Research

This web-resource presents audio recordings from the 'Discovering Degas' study day held by the University of Glasgow and Burrell Collection in 2024, plus illustrated video interviews with their authors. The study day complemented the Burrell Collection’s acclaimed Discovering Degas: Collecting in the Time of William Burrell exhibition, that brought together over 50 works by the artist to celebrate the centenary of the first Impressionist group exhibition in Paris, and the instrumental role of pioneer collectors like Sir William Burrell in early appreciation of Impressionism.

The papers explore less well-known aspects of Degas’s work and its reception, including his depiction of skin colour and race, and the contribution of pioneer women collectors of Impressionism. The plenary lecture by distinguished French Literature expert Prof. Robert Lethbridge provides fascinating new insights into Degas’s important portrait of the writer Edmond Duranty, a highlight of the Burrell Collection. The interviews each focus on further key Degas works from the Burrell Collection.

The web-resource has been developed by Prof. Clare A.P. Willsdon (University of Glasgow) in cooperation with the curators of the Discovering Degas exhibition, Pippa Stephenson-Sit (Curator of European Art, The Burrell Collection), and Prof. Frances Fowle (Emeritus Professor of Nineteenth-Century Art, University of Edinburgh), and with the kind help of Dr. Disa Persson, University of Glasgow (Project Research Assistant). We are immensely grateful to all who contributed to the study day in 2024, and for the kind agreement given by participants for their papers and interviews to appear in this web-resource. Support from the University of Glasgow’s General Knowledge Exchange Fund and Impact Development and Evaluation Fund is gratefully acknowledged. Unless otherwise indicated, all images are by kind permission of The Burrell Collection under the terms of CC BY-NC-ND licence.

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