Edgar Degas at the Bibliothèque nationale

Bill and I have enjoyed many visits to the Palais-Royal, 

having no idea that a few steps to the north is the wonderful Richelieu site of the National Library of France

with its unforgettable Oval reading room. The library is open to all, desks and computers can be reserved.

As we entered we got a friendly smile from behind a low, unthreatening desk.

Library staff have placed fabulous art books out to ensnare and enchant. Imagine spending hours here on a rainy day.

We like everything about this place!

We had also come to see an Edgar Degas exhibition in the library's art gallery.

"En Noir et Blanc" is a show of Degas' drawings, prints and photographs. Self-portrait, pencil on tracing paper, 1865.

The Mansart gallery has magnificent high ceilings, yet the exhibition design gives the visitors a feeling of intimacy with the works on paper.

Bill and I love the sketchbooks. Degas called these pages "Copies of works seen in Italy by Van Eyck and Bellini, August 1858." June 1859

Loose sheet: Interior scene in 18th century costume.

We didn't get a date or a title for this delightful sketch.

To think Degas must have had this sketchbook in his lap while out on the town. Mademoiselle Bécat, around 1877.

In the 1870s Degas, and his buddies Camille Pissarro and Mary Cassatt, became interested in making monoprints using a variety of printmaking techniques.

This etching of Mary Cassatt, and her sister Lydia (left), at the Louvre, from 1879-80, contains drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint.

A standing nude, 1891-92.

In 1895, Degas began to take and print photographs. Here is "The painter, Henry Lerolle and his two daughters, Yvonne and Christine, 22, rue de Douai," taken in 1895.

The sumptuous and delightful show concludes with an aquatint by Picasso: a fantasy of Degas at work, 1971.