Edward Saywell Quotations

There really is a perception that if you know the ballet studies, you know Degas. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Like Picasso, Degas was a relentless innovator in everything he did -- in drawing, in printmaking, in photography.

It really is a remarkable collection. Because Harvard began collecting so early, on so many levels, it can trace the full range of Degas' artistic interests in a way that few other museums can match.

For many 19th-century artists, the usual reaction to photography was no reaction at all. They simply ignored it. But not Degas. He was deeply interested in the new medium, not just as a tool that could help with his drawings and paintings, but as an art form in its own right.

In a way, the show is as much about Paul Sachs as it is about Edgar Degas. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked, at least as far as Harvard is concerned.