Executed in 1867, this tender and sensitive portrait is one of a small number of works executed by Edgar Degas which depicts his young niece, Célestine Fèvre. The eldest daughter of his sister, Marguerite, the drawing is the first of only two completed in 1867, most likely at the Fèvre apartment at 72 boulevard Malesherbes, Paris. Degas was deeply fond of his younger sister, and, after her husband, the architect Henri Fèvre, assisted him in clearing his father’s considerable debts at great personal cost, Degas decided to divide his estate between Celestine and her siblings and his brother René when he died.

The present work portrays an engaged young child and is a wonderful illustration of Degas’s ongoing fascination with the fleeting moments of domestic intimacy that came to define his depictions of bathers and ballet dancers in his later years. Degas worked primarily in pencil throughout the 1860s and this portrait is a rare example of what Ronald Pickvance described as an ‘increased naturalism and a looser, more expressive manner of drawing’ explored by the artist in his early works (Ronald Pickvance & Jaromír Pecirka, Degas: Drawings, 1963, London, p. 12).