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Tag Archives: Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas: Eclecticism

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Dreyfus Affair, Edgar Degas, Impressionism, landscapes, pastels, Realism, Social Realism, Valery-sur-Somme

 beach-with-sailing-boats
beach-at-ebbe-1870
Beach with Sailing Boats, 1869 (pastel)
Beach at Ebbe, 1870 (pastel)
(Please click on the smaller images to enlarge them.)
 

The Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) we know depicted ballet dancers.  In fact, for many of us, dancers were Degas’ only subject matter, which is understandable as these were the works we were shown.  Yet, he also depicted horse racing and café scenes.  Moreover, he was a fine portrait artist, a skill he perfected during a three-year stay with relatives in Naples, Italy, beginning in 1856.  At that time, he was also considering a career as historical painter and produced a few historical paintings.

Degas’ main subject was indeed the human figure, especially women.  “Ballet dancers and women washing themselves would preoccupy him throughout his career.”[i]  So would milliners, laundresses, cabaret singers and prostitutes.  As Degas claimed, he was a “realist” and, earlier in his career, a social realist, as in literary realism.     

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica,

“As part of his own process of engaging with modernity, he [Degas] self-consciously aligned himself with Realist novelists such as Émile Zola and Edmond and Jules Goncourt, drafting illustrations for their novels and briefly adopting a similar social descriptiveness.”[ii]

Yet, Degas would later cast away “the certainties of a state-controlled, historical culture for an art of individual crisis, even approaching the nihilism of the following generation.”[iii]  Moreover, the Dreyfus Affair would elecit, on Degas’ part, a “violently anti-Semitic response” that estranged former friends.[iv]

Degas: Seascapes, Landscapes & Valery-sur-Somme

Early Outdoors Scenes

But let us return to our subject matter: the eclectic Degas.  We know that he made fun of en plein air (outdoors) painters, but the above paintings prove that he devoted at least one season, 1869, to “plein-air” art.  Moreover, Degas’ depictions of horses and horse racing scenes are outdoors works.  Finally, Degas left seascapes, landscapes, and depictions of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, shown below.  The above paintings, two pastels, are early works depicting beaches.  These are therefore very luminous works.  Moreover, they could be classified as Impressionist works.  The colours are muted, varied, and sea and sky nearly blend in “Beach with Sailing Boats.”  In the upper part of these pastel seascapes, Degas has used a darker colour.  He therefore presents a painterly rather than linear sky scape.

sky-study_jpg!HalfHD
Sky Study, 1869
 

Later Outdoors Scenes

In later “plein-air” works, his subject matter changed and his works darkened accordingly.   Yet, he did not change his selection of colours to a significant extent.  In “Plowed Field,” shown below, as one looks up, one sees little beads: blue, mauve, dark green and silver.  They illuminate his art.  Here the sky is not a principal subject matter.  Trees dominate “Plowed Field,” a mostly linear pastel.  “Plowed Field” is reminiscent of the nineteenth-century Russian lyrical landscapes of artist Alexei Savrasov (24 May 1830 – 8 October 1897).  It is also reminiscent of the “mood” landscapes created by Isaac Levitan (30 August 1860 – 4 August 1900; aged 39).

Plowed Field, 1890 (pastel)

plowed-field_jpg!HalfHD

From the point of view of composition, “Plowed Field,” now above, is a gem.  It features a lovely curve that begins with the largest tree, on the right side of the artwork.  Degas usually placed his subject matter relatively far from the middle of his artwork.  We also see curves running in opposite directions.  However, we have a dark main line directly beneath the trees.  I love the effect created by the very pale, silvery, beads.  There is considerable movement in this painting.  It is as though the trees were performing pirouettes.  

Saint-Valery-sur-Somme

Degas also depicted the houses of Saint-Valerie-sur-Somme, a small community in northern France.  In “Houses at the Foot of a Cliff (Saint-Valery-sur-Somme),” we have an oil painting featuring a coloured sky, but the main compositional elements are three lines: 1) a slightly broken diagonal line and, underneath, 2) a horizontal line, traced above the blue-roofed cottages and running the entire width of the canvas, beneath the cottages, 3) another diagonal line running in a direction opposite the upper diagonal line.  We do not see a vanishing point, but almost.  There is movement is this painting, as in “Plowed Field.”

