Research

At the University of Chicago, Moses continued work on his dissertation, which focused on the prints and monotypes of the nineteenth-century French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas. His many pages of meticulous notes attest to the great care with which he catalogued his findings and developed his theories. He also began in-depth studies of several related topics, including the prints of Charles Meyron, the caricatures of Honoré Daumier, and the early history of photography. He received a prestigious Whitney Foundation grant to conduct further research in France in 1963 and an Inland Steel Faculty Fellowship in 1964. While in France in 1963, Moses surveyed numerous private art collections and discovered unpublished etchings and sketches by Degas, which he detailed in enthusiastic letters to his wife and a university colleague. Most exciting of all, in December of that year he received an offer from the French publishing firm Arts et Métiers Graphiques to publish a major catalogue raisonné (a comprehensive, annotated catalogue) of Degas’ lithographs, etchings, and monotypes based on his dissertation research. “Needless to say, my spirits are very very high despite the tedium of the voyage,” Moses wrote two days later.