0D5R-0001-0000-0000https://data.ng.ac.uk/0D5R-0001-0000-0000Human-made Objecthttps://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300264388PicturePictureCarlo PellegriniSignedSignedhttp://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/500125190NGhttps://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q180788The National GalleryL699The jovial man appears to be talking with someone outside the picture. He has a cigarette in his hand and is wearing a smart grey suit. He holds his bowler hat behind his back. Degas’s lighthearted depiction of the Victorian caricaturist Carlo Pellegrini imitates Pellegrini’s own style. Degas frames him with a narrow, upright format. The Italian often used this format for his gentle satires of British politicians and celebrities. Pellegrini was born in Southern Italy but settled in London. By the date of this portrait, he was a famous and regular contributor to the magazine Vanity Fair. The portrait seems to have been part of an exchange between friends. Around 1876–7, Pellegrini had painted a half-length caricature of Degas which he dedicated ‘à vous/Pellegrini’ (to you/Pellegrini). Degas’s response, as we see here, is inscribed ‘à lui/ Degas’ (to him/Degas). Both sketches must have been made when the French artist visited London in the 1870s.62.6 × 34.2 cmHeightcm62.60Widthcm34.20OverallOil on laid paper, strip-linedOil on laid paper, strip-linedhttp://terminology.lido-schema.org/lido00031Execution of designhttps://data.ng.ac.uk/0PIW-0001-0000-0000Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas18341917Artistabout 1876-718761877https://data.ng.ac.uk/0F06-0008-0000-0000Impressionisthttps://data.ng.ac.uk/0FBY-0008-0000-0000realistThe National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Cataloguehttps://data.ng.ac.uk/0E1Z-0008-0000-0000Key bibliography, p. 760, ill., p. 760http://terminology.lido-schema.org/lido00618documentsObject rightsTate: Presented by the Art Fund 1916use of images and metadataTo encourage the use and reuse of the National Gallery's collection data, they are released under the following dedications and licences: Structured data (as opposed to narrative texts) are released under a Creative Commons Zero dedication (CC0): https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Descriptions, notes and all other narrative text content are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 licence (CC BY-NC-ND): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.https://data.ng.ac.uk/0D5R-0001-0000-0000?profile=lidohttp://terminology.lido-schema.org/lido00141Item-level recordNational Gallery London2026-05-05T10:40:53+0100