Deoras
Attributed to Rene de Gas, Degas in front of His Library (T38), c. 1900. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Jean Sutherland Boggs
Douglas W. Druick
Henri Loyrette
Michael Pantazzi
Gary Tinterow
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris
9 February-16 May 1988
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
16 June-28 August 1988
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
27 September 1988-8 January 1989
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Degas, organized by the Reunion
des Musees Nationaux/Musee d'Orsay, Paris, the National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the National
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Serge Theriault, Chief, Publications Division, National Gallery of Canada
Emily Walter, Coordinating Editor
Usher Caplan and Norman Dahl, Editors
Colleen Evans, Photograph Editor
Bruce Campbell and Bruno Pfaffli, Designers
Gwen Roginsky, Production Manager
Translation of Chapter I, and quoted material, by the National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or trans-
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including pho-
tocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Degas, Edgar, 1834-1917.
Degas: [an exhibition held at the] Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris,
9 February-16 May 1988, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 16 June-
28 August 1988, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 27 September 1988-
8 January 1989 /Jean Sutherland Boggs . . . [et al.].
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
isbn 0-87099-519-7 isbn 0-87099-520-0 (pbk.)
1. Degas, Edgar, 1834-1917 — Exhibitions. 1. Boggs, Jean Sutherland,
n. Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (France), m. National Gallery of Canada,
rv. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) v. Title.
N6853.D33A4 1988
709'.2'4^DCI9 88-12066 CiP
isbn 0-88884-581-2 (National Gallery of Canada)
® Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris, 1988
® National Gallery of Canada for the Corporation of the National Museums of
Canada, Ottawa, 1988
0 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988
Type set in Bembo by Columbia Publishing Company, Inc. , Baltimore, Maryland
Printed on Nivis Demi Matte 125 gram
Color separations by Digamma, Paris
Printed and bound in Verona, Italy, by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A.
On the jacket/ cover: At the Races in the Countryside (cat. no. 95), detail.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
This exhibition is made possible by United Technologies Corporation
In the ten years since United Technologies first became a major supporter of the
arts, we have sponsored a wide variety of painting, drawing, sculpture, and photo-
graphy exhibitions. Some of these have been hugely popular. Some have attracted
smaller audiences, but have been impressive for critics and art historians.
With this survey of the works of Edgar Degas, we are happy to be the sponsors of
an exhibition we know will be both enormously important artistically and an un-
precedented hit with the general public.
We hope Degas brings much pleasure to everyone who visits it.
Robert F. Daniell
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
United Technologies Corporation
Curators of the Exhibition
Jean Sutherland Boggs
Chairman of the Scientific Committee
and General Editor of the Catalogue
Henri Loyrette
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Michael Pantazzi
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Gary Tinterow
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
with the participation of
Douglas W. Druick
The Art Institute of Chicago
and with the assistance of
Anne M. P. Norton
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
Anne Roquebert
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
John F. M. Stewart
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Contents
Lenders to the Exhibition 12
Foreword 14
Acknowledgments 16
Guide to the Use of the Catalogue 20
Degas and Equilibrium 22
JEAN SUTHERLAND BOGGS
I: 1853-1873 33
HENRI LOYRETTE
"What is fermenting in that head is frightening" 35
Chronology I: 1832-1873 47
Catalogue (cat. nos. 1-121) 61
II: 1873-1881 195
MICHAEL PANTAZZI
Scientific Realism: 1873-188 1 197
DOUGLAS W. DRUICK
PETER ZEGERS
Chronology II: 1873-1881 212
Catalogue (cat. nos. 122-231) 221
III: 1881-1890 361
GARY TINTEROW
The 1880s: Synthesis and Change 363
Chronology III: 1881-1890 375
Catalogue (cat. nos. 232-293) 395
IV: 1890-1912 479
JEAN SUTHERLAND BOGGS
The Late Years: 1890-1912 481
Chronology IV: 1890-19 17 486
Catalogue (cat. nos. 294-392) 499
A Note on Degas* s Bronzes 609
GARY TINTEROW
Key to Abbreviations
Exhibitions 611
Selected References 614
Index of Former Owners 621
General Index 623
Photograph Credits 640
Lenders to the Exhibition
Public Institutions
ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 202
CANADA
Ottawa
Toronto
National Gallery of Canada, 13, 18, 72, 147,
176a, 179, 185, 192, 296, 353, 374
The Art Gallery of Ontario, 338, 387
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
Frankfurt Stadtische Galerie im Stadelschen Kunstinstitut, 98
Karlsruhe Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Kunsthalle,
211
Munich Neue Pinakothek, 336
Stuttgart Staats galerie Stuttgart, 167, 302
Wuppertal Von der Heydt-Museum, 10
DENMARK
Copenhagen Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling, Statens
Museum for Kunst, 292
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 355
Ordrupgaardsamlingen, 111
FRANCE
Gerardmer
Paris
Pau
Tours
City of Gerardmer, 99
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Univer-
sites de Paris (Fondation Jacques Doucet),
14, 183, 186, 195
Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet, 333
Bibliotheque Nationale, 176b, 178, 191, 207,
335, 357
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 380
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
4, 21, 22, 23, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37,
38, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55,
56, 57, 59, 62, 69, 91, n8, 119, 121, 126, 134,
137, 156, 169, 223, 246, 247, 252, 299, 365
Musee d'Orsay, 1, 15, 20, 29, 42, 45, 58, 68,
79, 80, 81, 92, 93, 97, 100, 102, 107, 112, 120,
123, 129, 142, 157, 160, 162, 163, 166, 172,
174, 190, 203, 226, 227, 231, 240, 241, 251,
257, 262, 265, 271, 273, 275, 276, 280, 281,
287, 290, 291, 309, 310, 311, 3H, 3i8, 321,
322, 323, 332, 343, 347, 349, 350, 358, 372,
373, 379, 38i, 384, 392
Musee du Petit Palais, 391
Musee Picasso, 170, 180, 181, 182, 184, 188
Musee des Beaux-Arts, 115
Musee des Beaux- Arts, 27
GREAT BRITAIN
Birmingham Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 11
Edinburgh National Gallery of Scotland, 201, 362
Leicester Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries, 356
Liverpool Walker Art Gallery, 325
London Trustees of the British Museum, 74, 164, 245,
300
The Trustees of the National Gallery, 40, 344
Victoria and Albert Museum, 104, 105, 159
Oxford Ashmolean Museum, 238
JAPAN
Kitakyushu Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, 82
THE NETHERLANDS
Rotterdam Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 279, 282
NORWAY
Oslo Nasjonalgalleriet, 345
PORTUGAL
Lisbon Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 44
SWITZERLAND
Basel Oeffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum
Basel, 351
Lausanne Musee Cantonal des Beaux- Arts, 389
Zurich E. G. Biihrle Foundation Collection, 361
12
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
Moscow Pushkin Fine Art Museum, 139
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Boston
Buffalo
Cambridge
Chicago
Pallas
Denver
Detroit
Fort Worth
Glens Falls
Houston
Los Angeles
Malibu
Minneapolis
New Haven
New York
Northampton
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Princeton
Reading
The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation,
270, 339
Print Department, Boston Public Library, 294
Museum of Fine Arts, 3, 63, 64, 95, 96, 187, 216
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 78, 326
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), 61, 76, 116, 168, 200
The Art Institute of Chicago, 70, 131, 132, 145,
171, 189, 208, 224, 235, 244, 266, 295, 320,
388
Dallas Museum of Art, 346
Denver Art Museum, 220
The Detroit Institute of Arts, no, 113
Kimbell Art Museum, 242
The Hyde Collection, 261
The Museum of Fine Arts, 368, 382
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 65
The J. Paul Getty Museum, 328, 329, 340
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 101
Yale University Art Gallery, 327
The Brooklyn Museum, 71, 77, 255
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17, 60, 66,
73* 75, 79, 81, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 103, 106,
122, 124, 125, 130, 135, 136, 138, 140, 151,
153, 165, 197, 198, 199, 209, 210, 213, 217,
218, 222, 225, 226, 227, 231, 232, 234, 239,
243, 254, 262, 263, 269, 272, 274, 276, 280,
281, 285, 286, 287, 288, 291, 293, 297, 298,
309, 318, 321, 323, 324, 334, 343, 349, 369,
373, 38i, 384
Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 354, 367
Smith College Museum of Art, 2, 26
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 84, 133, 219,
289, 342
The Carnegie Museum of Art, 144, 337
The Art Museum, Princeton University, 348, 359
Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, 258
Rochester Memorial Art Gallery of the University of
Rochester, 366
Saint Louis The Saint Louis Art Museum, 390
Toledo The Toledo Museum of Art, 83
Washington, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 128
DC. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Col-
lection, 25, 117
National Gallery of Art, 150, 196, 256, 267, 305
The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution, 268
The Phillips Collection, 148, 375
Williams town Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 9,
12, 67, 193, 221, 236, 248
Private Collections
Mrs. Franklin B. Bartholow and the Dallas Museum of Art, 259
Muriel and Philip Berman, 3 12
Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, 8
Walter M. Feilchenfeldt, 205
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Gibson, 108, 250
Robert Guccione and Kathy Keeton Collection, 317
The Hart Collection, 260
The Josefowitz Collection, 194
Mme Joxe-Halevy , 330, 331
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Klapper, 308
Phyllis Lambert, 301
Mrs. Alexander Lewyt, 370, 371
Mr. Stephen Mazoh, 39
The Mr. and Mrs. Bernard H. Mendik Collection, 319
The Barbara and Peter Nathan Collection, 278, 385
The Sand Collection, 5
Mr. and Mrs. A. Alfred Taubman, 284
Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor Thaw, 16, 109, 155, 264
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 229, 233, 306
Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 237, 304
Anonymous lenders, 6, 7, 19, 24, 28, 43, 86, 94, 114, 127,
141, 143, 146, 149, 152, 158, 161, 173, 175, 177, 204, 206,
212, 214, 215, 228, 230, 249, 277, 283, 303, 307, 313, 315,
341, 352, 360, 363, 376, 377, 378, 383, 386
13
Foreword
As early as 1983, there were rumblings in the art world that it was time to organize a
retrospective exhibition of the work of Edgar Degas. The following year, the 150th an-
niversary of the artist's birth, there was some criticism that the event had not been fully
acknowledged in Paris. However, for that year, an unusual number of small and highly
focused exhibitions of Degas's work had been planned — on his prints (Edgar Degas: The
Painter as Printmaker, by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), on Degas and Italy (Degas
e V Italia, at the Villa Medici in Rome), on the great riches in the works of Degas at The
Art Institute of Chicago (Degas in The Art Institute of Chicago), on the artist's develop-
ment of certain themes in the dance (Degas: The Dancers, by the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, D.C.), and on his pastels, oil sketches, and drawings (Edgar Degas: Pas-
telle, Olskizzen, Zeichnungen, by the Kunsthalle Tubingen). These were to be followed
in 1987 by The Private Degas at the Whitworth Art Gallery at the University of Man-
chester. The publication in 1984 of the first serious biography of the artist (Degas: His
Life, Times, and Work, by Roy McMullen) as well as the catalogues of these exhibitions
were clearly preparing the way for the first major retrospective exhibition of the work
of the artist in fifty years.
In 1983, the Reunion des Musees Nationaux, the National Gallery of Canada, and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, under the directorship, respectively, of Hubert Landais,
Joseph Martin, and Philippe de Montebello, decided to collaborate on this retrospective
exhibition. A Scientific Committee was formed, composed of a curator from each of
the three institutions, to make the selection of works and to write the catalogue: Henri
Loyrette from the Musee d'Orsay, Gary Tinterow from the Metropolitan Museum,
and Douglas W. Druick from the National Gallery of Canada, to be replaced by Michael
Pantazzi when Mr. Druick went to The Art Institute of Chicago in 1985. Jean Sutherland
Boggs, esteemed Degas scholar, then chairman of the Canada Museums Construction
Corporation, was appointed chairman of the committee.
It was decided that the exhibition should follow the pattern of the 1983 exhibition
of the work of Manet on which both the Reunion and the Metropolitan collaborated,
though it soon became evident that there would be many more (and much smaller)
works in any single location of the Degas exhibition and that, because so many works
are on paper, the exhibition would have to vary from one location to another. In the end,
however, we have provided a comparable selection for each of the three venues, and the
catalogue includes commentaries on each exhibited work .
In the organization of such an ambitious project there are inevitable disappointments.
The small early portraits of Bonnat and his brother-in-law Melida could not be borrowed
from the Musee Bonnat in Bayonne. The severe portrait of Mme Gaujelin from the Isa-
bella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the spirited Rehearsals in the Frick Collection
in New York and the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, and the dazzling pastel Two Dancers
in Yellow and Pink in Buenos Aires could not be lent because of the bequests of their do-
nors. Similarly, policies established by two great Degas collectors, Norton Simon and
Paul Mellon, have precluded their collaboration. In other instances the fragility of the
works — most sadly, Cleveland's great Frieze of Dancers, for example — prevented them
from traveling.
We must emphasize, however, the great generosity and noble contribution to pub-
lic knowledge and enjoyment of those who do lend works of art to exhibitions. This is
particularly true of private collectors who give up what often may be their most pre-
cious possessions for a very long period of time. Although we will express our thanks
to them individually, we should like in the more permanent form of this catalogue to
express our gratitude now in assessing the contributions of the lenders. It seems particu-
larly appropriate to thank those who have lent three works or more to all three sites of
the exhibition. This honor roll includes: the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Brooklyn
Museum; The Art Institute of Chicago; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the
Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williams-
town. There are also three private collectors in Switzerland who have lent at least three
works — Baron H. H. Thyssen-Bornemisza and two anonymous lenders. But we must
also acknowledge our delight in individual loans such as the magnificent Portraits in an
Office (New Orleans) (cat. no. 115) from the Musee des Beaux- Arts in Pau, or M. and
Mme Edouard Manet (cat. no. 82) from the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, which
has never been seen in North America and has not been seen in Europe since 1924.
Among the generous lenders are very naturally the collaborating institutions. The
Musee d'Orsay is lending fourteen paintings to the three venues, having freely allowed
the committee to make this selection when condition was not at issue. This group of
loans includes three of Degas's great early works, The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20), Semi-
ramis Building Babylon (cat. no. 29), and Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45), the
latter two of which are traveling to North America for the first time. The Metropolitan
Museum is lending fifteen paintings, including the beloved Woman Leaning near a Vase of
Flowers (cat. no. 60), and The Dance Class (cat. no. 130), recently bequeathed to the museum
by Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham. In lending these works, we have been conscious of the
importance of those collectors who bought the work of Degas during his lifetime and
eventually gave them to our museums. At the Louvre, we recall especially Comte Isaac
de Camondo, who gave the museum eleven paintings, nine pastels, one drawing, and
three monotypes, and Gustave Caillebotte, who bequeathed seven pastels. The gift of
Louisine Havemeyer in her husband's name to the Metropolitan Museum was even
richer: fourteen paintings, eleven pastels, ten drawings, four prints, and fifty-nine bronzes.
Even then there were many other works by Degas that remained to be given to her
children. It is estimated that 66 of the 392 works in this exhibition were once owned by
Mrs. Havemeyer.
It has been a great pleasure to put this exhibition together, and the capable leader-
ship Jean Sutherland Boggs has brought to the project has made it more agreeable still.
The tireless devotion with which she, Henri Loyrette, Michael Pantazzi, and Gary Tin-
terow have pursued the study of Degas over the past five years has transformed our
knowledge of the life and work of this great artist.
An exhibition of this scale cannot be mounted without financial support. We are
grateful to United Technologies Corporation for its generous grant to the exhibition.
Air Canada is providing transportation for works of art and couriers from Paris to Ot-
tawa. In addition, insurance in Canada has been provided by Communications Canada
through the Insurance Program for Traveling Exhibitions; at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, it has the support of the U.S. Government Indemnity Program. Additional fund-
ing has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
We expect that this exhibition and catalogue will finally pierce the obscurity that
has veiled the legacy of Edgar Degas. Enigmatic, he wanted to be "illustrious but un-
known." Now, through the generosity of many lenders, he shall be not only renowned
but better understood.
Philippe de Montebello Shirley L. Thomson Olivier Chevrillon
Director Director Director
The Metropolitan Museum National Gallery of Les Musees de France
of Art Canada
15
Acknowledgments
The organization of the first large retrospective exhibition of the work of Edgar Degas
in more than fifty years has been an international undertaking requiring the collabora-
tion of an incalculable number of colleagues. More than 70 institutions and 90 private
collectors from 13 countries have agreed to participate in generously lending the works
in their possession. Other institutions — museums, universities, libraries, archives, gov-
ernment agencies, dealers, and auction houses — along with many other colleagues and
friends, have contributed to the success of this enterprise. To all we should like to ex-
press our deepest gratitude. We heartily acknowledge, in addition, those who have
guided, with resourcefulness and discretion, our search for often very elusive works;
those who have negotiated and expedited loans on our behalf when time was of the es-
sence; and those who have shared with us their personal knowledge of Degas and his
contemporaries, critics, and patrons. Many of them are named on pages 18 and 19.
Like all scholars working on Impressionism, we are particularly indebted to the
Durand-Ruel archives in Paris, to Mme Charles Durand-Ruel, and to Mme Caroline
Durand-Ruel Godfroy, who permitted Henri Loyrette and Anne Roquebert of the Mu-
see d'Orsay to work there weekly, with the kind assistance of Mile France Daguet, in
the interest of all of us collaborating on the exhibition and the catalogue. In a spirit of
great collegiality Charles S. Moffett, now of the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D.C., and Ruth Berson, of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, provided us with
reviews and lists of reviews of the Impressionist exhibitions that were more extensive
than they were able to publish in the catalogue of the 1986 exhibition in Washington
and San Francisco, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1881.
Highly important in justifying the loans to the exhibition is our provision in the cata-
lpgue of new information about the physical condition of the works and about Degas's
techniques and approach. In this, we were given invaluable help by the conservation
and research staffs of the three collaborating institutions. In particular, we have benefited
from the valuable advice of Charles de Couessin of the Laboratoire de Recherche des
Musees de France, Gisela Helmkampf and Marjorie Shelley of The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, and Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers, who, for the National Gallery of Canada,
have studied a large number of pastels. Often the lenders — such as the Kunstmuseum
Basel, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Smith College Museum of Art,
or the Philadelphia Museum of Art — were particularly generous in providing informa-
tion acquired through X-radiographs of their works, undertaken at our request.
