Portrait of James Huneker

James Gibbons Huneker (1857-1921) was a musician, author and critic and was among the earliest American enthusiasts for Edgar Degas. Huneker wrote of Degas that for that artist "the beauty of life lies in the moving line. He captured with ease the swift, unconscious gesture. His models are never posed. They are nature caught in the act… Pity is deeply rooted in his nature. He is never tender, yet there is veiled sympathy in the ballet-girl series. Behind the scenes, in the waiting-rooms, at rehearsal…his girls are all painfully real." This drawing shows Huneker two years before that was written in 1910.