Houses at the Foot of a Cliff (Saint-Valery-sur-Somme), 1898 (oil)
houses-at-the-foot-of-a-cliff-saint-valery-sur-somme
rue-quesnoy-saint-valery-sur-somme_jpg!Blog
Rue Quesnoy, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, 1898 (pastel)
 

“Rue Quesnoy” also features lines: two narrowing vertical lines, flanked by houses and a broken and playful third line, a horizontal line consisting of trees slightly above the horizon.  Again, we sense movement in Degas’ work.  He guides and pleases the eye.

Our Masterpiece

But our masterpiece remains a female figure, a pastel inserted at the bottom of this post, a dancer adjusting her slipper:  lines against a flat-coloured background, an example of Japonism, except that he shows a shadow.  In this work, less is more.

“Artists were especially affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the flat areas of strong color, and the compositional freedom gained by placing the subject off-centre, mostly with a low diagonal axis to the background.”  (See Japonism, Wikipedia)

“The prints were collected by such painters as Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and other artists. The clarity of line, spaciousness of composition, and boldness and flatness of colour and light in Japanese prints had a direct impact on their work and on that of their followers.”[v]

Conclusion

Once known mainly for his depiction of ballet dancers, Degas’ choice of subject matter was much broader and always appealing, even when his representation of the human form, the female figure, did not embellish his models.  His art is figurative, not abstract, but his strength lies, to a large extent, in the structure of his art, or in the lines behind the figures.  A successful artist during his own lifetime, he was admired by artists who followed him, including Picasso, and he remains not only a favourite but also a model, which makes him a classic.

________________________________________

[i] “Edgar Degas”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Aug. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/155919/Edgar-Degas/235481/Realism-and-Impressionism>.
 
[ii] “Edgar Degas”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Aug. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/155919/Edgar-Degas/235483/Final-years>.
 
[iii] “Edgar Degas”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Aug. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/155919/Edgar-Degas/235481/Realism-and-Impressionism>.
 
[iv] “Edgar Degas”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Aug. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/155919/Edgar-Degas/235483/Final-years>.
 
[v] “Japanism”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 13 Aug. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/301314/Japanism>.
 
degas-in-a-green-jacket-1856
Degas in a Green Jacket, Self-Portrait, 1856 (oil) (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 
Antonio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741),
The Four Seasons, Spring
Gidon Kremer (born 27 February 1947), violinist
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado
 
dancer-adjusting-her-sandelDancer Adjusting her Sandal, 1890 (pastel)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Micheline Walker
13 August 2013 
WordPress

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Edgar Degas’ Apparent Serenity

10 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Alan Gowans, Degas' female nudes, Edgar Degas, genre painting, Impressionism, the Bellilli family, the industrial revolution, Tony Emery

584px-Edgar_Germain_Hilaire_Degas_032
The Tub (Le Bain), by Edgar Degas, 1886 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

Edgar Degas (b. Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas [19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917])

We associate the art of Edgar Degas with portraits, the depiction of ballet dancers, horses, horse racing, and people engaged in everyday activity (genre  painting).  We also know that he taught Mary Cassatt to make etchings.  It proved extremely useful as Cassatt would later make prints using drypoint.  In 1890, Cassatt visited the Paris Japanese Arts Exhibition of 1890 (wood-block ukiyo-e prints), held at the École des Beaux-Arts.  That exhibition had such an impact on artist Mary Cassatt that she decided to devote the following year to making prints.  In short, Cassatt and Degas were very good friends.

Degas’ Apparent Serenity

When I started studying the fine arts, our teacher, Tony Emery, told the class that Degas’ lovely depictions of ballerinas expressed not serenity, but a rather dark view of the world.  Another teacher, Professor Alan Gowans[i] made similar statements.  The ballet dancer is “the perfect symbol of a rigidly organized society.”  Degas was “commenting of the human condition.”[ii]  The industrial revolution had transformed humans into robot-like workers who  performed the same motion in a repetitive manner, as did ballet dancers.

Remember William Blake‘s (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) “dark Satanic Mills.”  The “dark Satanic Mills” may have been Blake’s response to “orthodox churches of the establishment,” (see The Gardian) but it was also a response to the industrial revolution.  Humans working in factories were like the machines they used to produce “goods.”  In this regard, Professor Gowans points to three paintings: “The Bellilli Family,”  “The Cotton Merchants” (1863), and “The Milliners’ Shop.”  In “The Bellilli family,” we sense rigidity.  In “The Cotton Merchants,” human beings stand behind the cotton.  In “The Milliners’ Shop,” the milliner sits behind the “hats and hat racks.”  They completely “dominate the milliner herself.”[iii]

(Please click on the smaller images to enlarge them.)