This exhibition would never have taken place without the goodwill and devoted
support of the directors and staff of the three collaborating institutions. In Paris, we ex-
press our thanks to Olivier Chevrillon, Director of the Musees de France, and to his
predecessor, Hubert Landais; Franchise Cachin, Director of the Musee d'Orsay, and her
predecessor, Michel Laclotte; Irene Bizot, Deputy Administrator of the Reunion des
Musees Nationaux; Claire Filhos-Petit, Chief of the Exhibitions Division, and Cather-
ine Chagneau, Administrative Officer of the Division. In Ottawa, we thank Shirley L.
Thomson, Director of the National Gallery of Canada, and her predecessor, Joseph
Martin, who suggested the exhibition originally; Gyde V. Shepherd, Assistant Direc-
tor, Public Programs; Margaret Dryden, Chief of the Exhibitions Division; Catherine
Sage, Coordinator of Ottawa Exhibitions, and her collaborator, Jacques Naud. In New
York, we thank Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art;
Mahrukh Tarapor, Assistant Director; Emily K. Rafferty, Vice President for Develop-
ment; Everett Fahy, Chairman of the Department of European Paintings, and his prede-
cessor, Sir John Pope-Hennessy.
16
This catalogue, the result of a collaborative effort, has been realized under the su-
pervision of Jean Sutherland Boggs, general editor. The National Gallery of Canada as-
sumed the great responsibility of editing and translating the catalogue texts in English
and French. This was done in its bilingual Publications Division under Serge Theriault,
who also edited the French manuscript with Helene Papineau. Usher Caplan and Norman
Dahl have been responsible for the editing of the English manuscript, bringing it to a
remarkable level of completion in a very short time. At peak periods, the Division was
assisted by editors Monique Lacroix and Andre La Rose. Translations were provided by
the Secretary of State Department of Canada, whose translators over many months
made the subject of Degas a minor specialty. The quality of the more than 730 photo-
graphs illustrating this catalogue is due to the expertise and patience of the National
Gallery's indefatigable photograph editor, Colleen Evans, who was assisted by Degas
student Lori Pauli. Everyone in the Gallery's Publications Division worked with a high
degree of professionalism and dedication to prepare the material for publication both in
Paris and New York.
In Paris, Ute Collinet, Nathalie Michel, Bruno Pfaffli, and Claude Blanchard have
shown imagination, skill, and determination in producing the catalogue in record time.
In New York, we are extremely grateful for the good offices of John P. O'Neill and
Barbara Burn, of the Metropolitan's Editorial Department. Emily Walter, coordinating
editor of the catalogue, worked closely with designer Bruce Campbell and Production
Manager Gwen Roginsky in the exacting task of producing the English edition. To
them, we owe the present handsome volume. We should also like to thank Walter Yee,
Chief Photographer, and Karen L. Willis for taking such remarkable photographs of
works by Degas in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.
There are some who have worked particularly intimately on the project and who
should be given special thanks. In Paris, Henri Loyrette had the collaboration of Anne
Roquebert, who energetically and enthusiastically hunted and found original archival
material, not only at Durand-Ruel but in other archives and in libraries, auction houses,
autograph and rare book shops, and the collections of descendants of the friends and
family of Degas. Both he and she benefited from the invaluable archival research of
Caroline Larroche and the assistance of Didier Fougerat. The discoveries of this French
team were put at the disposal of all of us working on the exhibition. In Ottawa, John
F. M. Stewart acted as a disseminator of information to all three participating institutions
and produced the first draft of the chronology, which was later revised and divided into
four (one for each section). He also made a contribution to all three institutions in giving
advice on the use of computers and other technology in research. Gary Tinterow in
New York had the great advantage of working with Anne M. P. Norton, who tirelessly
hunted sales catalogues, sought out elusive periodical and newspaper articles, discovered
material which she shared with both Ottawa and Paris, and devoted her keen eye and
intellect to solving research problems. Susan Alyson Stein devoted her remarkable gifts
for research to the project, in particular to the histories of the works in the exhibition
and Degas's interaction with the artistic community in Paris in the 1880s. Lucy Oakley
diligently catalogued the works by Degas in the Metropolitan's collection, and Perrin
Stein, through her research, contributed to the accuracy of the catalogue entries. There
was a very gratifying sense of collaboration in the three institutions — working together
from Paris, Ottawa, and New York — to understand the enigmatic figure of Degas.
Our indebtedness to the scholars of the past and present is repeatedly acknowledged
in our footnotes, the bibliography, and the apparatuses for the catalogue entries. Never-
theless, we should like to single out the late Jean Adhemar, who will not see this exhi-
bition in which he expressed such a great interest.
There are moments when we can with some envy project ourselves back to an
event in the life of Max Beerbohm, which he described:
And of all the great men whom I have merely seen the one who impressed me
most was Degas. Some forty years ago I was passing, with a friend, through the
Place Pigalle; and he, pointing up his stick to a very tall building, pointing up to an
17
open window au cinquieme — or was it sixieme? said, "There's Degas." And there, in
the distance, were the head and shoulders of a gray-bearded man in a red beret,
leaning across the sill. There Degas was, and behind him, in there, was his studio;
and behind him, there in his old age, was his lifework; and with unaging eyes he
was, I felt sure, taking notes of "values" and what not of the populous scene down
below, regretting perhaps (for he had never cast his net wide) the absence of any
ballet dancers, or jockeys, or laundry girls, or women sponging themselves in hip
baths; but deeply, but passionately observing. There he was, is, and will always be
for me, framed.1
We hope this catalogue is another window to Degas.
Members of the Scientific Committee
We wish to express our gratitude to all those who assisted us in our work, and, in par-
ticular, the following:
William Acquavella; Henry Adams; Helene Adhemar; Gotz Adriani; Maryan Ainsworth;
Eve Alonso; Richard Alway; Daniel Amadei; Frau Hortense Anda-Biihrle; the Baroness
Ansiaux; Irina Antonova; Mme Aribillaga; Marie-Claire d'Armaghac; Francoise Autrand;
Manfred Bachmann; Roseline Bacou; Katherine B. Baetjer; Colin B. Bailey; Patricia
Balfour; Anika Barbarigos; Armelle Barre; Isabelle Battez; Guy Bauman; Jacob Bean;
Kay Bearman; Laure Beaumont; W. A. L. Beeren; Knut Berg; Christian Berube; Peter
Beye; Ernst Beyeler; Erika Billeter; Beatrice de Boisseson; Suzanne Boorsch; Robert
Bordaz; J. E. von Borries; Michael Botwinick; Edgar Peters Bowron; Jacques Bouffier;
P. J. Boylan; Philippe Brame; John Brealey; Claude Breguet; Richard R. Brettell; Bar-
bara Bridgers; David Brooke; Harry Brooks; Calvin Brown; J. Carter Brown; Yvonne
Brunhammer; John Buchanan; Robert T. Buck; Christopher Burge; James D. Burke;
Therese Burollet; Marigene Butler; James Byrnes; Jean and Marie- Annick Cadoux; Bi-
anca Calabresi; Evelyne Cantarel-Besson; Victor I. Carlson; Laura Catalano; Mme
Chagnaud-Forain; Francois Chapon; Christine Chardon; Jean-Louis Chavanne; Alison
Cherniuk; Andre Citroen; Michael Clarke; Timothy Clifford; Denys Cochin; Patrick F.
Coman; Isabelle Compin; Philippe Comte; Philip Conisbee; Philippe Contamine; Jean
Coudane; Karen Crenshaw; Marie-Laure Crosnier-Leconte; Deanna D. Cross; Pierre
Cuny; Roger Curtis; Jeffrey Daly; Jean-Patrice Dauberville; Lyliane Degraces; M. and
Mme Devade; Pierre Dieterle; Michael Diamond; Bruce Dietrich; Robert Dirand; Anne
Distel; Peter Donhauser; Susan Douglas-Drinkwater; Ann Dumas; Claire Durand-Ruel;
Peter Eikemeier; Denise Faife; Sarah Faunce; Sabine Fehlemann; Marianne Feilchenfeldt;
Walter Feilchenfeldt; Norris Ferguson; Alan Fern; Rafael Fernandez; Maria Theresa
Gomes Ferreira; Hanne Finsen; Eric Fischer; F. J. Fisher; M. Roy Fisher; Jan Fontein;
Jacques Foucart; Elisabeth Foucart- Walter; Jose-Augusto Franqa; Claire Freches; Alice
C. Frelinghuysen; Gloria Gaines; John R. Gaines; Dr. Klaus Gallwitz; Christian Garos-
cio; Dr. Ulrike Gauss; Elisabeth Gautier-Desvaux; Denise Gazier; Christian Geelhaar;
Pierre Georgel; Susan Ginsberg; Catherine Goguel-Monbeig; Nicholas Goldschmidt;
Carrolle Goyette; Anne Grace; MacGregor Grant; Mile Greuet; Michael Gribbon; Phi-
lippe Grunchec; M. and Mme Guy-Loe; Jean-Pierre Halevy; Maria Hambourg; Eve
Hampson; Anne Coffin Hanson; Kathleen Harleman; Anne d'Harnoncourt; Francoise
Heilbrun; Jacqueline Henry; Karen Herring; Sinclair Hitchings; Meva Hockley; Allison
Hodge; Joseph Holbach; Grant Holcomb; Ay- Whang Hsia; Jacqueline Hunter; John Itt-
mann; Colta Feller Ives; Eugenia Parry Janis; Flemming Johansen; Moira Johnson; Betsy
B. Jones; Jean-Jacques Journet; Martine Kahane; Diana Kaplan; Yousuf Karsh; C. M.
Kauffmann; Richard Kendall; George Keyes; David Kiehl; Penny Knowles; Eberhard
Kornfeld; Susan Krane; Lisa Kurzner; Andre Labarrere; Pauline Labelle; Craig Laberge;
Genevieve Lacambre; Jean-Paul Lafond; Marie de La Martiniere; Bernardo Lanaido;
i. S. N. Behrman, Portrait of Max: An Intimate
Memoir of Sir Max Beerbohm, New York:
Random House, i960, p. 133.
18
John R. Lane; Antoinette Langlois-Berthelot; Daniel Langlois-Berthelot; Chantal Lanvin;
Amaury Lefebure; Sylvie Lefebvre; Antoinette Le Normand-Romain; Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie; Sir Michael Levey; the Marquis and the Marquise de Lillers; Irene Lillico; Nancy
Little; Christopher Lloyd; Richard Lockett; Willem de Looper; Frangois Loranger; Do-
mitille Loyrette; Vinetta Lunn; Neil MacGregor; Roger Mandle; J. P. Marandel; George
Marcus; Laure de Margerie; Michele Marsol; Karin Frank von Mauer; Michele Maurin;
Karin McDonald; Marceline McKee; William K. McNaught; Anne-Marie Meunier;
Genevieve and Olivier Michel; M. Michenaud; Charles Millard; Lina Miraglia; Andrew
Mirsky; Kazuaki Mitsuiki; Jane Montgomery; Alden Mooney; Herbert Moskowitz;
Stephen Mullen; John Murdoch; Alexandra R. Murphy; Claude Nabakov; Weston Naef;
David Nash; Steven A. Nash; Philippe Neagu; Mary Gardner Neill; Anne Newlands;
Jacques Nicourt; David Nochimson; the Marquise de Noe; Monique Nonne; Jim Nor-
man; Hans Edvard Norregard-Nielsen; Helen K. Otis; Micheline Ouellette; Philip Palmer;
Giles Panhard; Nancy Parke-Taylor; Robert McD. Parker; Harry S. Parker III; Pascal
Paulin; Germaine Pelegrin; Nicholas Penny; Azeredo Perdigao; Susan Dodge Peters;
Larry Pfaff; Vreni Pfaffli; Laughlin Phillips; Me. Picard; Jacques Pichette; Ronald Pick-
vance; James Pilgrim; Edmund P. Pillsbury; Anne Pingeot; Sir David Piper; Mme Pitou;
Andree Pouderoux; Earl A. Powell III; M. and Mme Hubert Proute; Jim Purcell; Olga
Raggio; Rodolphe Rapetti; Benedict Read; Sue Welsh Reed; Theodore Reff; John Rewald;
Joseph Rishel; Anne Robin; Andrew Robison; Philippe Romain; Jean Romanet; Michelle
Rongus; M. and Mme Rony; Allen Rosenbaum; Agathe Rouart-Valery; John Rowlands;
Joseph Ruzicka; Samuel Sachs II; Moshe Safdie; Jean-Franqois St-Gelais; Elisabeth Sal-
vant; Elizabeth Sanborn; Jean-Jacques Sauciat; Robert Scellier; Scott Schafer; Patrice
Schmidt; Robert Schmit; Douglas G. Schultz; Sharon Schultz; Helene Seckel; Thomas
Sellar; Monique Sevin; George T. M. Shackelford; Barbara Stern Shapiro; Michael Sha-
piro; Alan Shestack; Karen Smith Shafts; Danny Schulman; Janine Smiter; Dr. Hubert
von Sonnenburg; Timothy Stevens; Margaret Stewart; Lewis W. Story; Michel Strauss;
Sir Roy Strong; Charles Stuckey; Peter C. Sutton; Linda M. Sylling; George Szabo;
Dominique Tailleur; Me. Taj an; Dominic Tambini; John Tancock; Patricia Tang; Rich-
ard Stuart Teitz; J. R. Ter Molen; Antoine Terrasse; Madeleine de Terris; Eugene V. Thaw;
Andre Thill; Richard Thomson; Robert W. Thomson; Helene Toussaint; Vincent To-
vell; Valerie Troyansky; David Tunick; Michael Ustrik; Gerald Valiquette; Isabele Van
Lierde; Horst Vey; Maija Vilcins; Nicole Villa; Villards Villardsen; Clare Vincent; Brett
Waller; John Walsh; Frances Weitzenhoffer; Robert P. Welsh; Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov;
Lucy Whitaker; Nicole Wild; Daniel Wildenstein; M. Wilhelm; Alan G. Wilkinson; Sir
David M. Wilson; Michael Wilson; Linden Havemeyer Wise; Susan Wise; William J.
Withrow; Gretchen Wold; James N. Wood; Anthony Wright; Marke Zervudachi; Horst
Zimmerman.
Members of the Scientific Committee
19
Guide to the Use of the Catalogue
General Organization of the Catalogue
The catalogue is divided chronologically into four parts: I (1853—
1873), II (1873-1881), III (1881-1890), and IV (1890-1912),
each written by a member, or members, of the Scientific Com-
mittee for the exhibition. When one author has contributed a
catalogue entry in another author's section, his or her initials
appear at the end of the entry. Each section includes an essay, a
chronology, and catalogue entries. Occasionally, two or more
catalogued works are discussed under one entry.
Form of the Catalogue Entries
Titles: Although Degas would occasionally, for public exhibi-
tion, provide ambitious titles for his works — for example,
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45), when it was shown
at the Salon of 1865, or Spartan Girls Challenging the Boys (also
called Young Spartans', cat. no. 40), when he proposed to ex-
hibit it in the Impressionist exhibition of 1880 — he seemed on
the whole indifferent to titles, perhaps because he exhibited and
published his works so rarely. He did give them nicknames, as
when he spoke of "mon tableau de genre" (my genre picture)
instead of Interior (also called The Rape; cat. no. 84). Some-
times he wrote of his "Coton" (cotton) in letters of 1876, or of
his "Cotonniers" (cotton workers), as when he objected to the
loan to an exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1900, of what in the
Impressionist exhibition of 1876 he had called Portraits in an Office
(New Orleans) (cat. no. 115). When his pictures were sold to
Durand-Ruel or stored or exhibited by the dealer, they were
given descriptive titles, often carelessly applied. This is also true
of the titles given in the inventory of the contents of Degas's
studio after his death, which were produced under great pres-
sure but have become standard usage, accepted for the most
part by Paul- Andre Lemoisne in his catalogue raisonne of the
artist's work. Often the titles are insufficiently precise; many
are even misleading. In defense of those who bestowed these
titles, one must acknowledge that Degas constantly repeated
certain themes so that duplications are inevitable. He might have
been happier, as are certain twentieth-century artists, with only
numbers.
Every attempt has been made to use the artist's own title
for a work when it is known, or a title used by his contemporaries.
Titles in the atelier sales, in Lemoisne' s catalogue raisonne, and
in literature since the death of the artist have also been consid-
ered. The title used for each work represents an effort to be as
precise as possible, while still respecting traditional usage. When
a title has been changed, the conventional title, if it is well known,
is also given. Variations in titles under which works have been
exhibited, published, bought, or sold, are provided, between
quotation marks, under the headings Provenance, Exhibitions,
and Selected References.
Dates: Degas dated very few works — less than five per cent of
the approximately 1,500 paintings and pastels in Lemoisne's
catalogue raisonne. Even when he did inscribe dates, he often
did it sometime later — and occasionally inaccurately — as Theo-
dore Reff has demonstrated for the drawings from the mid-
1850s. He dated some drawings "Florence 1857," for example,
though family correspondence reveals that he went to Florence
for the first time in 1858 (see Reff 1963, pp. 250-51). There is
also very little additional supporting documentation for dating
because he exhibited his works rarely and they were seldom
published during his lifetime. As a result, the authors of this
catalogue have made a particular effort to uncover information —
such as the records of purchases from the artist by his dealer,
Paul Durand-Ruel — that could help to date the works more
precisely.
Medium and support: Degas was an experimenter; he tried many
unconventional combinations of mediums and supports. This
has made it difficult to ascertain the exact materials used. When-
ever possible, the advice of conservators has been sought, though
because of the varied provenances of the works, this could not
be done systematically.
Dimensions: Dimensions in most instances have been provided
by the lender. They are given in inches and centimeters, height
preceding width.
Inscriptions: Inscriptions are given when the work is signed, dated,
or otherwise inscribed by the artist.
Stamps: Vente and atelier stamps are recorded, indicating their
location on the work. The Vente stamp (Frits Lugt, Les marques
de collections de dessins et d'estampes, Amsterdam: Drukkerijn, 192 1,
p. 117, no. 658) imitates the Degas signature and is normally
printed in red; any departures in color are identified. The Vente
stamp was used on most of the works sold in the atelier sales
(see Ventes I-IV below). The atelier stamp (Lugt, op. cit., p. 117,
no. 657), "Atelier Ed. Degas" within an oval, was printed in
black on the works in the artist's studio after his death.
