In the News

Digging into Degas--In the October 21 issue of The New Republic magazine, Christopher Benfey, associate professor of English, reveals his discovery that Edgar Degas, the nineteenth-century French painter, had prominent African American relatives in New Orleans. Benfey notes that Degas, despite his strong interest in the blacks he saw during a visit to the city in 1872-73, painted very few images of blacks. He argues that Degas, whose mother was a native of New Orleans, was unable to look at black people with aesthetic detachment, since he himself had black relatives. Among those relatives was the well-known chemical engineer Norbert Rillieux, a first cousin of Degas's mother. The French-educated Rillieux invented a method for refining sugar that revolutionized the sugar industry. Rillieux was a free man of color, son of Degas's great uncle, Vincent Rillieux, and a free woman of color called Constance Vivant.

In a related article in the current (autumn) issue of The American Scholar, Benfey reveals hitherto unknown details of Degas's New Orleans sojourn, including his family's involvement in a white supremacist organization called the Crescent City White League. Both articles are derived from Benfey's research for a book entitled Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable, scheduled for publication by Knopf in December 1997. Research for the book was supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by a Mount Holyoke faculty fellowship.