folded back on the canvas frame preserved some details. Each figure was continued. The additional straightened canvas required alterations to the frame. It was decided to leave it as it formerly was since it was of historical value with numerous inscriptions and labels, although the size of the picture has changed - it is now four centimetres taller. Wooden planks two centimetres wide have been attached to both the top and the bottom of the picture.

On the parts of the picture that were formerly curled under the frame there was practically no lacquer. This enabled us to hypothesise that Degas initially did not lacquer the image - this was done later when the format of the picture was changed, when part of it was crudely cut off and the four centimetres of canvas was folded behind the frame and nailed.

It was decided to thin the layer of lacquer as much as possible, especially as it altered the artist's use of colour and made the surface smooth and glossy which was incongruent with the original. On a small part of the painting a technique was found to work with the lacquer, which would not affect the paint underneath. Following approval from the restoration commission, work continued to May 2011. After colouring the damaged areas and covering the painting with a transparent lacquer the work was complete.

Although we can only guess how much of the painting was cut off and how the original composition really looked, we believe the current restoration work has brought the painting close to the same condition it was in when Degas applied the finishing touches of his brush.

The State Hermitage Museum has prepared a book for the exhibition, Edgar Degas: Place de la Concorde from the Masterpieces Reborn series. The book is written by the exhibition curator Albert Grigorevich Kostenevich. Albert Kostenevich has a doctorate in research and is the chief scientific advisor for the Department of Western European Fine Art.