Realism And Impressionism In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Another contributor to this exhibition, whose picture, ‘The Dancing Lesson’, attracted much attention, was Degas. Friendship with Manet drew Degas into this circle, though he never entirely accepted all the priciples of Impressionism. Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas (1834-1917) was born in Paris, the son of a banker, and, like Courbet and Manet, was originally destined for a legal career. In 1855, however, he entered the École des Beaux Arts, and also studied under Lamothe, a pupil of Ingres. All this life Degas, who was brought up in the classical tradition, had the deepest veneration for Ingres. He was also an admirer of Holbein and Clouet, whose pictures he copied. In 1856 he went to Rome and remained two years in Italy studying the work of the early Italian masters. Returning to Paris, he began as an historical painter, his last picture in this style being ‘A Scene of War in the Middle Ages,’ shown in the Salon of 1865. But about this time he came into contact with Manet, and through him with Pisaro, Monet, Renoir, and others who frequented the Café Guerbois in the Batingnolles, and there endlessly discussed their artistic aims and ideals. Because of this centre for social intercourse the Impressionist group was at one time nicknamed ‘The School of Batingnolles’. Owning to the powerful new influences surrounding him, Degas was led to abandon his historical works and devote himself to painting scenes of modern life. Always intensely interested in the rendering of movement, Degas was first attracted to subjects he found on the racecourse, one of the earliest successes in his new manner being ‘A Carriage at the Races’. He also painted washerwomen at their work, scenes in cafés and in theaters, and revealed himself as an artist passionately absorbed in the spectacle of city life, though with rather a cynical outlook. Degas was the greatest draughtsman among the Impressionists, and in his pictures of modern life he relied upon line more than any other of the friends with whom he exhibited, like Whistler, he was much influenced by Japanese colors prints, which gave him new ideas of pattern and design.

After the Franco-Prussian war, during which he served in the artillery, Degas concentrated on the Ballet, a subject for which he became famous throughout the world, and which occupied his best attention for twenty years. In these works Degas stands revealed as an uncompromising Realist. What he usually shows us is not the glamor and illusion of the Ballet from the spectator’s standpoint; Degas get behind the scenes and exposes the work and discipline which lie behind this artificial fairyland; he strips the dancers of their tinsel, compelling us to see that they are not lovely young nymphs, but plain, tired, hardworked women, often middle-aged. The beauty of his pictures is to be found not in any prettiness of his models but in the lighting, the arrangement, the drawing, and later, in the color, in the convincing truth of his vision, and in the decorative charm of his design. In the later seventies and thenceforward, Degas worked more frequently in pastel than in oils, and in these later pastels he adopts the prismatic hues of Luminism, based on the rainbow colors of the solar spectrum, so that these works, in addition to their masterly drawing and decorative design, have the additional beauty of shimmering, iridescent color. A superb example of his later style is the pastel ‘A Dancer on the Stage’ in the Luxembourg, Paris. Here, for once in a way, Degas forgets his cynicism and shows us the magical glamor of a première danseuse quivering with movement, bathed with light, and happy apparently in her moment of success. After 1886 Degas retired almost completely from the public eye, living the life of recluse on a fifth floor in Montmartre; refusing for the most part to sell his works or even to show them to collectors, though his fame continually increased and the value of his earlier works rose to sensational prices. Before his death his pictures ‘Dancers at the Bar,’ which he had originally sold for £20, was bought by an American collector for £17,400, this being the record price obtained today at public auction for a picture by any living artist. But Degas was equally contemptuous of praise or criticism, and to the end he declined all honors.

Realism And Impressionism In France (continued)