Edgar Degas is regarded, above all, as a painter of the human figure and of city life, and yet both his early notebooks and the practice of his later years attest to his consistent interest in landscape painting. In tracing Degas's response to landscape, including, most notably, his visits to the small resort of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, in Picardy, and in closely analysing his painterly practice, this book reassesses the importance of landscape painting to his career. By revealing Degas's little-known love of this genre, it challenges our assumptions about one of the giants of Impressionist art.