750px-Edgar_Degas_-_La_famille_Bellellicotton-merchants-in-new-orleans-1873.jpg!HalfHD
Edgar_Germain_Hilaire_Degas_011 
The Bellilli Family, by Edgar Degas, 1867 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
The Cotton Merchants, by Edgar Degas, 1873 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
The Milliners’ Shop, by Edgar Degas 1884 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
 

Professor Gowans also refers to Degas’ “handling of the nude.”  Degas’ bathers are depicted “climbing awkwardly and unobtrusively in and out of bathtubs, having their hair dried, and so on…” (See Woman Leaving Her Bath.)[iv]  For my part, however, I rather like the painting featured at the top of this post, but other portraits of nudes are less flattering.  Degas tended to paint anonymous human beings.  We see the back of their head or body. However, his paintings are consistent with genre painting.  He captures his subjects in medias res, in the midst of things (Horace).

woman-in-a-bath-sponging-her-leg
the-tub-1886.jpg!HD 
Woman in a Bath Sponging her Leg, by Edgar Degas, 1884 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
The Tub (Le Bain), by Edgar Degas, 1886 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
 
 

Biographical Notes

Degas was born, in Paris, to a wealthy family.  His mother was a Creole and he had family, a brother, an uncle and other relatives, in Louisiana.  Degas visited with them after the Franco-Prussian War.  He was in New Orleans in 1872-73, living at his uncle’s home.  After his father’s death, he learned that his brother René had incurred an enormous debt.  Degas therefore sold the family home in Paris as well as the artwork he had inherited.  He would, however, become an avid collector when he started selling his own artwork. 

In 1853, Degas enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Paris, where he was not an enthusiastic student.  He did however have a studio in the family’s home.  To begin with, he was therefore mostly self-trained and did not enter the École des Beaux-Arts until he met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) who encouraged him to pursue a career in the fine arts.  So, two years after enrolling in the Faculty of Law, he entered l’École des Beaux-Arts where he was a student of Louis Lamothe.  Later, in 1861, he visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon, in Normandy, where he made studies of horses.  Horse racing would become the subject matter of many of his paintings.

Schools

Degas disliked being called an Impressionist.  In fact, other artists, such as Mary Cassatt and Édouard Manet, were artists whose artwork had been rejected by the Salon, the official exhibition of Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts.  They were the refusés.  There was only one Salon des refusés, in 1763.  Consequently, it may be useful to revisit Impressionism.  It was not a genuine “school,” except for a common wish to suggest or evoke, a wish stemming, to a large extent, from the invention of photography as well as Japonisme.  The ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) prints artists and art lovers collected were mass-produced prints.

racehorses-before-the-stands-1872_jpg!HD 
Racehorses before the Stands, by Edgar Degas, 1872
Chevaux de courses devant les tribunes
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
 

However, Degas would make fun of artists who worked en plein air.  Moreover Degas preferred to be described as a realist.  He may in fact have known “naturalist,” writers, the most prominent being French author Émile Zola, its founder.  We have reached a point in the history of art where there occurred a blending of the visual arts, literature and music.  During Degas’ lifetime, Émile Zola was a key figure among French writers and intellectuals.  But unlike Zola, who wrote the famous J’Accuse during the Dreyfus affair, blatant anti-Semitism on the part of the French military and the French clergy — the latter  apologized, Degas had no sympathy for Jews nor, for that matter, anyone else.

Progressive Blindness

At the age of 35, Degas started losing his eyesight and died a nearly blind man.  As he aged, he grew into an embittered individual which may have been caused by the progressive loss of his most precious sense: sight, not to mention skepticism as to his condition,   the skepticism the deaf face: “he or she hears when he or she wants to.”  One thinks of Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) whose hearing was impaired beginning with the “Eroica,” Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (Op. 55), first performed on 7 April 1805, when he was 35.

So, according to two of my teachers, Degas was one of the first artists to depict the profound sense of alienation that characterizes modern “man,” i.e. men and women.  In such cases, magical realism, the ability to fantasize, falls short of a human being’s needs.