Venues: Unless otherwise indicated, the work reproduced in the
catalogue is being exhibited at all three venues: Paris, Ottawa,
and New York.
Standard catalogue numbers: Following the identifying informa-
tion for each work and preceding the catalogue entry, the num-
20
ber in the standard catalogue that includes the work (Lemoisne,
Rewald, etc.) or the Vente catalogue number is given. See ab-
breviations above.
Provenance: Although every effort has been made to trace the
history of each work, there are inevitable breaks in knowledge;
such breaks are identified by periods. A semicolon indicates a
direct transfer in the provenance.
Exhibitions: Exhibitions are cited either in abbreviated form or
in full depending on the frequency of citation, giving the date
and the city in which the exhibition has taken place.
Selected references: An effort has been made to select only those
bibliographical references that have added to the knowledge or
understanding of the catalogued work. Frequently cited sources
have been keyed to a list of abbreviations for selected references
(p. 614). For works in the collections of the Musee du Luxem-
bourg, the Musee du Louvre, and the Musee d'Orsay, only the
first and last editions of the catalogue have been cited.
Citations of reproductions: When all works cited are reproduced in
a catalogue or monograph, such as Lemoisne, no indication of
reproduction is given. When a publication does not reproduce
all works, a reproduction is indicated by the abbreviation pi.,
fig.,orrepr.
Degas's notebooks: References to Degas's notebooks are cited as
they are given in Theodore Reff 's catalogue (The Notebooks of
Edgar Degas, New York: Hacker Art Books, 1985), providing
in parentheses the inventory number of the notebook owner —
for example, Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 21).
Location of works: The authors have endeavored to indicate the
location of works not included in the exhibition. When the title
of a work is followed only by an identifying number from a
catalogue raisonne, the location of that work is not known.
Translations: Published translations have been used where possible,
and where appropriate. When no source is given, the translation
has been provided by the authors and editors. In some instances,
for reasons of accuracy and style, published translations have
been revised for this catalogue and are indicated as such.
Orthography of the Degas Surname: Degas, De Gas, or de Gas?
The painter's grandfather, Hilaire Degas, was born in Orleans
and spent most of his life in Naples. The spelling Degas, with-
out the particle, is used on his birth certificate and on his tomb,
and his Italian children followed the same form. This spelling
is therefore used in the catalogue in referring to the Italian
members of the family. The exception is the painter's father,
Auguste, who began to use the particle — thus, De Gas — when
he moved to Paris. The painter, like his brothers and sisters,
also used De Gas — for example, in the Salon exhibitions of the
1 860s — but by the time of the Impressionist exhibition of 1874,
he had changed the spelling to Degas. The other members of
the family in France continued to use De Gas, but the painter's
brother Ren6, by 1901, when he had received the Legion of
Honor, changed the form to de Gas. Thus, in the catalogue,
Degas is used for the artist and for the Italian members of the
family, De Gas for the French members of the family, and de
Gas for Rene and his children after 1900.
Abbreviations
Short forms for the most frequently used bibliographical and
exhibition references are to be found in the Key to Abbreviations
(pp. 611-20). In addition, the following abbreviations are used:
BN Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (abbreviated only
in citations of Degas's notebooks)
BR Philippe Brame and Theodore Reff, Degas et
Brame and son oeuvre: A Supplement, New York: Garland
Reff Press, 1984
D Loys Delteil, Edgar Degas, Le peintre-graveur
Delteil illustre, IX, Paris: privately printed, 1919
J Eugenia Parry Janis, Degas Monotypes, Cam-
Janis bridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, 1968
A or C Jean Adhemar and Frangoise Cachin, Degas:
Adhemar or The Complete Etchings, Lithographs and Mono-
Cachin types, New York: Viking Press, 1974
L Paul-Andre Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre,
Lemoisne 4 vols., Paris: Paul Brame and C. M. de Hauke,
Arts et Metiers graphiques, [1946-49]
R John Rewald, Degas: Sculpture, New York:
Rewald Abrams, 1956
RS Sue Welsh Reed and Barbara Stern Shapiro,
Reed and Edgar Degas: The Painter as Printmaker, Boston:
Shapiro Museum of Fine Arts, 1984
T Antoine Terrasse, Degas et la photographie, Paris:
Terrasse Denoel, 1983
I: Vente Atelier Degas (first Degas atelier sale),
Vente I: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 6-8 May 1918
II: Vente Atelier Degas (second Degas atelier sale),
Vente II: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 11-13 December
1918
III: Vente Atelier Degas (third Degas atelier sale),
Vente III: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 7-9 April 1919
IV: Vente Atelier Degas (fourth Degas atelier sale),
Vente IV: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 2-4 July 1919
21
22
Degas and Equilibrium
JEAN SUTHERLAND BOGGS
The longer one reflects on the work of Edgar Degas, the more
elusive it seems. But some key to the work, if not necessarily
to the man, may be found in his fascination with equilibrium.
Whether it was in the dizzy heights reached by Mile La La in
the Cirque Fernando, 1 or the efforts of young dancers at the
exercise barre,2 he was attracted by the relationship of man to
the earth, sometimes challenging gravity, sometimes reconciled
with it. As the poet Paul Valery observed in his perceptive
writings about the artist, whom he knew quite well, Degas
more than any other artist gave floors — the symbol of the earth
on which balance was achieved — an important role in many of
his works.3
It is difficult to know about Degas's personal sense of equi-
librium. Theodore Reff has written so incisively about Degas
in relation to Whistler in a chapter entitled "The Butterfly and
the Old Ox" that, since we know Whistler used a butterfly as
his monogram, we are apt to think of Degas as a heavy four-
footed mammal.4 This seems stamped even more indelibly on
our memories when we read a letter of 15 July 1858 to Degas
from his older friend the painter Joseph Tourny, to which Mme
Tourny added a footnote, "In Rome we often complained about
the little bear, but now we find ourselves regretting his ab-
sence." Tourny himself wrote, "We think constantly of the Degas
who grumbles and of the Edgar who growls, and we are in-
deed going to miss that grumbling and growling during the
coming winter/'5 As a result, we are inclined to think of Degas
lumbering like the bear that Toulouse-Lautrec drew being led
on a chain by Degas's old friend the bassoonist Desire Dihau,
who appears in The Orchestra of the Opera.6 But there is another
side of the relationship of Degas to his body, Degas who in old
age surprised his male friends and acquaintances by his lack of
embarrassment about his nakedness when he dressed,7 who
would thank an Italian photographer for having used a passerby
to conceal his furtive buttoning of his trousers as he left a uri-
nal,8 and, more significantly, who seemed to have enjoyed his
body as a gifted mimic, even a clown. It was Valery again who
wrote about Degas's talents as a mime, which he attributed to
the artist's Italian ancestry.9 Others have described Degas per-
forming the steps of a dance;10 in photographs taken about
1900 outside the Chateau Menil-Hubert in Normandy, we see
him dancing, gesturing, and bowing with his younger friends
Jacques Fourchy and his wife,11 who had been born Hortense
Valpincon in 1862. 12 In 1912, when he was still walking obses-
sively, he told Daniel Halevy, after the sale of the paintings in
the collection of his schoolfriend Henri Rouart (in which his
Dancers Practicing at the Barre13 sold for the phenomenal sum of
Fr 478,000), "You see, my legs are good. I walk well."14 His
own relationship to the earth, even in his advanced years,
seems to have remained a happy one.
When Degas began to work, he undoubtedly had a strong af-
fection for his family and a deep sense of pride in the relatives
of his Neapolitan-born father. This seems crystallized in the
great family portrait of his father's sister Laura Bellelli, her
husband, and the Bellellis' two daughters Giulia and Giovanna,
which he began during their exile in Florence from their native
Naples.15 Across the surface of the canvas he painted later in
Paris, the hands of the Bellellis play like the hands of mimes to
give an indication of the relative composure of each family mem-
ber. The baron's hands are furtively folded in shadow. Those
of Giulia in the center are cockily and awkwardly turned
under her wrists at her waist. Giovanna's are shown sancti-
moniously and, as Henri Loyrette suggests on the basis of hith-
erto unpublished letters, probably hypocritically folded, for she
was an undisciplined child. And the mother places one gentle
but controlling hand on her daughter's shoulder, while she
gracefully uses the other to balance her pregnant body. Every-
where within the work equilibrium is sought, in spite of the
tensions and shadows Degas suggests could be threatening the
family.
The mother, Laura Degas Bellelli, stands out as the dominat-
ing figure. She represents the supreme ideal of balance, as a de-
tail of the painting of her head and shoulders reveals (fig. 1). In
her recent restoration of the picture, Sarah Walden has shown
that Degas probably retouched the head in the 1890s, but he
did so with exquisite discretion. We feel that the model's sense
of poise must have been innate from the head that rises so
proudly above the slender neck set upon sloping shoulders.
Her eyebrows reinforce that suggestion of inner pride. Al-
though there have been many speculations about the sources
for Degas's conception of his aunt — including the works of
Clouet, Holbein, Bronzino, and Ingres — he himself seems to
have found the strongest echo of her in the painting of Paola
Adorno by van Dyck in Genoa.16 He saw that painting on his
trip back to Paris after having spent several months with the
Bellelli family in the fall and winter of 1858-59, making the
studies that would lead to the family portrait. After seeing the
van Dyck, he made a drawing from memory of its composi-
tion and wrote notes over three pages in one of his notebooks,
now (thanks to his brother Rene) in the Bibliotheque Nationale
23
in Paris.17 It seems as if he was responding to his sadness at
leaving his beautiful aunt. He says of van Dyck's Genoese
countess, "Artists no longer paint such a woman, with such a
subtle and distinguished hand."18 And wonders about van Dyck's
relationship to her, as he must have questioned his own rela-
tionship to his aunt: "Was this the result of van Dyck's love for
the Countess Brignole? Or, indeed, do I find the work charm-
ing even though there was no such feeling?" He answers him-
self almost immediately, "There was perhaps more than a natural
fondness on the part of van Dyck."19 He even thinks of her in
terms of gravity, "purposeful and light as a bird,"20 noting the
ground, the rug, and the steps on which she stands. But it is
the head, like that of Baroness Bellelli, that finally captivates
him: "Her head," he writes, "in its grace and delicacy, is life it-
self,"21 adding, at the top of another page, "Her head alone
dominates all else."22
In The Bellelli Family, though a balance is achieved among
the four principal actors, we are aware that they form a tableau
against a background that is somewhat alien. We may not know
that the baron, who would have his political fortunes restored
with the Unification of Italy in i860, had complained about the
ignominy of living in Florence in "rented rooms."23 We might
guess that the baroness had grown up in an environment like
the colossal Palazzo Pignatelli, with its portal by Sanfelice, near
the Gesu Nuovo in Naples, a house acquired floor by floor by
her adventurous father (a drawing of whom by Degas hangs on
the wall behind her). Nevertheless, in the painting we feel some-
thing amiss in the door at the left opened into unknown space
beyond an empty bassinet, or in the reflections in the mirror
above the mantelpiece. But perhaps these reflections are evoca-
tive simply of the dreams and longings contained within what
seemed to its inhabitants to be the prison of the conventional
Bellelli drawing room in Florence.
When within the same decade Degas conceived another room
as evocative as that in The Bellelli Family, it was for Interior,2* in
which all the earlier painting's proper posturing for a stable im-
age before society is shattered (fig. 2). Although the drama has
never been satisfactorily explained — which may have been as
Degas intended — the painting is charged with emotion. Nei-
ther of the two characters — the woman crouching in her chair
or the man leaning with his back against the door — displays any
of the attributes of decorum. The room is conventional enough,
so that the disorder of clothes thrown over the end of the bed
or a corset fallen on the floor is conspicuous. Every detail
seems to contribute to the intensity of the drama, a drama that
cannot be solved. There is a floor here for Valery's admiration,
with red stripes leading dramatically back beside the narrow
bed. The flowers on the wallpaper glow like the coals in the
fireplace. The slender pedestal table shows Degas playing with
equilibrium, particularly by not putting the kerosene lamp on
the axis of the pedestal and appearing to support it by identify-
ing it with the edge of the mantel and the gold mirror above it.
Some soft white fabric spills tantalizingly over the open case.
The beads are further evidence of the woman's provocative
state of semidress. Finally, the mirrored image is even more il-
lusive than the reflections in The Bellelli Family, sufficiently so Fig. 2. Interior (detail), cat. no. 84. Philadelphia Museum of Art
24
Fig. 3. Racehorses before the Stands (detail), cat. no. 68. Musee d'Orsay, Paris
that Sidney Geist has seen in it the "magical apparitional im-
age" of the husband murdered by the guilty lovers in Zola's
Therese Raquin, a novel some critics believe to be the source for
the painting.25 The result, particularly with the emotive light
from the lamp, seems far removed from the apparently rational
calm of The Bellelli Family.
The significance of the detail in figure 2 was recognized by
Quentin Bell in the Charlton Lecture on the painting at the
University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1965:
The central axis from which all the drawing grows is, surely,
the pedestal table, the open box and the lamp. I cannot ex-
press my sense of the importance of this passage better than
by saying that I can well imagine Degas feeling that if only
he could get that part solidly stated the rest would fall into
place. Everything, it seems to me, is governed by this central
axis, the mirror balancing the shape of the bedstead, the
strong horizontal that is broken by the top hat and the girl's
head, which itself terminates a majestic series of curves made
by her arm and her petticoat — note in passing that the arm
itself is a miracle of integrity — who but Degas would have
dared to describe such inexplicable contours? From the same
nexus the fringe of the counterpane, produced by the angle
of the box, is itself integrated with the carpet and the floor-
boards. This, the vital element in the composition, is surely
one of the great feats of painting of the nineteenth century.26
Degas painted only one Interior, and indeed seldom produced
other works as saturated with dramatic power. At the same
time, he was turning to subjects that could be seen in everyday
Paris. One of these is Racehorses before the Stands, which he
would not have painted at the racetrack but later in his studio
from drawings and from memory (fig. 3). 27 Although it is
conventionally believed that the work was painted at Long-
champ, which has a similar wooden spectators' stand, Henri
Loyrette points out (see cat. no. 68) that the stand is not exactly
the same and that the source must have been another racetrack
in Paris, such as the popular one at Saint-Ouen. Even as early
as this, Degas was experimenting with his materials, as he
would for the rest of his life. He used oil paints but blotted the
25
oil from them and thinned them with turpentine, applying this
to paper; the medium has the dryness and delicacy of surface of
an eggshell and is known as "essence," called "peinture a l'es-
sence" by Degas. Although he made many drawings with es-
sence on dark oil paper — such as Four Studies of a Jockey from
the Art Institute of Chicago28 — that show him seeking the
most natural balancing of a jockey on a horse, in Racehorses be-
fore the Stands he toys with stability. Framed by two substantial
horses and riders are other jockeys and their mounts that seem
more spirited (if not necessarily unstable) because of the animated
shadows they make on the ground and the complicated pattern
of the horses' legs. And indeed, farthest from us are a horse
and rider in exaggerated and improbable trouble, adding a cer-
tain dynamism to what otherwise would be a tranquil scene.
On the other hand, the smokestacks of Paris in the distance are
a reminder of the equilibrium that Degas, in spite of certain in-
tentional dissonances, was trying to achieve.
It may have been before he went to New Orleans (where his
mother had been born) for the winter of 1872-73 that Degas
began his first version of The Dance Class, now in the Musee
d'Orsay.29 And it was almost certainly after his return that he
completed it and the second version (recently bequeathed to
the Metropolitan Museum),30 which had been commissioned by
the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure in a complicated series of ac-
quisitions from Degas that Michael Pantazzi has unraveled.31
Dominating the composition (fig. 4) is the aging dancer Jules
Perrot, who is conducting the class, though the nineteen young
dancers and their chaperones seem largely indifferent to him.
Even if in his very stillness Perrot is the antithesis of the danc-
ers around him, Degas by no means suggests that he is imper-
vious to change; his suit is baggy; his hair is thin; his position,
as suggested by the strokes of paint, somewhat uncertain. Never-
theless, as he leans on a heavy stick (which seems a reminder of
equilibrium like the edge of the frame in The Bellelli Family, the
pedestal of the table in the Interior, and the smokestacks in
Racehorses before the Stands), he is the pivot around which this
world revolves.
Degas, who had begun to paint dancers not long before going
to New Orleans, was now in the 1870s frequently devoting
much of his time to the theme. On the one hand, he could be
compassionate about the aging of a great dancer of the roman-
tic period, Jules Perrot. On the other, he was infinitely touched
by the efforts of dancers to give an illusion that they could flout
the laws of gravity. He admired their efforts, which were often
less successful than those of the young dancer performing an
arabesque here for Perrot. They are placed, brilliantly, in oppo-
sition to each other — one defying the earth, the other with his
stick seeking a securer relationship to it.
Perrot's stick is one of many that appear in Degas's work, al-
ways as symbols of the relationship of their bearer to the force
of gravity.32 Degas also used the umbrella — Mary Cassatt's,
for example — in the same way.33 Walking sticks were to be-
come an obsession for him; he collected them compulsively, as
he had once collected printed handkerchiefs and would later
collect works of art.34
At the time Degas painted The Dance Class, he was entering
the period of his life in which his own personal equilibrium
was most threatened.35 The year he reached forty, in 1874, his
father died leaving his private bank facing bankruptcy, perhaps
because of his own impracticality, perhaps because he had
overextended its credit, lending money to his two other sons,
Achille and Rene, for the business they were establishing in
New Orleans. The painter had to assume a heavy financial ob-
ligation to clear the family name. His brother Achille, when he
returned from New Orleans in 1875, was tried and subsequently
served one month in jail for shooting (but not killing) the hus-
band of his mistress. In 1876, the family was sued by the
Banque d'Anvers for unpaid debts. Early in 1878 in New Or-
leans, Rene De Gas deserted his blind wife (and their first
cousin), Estelle Musson De Gas, and eloped with her reader; it
was fifteen years or so before the painter forgave him. Some-
what later that year, his sister Marguerite emigrated to Argen-
tina with her architect husband, Henri Fevre, and he was never
again to see this sister of whom he seemed particularly fond.
