In his up-to-the-minute enthusiasm for photography, Edgar Degas was the first artist to know how not to abuse the medium in his work; he understood what to digest and what to leave aside. Late in life he himself went behind the camera; most of his extant photographs, of nearly all of his family and of friends such as Renoir and Mallarme, date from a single year, 1895. This spare but powerful oeuvre (along with related paintings and works on paper) is being shown in full for the first time, with an accompanying catalogue by Malcolm Daniel, Eugenia Parry, and Theodore Reff. Oct. 14, 1998–Jan. 3, 1999; travels to J. Paul Getty Museum, Feb. 2–Mar. 28, 1999; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, May 11–July 31, 1999.

— Richard Shone