Degas filled the pages of this sketchbook with portraits as well as sketches of dancers and scenes from a Turkish bath. In the center of the first drawing (Folio 3 recto), Degas made a rapid sketch of the so-called Pavillon Henri IV, where he attended weekly dinners with his friend, the playwright and librettist Ludovic Halévy, and with other writers, artists, and musicians. Seventeen sketches, mostly of those who attended the dinners, surround the drawing of the building.- Exhibition Label, from "Life Lines: Portrait Drawings from Dü̈rer to Picasso."
Inscribed by Halévy throughout, notably on first leaf in pen and black ink, "Tous les croquis de cet album / on été faits chez mois par Degas. / Années 1880 et suivantes".
Halévy, Ludovic, 1834-1908, former owner.
Halévy, Daniel, 1872-1962, former owner.
Thaw, Eugene Victor, former owner.
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY, "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection", 2017. Exh. cat., p. 19, no. 88, repr.
Denison, Cara D. et al. Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor Thaw. Part II. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1985, no. 45, folios 2, 4, 13, 14 repr.
Degas, Georges Petit, Paris, 1924, no. 188 (with nb. 28), not repr.
Edgar Degas, Album de dessins, ed. Daniel Halévy, Paris, 1949, published in facsimile with another sketchbook (nb. 28) with the same provenance.
Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas, a Catalogue of the Thirty-Eight Notebooks in the Bibliothèque Nationale and other Collections, Oxford, 1976, 2 vols. I, pp. 2f., 10f., 17, 30, 31, 131ff., II, repr., n.p., under nb. 29.
Edgar Degas, 1834-1917, catalogue by Ronald Pickvance, David Carritt Limited, London, 1983, no. 21 (lent by Mr. and Mrs. Thaw), six leaves repr.