Painters such as Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet used new scientific discoveries and in industrial life to create new subject matter, and new points of view. While Honore Daumier’s painting Third-Class Carriage provides an apparent social criticism of new customs and labor practices, Edgar Degas paints a different picture in The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans.

This painting displays Degas’ interest in unusual angles of vision and staging. Degas was born in Paris in 1834 and died in 1917. He is known for his painting, sculpting, and drawing. However, unlike his contemporaries (make a minor change to the dates and add a new name and you have a basic description of any realist, impressionist, or post-impressionist painter in the previous two sentences), Degas took a special interest in the role of geometry in art. This is not to say that he studied hours upon hours of mathematics and then painted numbers, but that his paintings use line and perspective unlike any of his contemporaries.

This aspect of Degas’ style is apparent in The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans. Although he was born in Paris, his mother’s side of the family were native to New Orleans, and on an extended stay in the city, Degas observed a multitude of things that sparked his creative interest. The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans was painted in 1873, ten short years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As manufacturers adjusted to their new labor standards, i.e. the use of paid labor instead of slaves, Degas observed them.

Compositionally, the painting is unparalleled. The lines are exact, and each person sits, leans, or stands in their own frame. This meticulous separation of characters creates a story for each man in the painting. While some read casually, others are working intensely. This creates a character dynamic within the painting. Most impressive is Degas ability to catch each man in a vulnerable moment. Each person's character is revealed in one brush stroke, much like Dega's character is revealed more and more in each painting.

Although towards the end of his career Degas identify with the Impressionist movement, his keen eye for line and perspective never changed.