Although these family events must have threatened Degas' s
sense of stability, there may have been compensations in the
collegiality with which he worked with his fellow artists
toward the series of Impressionist exhibitions starting in 1874,
in his increasing reputation as an artist, and in some successes
with sales, including his first to a museum — the museum at
Pau. Although he did make some concessions to his financial
instability in the small "articles" he produced, such as fans or
drawings of dancers, his work was as valiant as were the efforts
of his young dancers. An important part of that courage was to
be found in his wit, which usually took the form of approach-
ing a subject from an unexpected angle of vision.
Degas, like some of his colleagues — in particular the Braque-
monds, Pissarro, and Mary Cassatt, who together planned to
produce a review, Le Jour et la Nuit, to publish fine prints — saw
in printmaking the possibility of a popular and even profitable
art.36 At the same time, his desire for experimentation pushed
him forward, so that he made many variations on states of
prints — for example, at the most extreme, twenty-two of the
drypoint and aquatint Leaving the Bath, of about 1879. 37 One
print that does exist in a single state, except for one variation
and the pastel he made over it in 1885, is the lithograph Mile
Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (fig. 5). 38 The fifteen impres-
sions of the print that Reed and Shapiro were able to discover
in preparing their important catalogue of his prints may not
seem a large edition, but for Degas it was. Its subject also has a
charm that would justify greater distribution. In considering
Degas on the subject of equilibrium, it is the sky and the mir-
rored reflection at the left that interest us. Reed and Shapiro de-
scribe the lights felicitously: "It [the print] exhibits every form
of natural and artificial lighting that could manifest itself in a
nocturnal scene: a large gas lamppost, a cluster of gas globes,
and a string of lights, seen at the right, are reflected, along with
a prominent hanging chandelier, in the mirror at left behind the
performer. In the dark sky, the moon shines through the trees
of the Champs-Elysees, while fireworks send down streamers of
light."39 It is as if all these elements of light joyously celebrate
26
Fig. 5. Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (detail), cat. no. 176. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
the universe while their explosions challenge its laws. Degas
seemed briefly to be master of a brilliant cosmos.
By the time he reached fifty in 1884, Degas's financial position
was, as Gary Tinterow documents, considerably more secure.40
Although he remained estranged in the eighties from his brother
Rene, there do not seem to have been any family events to up-
set his equanimity, aside from the desire to settle his frustrating
affairs in Naples with his young cousin Lucie Degas. But still
he was unhappy. He wrote the younger painter Henry Lerolle,
who had been buying his works, of his melancholy:
If you were single, fifty years of age (for the last month),
you would know similar moments when a door shuts inside
you and not only on your friends. You suppress everything
around you, and once all alone you finally kill yourself, out
of disgust. I have made too many plans; here I am blocked,
impotent. And then I have lost the thread of things. I thought
there would always be enough time. Whatever I was doing,
whatever I was prevented from doing, in the midst of all my
enemies and in spite of my infirmity of sight, I never despaired
of getting down to it some day.
I stored up all my plans in a cupboard and always carried
the key. I have lost that key. In a word, I am incapable of
throwing off the state of coma into which I have fallen. I shall
keep busy, as people say who do nothing, and that is all.41
Degas's work was no longer explosive, defying, devastatingly
witty. As he withdrew from his increasing fame, it became
more reflective and more classically serene.
A detail of The Visit to the Museum (fig. 6), now in the Na-
tional Gallery of Art in Washington, shows a woman in the
Grande Galerie of the Louvre, which Gary Tinterow identifies
by its pink scaglio columns.42 She is looking at a work that is
even more mysterious than the mirrored reflections in The
Bellelli Family or Interior These reflections are, however, as sub-
dued and withdrawn as the sky above Mile Becat is explosive.
They are almost like reflections of reflections of paintings — or
perhaps dreams of works of art. It is as if the world the young
woman^ees should be magical within the frames, which are
therefore not rationally described. Degas's comment as he ap-
plied what Sickert called "undecided strokes" to suggest these
reflections — "With this, I must give a bit of the idea of the Mar-
riage at Cana"43 — may have an ironic reference to the miracle
he wished to perform.
The young woman herself is contained. Her head, balanced
by the absurdity of the hat on her neck, edged with white, is as
exquisitely tuned as that of Baroness Bellelli. We barely see her
face, but the light on her ear is painted with a certain affection.
Although very modern for the 1880s, she seems to embody
Degas's desire for an art like that of the ancient Greeks. From
two remarks he made — one at the beginning of his career and
the other at the end — it is clear that Degas did not think of
Greek art as static or hermetic, as suggested by frigid neoclassic
art. The first reference was in jottings he made in a notebook
about a performance he had seen of the great Italian actress
Adelaide Ristori in Legouve's Medee on 15 April 1856: "When
she runs, she often evokes the movement of the Winged Vic-
tory [Iris] of the Parthenon."44 The second was when he was
28
Fig. 6. The Visit to the Museum (detail), cat. no. 267. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
asked by Louisine Havemeyer, presumably in the late nineties,
why he painted so many scenes of the dance and he answered:
"Because only there can I recapture the movements of the
Greeks."45 In this visitor to a museum, we find that genuinely
classical sense of life, with an equilibrium beautifully and easily
achieved.
Suggesting both the straining and the attainment of equilib-
rium is one of Degas 's fine nudes from the eighties, a pastel,
After the Bath (fig. 7). 46 Degas here uses light to show his plea-
sure in this bather's body as he had used light on the young
woman's ear in The Visit to the Museum. As the bather lifts her
left knee to sponge it and balances her body with the pressure
on her right leg and with her right hand lightly grasps the
back of a chair, there is an exquisite suggestion of the act of bal-
ancing to achieve equilibrium. The application of pastel is disci-
plined and thin, without the indulgence in the wild mass of color
that can make the later works so thrilling. But this very re-
straint is what enhances the sense of perfection in composure
restored.
Once having achieved equilibrium, Degas seemed determined
in his old age — at least by the time he was sixty in 1894 — to
strain it, to shake it up, if not to destroy it utterly. This may
have been the result of his personal unhappiness, much of it
self-induced, like his stand on the Dreyfus Affair or his reaction
to the climate of the times.47 Curiously, however, he did not
ignore the significance of a stable and measured relationship of
man to his universe. On 27 August 1892, from Menil-Hubert,
where, for diversion, he was making a painting of the billiard
room,48 he wrote to his friend the sculptor Albert Bartholome,
"I thought I knew a little about perspective. I knew nothing at
all, and thought I could replace it through a process of perpen-
diculars and horizontals, measuring angles in space, just through
an effort of will. I kept at it."49 Even stranger is the letter he
wrote to the painter Henry Lerolle on 18 December 1897: "It is
in vain that I repeat to myself every morning, tell myself, yet
again, that one must draw from the bottom upward, begin
with the feet, that the form is far better drawn upward than
downward. Alas, mechanically, I begin with the head."50 Very
few works painted in the nineties or in this century placed on
him the same demands for a sense of ordered perspective as
those of the rooms at Menil-Hubert. There is also little evi-
dence that he overcame his habit of beginning the drawing of a
figure with the head; increasingly, he ignored the feet. And yet
the shift in both order and emphasis that took place in his work
must have been based on a conscious denial of the security and
optimism of his past.
The late works become increasingly spectral, itself a contra-
diction of his earlier classicism. Although one small detail of
one work (fig. 8) can hardly represent all that was happening,
the horse and rider in the background of a pastel, Racehorses, in
the National Gallery of Canada,51 can symbolize a great deal. It
is curious that the clue to the significance of the work rests in
the horse and rider farthest from us, as it had in Racehorses before
the Stands, painted nearly thirty years earlier. Although the
work of Degas was still understated in this period, it is a shock
to consider how far removed this jockey is from the chrono-
logically closer nude of the early eighties. There is no sense of
29
physical beauty here, or of radiant health. Nor is there any ar-
ticulation of the pathetic body. The jockey, with feeble arms,
struggles with a force that is stronger than he, giving the detail
of the picture a disturbing disequilibrium. The brilliance of the
orange silks — almost a vermilion — with the patches of indigo
carries the scene into a world of great intensity. Rational order
has vanished, and any hint of stability is further violated by the
vibration, of horse, jockey, and stormy sky — as if all were one.
Two anecdotes told by the dealer Rene Gimpel are significant
in what they reveal about Degas's apparent rejection of equilib-
rium. One was of Degas's telling Monet, after the other artist
had exhibited his Water Lilies at Durand-Ruel in 1909: "I remained
for only a second at your exhibition. Your pictures gave me
vertigo."52 And though it is true that while his own works were
courting vertigo, like those of Monet, in the paintings he was
buying for his own collection, with the possible exception of his
El Grecos, he preferred the sense of balance in works by Ingres,
Delacroix, or Cezanne. The second anecdote concerns Degas's
remark at the first exhibition of the Cubists: "This is more diffi-
cult to do than painting," a remark that suggests some admira-
tion for artists who shared his preoccupation with equilibrium.53
Degas was certainly part of the emerging twentieth century,
despite the fact that he had exhibited in the Salon in the 1860s
and in the first Impressionist or Independent exhibitions in the
1 8 70s. He was not unaffected by the spirit at the turn of the
century. He had always known younger artists; his relation-
ships with them had at times been ambivalent, but at least they
knew each other's work. Degas had received them in his studio,
even when they came from abroad. And in turn, he was re-
spected, though that respect could take curious forms.
One typical incident took place during the winter of 1898-
99, before the death of Toulouse-Lautrec. After a dinner to
which he had invited friends, including Edouard Vuillard and
Thadee and Misia Natanson, Lautrec took his guests to the
Montmartre apartment of two distant cousins, Desire Dihau,
the bassoonist whom he had drawn leading a bear, and Dihau 's
sister Marie, who gave singing lessons. In their apartment were
two paintings by Degas, The Orchestra of the Opera with Desire54
and a portrait of Marie at the piano, both from the late sixties,
both now in the Musee d'Orsay. Leading his friends over to
the pictures, Lautrec said, "This is your dessert."55
Quite different is the story the "Cubist" writer Andre Salmon
tells about the Bateau-Lavoir, where Picasso, who was to buy
some of Degas's finest monotypes, was then living. In about
1913, the artists used to play a game: "One of us would ask,
*Shall we play Degas?' The next question was, 'Who'll be
Degas today?' We'd argue about it . . . then one of us would
start. We would play Degas, the illustrious old grouch, visiting
Pablo and judging his work. ... To play at being Degas meant,
alas, to play at what one ran the risk of becoming once one
grew old — to act out, well in advance, the absurdities of old
age in order to be better able to defend oneself, once the fatal day
arrived, by recollecting the silly games of one's youth."56
There were other, more serious tributes, such as Pissarro's,
in a letter he wrote to his son Lucien in 1898: "Degas . . . con-
stantly pushes ahead, finding expressiveness in everything
Fig. 8. Racehorses (detail), cat. no. 353. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
31
around us."57 Or Renoir's, in his comment to his son Jean:
"Degas painted his best things when his sight was failing."58
Finally, there is the assessment made by Renoir to the dealer
Vollard: "If Degas had died at fifty, he would have been re-
membered as an excellent painter, no more; it is after his fiftieth
year that his work broadens out and that he really becomes
Degas."59
Degas had begun within the seemingly certain, established
world into which he was born, symbolized by the Bellellis, in
whose apparently exquisite balance he was able, however, to
detect and suggest certain insecurities. He ended his career ex-
pressing, through his challenges to equilibrium, the anxieties of
a world facing the abyss of the First World War.
Notes
1. L522, 1879, National Gallery, London. See fig. 98.
2. Cat. nos. 164, 165.
3. Valery 1965, p. 91; Valery 1960, p. 42.
4. Reff 1976, chapter I.
5. Lemoisne [1946-49] I, pp. 227-28; English translation in McMullen 1984,
p. 58.
6. Cat. no. 97. The Toulouse-Lautrec image of Dihau was a lithograph for a
sheet of music, "Les vieilles histoires," with music by Dihau to poems by
Jean Goudezki, 1893.
7. Valery 1946, p. 37; Valery i960, p. 22.
8. See Chronology III, 25 July 1889.
9. Valery 1938, pp. 98-99; Valery i960, p. 56.
10. Michel 1919, p. 469.
11. See fig. 287.
12. See cat. nos. ioi, 243.
13. Cat. no. 165.
14. Halevy i960, pp. 145-46; Halevy 1964, p. no.
15. For Henri Loyrette's full discussion and documentation of the painting, see
cat. no. 20.
16. Van Dyck, Paola Adomo, c. 1621-25, Genoa, Palazzo Rosso.
17. Reff 1985, Notebook 13 (BN, Carnet 16, pp. 41-43)-
18. Ibid., p. 41.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Reff 1985, p. 43.
23. Raimondi 1958, p. 246, letter of 8 February i860 from Baron Bellelli to
his brother-in-law, Edouard Degas.
24. For Henri Loyrette's full discussion and documentation of the painting, see
cat. no. 84.
25. Sidney Geist, "Degas' Interieur in an Unaccustomed Perspective," Art News,
October 1976, pp. 81-82.
26. Quentin Bell, Degas: Le Violy Newcastle upon Tyne: University of New-
castle upon Tyne, 1965, p. 2.
27. For Henri Loyrette's fuD discussion of the painting, see cat. no. 68.
28. Cat. no. 70.
29. Cat, no. 129. Michael Pantazzi, the author of this commentary, dates the
beginning of the work in 1873 as he does the two preparatory drawings
(cat. nos. 131, 132), which I believe (1967 Saint Louis, no. 65) to be 1872.
30. For Michael Pantazzi's full discussion and documentation of the painting,
see cat. no. 130.
31. See "Degas and Faure," p. 221.
32. See cat. nos. 75, 107.
33. See cat. nos. 206, 207, 208, 266; see also cat. nos. 166, 185.
34. See Chronology IV, 23 January 1896.
35. For the details of his life at this period, see Chronology II.
36. See cat. no. 192 for the details.
37. Cat. nos. 192, 193, 194.
38. For Michael Pantazzi's full discussion and documentation of the print, see
cat. no. 176.
39. Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, p. 94.
40. See "The 18 80s: Synthesis and Change," pp. 363-74, and Chronology III.
41. Lettres Degas 1945, LIII, p. 80; Degas Letters 1947, no. 63, p. 81 (transla-
tion revised).
42. For Gary Tinterow's full discussion and documentation of the painting, see
cat. no. 267.
43. Sickert 19 17, p. 186.
44. Reff 1985, Notebook 6 (BN, Carnet 11, p. 9).
45. Rene Gimpel, Journal d'un collectionneur, Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1963, p. 186.
46. For Gary Tinterow's full discussion and documentation of the pastel, see
cat. no. 253.
47. For the details of his life at this time, see "The Late Years: 1890-19 12,"
pp. 481-85, and Chronology IV.
48. Cat. no. 302.
49. Lettres Degas 1945, CLXXII, p. 194; Degas Letters 1947, no. 185, p. 183
(translation revised).
50. Lettres Degas 1945, CCX, p. 219; Degas Letters 1947, no. 227, p. 206 (trans-
lation revised).
51. Cat. no. 353.
52. Rene Gimpel, Journal d'un collectionneur, Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1963, p. 179.
53. Ibid., p. 435.
54. Cat. no. 97.
55. Henri Perruchot, La vie de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris: Hachette, 1958, p. 369;
Henri Perruchot, Toulouse-Lautrec (translated by Humphrey Hare), London:
Perpetua, i960, p. 249.
56. Andre Salmon, Souvenirs sans Jin, Paris: Gallimard, 1956, II, pp. 99, 100.
57. Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 451; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 323.
58. Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father, London: Collins, 1962, p. 198.
59. Vollard 1936, p. 320.
32
1853-1
Henri Loyrette
"What is fermenting in that
head is frightening"
1. Alexandre 1935, p. 146.
2. Albert Andre, Degas, Galerie d'Estampes, Paris:
Brame, n.d.
3. Louis Vauxcelles, La France, 29 September 19 17.
4. Andre Michel, "E. Degas," Journal des Debate Po-
Htiques et Litteraires, 6 May 19 18.
5. In July 1906, Paul Valery wrote to Andre Lebey:
"I also dined with Degas, who is quite worn
down by his seventy-two years. . . . On the wall
he had hung a picture from his youth, from the
time when he was haunted by Poussin. The pic-
ture, which was far from finished, was titled
'Young Spartan Girls Challenging the Boys to
Combat.' There are two well-studied and finely
drawn groups of figures — the girls are charming,
the boys disdainfully flex their muscles. In the
background is the Taygetus Range and a fanta-
sized city of Sparta." Paul Valery, Oeuvres, Paris:
Pleiade, 1984, II, p. 1568.
