The Bell Gallery collection includes four etchings and a small sculpture Dancer Rubbing her Knee (ca. 1885–1890) by Edgar Degas. During his lifetime, Degas did not sell many of his prints and only a few were made into editions. Although he liked to experiment with new printing techniques, he seems to have found prints a private enterprise.

Degas produced the majority of his printed works between 1875 and 1880. The portrait of Alphonse Hirsch (1875) is a study from this period and shows an increased interest in experimentation with new techniques. Hirsch was a fellow artist, etcher, and agent for art collectors. This portrait was most likely made on February 20th, 1875 when Degas, Hirsch, Marcellin Desboutin, and Giuseppe de Nittis met to execute portraits of each other. Degas later added the jacket and cravat with aquatint, which created contrasting textures between the soft wispy hair and beard and the dark grainy clothes. The Bell Gallery impression is a restrike of the second state, published in 1959 by Mr. Lessing J. Rosenwald and printed by Arthur Flory for sale to members of the Print Council of America.

In the etching At the Louvre, the painter Mary Cassatt, ca. 1879–80, Degas again used friends as his subject. The two women viewing paintings at the Louvre present a glimpse of contemporary women in society. The image is similar to another, roughly contemporary etching by Degas, which includes female figures viewing an ancient sarcophagus in the Louvre’s Etruscan Gallery.

This print is one of Degas’ most ambitious undertakings within his etching oeuvre and attests to his pursuit of the medium as an end in itself. He reworked the plate for this etching extensively, pulling at least twenty different states. He combined his rich linear hatchings with aquatint to achieve a tonal quality, gradually increasing the aquatint as he progressed through the twenty states of this print, building areas or even spots to a rich velvet black while other areas remain a grainy grey.

Much of the composition as well as the narrow format for this image derives from Japanese hashira-e prints or “pillar” prints, which were of great interest to Degas and his contemporaries. The figures come forward and do not recede and the space is shallow with an upward tilt. The numerous directions of hatchings, doorframe, floor and also drapery create somewhat ambiguous planes, which further complicate the spatial relationship between figure, frame and interior space. The Bell Gallery impression was printed from the cancelled plate. It is probably from an edition of 150 prints, which Delteil mentioned in his 1929 catalogue, although precise documentation for the edition is not known.