A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?)

The flowers get most of the canvas. White, blue and reddish blooms spread across the center, while the woman sits on the far right with her cheek against her hand. Her eyes look beyond the edge of the picture. You can follow that gaze, or stay with the bouquet she seems scarcely to notice. Edgar Degas painted this arrangement in 1865. The late-summer flowers crowd together above a large vase, with a glass pitcher set farther left. The woman is probably Madame Paul Valpinçon. A pencil study of her from the same year shows that Degas worked on the figure as well as the flowers. Try holding the whole arrangement in view for a moment. The bouquet rises and spreads, the tabletop runs across the foreground, and the woman’s bent arm makes a smaller, quieter shape beside them. Her position near the edge can feel like a glimpse caught in passing. Degas planned a composition in which a person and a still life compete for your attention.