6. Blanche 1927, pp. 294-95.
7. Alexandre 1935, p. 153.
8. Andre, op. cit.
The first twenty years of Degas's career, from 1853 until his return to Paris from New
Orleans in 1873, are a complex and still little-studied period, in which most observers
see a long apprenticeship gradually progressing toward The Orchestra of the Opera (cat.
no. 97) or Dance Class at the Opera (cat. no. 107), masterpieces in which the "real" Degas
finally seems to emerge. Arsene Alexandre, who knew Degas slightly, wrote in pre-
cisely such terms of this long period of time in which "his path was to be laid out, di-
rected. . . . From then on, Degas would not stray from it, regardless of the twists and
turns it might take."1
Thus, the early works are often regarded as palimpsests in which can be detected
both a marked and constant attachment to the old masters and "clear signs of the mod-
ernism that would soon be his domain."2 Sometimes overlooked, they emerge as the
interesting but inconclusive efforts of a painter who has yet to find himself, of a "Degas
before Degas" still awaiting the revelations that would come to him from his friend-
ships with Manet and Duranty. The classical beginnings, without "any gesture of re-
volt,"3 seem to many to have heralded nothing more than a mediocre history painter
who was knocked into shape in the 1860s by his companionship with the habitues of
the Cafe Guerbois. Rare are those like Andre Michel who praised the beauty and origi-
nality of the early works: "I should like to bring to the attention of our fiercest 'revolu-
tionaries,' our 'wild men,' these 'classical' beginnings of the man they have so often
claimed as their own." Foreshadowing today's revisionism, the critic added: "If certain
evidence is to be believed, we may shortly have the surprise and satisfaction of hearing
Degas called a pompier."4 The studies under Louis Lamothe, the training at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts, the stay in Italy, and the sustained effort over several years to carry
through large history compositions sparked the mistrust of most biographers, who saw
these works as nothing more than first efforts, cast in the mold of a career that could
have been an official one. As a result, the long stay in Italy (1856-59) is often viewed
with suspicion by those who see it as simply the leaven of academicism: even if he did
not win the Prix de Rome and despite the excuse that most of his father's family lived
in Italy, Degas had nevertheless made a trip lasting three years, a trip that, in its very
justification, its length, and the work for which it was undertaken — first and foremost
the many life studies and copies (see "Life Drawings," p. 65, and cat. no. 27) — was
very similar to that of a student of the French Academy in Rome. The history paint-
ings— the present exhibition features the four principal ones (cat. nos. 26, 29, 40, 45) —
were largely responsible for this attitude. Throughout his life, Degas would demonstrate a
genuine attachment to these works,5 but those in his circle were already more reserved
about them. Jacques-Emile Blanche saw in them nothing but "dry, emaciated canvases."6
Arsene Alexandre considered Young Spartans (cat. no. 40) to be "an inconsequential
work . . . agreeable but with a thin story."7 The critics were unanimously hostile, find-
ing in them only "pledges to the academic tradition."8
Indeed, everything in Degas's beginnings contrasts with the comfortably established
idea of the "modern" painter. But instead of emphasizing the successive breaks, as is
usually done, it is more reasonable and more correct to point out the obvious continuity
within Degas's work; instead of waiting for the definitive flashing revelations of Real-
ism to mark the painter's true beginnings, it is more reasonable and more correct to an-
alyze what he would come to regard as the "dubious proximities" of academicism. We
35
can then see that, in spite of the uncertainties and hesitations to which the painter later
confessed, we have "all of Degas" with his own style as early as the inaugural self-
portrait (cat. no. i), and that from Semiramis Building Babylon (cat. no. 29) to the final
bathers and dancers there is the same passion, the same inspiration, the same tenacity,
and an obvious continuity.
The three years from 1853 to 1856, crucial to Degas's formation as an artist, are known
only from a few meager archival sources and mainly through the information to be
found in the notebooks that he used regularly at the time. Degas had not shone in
drawing at his lycee, Louis-le-Grand. The quarterly reports noted, "Degas applies him-
self successfully" (fourth term, 1847), "good work and good progress" (first term,
1848), and "good work, satisfactory progress," and afterward, until he left the school,
they bore the constant notation "good."9 He gleaned a few awards — a prize in 1848
("heads after an engraving") and a second in 1849 ("heads after a plaster cast") — but his
fellow students Henri Rouart and Paul Valpinqon, who later would show some small
talent as painters, did as well if not better. What remains a mystery is how Degas set his
course so quickly once he finished school. After leaving Louis-le-Grand on 27 March
1853 (four days after receiving his baccalaureate), he registered on 7 April as a copyist at
the Louvre, 10 and on 9 April obtained permission to copy in the Cabinet des Estampes
of the Bibliotheque Nationale.11 It is true that Degas enrolled at the Faculte de Droit in
November (for the first and last time),12 but that was only in order to appease his fa-
ther, who despite his interest in painting could not think of his son as an artist without
apprehension. When he dined at the Halevys' in May 1889, Degas, usually tight-lipped
about everything concerning his early years, admitted that he had indeed studied law,
but that "while I was doing it I copied all the Primitives at the Louvre. I ended by telling
my father that I couldn't go on."13
At Louis-le-Grand, Degas had three professors of drawing: Leon Cogniet (a very
busy man who could come only once a week14), Roehn, and Bertrand — excellent mas-
ters whose classes were filled to capacity. "To train that crowd, not only was it divided
into two groups — one drawing plaster casts (almost a quarter of the students) and one
engravings (the other three-quarters) — but each of the two groups was further split into
sections, of which there were ten in all. Some drew with lines, others made renderings
with stump and shading."15
It was probably Cogniet, a painter of renown and a member of the Institute of France
since 1849, who advised Degas to attend the classes in the studio of his pupil Felix-
Joseph Barrias (1822-1907), whose large composition The Exiles of Tiberius (185 1) had
recently made him famous. Of Degas's progress under Barrias we know nothing, and
Degas himself apparently never spoke of his first independent master. However, we can
detect traces of the teaching of Cogniet and Barrias in certain history subjects that
briefly attracted Degas in 1856-57. This is particularly true of studies Degas made in
one of his notebooks,16 inspired by one of Cogniet's most celebrated paintings, Tintoretto
Painting His Dead Daughter,
Louis Lamothe (1 822-1 869), whom Degas is said to have taken as a teacher on the
advice of Edouard Valpingon, a friend and collector of Ingres, was important in an al-
together different way. Lamothe, a native of Lyons, was a disciple of Hippolyte Flandrin,
for whom he worked at the Chateau de Dampierre, at Saint-Paul-de-Nimes, and above
all at Saint- Vincent-de-Paul in Paris. Lamothe passed on to Degas the precepts of Ingres's
teaching, which he had learned through Flandrin: a passion for drawing ("Draw lines,
lots of lines, and you will become a good artist," Ingres is reported to have said to Degas
during their brief meeting17), the cult of the Italian masters of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries (whom Degas had been copying at the Louvre since 1853), and also the
fundamental integrity, the wholly provincial honesty, and the taste for well-executed
work characteristic of the Lyons school, to which Lamothe and Flandrin belonged. It
was this mediocre artist, more a practitioner than a creator (and yet the author of "a few
admirable drawings," as Maurice Denis conceded18), whom Degas claimed as a teacher
9. Archives, Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris.
10. Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, LL9.
11. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 227 n. 13.
12. Ibid., n. 14.
13. Halevy i960, p. 30; Halevy 1964, pp. 3 3 -34.
14. Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, Du College de Clermont
a Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris: Bastard, 1922, II,
p. 361.
15. Ibid.
16. Reff 1985, Notebook 8 (private collection, pp.
86-86v).
17. Alexandre 1935, p. 146.
18. Maurice Denis, "Les eleves d'Ingres," VOccident,
1902, pp. 88-89.
19. Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN, Carnet 20, passim).
20. Reff 1985, Notebook 1 (BN, Carnet 14, p. 12).
21. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, 25 No-
vember 1858, private collection; cited in part in
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 31.
36
Fig. 10. Louis Lamothe, Self-Portrait, 1859. Oil on canvas,
345/g X 273/4 in. (88 X 70. 5 cm). Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyons
when he entered the Ecole des Beaux- Arts on 5 April 1855, ranking thirty-third in the
entrance competition. Once again, our information on his brief stay at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts is limited. We do not even know in whose studio the young painter worked;
all we know is that he did not persevere and that he disappeared the following semester.
Perhaps he was shocked by the somewhat brutal customs of the school; perhaps, fol-
lowing Ingres's advice to Amaury-Duval, he preferred to bypass an uncongenial in-
struction, and to give up the possibility of the Prix de Rome since he had his own
means of financing a prolonged stay in Italy.
The "Flandrinian-Lamothian" influence on Degas, to use his father's term, was
then considerable. Visiting the Exposition Universelle of 1855, Degas looked only at
Ingres, whose works were shown in a major retrospective exhibition. 19 He copied Flan-
drin at Saint- Vincent-de-Paul, 20 and during the summer of 1855 saw him, accompanied
by his faithful Lamothe, working on the frescoes in Saint-Martin-d'Ainay in Lyons.
But this marked ascendancy of Flandrin, Ingres' s favorite disciple, was fortunately bal-
anced by the influence of Degas's family circle arid of his father, Auguste De Gas, in par-
ticular. Auguste had never really opposed his son's wishes, and showed himself attentive
to his progress from the beginning. His lack of admiration for Delacroix did not make
him an unwavering supporter of Ingres and even less of his imitators; his predilection
was for fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian painting, which he felt had never been
surpassed. For him, the value of Lamothe's teaching lay solely in his proclaimed respect
for "those adorable fresco painters," as Auguste called them.21 Auguste De Gas's close
ties with the great collectors Marcille and La Caze, to whose homes he sometimes took
his son after school, his friendship with the Romanian Gregoire Soutzo, an engraver
and print collector, and his own knowledge of works of art gave the young painter
another string to his bow and softened the possibly desiccating effects of a strict adherence
to Flandrinian principles.
The influence of Ingres on Degas's early career, which could be the subject of much
discussion, seems considerably less certain than has been claimed. The Self-Portrait of
the spring of 1855 (cat. no. 1), his first masterpiece, is significantly different from Ingres,
and his painting of his brother Rene (cat. no. 2) in no way resembles the portraits by
37
Ingres and his successors. On the other hand, the influence of Flandrin and the Lyons
school is apparent in several canvases from the early part of Degas's stay in Italy: the
1856 portrait of his cousin Giovanna Bellelli (Lio, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), the portrait of
his grandfather Hilaire Degas (cat. no. 15), and in particular Woman on a Terrace (cat.
no. 39), an exotic translation of a famous work by Flandrin.
The consequences of Degas* s close relations with Soutzo are difficult to assess. An
enigmatic figure (unfortunately we have none of his prints), Soutzo introduced Degas
to printmaking and in the course of their long discussions ("great talk with Soutzo,"
Degas noted on 18 January 18 56;^ "remarkable conversation" with him, he observed
on 24 February23) gave him advice on landscapes (see "The Landscapes of 1869," p. 153)
and encouraged him not to prevaricate with nature, but to "confront" it "with its main
outlines."24 Thanks to Soutzo, Degas discovered Corot and the Flemish and Dutch en-
gravers of the seventeenth century, of whose works the Romanian prince had assembled
a fine collection (see "The Etched Self-Portrait of 1857," p. 71). In short, it was he who
first made of Degas a landscape painter and a printmaker.
The Degas who left for Naples in July 1856 was more than a novice, despite his
twenty-two years. It is true that the self-portraits of the period show him still hesitant,
uncertain of the road to follow — but about ten years later, sitting beside his friend Eva-
riste de Valernes (see cat. no. 58), he seems the same. He arrived in Italy with the inten-
tion of undertaking the usual tour, that of all French artists with or without the Prix de
Rome. His ideas and ambitions were very openly those of a follower of Ingres, even if
his works were already notably different from the Ingres tradition. We need only com-
pare his moving Self-Portrait in the Musee d'Orsay (cat. no. 1) with the haughty, boastful
self-portrait by Lamothe (fig. 10), painted a few years later, to appreciate all that already
separated the master from the young man who was still his disciple. From his appren-
tice years, Degas occupied a place apart in French painting that would always be his
own — one that defied both comparison and classification. The long stay in Italy, an
obligatory stage in any artistic career, instead of casting him in a mold, was to widen
even further the gulf that already existed between the young Degas and most of his
contemporaries.
Curiously, Degas did not find in Italy what he had expected. More than a knowl-
edge of the Italian masters (which he already possessed, thanks to the Louvre's sizable
collection), it was his meeting with Gustave Moreau in early 1858, the long discussions
with him about art, and his new mentor's revelation of artists whose works were shown
little or not at all in Italy — van Dyck, Rubens, Chasseriau, and above all Delacroix —
that unquestionably affected his development. In Rome, Degas moved for a while in an
artistic circle of a kind he had had no chance to frequent in Paris, made up of pensioners
of the French Academy, such as Emile Levy, Elie Delaunay, Henri Chapu, and Ferdi-
nand Gaillard; painters on other scholarships, like Leon Bonnat, whose stay was sup-
ported by the city of Bayonne; painters who had come to undertake commissions, like
Joseph-Gabriel Tourny, who was th^n copying the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel for
Adolphe Thiers; and those who were financing their own visits, like Francois-Edouard
Picot, a teacher of several of the pensioners, and Gustave Moreau. All were welcomed
by the French Academy, were readily admitted to the director's "Sundays," and took
advantage of the evening life classes, where artists could work from nude models (see
"Life Drawings," p. 65). The French artists in Rome formed a community that was
close-knit and restricted, because they had no contact with Italian society in general and
Italian artists in particular. Rome seemed to them a provincial city, "untidy, badly
planned, baroque, and dirty."25 It would disappoint them at first, but a few years later
they would take leave of it "with regret, indeed with heartbreak."26 Contemporary art
there was anemic — there were only a "small number of true artists," but "a plethora of
manufacturers living off the reputations of their ancestors."27 As a result, Henner could
confess that he stayed five years in Rome "without seeing a single modern picture."28
Moreau, Chapu, Delaunay, and Bonnat, as well as Taine and About, could have said
the same: one did not go to Italy to see contemporary painting, which in any case was
wretched.
22. Reff 1985, Notebook 5 (BN, Camet 13, p. 33).
23. Reff 1985, Notebook 6 (BN, Camet 11, p. 65).
24. Reff 1985, Notebook 5 (BN, Camet 13, p. 33).
25. Hippolyte Taine, Voyage en Italie, Paris: Hachette,
1866 (1965 edition, Paris: Julliard, p. 24).
26. Edmond About, Rome contemporaine, Paris:
N. Levy Freres, 1861, p. 62.
27. Ibid., p. 187.
28. Jean-Jacques Henner, unpublished journal, Musee
Henner, Paris.
29. See 1984-85 Rome, p. 25. Nothing is known of
Leopoldo Lambertini. Stefano Galletti (died
1904) was a sculptor; according to Olivier Mi-
chel, he worked mainly at Santa Maria in Aquiro
and San Andrea della Valle, Rome.
30. See 1983 Ordrupgaard, p. 84; Cristiano Banti: un
macchiaiolo net suo tempo, 1824-1904 (catalogue by
Giuliano Matteucci), Milan, 1982.
31. Letter from Moreau to his parents, Rome to Paris,
14 January 1858, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
38
In spite of his many family connections (limited, it is true, to Naples, where the core
of his paternal family resided, and Florence, where his uncle Gennaro Bellelli lived in
exile; see cat. no. 20), Degas did not demonstrate any particular readiness to participate
in Italian life, confining his contacts to two obscure artists, Stefano Galletti and Leopoldo
Lambertini,29 with the possible addition of Cristiano Banti,30 All his new friendships,
except with the engraver Tourny and the sculptor Chapu, were established through the
all-powerful Moreau.
Moreau and Degas probably met early in 1858. Moreau, who had arrived in Rome
at the end of October 1857, was a regular figure at the Villa Medici's evening life classes,31
where he would go after long hours of copying in the Farnesina and in the Sistine
Chapel. On 9 June 1858, Moreau left for Florence; Degas met up with him there two
months later for about fifteen days; they saw each other again only in December of that
year, and then at the end of March 1859, when Degas was leaving for Paris. Chapu and
Bonnat later recalled the amiable fellowship of Moreau on many joint excursions; for
Degas, however, he was more than just a traveling companion helping him to endure
the occasional boredom of life in Rome or Florence. Eight years older than Degas —
Moreau was born in 1826 — and with a body of work already behind him, he was indis-
putably a gifted teacher, with the talents to introduce new ideas, as Matisse and Rouault
were subsequently to testify. In his discovery of Italy, there was about Moreau (to use
Fig. 11. Dante and Virgil (L34), 1857-58. Oil on canvas, 43V4X 29V2 in.
(110X75 cm). Private collection
39
his own term) a great "receptiveness." "Since my departure from Paris," he wrote to
his parents, "I have the feeling of a keen sensibility. I have never experienced things so
vividly. . . . There is a great excitement within me, a great movement of ideas and feel-
ings."32 This "receptiveness" of Moreau's had its effect on the young Degas. The eclec-
ticism of his senior, who was simultaneously interested in Raphael, Michelangelo, the
sixteenth-century Florentines, Correggio, and especially the Venetians (Carpaccio, and
above all Titian and Veronese), soon became his own and then that of most of the pen-
sioners at the French Academy at the end of the 1850s. Aware that drawing was now
"his strong suit," Moreau was directing his endeavors toward color and conducting
"studies in values and decorative hues," which had "nothing to do with the study of de-
tail."33 These investigations were of particular interest to Degas, who was following a
parallel development and as a result was able to throw off the confining teaching of
Flandrin and Lamothe. Moreau increased his technical investigations in order to repro-
duce, as faithfully as possible, the colors and textures of old paintings: in turn he used
watercolor to give "the matte tones and the gentleness of fresco," "distemper heightened
with watercolor" to "imitate frescoes with oil,"34 and then pastel. Degas, who would
from this time never tire of experimenting with new techniques, owed a good part of
his insatiable curiosity about such matters to Moreau, and probably also his initiation
into pastel, which he would use to test the balance of colors in the sketches for The
Bellelli Family (see fig. 36) and Semiramis (see fig. 45).
Degas' s friendship with Moreau and the considerable ascendancy the latter had
over the young painter for at least two years are particularly evident in the moving
Dante and Virgil (fig. 11) that Degas sent to his father from Florence just after finishing
it in the fall of 185 8. 35 Like Virgil, Moreau guided and supported his young follower.
The "sorrows that are the lot of anyone who takes up art," as they had discussed,36 and
the hazards of a profession that his new master had made difficult for him, as Degas
would later complain,37 led him to seek Moreau's encouragement, which placed the
younger artist in the metaphorical position of Dante. But while the friendship with
Moreau was represented symbolically in the image of the two poets helping each other
to make the perilous passage, that image also has a formal significance: indeed, as his
father noted on receiving the packing case containing Dante and Virgil, Degas had rid
himself of "that weak, trivial, Flandrinian, Lamothian manner of drawing and that dull
gray color."38 This momentary abandonment of the sound precepts of Ingres drove Degas
toward Delacroix, to whom he was probably never so close (though he had not as yet
studied much of his work).
The encounter between Degas and Moreau, long obscured — what could one of the
masters of the "new painting" owe to the now neglected painter of Jason and Salome? —
was a decisive point in the young artist's development. Without Moreau, the trip to
Italy would have been only the confirmation of what he had already known. Like his
pensioner friends, Degas would have turned out more of the tediously repeated pictures
of a conventional Italy — daughters of the people in local costume, noble beggars (see
cat. no. 11), and the usual landscapes of the environs of Naples or Rome (though when
he did broach these themes early in his trip, he did so with unquestionable originality) .
