“For God, the Nation, and the extermination of the Jews,” Edgar Degas’ maid read aloud to the artist at the breakfast table in 1898 (qtd. Nochlin, 156). As Degas’ eyesight worsened and his anti-Semitism intensified, the renowned French Impressionist often asked his maid to read to him from his favorite newspaper, the hate-mongering La Libre Parole. Already prejudiced, Degas was consumed by the anti-Semitic fervor that swept France during the Dreyfus Affair. The sham trial of Colonel Albert Dreyfus, a Jewish officer falsely accused of treason, polarized the country and pit Dreyfusards against anti-Dreyfusards in vicious arguments. Degas, an adamant anti-Dreyfusard, thought all Jews should be punished for the colonel’s alleged crimes. During the Affair, Degas severed relations with his closest friend, Ludovic Halévy, because he was Jewish, and refused to associate with Dreyfusards, including fellow impressionists Camille Pissarro and Mary Cassatt. But after the Affair, when passions cooled and anti-Semitic rants fell out of style, did Degas reconsider his position? Did he regret ending friendships over politics and prejudices?
According to art historian Linda Nochlin, “When the storm of the Dreyfus Affair had subsided, [Degas] seems to have drawn back to some degree from overt anti-Semitism, although the evidence is equivocal” (Nochlin, 163). Indeed, it is difficult to tell how the intensely private artist truly felt. Near the end of the Dreyfus Affair and in the years after, Degas did make contact with his former friends. When Pissarro died in 1903, Degas did not attend the funeral, but he did send a note to Pissarro’s son Lucien, claiming he was too ill to come. He added, “For a long time we did not see each other, but what memories I have of our old comradeship” (qtd. Nochlin, 163). Degas may actually have been sick or may have felt too uncomfortable to spend time with Pissarro’s Jewish family. Either way, he had softened enough to remember Pissarro not as a “dirty Jew” but as a friend. Degas was also able to look past Cassatt’s outspoken defense of Colonel Dreyfus, and was friendly to her when they met at a luncheon after the Affair.
After his split with Halévy in 1897, Degas never spoke to him again. He did, however, visit the Halévy household to pay his respects when Ludovic died in 1908 (Armstrong, 12). Ludovic’s son Daniel remained in contact with Degas after his visit and later wrote the book My Friend Degas, a collection of Daniel’s fond childhood memories of the artist (Halévy). 
Although Degas resumed speaking to Jews and Dreyfusards after the Affair, there is no evidence that he abandoned his anti-Semitism. In his book, Impressionists and Politics, Philip Nord cautioned readers not to put too much emphasis on Degas’ polite treatment of Pissarro, Cassat, and Halévy, writing, “Such gestures…seem more elegiac tributes to friendship long gone than expressions of a present warmth” (Nord, 106). Nord pointed out that while Degas was civil to his former friends, he continued to attend rallies held by Action française, France’s anti-Semitic political party (Nord, 106).
While he did not renounce anti-Semitism, Degas may have regretted sacrificing his friendships to political ideals. It is impossible to know, but perhaps as the years passed, his eyesight worsened and his loneliness grew, he missed his friends. As he watched the modern world through blurry eyes, perhaps he realized he had been blinded by hatred.
top right: La Libre Parole. 17 July 1893.
left: Degas, Edgar. Self Portrait. Collection of Dr. Gustav Rau, Cologne, Germany.
bottom right: Bartholeme, Paul. Photograph of Edgar Degas. From Halévy, Daniel. My Friend Degas. Trans. Mina Curtiss. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1964.