Manet assis, tourné à droit is one of three etched portraits of Édouard Manet which Degas made from 1864 to 1865. Manet is depicted sitting sideways on a simple chair in a studio setting, identified by a canvas that has been turned to the wall. He is immaculately dressed, with a top hat casually cast aside on the floor, as if he has just walked into the room and pulled up a chair. At the time the two artists were close and Degas’s portrait is an intimate study of the charismatic painter. The informal pose and the contemporary setting reflect Manet’s influence, a departure from Degas’s earlier etchings which were closely modelled on Old Master prints. Degas worked the etching through fourth states, but in the final state scraped portions of the face and background away with a burnishing tool, presumably with the intention of working it further, before abandoning it. The present impression of the third state, with the hat most fully defined, is exceptionally rare. Reed & Shapiro record only one other impression, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Of the fourteen known impressions across all four states, this is the only remaining example in private hands.