Moreau's hold over the twenty-five-year-old painter can best be measured in 1859.
On returning at last to Paris after three years in Italy, Degas broke with Lamothe39 and
now had no time for what he had previously admired. His reactions during a visit to
the Salon of 1859 in the company of some of Moreau's friends demonstrated the rapid
change in his tastes: now he preferred portraits by Ricard ("composed in a more pic-
turesque fashion") to those by Hippolyte Flandrin and, despite Emile Levy's dismissal
of them as "horribly ugly," defended all the works exhibited by Delacroix, a painter he
had completely ignored at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. 40
Degas's meetings with his Roman friends, however, were soon less frequent. He
would do two fine portraits of Bonnat in 1863 (see cat. no. 43), and would maintain
close ties with Moreau into the early 1860s, as is evident both in the little canvas he
painted of Moreau (L178, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris) and in several of his history
paintings. But the lengthy development of Semiramis (cat. no. 29) is testimony to the
32. Letter, 19 November 1857, Musee Gustave
Moreau, Paris.
33. Letters from Moreau to his parents, 12 Novem-
ber 1857, 7 and 14 January 1858, Musee Gustave
Moreau, Paris.
34. Letter from Moreau to his parents [February
1858], Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
35. Reff 1976, I, p. 68; 1984-85 Rome, no. 45,
pp. 135-39.
36. Letter from Degas to Moreau, 2 September 1858;
Reff 1969, p. 282.
37. Letter from Eugene Lacheurie to Moreau, 12 Au-
gust 1859, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
38. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, 11 No-
vember 1858, private collection; cited in part in
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 30.
39. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 228 n. 32.
40. Letter from Eugene Lacheurie to Moreau, 9 June
1859, and letter from Emile Levy to Moreau, 12-
13 May 1859, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
41. Address, 13 rue de Laval, written on envelope of
1 October 1859, private collection.
42. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 161-
77).
43. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 73; Brame and Reff
1984, no. 43.
44. See Chronology I.
45. Reff 1985, Notebook 19 (BN, Carnet 19, pp. 1,
3). See Chronology L
46. Letter from Rene De Gas to Michel Musson,
Paris to New Orleans, 13 October 1861, Tulane
University Library, New Orleans.
47. Letter from Rene De Gas to the Musson family,
Paris to New Orleans, 22 April 1864, Tulane
University Library, New Orleans; cited in part in
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 41.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Letter to Michel Musson, Paris to New Orleans,
21 November 1861, Tulane University Library,
New Orleans; cited in part in Lemoisne [1946-49],
I, p. 41.
51. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 186.
40
distance that Degas gradually put between himself and his mentor of the Italian years.
Starting with a tumultuous and resonant subject and composition in the manner of Mo-
reau, he progressively changed the work so that it became very different — slow, serene,
and with little color. In his later years, he would have a few politely cruel words to say
about the painting of his former guide, minimizing the critical role played in his own
education by the man who was one day to become the venerated teacher of Matisse and
Rouault.
In many ways, 1859 marks the true beginning of Degas's career as an artist: back from a
prolonged stay in Italy, he left his father's apartment for a studio on rue de Laval in the
Ninth Arrondissement;41 he would reside in this neighborhood, with occasional changes
of address, until his death. Degas now became a Parisian painter, very attached to his
city and leaving it only infrequently, sometimes during the summer. Starting in 186 1,
he often went to see his friends the Valpinqons at Menil-Hubert in Orne,42 but his distant
trips were rare: to Bourg-en-Bresse, where in January 1864 and January 1865 he visited
his family from New Orleans;43 to London, which he first saw in October 1871;44 and
to Italy (Florence and Naples in i860,45 with other visits until 1906). The voyage to
Louisiana of 1872-73, long pondered and decided on after much equivocation, is an ex-
ception in this settled, sedentary way of life.
In the vast space of his new studio in 1859, the painter was finally able to tackle large
canvases, which had been impossible until then because he had not had the room.
Thus, the early 1860s are characterized by his sustained effort to cover large surfaces —
such as The Daughter of Jephthah (cat. no. 26) and The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20), which
were then in progress, as well as the smaller Semiramis (cat. no, 29) and Young Spartans
(cat. no. 40). Frequent allusions in the family correspondence are evidence of his ambi-
tion to present one of these works in a finished state at the Salon. Degas labored furi-
ously: he is "slaving away at his painting," noted his brother Rene in 1 861. 46 "Edgar is
still working enormously hard, though he does not appear to be," Rene wrote three
years later.47 Degas had scarcely arrived in New Orleans before he began to do portraits,
and during his five months' stay he was to produce an impressive series of masterpieces.
The taciturn, hesitant, dreamy Degas of the self-portraits, the man whose feverish anxiety
we feel so often in his notebooks (which are still our chief source of information for
these years because so little correspondence has survived), the man his relatives saw as
immersed in his work to the point of sometimes seeming brusque and surly — "what is
fermenting in that head is frightening,"48 his brother Rene noted in that same letter of
April 1864 — the artist perpetually displeased with his work, who could spend years on
canvases without really finishing them, was the same person who in a few hours, amid
the ceaseless bustle of a noisy household, could also execute elaborate studies for a com-
plex portrait (see cat. nos. 87-91).
But the combination of dissatisfaction and obvious facility, the perpetual need to
rework something that might have been thought completed, to return yet again to a
picture left for a while in a corner of the studio, inevitably gave rise to some uncertain-
ties among his relatives as to the young painter's gifts. While Rene was convinced that
he had "not only talent, but genius,"49 his father did not fail to observe ironically that
"our Raphael is still working, but has not produced anything that is really finished,"
and then to worry that "the years are passing."50 According to the Dihau family, the
Degas family did not display real satisfaction until about 1870, when the painter did
The Orchestra of the Opera (cat. no. 97). As the surprised model (Desire Dihau, the bas-
soonist in the orchestra) was told as he took the canvas off to Lille, thereby removing it
from all possible retouching, "It's thanks to you that he has finally produced a finished
work, a real painting!"51
Unlike his friends Tissot and Alfred Stevens, or even Moreau and Manet, Degas
did not yet have an established reputation; in the 1860s, he was completely unknown to
the public. Tissot, the product of a similar background, built a substantial fortune once
he found success, increasing his output of pleasing pictures for a clientele that quickly
found him and buying a town house on avenue de l'lmperatrice. Moreau, with whom
41
Degas had practically broken off relations, had his Oedipus and the Sphinx bought by
Prince Napoleon at the Salon of 1864 and in November of the following year was in-
vited by the emperor to one of his famous entertainments at Compiegne. Manet, whose
role was that of the leader of a school, enjoyed a "Garibaldi-like" celebrity52 — to use
one of Degas's expressions — beginning with the Salon des Refuses in 1863, while Degas
himself could draw only very scant and not always kind comments on the pictures he
exhibited at the Salon between 1865 and 1870.
The Salon, which Degas criticized bitterly in a letter published in Paris-Journal on
12 April 1870 (see Chronology I), was in fact his only opportunity at that time to dis-
play his works. The eight he showed there over six years were hardly noticed: not a
word in 1865 on Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45), complete silence in 1867
(except for Castagnary's brief mention of one of the two works listed as "Family Por-
trait"; see cat. no, 20), a mixed review by Zola in 1868 of the portrait of Mile Fiocre
(cat. no. 77), more sustained praise for the portraits hung in 1869 — in all, not a very
rich harvest. What is more, Degas was selling next to nothing. Of course, unlike most
of his peers, he had no need to dispose of what he himself called his "wares" in order to
live; and yet when he found himself, in 1869, in "one of the most celebrated galleries in
Europe," that of M. Van Praet, one of the king's ministers in Brussels, he felt, as his
brother Achille put it, "a certain pleasure" and gained at last "a little confidence in him-
self and his talent."53 The end of the 1860s and beginning of the 1870s marked a definite
change: in 1868 Duranty, who felt the wind turning for Degas, remarked that "he is on
his way to becoming the painter of high life."54 Four years later, on 7 March 1872,
Durand-Ruel paid the artist for three pictures transferred in January,55 thus beginning a
collaboration that would last over half a century and inaugurate the painter's true
career — in the commercial sense of the term.
Unknown to what is today called "the general public," seldom exhibited and then
only in a setting — the Salon — that was inappropriate for his work, Degas nevertheless
enjoyed an undeniable reputation among a limited group of artists. No one was quite
sure what would become of him, but his manners, his cultivation, the urbanity of his
conversation, the already well-known fierceness of his remarks, the intransigence of his
positions, and a charm mixed with brusqueness made him a figure who was both feared
and respected.
Along with Manet, Degas was a leading figure among the habitues of the Cafe
Guerbois (Manet, Astruc, Duranty, Bracquemond, and Bazille, as well as Fantin, Renoir,
and, when they were in Paris, Sisley, Monet, Cezanne, and Pissarro). "Degas, the great
aesthetician," as the painter of Olympia called him, not without irritation,56 had a re-
markable talent as a debater, which immediately set him apart in the group. His friend-
ships— "alliances" would be the more accurate term — had changed: Moreau had been
succeeded by Tissot, to whom he was already very close in the early 1860s, and then by
Manet (whom tradition has it he met about 1862 in the Louvre; see cat. no. 82), Fantin,
Whistler, and the Morisot sisters, in addition to the unassuming Valernes, in whose
company he showed himself in the last of his self-portraits. In the early 1860s, there
were a few survivors from his stay in Italy: Bonnat (whose portrait — cat. no. 43 — he
did in 1863), Henner, and the mysterious Edouard Brandon, who was one of the first
collectors of his works (see cat. no. 106).
If Degas's circle of acquaintances altered appreciably from i860 to 1873 while his
true friends came mainly from the milieu in which he grew up, the decent Parisian
bourgeoisie, educated and active (the constellation of the Niaudets, Breguets, and Hale-
vys, the Valpincons, and, after 1870, the Rouarts, childhood friends with whom he re-
newed contact when the war began), the same was also true of his tastes, which were
ever broadening. Ingres, who had reigned supreme before the departure for Italy and
was then eclipsed by Delacroix at the very end of the 1850s, returned in force, without
altering Degas's love for the painter of the Women of Algiers. His interests were never
exclusive, and he took a certain exception to the mandatory alternatives of the Flandri-
nian-Lamothian sectarianism, whereby strict loyalty to Ingres made it impossible to be
fond of Delacroix, not to mention Courbet, of course, and the masters of the Barbizon
52. Jacques-Emile Blanche, Essais et portraits, Paris:
Dorbon aine, 1962.
53. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 63.
54. Quoted by Manet in a letter to Fantin-Latour,
cited in Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 103.
55. Durand-Ruel archives, Paris, stock nos. 943,
976, 979.
56. Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 102.
57. Letter from Jacques-Emile Blanche to an uniden-
tified correspondent (Fantin-Latour?), n.d., Mu-
see d'Orsay, Paris.
58. March 1898, Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 451; Pis-
sarro Letters 1980, p. 323.
59. Letter, private collection, cited in part in Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, p. 30.
60. Reff 1985, Notebook 14A (BN, Carnet 29, fol.
599v).
61. Reff 1985, Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 6).
42
school. Degas took his pleasure — and profit — where he could find it: with Meissonier,
whose equestrian science he admired (see cat. no. 68 and "The First Sculptures," p. 71),
with De Dreux, Whistler, and the English painters he inspected at the Exposition Uni-
verselle of 1867, and also with Courbet (see cat. no. 77), though he later admitted that
in looking at the paintings of the Master of Ornans he felt they were "a personal judg-
ment on him [Degas], as someone who had spent his life overrefining his painting. . . .
He felt as if a calf's sticky muzzle had just nudged him."57
Degas's insatiable curiosity, which, as Pissarro acknowledged years later, spurred
him to continue to forge ahead,58 is evident not only in the scope, the complexity, and
sometimes the ambiguity of his pictorial interests, but also in the works themselves.
Over these twenty years of his career, as he tackled the most diverse subjects, using
many techniques and styles (at times so dissimilar that the most practiced eye would
probably never ascribe them to one artist), constantly questioning, always dissatisfied,
scraping a canvas to begin tirelessly again, he nevertheless succeeded in producing an
uninterrupted flow of masterpieces.
From 1853 to 1873, Degas worked — though not with equal application — in all genres:
copies, portraits, landscapes, history paintings, religious paintings, and scenes from
contemporary life, not to mention his studies from life and a very few still lifes. If one
compiles the works catalogued by Lemoisne and by Brame and Reff, it appears, despite
certain irresolvable ambiguities (for example, whether The Orchestra of the Opera [cat.
no. 97] and Portraits in an Office [cat. no. 115] are portraits or genre scenes), that the
portraits (over a hundred) are the clear numerical winners, representing about 45 per-
cent of the artist's production; a little more than 6 percent are self-portraits; next come
the sixty or so landscapes (approximately 25 percent), about twenty-five scenes from
contemporary life (10.5 percent), the copies (5 percent), the history paintings (4.25 per-
cent), and a similar percentage of miscellaneous works. These statistics are revealing,
but must be taken with caution. Their chief interest is that they indicate the staggering
preponderance of portraits. On the other hand, they veil the considerable effort applied
over many years to the difficult development of history paintings. They give an exag-
gerated importance to the sporadic landscapes (essentially the series of pastels done in
1869), and overlook the irruption of scenes from contemporary life, increasingly fre-
quent from the mid-i86os.
There are many reasons for this emphasis on portraiture, starting with the worldly
but not improvident remarks of Auguste De Gas, who saw in this genre the only way
for his son to earn an adequate living if he wanted a career as an artist. Admonishing
Edgar, who in 1858 in Florence was expressing some "boredom" with portraits (see cat.
no. 20), he explained to him that portraits would be "the finest jewel in your crown" and
that "the problem of keeping the pot boiling is so grave, so urgent, so crushing, that
only madmen can scorn or ignore it."59
Living off his fortune — or, to be more exact, his family's comfortable income —
Degas did not feel the need (pursuing his father's metaphor) to produce potboilers, and
so did not begin a career as a fashionable portrait painter. In fact, Auguste' s entreaties
were beside the point, because from the very outset (Lamothe's instruction contributing
to, but inadequate to explain, the persistence of this obsession) the painter demonstrated
an unflagging interest in this genre. In a notebook used in 1859-60, he noted as future
projects: "I must do something with Vauvenargues's face, which is close to my heart.
And not forget to do Rene full-length with his hat, as well as a portrait of a lady with
her hat, putting on her gloves while she is getting ready to go out."60 He wondered
about the possible appearance of an effigy of his favorite poet, Alfred de Musset — "How
does one do an epic portrait of Musset?"61 — testifying to the depth of his investigation
into the very nature of a genre that he practiced with such obvious success and which
led him, in a clear and progressive development, from the first portraits of 1853-55 to
the complex Portraits in an Office of 1873.
Until his return from Italy, his models — aside from himself, in the self-portraits he
executed during these formative years (see cat. no. 1) — were almost exclusively family
43
members, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. One exception was his father: although
Auguste was attentive to the progress of his son, he would not be portrayed until the
early 1870s, behind the singer Pagans (cat. no. 102). The painter did not make portraits
of all his many relations with the same frequency. His good and worthy aunt Rose
Morbilli is given no more than a small water color (cat. no. 16). His brother Achille
(cat. no. 4) appears less often than Rene, the youngest (cat. no. 2). His favorite sub-
jects— his sister Therese (cat. nos. 3, 63, 94), her husband Edmondo (cat. nos. 63, 64),
his aunt Laura Bellelli (cat. nos. 20, 23) — were not necessarily those he preferred as
people but those who were most interesting for strictly pictorial reasons: Therese for
her Ingresque countenance, more frequently studied and reproduced than that of the in-
telligent and musical Marguerite; Edmondo Morbilli, whose physiognomy was like
that of a sixteenth-century lord; Laura Bellelli, with her air of a queen regent in deep
mourning, a princess by van Dyck. The women often have "that saving touch of ugli-
ness"62— Berthe Morisot, commenting on the Salon of 1869, noted: "M. Degas has a
very pretty little portrait of a very ugly woman in black [fig. 25]. "63 Degas delighted in
emphasizing the exaggerated features of his models in works such as The Collector of
Prints (cat. no. 66) or Portrait of a Man (cat. no. 71), and in highlighting the faces of a
Roman beggar woman (cat. no. 11) or of his grandfather Hilaire (cat. no. 15) with all
their signs of old age — the wrinkled skin, the bags under the eyes.
Paradoxically, the "boredom" that Degas felt in doing portraits, whether in 1858 in
Florence when he produced a great number to please his uncle and host Gennaro Bellelli
or in 1873 when he successively "did" all the members of his American family by popu-
lar demand, resulted in two ambitious works, The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20) and Portraits
in an Office (New Orleans) (cat. no. 115), which were not of a different genre but true
portraits, each of which he tackled with passion, in singular contrast to the apathy and
lassitude he had shown earlier.
Degas' s chief concern remained the placing of the figure against its background:
the plain dark background of the 1855 self-portrait (cat. no. 1) was followed by more
picturesque arrangements, notably after the Salon of 1859, where he had admired the
novel compositions of Ricard.64 As early as September 1855, when visiting the museum
in Montpellier, he had been struck by the vivid and resonant backgrounds of certain
Renaissance portraits;65 a little later, in a notebook used in 1858-59, he observed: "I
have to think of the faces before all else, or at least study them while thinking only of the
backgrounds."66 Consequently, he tested various solutions over these twenty years: in-
stalling the model, along with the attributes of his or her social situation, on a neutral
background (Rene De Gas, cat. no. 2) or against more vibrant and colorful walls, yet
simplified to an extreme so as to leave scarcely a hint of the surrounding architecture
(M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli, cat. no. 63); the portrait in an interior in the tradition of
the Lyons school (Hilaire Degas, cat. no. 15); and soon after, beginning in the mid-
1860s, more complex arrangements — one might almost say "staged scenes" — in which
Degas sets the subject, usually very informally, in a significant environment. In this re-
gard, the series of portraits of artists that he executed sometime between 1865 and 1872
marked a decisive phase — "series" here implying similarity neither in size nor intention
but in the continuing search for a formula to capture the artists in their circumstances.
