Portraits at the Stock Exchange

Painted in 1878 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Portraits at the Stock Exchange belongs to Degas's sustained investigation of modern Parisian professional environments in the late 1870s. The Paris Bourse was the nerve centre of France's industrialising economy, and Degas — himself from a banking family — had a personal as well as artistic interest in its workings. The identifiable figure in the foreground is the banker and collector Ernest May, depicted in conversation with colleagues, the dynamic of financial exchange captured with the same eye for professional gesture that Degas brought to his studies of ballet dancers and laundresses at work.

Degas adopts an angled perspective and cuts the figures at unusual points — suggesting the viewing distance and cropping of a casual observer rather than a formal portraitist. The thick column at the left edge and the agitated handling of the background figures create a sense of busy urban space pressing around the main subjects.