Marie Dihau
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/%28Albi%29_Mademoiselle_Dihau_au_Piano_-_Edgar_Degas_-_Mus%C3%A9e_d%27Orsay%2C_Paris.jpg/220px-%28Albi%29_Mademoiselle_Dihau_au_Piano_-_Edgar_Degas_-_Mus%C3%A9e_d%27Orsay%2C_Paris.jpg)
Marie Dihau (12 September 1843 – 14 May 1935) was a French singer, pianist as well as singing and piano teacher.
Life
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/%28Albi%29_Mademoiselle_Dihau_au_piano_-_Toulouse-Lautrec_-_1890_MTL.132.jpg/220px-%28Albi%29_Mademoiselle_Dihau_au_piano_-_Toulouse-Lautrec_-_1890_MTL.132.jpg)
Dihau was born in Lille in 1843.[1]
She studied music at the
It is in their apartment on Montmartre, at number 6 rue Frochot, that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, their cousin, was introduced to Edgar Degas. In 1867-1868, he painted her first portrait, Mademoiselle Marie Dihau, kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Between 1869 and 1872, he painted a second portrait of the artist, Mademoiselle Dihau au piano, kept at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.[3]
In 1890, Lautrec, who called himself her "ordinary painter", a great admirer of Degas, painted another portrait entitled Mademoiselle Dihau au piano, kept at the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec of Albi[4] and in 1898 La Leçon de chant where Dihau at the piano accompanies her friend Mrs Janne Favereau standing up. The painting is exposed at the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum of Cairo.[5]
The paintings are hung in the Dihau's living room and then, after Désiré's death in 1909, in Marie's modest apartment on rue Victor-Massé where "the charming old maid lives off a small income and the product of the music lessons she gives, often free of charge, to the young girls of Montmartre who are preparing to sing in the cafés".
Dihau died in Paris on 14 May 1935 at age 92.[1]
References
- ^ ISBN 9782953237276. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
- ISBN 9780870993176.
- ^ a b Edgar Degas, Mademoiselle Dihau au piano, Musée d'Orsay (read online)
- ^ "Œuvre: Mademoiselle Dihau au piano – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Musées de Midi-Pyrénées)". www.musees-midi-pyrenees.fr (in French).
- ^