Dressed in bourgeois attire, the painters pose in studios piled with canvases (cat. nos. 72,
75); the musicians, at the theater or in a drawing room, play their instruments, whose
odd shapes Degas enjoyed emphasizing. In La nouvelle peinture (1876), Duranty was to
pinpoint (under the influence of the painter) what the art of the portrait had become:
"In actuality, a person never appears against a neutral or vague background. Instead,
surrounding him and behind him are the furniture, fireplaces, curtains, and walls that
indicate his financial position, class, and profession."67 But what distinguishes the Degas
portrait from traditional portraits in an interior is the model's attitude: "The individual
will be at a piano, or examining a sample of cotton in an office, or waiting in the wings
for the moment to go on stage, or ironing on a makeshift table. . . . When at rest, he
will not be merely pausing or striking a meaningless pose before the photographer's
lens. This moment will be as much part of his life as are his actions."68 As Clouet's por-
62. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 28; Degas Letters
1947, no. 5, p. 27.
63. Morisot 1950, p. 28; Morisot 1957, p. 32.
64. See 1984-85 Rome, p. 31.
65. Reff 1985, Notebook 4 (BN, Carnet 15, p. 99).
66. Reff 1985, Notebook 11 (BN, Carnet 28, p. 60).
67. Edmond Duranty, La nouvelle peinture, Paris,
1876 (translation 1986 Washington, D.C, p. 44).
68. Ibid.
69. Reff 1985, Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 6).
70. Unpublished letter from Gustave Moreau to
Degas, Rome to Paris, 18 May 1859, Musee
Gustave Moreau, Paris.
71. Duranty, op. cit., p. 478.
72. Halevy i960, pp. 159-60; Halevy 1964, p. 119.
44
traits were, for Michelet, irreplaceable historical testaments, as eloquent as archival
sources, so too would Degas's portraits of his contemporaries have documentary value,
revealing the circumstances of each person, describing a milieu or a profession: Degas
wished "to find a composition that paints our time," as he had already noted in 1859
when reflecting on the art of portraiture.69
While we can detect an appreciable evolution in this genre, which Degas practiced
throughout his life (even if he did not demonstrate the same interest and persistence after
1870), such is not the case with his history paintings. These amount to several ambitious
but mainly unfinished works for which there are a great many often admirable pre-
paratory drawings or sketches in oil. After the exhibition of Scene of War in the Middle
Ages (cat. no. 45) at the Salon of 1865 (an allegory, not a history subject in the proper
sense), the history paintings cease. There has of course been talk of failure, of Degas's
deep-seated inadequacy in this genre; it has not been appreciated that in just a few can-
vases, Degas (along with Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes) had proposed an original
solution to this tormenting problem. It is true that, from one picture to the next, it is
difficult to see where he was heading: The Daughter of Jephthah (cat. no. 26) casts a longing
gaze toward Delacroix's large formats and the brilliant tumult of his colors; Semiramis
(cat. no. 29) bears witness to his overcoming the ascendancy of Moreau; Young Spartans
(cat. no. 40) disregards archaeology, its girls "provoking" Gerome and the neo-Greeks
more than the boys of Sparta. At first, the situation appeared desperate and totally con-
fused. It no longer even seemed clear what was meant by "history painting"; Moreau,
receiving news of the Salon of 1859 in Rome, commented wryly: "A few laments for
the death of history painting. Poor history painting! I'm not quite sure what the term
means, and am waiting for a little information before raising my handkerchief to my
eyes."70 At that time, Degas probably shared his mentor's position: there was indeed a
crisis, but history painting was not dead; it had to be given back some of its color, and
other subjects had to be found, as well as new ways of treating them. It had to be re-
moved from the arduous exhumations of an artist such as Gerome who, on the barest
of data, gave birth to a world while claiming its exactitude. Salvation thus lay not in
"reconstruction" in the strict sense of the submission for entrance to the Academy in
Rome, but in seeking a different and resolutely contemporary truth. Semiramis and es-
pecially Young Spartans prove that Degas realized that archaeology is not an exact sci-
ence and that a discovery, however crucial, does not determine things forever; archaeology
is constantly renewing both itself and, inevitably, the knowledge of bygone ages. Ge-
rome's brand of truth was illusory; what was needed, as Duranty wrote in his 1876 es-
say, was to illuminate "these ancient things by the flame of contemporary life,"71 and
the novelist proposed Renan and Veronese as models. Such was Degas's procedure in
Young Spartans — rejecting the antique ideal and, in a desolate plain where we search in
vain for the shade of the plane-tree grove, setting Parisian urchins like anachronisms in
this scene from mythic Greece.
Degas would later imply that he did not continue with history painting because it
was an exhausted genre, commenting in relation to one of his many women in a tub:
"To think that in another age I would have been painting Susanna and the Elders."72 In
his youth, he had in fact painted compositions taken from the Bible or from ancient his-
tory that were perfectly original and had no equivalent in the art of his period. Like the
Renaissance painters to whom he so often referred, he had concealed very contempo-
rary concerns beneath a thin archaeological veneer: The Daughter of Jephthah can be read
as a criticism of the Italian policy of Napoleon III; Semiramis implicitly deplores the ur-
ban planning of Haussmann; and Scene of War in the Middle Ages evokes the American
Civil War and the Northern soldiers' cruel treatment of the women of New Orleans.
It was not the "discovery" of scenes from contemporary life under the influence of
Manet and the habitues of the* Cafe Guerbois — a misapprehension later fostered by
Manet — that led to the disappearance of historical themes. The introduction of horses
and, later, dancers into Degas's work owed nothing to these artists. While Degas was
working on his first racecourse scenes (see cat. no. 42) — a theme already treated by
Moreau, who perhaps inspired him — he continued the slow development of Semiramis
45
and turned to those who had preceded him in this genre, Gericault and in particular De
Dreux. Until the end of the 1860s, this was the only subject drawn from contemporary
life that Degas treated regularly. The first dancers were the result of research for the
portrait of the bassoonist Desire Dihau: in The Orchestra of the Opera (cat. no. 97), a few
legs and tutus appear, lit by the footlights over the heads of the dour musicians. A little
later, in Orchestra Musicians (cat. no. 98), the group portrait becomes a genre scene, a perti-
nent study of that incongruous and brutal gulf separating two juxtaposed worlds —
compact and somber (black and white, but mainly black) of the instrumentalists in the
orchestra pit, and light, vibrant, and luminous of the ballerinas on stage. Soon after,
Degas followed the little dancers into the vast, run-down rooms on rue Le Peletier. Out
of their daily exercises and varied poses, he made little pictures, precisely and meticu-
lously painted, with polished surfaces, whose immediate success explains their recurrence
in his work.
Meanwhile, there were two pictures that had no real posterity in the painter's
work, Interior (cat. no. 84) and Sulking (cat. no. 85) — enigmatic, deliberately ambigu-
ous canvases that do not invite conventional explanations. It would be unfair to see
them as simply the French equivalent of the countless English genre scenes that Degas
had admired at the Exposition Universelle of 1867. Interior is not an anecdote in the
manner of Tissot but the unaffected description of a drama, painted on a canvas of
some size. In another age, to return to what he later said about his women in a tub,
Degas would have painted a Tarquin and Lucretia: now the modest iron bed, the oil lamp,
the flowered wallpaper, and the lower-middle-class fireplace have replaced columns and
pilasters, tapestries and candelabra. No classical peplos here, but a corset and dressing
gown; no plumed crest, but a black top hat. Interior is the fulfillment of a contemporary
wish — "Ah! Giotto, let me see Paris, and you, Paris, let me see Giotto!"73 — and the re-
sult of a considerable mutation: the banal elevated to the level of history painting.
In addition to the variety of genres and subjects dealt with by Degas over these twen-
ty years, there is the variety in his techniques (oil, essence, chalk, pencil, watercolor,
and pastel, as well as etching and sculpture) and of his handling — rapid or deliberate,
but always flat as a board, as Ingres recommended, in a paint that was sometimes thin
but usually oily. More attention should be devoted to the beauty of his secret nota-
tions— those "black gloves shining like leeches"74 — and to the variety and frequency of
the images: the questioning, thirsty eyes, the uncertain and perplexed gaze of the painter,
the imperious yet absent air of Laura Bellelli, the weary face of a father soon to die, and
the beaming, impish expression of a little girl chewing a piece of an apple; and then
those slender youngsters in that arid plain of Sparta, a hieratic queen contemplating the
serene and monumental architecture of her city of Babylon, a huge bouquet of end-of-
summer flowers, the jockeys' bright caps and jackets on the darker green of the fields,
the smoke from a steamer on a motionless sea, ghostly nuns dancing above impassive
operagoers, and already the rustle of the first dancers skipping on stage or exercising at ?3 Reff ^ Notebook 22 (BNf Camet 8f p> $)m
the barre, their tutus white, their shoes pink, and their bows of many colors. 74. Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Camet 21, p. 17).
46
Chronology I
mi
Marriage at the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette of "Laurent
Pierre Augustin Hyacinthe Degas, banker, of rue de la Tour-des-
Dames and formerly of via Monte Oliveto, Naples, of age, son of
Rene Hilaire Degas, broker, and of Jeanne Aurore Freppa of Naples,
to Marie Celestine Musson of 4 rue Pigal, her father's house, of
age, daughter of Jean Baptiste Etienne Germain Musson, formerly
a merchant, and of Marie Celeste Vincent Rillieux, deceased."
Augustin, known as Auguste De Gas, is twenty-four years old (born
27 September 1807 in Naples) and Celestine Musson is seventeen
(born 10 April 18 15 in New Orleans).
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 225 n. 5.
Fig. 12. Anonymous miniaturist, Celestine De Gas and Auguste De Gas,
c. 1832-34. Location unknown. Reproduced in Lemoisne [1946-49], I,
between pp. 8-9
1834
I9july
Hilaire Germain Edgar De Gas is born at 8 rue Saint-Georges, his
parents' apartment. He is almost the same age as his cousin Alfredo
Morbilli, born 29 June in Naples. Two of his closest friends are
born the same year — Ludovic Halevy on 1 January and Paul Val-
pinqon on 29 October.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 225 n. 6; Raimondi 1958, genealogical table IV,
p. 284.
1836
9 January
Edmondo Morbilli, a cousin and future brother-in-law of the artist,
is born in Naples.
10 June
Together with his sons Henri, Edouard, and Achille, Hilaire Degas
establishes the company Degas Padre e Figli in Naples.
Raimondi 1958, p. 118.
1838
16 November
The artist's brother Achille De Gas is born at 21 rue de la Victoire,
Paris.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 225 n. 7.
1840
8 April
His sister Therese De Gas is born in Naples.
Boggs 1965, p. 275 n. 32.
1841
13 April
Death of his grandmother Giovanna Aurora Teresa Freppa, wife of
Hilaire Degas, in Naples (born 1783 in Livorno).
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table II, p. 282.
1842
2 July
His sister Marguerite De Gas is born in Passy.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 226 n. 8.
31 August
His aunt Laura Degas marries Baron Gennaro Bellelli in Naples.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table II, p. 282.
1845
6 May
His brother Rene De Gas is born at 24 rue de l'Ouest, Paris.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 226 n. 9 (records baptism at Saint-Sulpice
1 5 June).
5 October
Begins attending the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, entering the "classe de
septieme." Alfred Niaudet has attended Louis-le-Grand since 2 Oc-
tober 1843; Paul Valpincon will begin on 16 February 1846 and Lu-
dovic Halevy on 20 April.
Archives, Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris. Lemoisne's chronology of Degas's
education (Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 226 n. 10) is incorrect. All informa-
tion provided here concerning Degas's years at Louis-le-Grand is taken
from the school's archives.
1846
5 October
Enters the "classe de sixieme" at Louis-le-Grand.
1847
$ September
Death of his mother, Mme Auguste De Gas, nee Celestine Musson,
in Paris.
4 October
Enters the "classe de cinquieme" at Louis-le-Grand.
1848
15 -id May
Revolution in Naples; his cousin Gustavo Morbilli is killed.
Raimondi 1958, pp. 190, I96ff.
2 October
Enters the "classe de quatrieme" at Louis-le-Grand.
10 December
Birth of his cousin Giovanna Bellelli in Naples.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table VIII, p. 288.
1849
May
Gennaro Bellelli is exiled from Naples as a result of his active par-
ticipation in the events of 1848. He will go to Marseilles, London,
Paris, and Florence.
Raimondi 1958, pp. 226-36.
8 October
Enters the "classe de troisieme" at Louis-le-Grand.
1850
19 June
"Edgar is a little man, and argues logically."
Unpublished letter from Hilaire Degas to MM. Degas, Marseilles to Genoa,
private collection.
47
1850-1855
24 September
His brother Achille begins attending Louis-le-Grand.
7 October
Enters the "classe de seconde" at Louis-le-Grand.
1851
13 July
Birth of his cousin Giulia Bellelli.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table VIII, p. 288.
6 October
Enters Rhetoric at Louis-le-Grand. The punishment records for
November-December 185 1 and January 1852 (the only ones surviving
for those years) show that he received five detentions — three for
"laziness," one for "untidiness," and one for "careless homework."
1852
18 February
Alfred Niaudet, through whom Degas will become acquainted with
the Breguet and Halevy families, is expelled from Louis-Le-Grand.
20 September
Obtains the certificat d 'aptitude for the baccalaureate.
Diploma, private collection.
4 October
Enters Logic, arts section, at Louis-le-Grand.
1853
23 March
Obtains his baccalaureate.
Diploma, private collection.
27 March
Leaves Louis-le-Grand.
7 April
Receives permission to copy at the Louvre (card no. 611: De Gas,
Edgar; age, 18V2; address, 4 rue de Mondovi; teacher, Barrias).
Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, LL9.
p April
Receives permission to copy at the Cabinet des Estampes of the
Bibliotheque Nationale.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 227 n. 13.
after 10 May
Death of his grandfather Germain Musson in Mexico.
12 November
Registers at the Faculte de Droit for the first and last time.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 227 n. 14.
11 December
Drawing of his brother Achille (formerly Nepveu-Degas collec-
tion), inscribed "11 Xbre 53," the first dated drawing on a separate
piece of paper.
1854
31 October
Begins copying Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man (now attributed to
Franciabigio).
Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, LL26; Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN,
Carnet 20, p. 31).
1855
Degas is taken by Edouard Valpincon (father of his friend Paul and
a well-known collector) to visit Ingres.
Moreau-Nelaton 193 1 , p. 269.
12, jp, and 26 March
Competition for places at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ5276.
5 April
Judging of competition for places for the summer term, with Du-
mont presiding. Degas (ranking thirty-third) is admitted along with
Leon Tourny, Ottin, Regamey, and Fantin-Latour.
6 April
Registers at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as a student in the painting-
and-sculpture section. He is the only student presented by Louis
Lamothe; his fellow students work under Lecoq de Boisbaudran,
Hippolyte Flandrin, Cogniet, Picot, and Gleyre.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ52235.
spring
Paints Self-Portrait (cat. no. 1) and Rene De Gas (cat. no. 2).
May-July
Visits the Exposition Universelle, where he copies among other
things several works by Ingres.
Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN, Carnet 20, pp. 9, 30, 48, 53-54, 59, 61, 68,
79, 82-83).
26 June
First performance of Schiller's Mary Stuart (translated into Italian),
with the celebrated Adelaide Ristori, is presented at the Salle Venta-
dour; Degas makes several sketches of the tragedienne in this role.
Reff 1985, Notebook 3 (BN, Carnet 10, p. 96).
July -September
Visits Lyons. Flandrin is there, working on the Saint-Martin-d'Ainay
frescoes with the assistance of Lamothe.
Reff 1985, Notebook 3 (BN, Carnet 10, p. 20).
16-22 September
Travels to Aries, Sete, Nimes, and Avignon; copies David's Death of
Bara at the Musee Calvet.
Reff 1985, Notebook 4 (BN, Carnet 15, p. 64).
late September-mid-July 18 $6
Stays in Paris, where he continues copying at the Louvre and does
preliminary sketches for Saint John the Baptist and the Angel (un-
realized; see cat. no. 10 and L20) and Candaules's Wife (unrealized;
see BR8).
Reff 1985, Notebook 5 (BN, Carnet 13, p. 48), Notebook 6 (BN, Carnet
11, pp. 54-63).
Fig. 13. Notebook drawing inscribed "D'apres M. Soutzo 15 fevrier
1856." Pencil, 4V8X 5% in. (10.5 X 13.7 cm). Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris, Dc327d, Carnet 11, pp. 43-42 (Reff 1985, Notebook 6)
48
1856-1857
Fig. 14. At left, Hilaire Degas's residence, Palazzo Pignatelli,
Calata Trinita Maggiore, Naples
1856
18 January
A "great talk" with Gregoire Soutzo, an engraver and friend of the
artist's father. "His studies show such courage. Courage is what's
needed — never haggle with nature. It is courageous to confront na-
ture with its main outlines, and cowardly to approach it through
facets and details." On 15 February, Degas copies a landscape by
Soutzo (fig. 13) and on 24 February has another "remarkable con-
versation" with him.
Reff 1985, Notebook 5 (BN, Carnet 13, p. 33), Notebook 6 (BN, Camet 11,
P- 65).
24 January
Sketch of a young man inscribed "after M. Serret, Thursday, 24
January 1856."
Reff 1985, Notebook 5 (BN, Carnet 13, p. 49).
7 April
"I cannot say how much I love that girl since she turned me down."
Reff 1985, Notebook 6 (BN, Carnet 11, p. 21).
IS April
Sees Adelaide Ristori in her second Paris appearance, in Legouve's
Medea (translated into Italian); the actress's costumes were designed
by Ary Scheffer.
Reff 1985, Notebook 6 (BN, Carnet 11, p. 14); Adelaide Ristori, Etudes et
souvenirs, Paris: P. Ollendorff, 1887, pp. 140, 194.
17 July
Arrives in Naples from Marseilles. During his stay, he will make
numerous copies of works at the National Museum, as well as a
portrait of his cousin Giovanna Bellelli (Lio) and View of Naples Seen
through a Window (L48).
Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie, 19 July 1856; Reff 1985, Notebook 4
(BN, Carnet 15, p. 17).
