Marie Dihau

[2] She was the sister of Désiré Dihau, ten years her senior, a bassoon player at the Paris Opera and composer, whose melodies she interpreted.

It is in their apartment on Montmartre, at number 6 rue Frochot, that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, their cousin, was introduced to Edgar Degas.

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.

[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".