I will conclude by pointing out that reception is a factor in the description and classification of works of art.  For many of us, Degas’ dancers are graceful and carefree young women who have the innocence of his fourteen-year-old little dancer, featured below.

fourteen-year-old-little-dancer.jpg!HalfHD
Fourteen-year Old Little Dancer, 1881
(Photo Credit: Wikipaintings)
 
_____________________________
[i] Alan Gowans, The Restless Art, A History of Painters and Painting  1760 – 1960 (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966), p. 209.
[ii] Gowans, loc. cit.
[iii] Gowans, loc. cit.
[iv] Gowans, loc. cit.
 
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893)
“Swan Lake” Op. 20, (composed in 1875–1876)
Armonie Symphony Orchestra
 
the-star-dancer-on-stage_jpg!HD
The Star Dancer on Stage,
L’Étoile
pastel, 1878
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
  
  
© Micheline Walker
10 August 2013
WordPress

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Édouard Manet: Enigmas

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Édouard Manet, Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Courbet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Salon

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, by Édouard Manet, 1863

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, by Édouard Manet (1862-1863)

Although future critics may think differently, Édouard Manet‘s (23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) Déjeuner sur l’herbe, The Luncheon on the Grass, (c. 1863) may well have changed the course of the history of European art, mainly French.  It is a representational, à la Gustave Courbet (10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877), rather than an abstract painting.  However, it ushered in a revolution.

Le Salon & Le Salon des Refusés   

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe could not be shown at the Salon  (founded in 1725), the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.  It was rejected by Academicians Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) and Adolphe-William Bougereau (30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905).  Manet therefore showed it at the Salon des refusés.  Ironically, history was very kind to rejected artists, les refusés. 

Avant-garde artists had to settle for the Salons des refusés, which was somewhat of a blessing.  Persons who own works by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Claude Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassat, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin etc. were shrewd investors.  Americans loved the Impressionists, and other Modernistes.  The shrewder investors bought a Vincent van Gogh or a Pablo Picasso.

You may remember that Gertrude Stein and her brother Leon Stein bought Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, showed at the 1905 Salon d’automne, a new Salon, established in 1903.  Matisse was described as a Fauviste, a wild beast, but he didn’t coin the term.  This was “du nouveau,”  (something new), to quote French poet Charles Baudelaire.  Matisse used unusually bold colours.  The Cone sisters were also in Paris at the time.  These wealthy American socialites could afford artworks.

SalonAutomneManet_1866_The-Fifer_GGW-468

The Fifer, by Manet, 1866

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: an element of Magical Realism

Novelty made Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe a painting Academicists would reject.  It featured a nude woman sitting with two fully dressed men and sharing a luncheon.  Nudes had long entered the Fine Arts, but not in such a manner.  The nude figure does not seem to fit the painting.  But it could fit the imagination of the gentlemen sitting next to her as well as Manet’s imagination.  It could also be a reference or a reminiscence: art within art.  There is in Manet an element of magical realism, a characteristic of Latin American literature.  According to Professor Matthew Strecher, magical realism is “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.”[i]

Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère is also enigmatic.  Just where is the man?  Furthermore, I wonder whether or not the mirror reflects the woman.  Manet was accused of not knowing perspective, which does not make much sense.  (See A Bar at the Folies-Bergères, Wikipedia.)  But the newness of the painting may be the depiction of the young woman who seems a foreigner.  Her eyes display a kind of bewilderment.  The painting could be a depiction of Marxist alienation.  The painting was shown at the Paris Salon, in 1882, at a later date than Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862-1863).

Edouard_Manet_004

Un Bar aux Folies Bergère, by Édouard Manet, 1882 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my former teachers writes that “[i]n each case Manet takes a ‘standard’ Reality, not only as to content, but also as to form.”[ii]  Professor Gowans also states that Manet was teaching other painters and that his work is therefore “didactic.”  As for the public, they were not a factor.

Also enigmatic is Manet’s Olympia, shown at the 1865 Paris Salon.  But it will not be discussed today.

______________________________

[i] Matthew C. Strecher, “Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki,” Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 25, Number 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 263-298, at 267.

[ii] Alan Gowans, The Restless Art, A History of Painter and Painting 1760-1960 (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966), p. 190.

Edouard_Manet_-_Olympia_-_Google_Art_Project_3© Micheline Walker
17 June 2013
WordPress
 
Olympia, 1863
Photo credit: Wikipedia
(Please click on the picture to enlarge it.)

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