Princess Pauline de Metternich

Princess Pauline de Metternich, painted in 1865 and now at the National Gallery in London, is believed to be based on a photograph rather than a direct sitting — Degas experimenting with photography as a source for his painted portraits, a practice he would pursue throughout his career. The Princess was a famous figure in Second Empire Paris: wife of the Austrian ambassador, patron of Offenbach, and a legendary eccentric known for her wit and unconventional behavior. Degas captures her characteristic intensity without flattery. The work is significant as one of the early examples of his use of photographic sources, which would become central to his working method.

The photographic source gives the portrait an unusual quality of caught observation rather than posed presentation — the subject appears as if seized in a moment of characteristic expression rather than arranged for formal documentation. Degas's handling translates the photographic information into painterly terms: the face is rendered with tonal precision while dress and surroundings are handled more broadly. His palette is characteristically restrained, the tonal structure doing most of the compositional work.