Edgar Degas"s arrival in New Orleans in October 1872 was both a homecoming and an exotic sojourn in a land of cotton, steamboats, beautiful women of African descent, and white mansions with Iluted columns the artist was almost a son of Louisiana, his mother having been born to a prominent French Creole family, but he was also already recognized as a leading light of the new art in Paris. This book explores that fascinating and unique moment: the only visit by a French Impressionist to the United States, when the subtlest ideas of French painting alighted on the Mississippi River.