What Degas Saw

By Samantha Friedman
Illustrations by Cristina Pieropan, with artwork by Edgar Degas

What Degas Saw looks at the world through a beloved artist's eyes and provides insight into his creative process. Walking through the streets of Paris with cape and cane, the French artist Edgar Degas observes the world around him, finding inspiration at every turn. From the blurry faces of passersby glimpsed through a bus window to the sun-dappled landscape seen from a moving train, from the hunched profiles of laundresses at work to light-bathed ballerinas on the opera-house stage, the artist—with open eyes and a curious mind—collects impressions of the people and places he sees.
Featuring artwork by Degas, aquatint etching illustrations by Cristina Pieronpan, and a story by Samantha Friedman, a curator at MoMA and the author of Matisse's Garden, What Degas Saw encourages young readers to carefully observe their surroundings and to create their own art about the people and places around them.