Fig. 15. Entrance to Hilaire Degas's residence, Palazzo Pignatelli,
Cajata Trinita Maggiore, Naples. Portal by Sanfelice, 1718
7 October
Leaves Naples for Civitavecchia and Rome, where he will stay until
late July 1857. During this first visit, he attends the academy at the
Villa Medici in the evenings (see "Life Drawings," p. 65), copies in
the churches and Vatican museums, and sketches street scenes. He
continues his studies for Saint John the Baptist and the Angel (see cat.
no. 10) and begins various subjects after Dante's Divine Comedy.
Reff 1985, Notebook 7 (Louvre, RF5634, p. 27 and passim), Notebook 8
(private collection, passim).
1857
Dated works: Roman Beggar Woman (cat. no. 11); The Old Italian
Woman (fig. 31). In 1857-58, paints Woman on a Terrace, which he
will later rework as Young Woman and Ibis (cat. no. 39).
6 February
From the Villa Medici, sketches the gardens of the Villa Borghese.
Reff 1985, Notebook 8 {private collection, pp. 36V, 37).
S March
"I feel much calmer now."
Reff 1985, Notebook 8 (private collection, p. 35V).
9 April
Holy Thursday. Sketches the crowd at Saint Peter's.
Visits Terracina, Fondi, and Mola di Gaeta.
Reff 1985, Notebook 10 (BN, Carnet 25, passim).
July-September
Elie Delaunay ( 1828 -1 891), a painter from Nantes whom Degas
had known at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, visits Naples and Campania.
Drawings in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, and the Musee de Nantes.
49
1857-1858
i
Fig. 16. Edouard Degas, 1857. Pencil, 104 X So3/* in. (264X205 cm).
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF22998)
16 July
Degas is still in Rome; his grandfather urges him to join him at his
villa at Capodimonte, where he has been for a month.
Unpublished letter from Hilaire Degas to Edgar, Naples to Rome, private
collection.
I August
Arrives in Naples. Stays in Naples and at his grandfather's villa at
San Rocco di Capodimonte until late October. Does two portraits
of his grandfather (L33, Musee d'Orsay, Paris; cat. no. 15) and a
pencil drawing of his uncle Edouard Degas (fig. 16).
Reff 1985, Notebook 8 (private collection, p. 90V).
29 August
During his visit, his cousin Germaine Argia Morbilli, who is married
to the Marquis Tommaso Guerrero de Balde, gives birth to a baby
girl.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table IV, p. 284.
22 October-June 18 $8
First visit to Rome of the painter Gustave Moreau (1 826-1 898), whom
Degas has not yet met. He stays at 3 5 via Frattina. From November
on, Moreau sees the painters Edouard Brandon (who will become
a friend of Degas's and an important collector of his works) and
Emile Levy.
Mathieu 1974, pp. 173-77; unpublished letters from Moreau to his parents,
Rome to Paris, 24 and 30 October, 2 and 5 November 1857, Musee Gustave
Moreau, Paris.
late October
Degas arrives in Rome. This time he stays at "18 San Isidoro." Be-
fore leaving for Florence in July 1858, he does many copies of
works in the Sistine Chapel, the Doria Pamphili Gallery, and the
Capitoline Gallery; begins David and Goliath (L114); and continues
his studies for Dante and Virgil (see fig. 11) and Saint John the Baptist
and the Angel (see cat. no. 10).
Unpublished letter from Therese De Gas to Sophie Niaudet, Paris to Paris,
11 November 1857, private collection; Reff 1985, Notebook 11 (BN, Car-
net 28, pp. 34-36, 49).
2 November
Moreau, accompanied by his friend the painter Frederic Chariot de
Courcy, visits Schnetz, the director of the French Academy in
Rome; he begins going to the Villa Medici. Between 8 November
and 4 December, he copies part of Sodoma's Alexander and Roxana
at the Villa Farnesina.
Unpublished letters from Moreau to his parents, Rome to Paris, 30 Octo-
ber, 2, 5, and 8 November 1857, Muse*e Gustave Moreau, Paris.
10 November
Degas is in Tivoli.
Reff 1985, Notebook 10 (BN, Carnet 25, p. 46).
11 November
Therese De Gas informs Sophie Niaudet that she has returned from
Saint- Valery-sur-Somme and does not intend to go to Naples be-
fore the following August.
Unpublished letter, private collection.
13 November
Degas studies Claude Lorrain's etchings at the Corsini Gallery.
Reff 1985, Notebook 10 (BN, Carnet 25, p. 50).
20 November
Sketches the Castel Sant' Angelo on the banks of the Tiber.
Reff 1985, Notebook 10 (BN, Carnet 25, p. 58).
December-January 18 $8
Moreau copies the Sibyls and Prophets at the Sistine Chapel. Bothered
by the frequent ceremonies, he often goes to work at the Villa
Medici, "where there are some very beautiful works of art."
Mathieu 1974, pp. 173-74; unpublished letter from Moreau to his parents,
Rome to Paris, n.d., Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
1858
January
Moreau continues frequenting the Villa Medici, where he studies
the nude. It is probably during this period that he makes Degas's
acquaintance. From February to May, he copies Giulio Romano,
Correggio, Raphael, and Veronese at the Borghese Gallery and the
Academy of Saint Luke.
Unpublished letter from Moreau to his parents, Rome to Paris, 14 January
1858, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
June-August
Moreau's first visit to Florence, where he stays at 1169 Borgo
Sant'Apostoli.
Mathieu 1974, pp. 171-79.
June
Emile Levy writes to Moreau from Rome: "Delaunay, Camille
[Clere], the bear, and the ciociaro send you their regards. You will
see them all shortly; I alone will be absent." (The "bear" apparently
is Degas.)
Unpublished letter, Rome to Florence, n.d., Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
Emile Levy has returned to Paris; he sorely misses Rome.
Unpublished letter from Levy to Moreau, Paris to Florence, Musee Gus-
tave Moreau, Paris.
13 July
Joseph-Gabriel Tourny (18 17-1880) writes to Degas: "We are al-
ways thinking of the Degas who grumbles and the Edgar who
growls." Tourny sends greetings to Clere, Moreau, and Abbe
Aulanier.
Letter, Ivry to Florence, private collection; cited in part in Lemoisne [1946-
49], I, p. 227 n. 24 (misdated 15 July).
50
1858
14 July
De Courcy returns to Paris.
Unpublished letter from Moreau to his parents, Florence to Paris, 3 July
1858, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
Mjuly
Degas travels from Rome to Florence by way of Viterbo, Orvieto
(27 July), Perugia, Assisi (31 July), Spello, and Arezzo. He describes
the trip in a notebook and, on the way, makes quick copies of the
Signorelli frescoes at Orvieto, among other things (IV:74.a,
IV:8i.c).
Reff 1985, Notebook 11 (BN, Carnet 28, passim).
3ijuly
His aunt Laura Bellelli, who is in Naples, invites him to stay with
her when she will be in Florence.
Unpublished letter from Laura Bellelli to Degas, Naples to Florence, pri-
vate collection.
4 August
Degas is in Florence. He will be there until March 1859, staying at
the Bellelli apartment, 1209 Piazza Maria Antonia (not Marco An-
tonin, as Lemoisne claims; today Piazza dell'Independenza). While
in Florence, he does numerous copies of works in the UfFizi.
Reff 1985, Notebook 12 (BN, Carnet 18, passim).
13 August
Auguste De Gas congratulates his son on a drawing of Angele and
Gabrielle Beauregard, ten-year-old twins from New Orleans, and
passes on praise from Gregoire Soutzo and from Edmond Beaucou-
sin, a well-known collector and friend of the family. However, he is
not pleased with "three other portraits" — of M. and Mme Millau-
don (the stepfather and mother of the young Beauregards) and of
Mme Millaudon's mother, Mme Ducros.
Unpublished letter, Paris to Florence, private collection.
Fig. 17. Gustave Moreau, Edgar Fig. 18. Gustave Moreau, Edgar
Degas, c. 1858-59. Pencil, 97/sX Degas, c. 1858-59. Pencil, sV+x
6V4 in. (24,9 X 15.7 cm). Musee 27/s in. (14.6 X 7.1 cm). Musee
Gustave Moreau, Paris Gustave Moreau, Paris
19 August
Degas submits a request to the director of the Academy of Fine
Arts in Florence for permission to "draw studies in the cloister of
the Annunziata."
Mathieu 1974, p. 67.
20 or 21 August
Moreau leaves Florence for Lugano.
Mathieu 1974, p. 67.
31 August
Hilaire Degas dies in Naples. "It was scarcely light when suddenly
our poor father died."
Unpublished letter from Achille Degas to his nephew Edgar, Naples to
Florence, 14 September 1858, private collection.
September
Beaucousin visits Florence; he talks to Degas about Carpaccio.
Letter from Degas to Moreau, Florence to Venice, 21 September 1858,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris; Reff 1969, pp. 281-82.
September- December
Moreau goes to Venice, where he rejoins Delaunay, the engraver
Ferdinand Gaillard (1834-1887), and Felix Lionnet (1832-1896), a
pupil of Corot's.
Mathieu 1974, p. 179.
21 September
Degas gets bored in Florence. His only companions are the painter
John Pradier and the English watercolorist John Bland. He remains
solely in order to see his aunt and his two cousins, who are kept in
Naples by Hilaire's death. Reads Pascal's Provinciates; copies Gior-
gione and Veronese.
Letter from Degas to Moreau, Florence to Venice, Musee Gustave Moreau,
Paris; Reff 1969, pp. 281-82 (Bland erroneously given as Blard).
28 September
Goes on a two-day excursion to Siena with Antoine Koenigswarter,
a banker's son and friend of Moreau's.
Letter from Degas to Moreau, Florence to Venice, 27 November 1858, in
Reff 1969, p. 283; Reff 1985, Notebook 12 (BN, Carnet 18, p. 27); unpub-
lished letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to Florence, 14 October
1858, private collection.
Tourny writes to Degas from Paris advising him, after his grand-
father's death, to work hard and "keep his nose to the grindstone."
He mentions the removal of varnish from paintings in the Louvre:
"a good lesson for these modern artists who use such dark colors in
imitation of the old paintings."
Unpublished letter, private collection.
6 October
Auguste worries about his son's prolonged stay in Florence, as Laura
Bellelli has again delayed her departure from Naples.
Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to Florence, pri-
vate collection.
14 October
Auguste complains that he receives news of his son only through
Koenigswarter; however, with the postponement of Achille's de-
parture (to serve in the Navy), he allows Edgar to wait in Florence
until his aunt's return.
Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to Florence, pri-
vate collection.
2$ October
Degas and his uncle Gennaro Bellelli plan to go to Livorno to wait
for Laura and her two daughters.
Letter from Degas to Moreau, Florence to Paris, 27 November 1858,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris; Reff 1969, p. 283.
November
De Courcy and Emile Levy visit Florence. At the same time, De-
launay is staying in Venice, where he sees Moreau. He later brings
back numerous photographs from Venice to show to his former
51
1858-1859
teacher Louis Lamothe and to the sculptors Eugene Guillaume
(1822-1905) and Henri Chapu (1833-1891).
Letter from Degas to Moreau, Florence to Paris, 27 November 1858,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris; Reff 1969, p. 283; handwritten notes by
Mme de Beauchamp, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
i November
Degas goes to Livorno, no doubt on impulse, to wait for his aunt
Laura and her daughters.
Unpublished letters from Gennaro Bellelli to Degas, Florence to Leghorn,
1 and 2 November 1858, private collection,
11 November
Tourny, who has seen Auguste De Gas the day before, leaves Paris
for Rome, traveling overland by way of Florence. On the same
day, Auguste receives a packing case from his son; among its con-
tents are the Dante and Virgil (fig. 11). He expresses satisfaction
with his son's progress: "I have unrolled your paintings and some
of your drawings. I was very pleased, and I can tell you that you
have taken a great step forward in your art; your drawing is strong,
the colors are right. You have rid yourself of that weak, trivial,
Flandrinian, Lamothian manner of drawing and that dull gray col-
or. My dear Edgar, you have no reason to go on tormenting your-
self, you are on the right track. Calm yourself and, working quietly
but with perseverance, without slackening, follow the path you're
on. It belongs to you and nobody else. Work calmly now and stick
to this path, I tell you, and rest assured that you will succeed in
doing great things. You have a great destiny ahead of you; don't be-
come discouraged, don't fret." To his son's complaint of "bore-
dom" with portrait work, Auguste replies that portraits insure a
painter's material security.
Letter, Paris to Florence, private collection; cited in part in Lemoisne
[1946-49], I, p- 30.
19 November
Degas has "just sketched" the portrait of his aunt Laura.
Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to Florence, 25
November 1858, private collection.
2$ November
Delaunay, passing through Florence on his way from Venice, visits
Degas, who writes to Moreau: "Delaunay talked to me for a long
time about Venice, about Carpaccio, about you, and a bit about Ve-
ronese." Degas adds that he has begun a portrait of his aunt and
cousins and is devoting himself wholly to it.
Letter from Degas to Moreau, Florence to Venice, 27 November 1858,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris; Reff 1969, pp. 282-83.
30 November
Moreau leaves Venice for Florence. Auguste De Gas hears about his
departure from Koenigswarter and is not at all pleased. "With M.
Moreau in Florence, you will stay there even longer." He also
warns his son: "If you have begun painting your aunt's portrait in
oil, you'll find yourself making a mess in your hurry to finish."
Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to Florence, pri-
vate collection.
mid-December- March 18^9
Moreau's second visit to Florence. He is ill for about three months;
does a number of copies.
Mathieu 1974, pp. 180-82.
1859
4 January
Auguste De Gas, in a letter, gives his son more advice on his career
as a painter; he does not share his liking for Delacroix and has res-
ervations about Ingres, ranking him below the Italian masters of the
fifteenth century, for whom he saves all his admiration; finally, he
doubts that his son will be able, in a short period of time, to com-
plete the portrait he has begun of the Bellelli family: "You start
such a large painting on 29 December and think you will finish it
by 28 February."
Letter, Paris to Florence, private collection; cited in part in Lemoisne
[1946-49], I, PP- 31-32.
22 January
"Your new and already old friend Degas."
Unpublished letter from Koenigswarter to Moreau, Paris to Florence,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
10 February
De Courcy, who has found a studio in Paris at 39 rue de Laval, asks
Moreau to give his address to Degas, whom he would like to see again.
Unpublished letter from De Courcy to Moreau, Paris to Florence, Musee
Gustave Moreau, Paris.
2$ February
Auguste De Gas gives his son news of Paris: the marriage of Mela-
nie Valpingon, the sister of Edgar's childhood friend Paul; the de-
parture of Edgar's brother Achille for Brest, where he will set sail
for the African coast; a visit to Paris by Edgar's uncle Eugene Mus-
son, whom he will see on his return; long talks with Soutzo about
the excessive rents being charged for studios ("700, 800, 900, as if it
were nothing"). He ends by exhorting him to be patient: "Finish
calmly the work you've begun, do not botch what you have to do."
Unpublished letter, Paris to Florence, private collection.
early March
Moreau goes to Siena and Pisa with Degas; in Pisa, they copy the
Benozzo Gozzoli frescoes in the Campo Santo.
Mathieu 1974, p. 182; pencil drawing inscribed "Siena 1859" (IV:85.d);
copies done at Siena and Pisa, Reff 1985, Notebook 13 (BN, Carnet 16, p. 41);
copies after Gozzoli (Kunsthalle Bremen).
late March-early April
Degas leaves Florence to return to Paris, traveling overland by way
of Livorno, Genoa (2 April; he is very impressed by the van Dycks
at the Palazzo Rosso), Turin, Mont-Cenis, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne,
Lac du Bourget, and Macon.
Reff 1985, Notebook 13 (BN, Carnet 16, p. 41); Reff 1969, p. 284.
April-July
Moreau's second visit to Rome.
Mathieu 1974, pp. 184-85.
about 6 April
Degas arrives in Paris. He stays at his father's apartment, 4 rue de
Mondovi, and on several occasions sees Moreau's friends Emile
Levy and De Courcy, who have now become his friends too. (Con-
trary to Lemoisne, he does not seem to have taken Soutzo's apart-
ment on rue Madame, though Soutzo had proposed it in a letter to
Auguste De Gas dated 6 April 1859 [private collection].)
Reff 1969, p. 284; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 32, 229 n. 36.
24 April
Visits the Salon with Koenigswarter and Eugene Lacheurie, one of
Moreau's friends whom he has just meL
Reff 1969, p. 284; unpublished letter from Lacheurie to Moreau, Paris to
Rome, 9 June 1859, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
14 May
"It seems that you are once again immersed in Parisian life, and,
since returning, have done nothing but stand and stare. As laziness
is not your style, I am convinced that you will soon have had enough
loafing and will get back to work. "
Unpublished letter from Achille Degas to his nephew Edgar, Naples to
Paris, 14 May 1859, private collection.
25 May
Degas meets Emile Levy at the home of De Courcy; Levy is not
pleased to receive news of Moreau through the conversation of
Degas and De Courcy.
Unpublished letter from Levy to Moreau, Paris to Rome, 27 May 1859,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
52
1859-1860
Fig. 19. Woman Seated in an Armchair, Sewing (111:159.2), dated 1859.
Charcoal, iiVsX i$3A in. (29 X 35 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du
Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF29292)
26 June
Continues to see De Courcy and Koenigswarter frequently. Writes
a few lines to his uncle Achille Degas in Naples to tell him about
Moreau' s visit.
Reff 1969, pp. 285-86.
early July- September
Moreau visits Naples, where he is joined by Chapu and by Leon
Bonnat (183 3-1923). Degas 's sisters, Marguerite and Therese, and
his brother Rene also spend the summer in Naples.
Mathieu 1974, pp. 185-86; Reff 1969, pp. 285-86.
30 July
Edmondo Morbilli writes to Degas from Naples: "Now you have
your own studio: that will make you feel more like working, though I
do not think the desire is lacking; what you need is the courage to
reach your goal. . . . We have not seen your friend M. Moreau, he
must have been afraid to come."
Unpublished letter, Naples to Paris, private collection.
August
Koenigswarter spends a few evenings with Degas in Paris: "The
poor fellow is quite down in the dumps just now."
Unpublished letter from Koenigswarter to Moreau, Paris to Naples, 30
August 1859, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
26 August
Woman Seated in an Armchair, Sewing, charcoal drawing inscribed
"26 August 1859/Paris E.D." (fig. 19).
$ September
Rene De Gas mentions the departure for New Orleans of the Mil-
laudon family, whose portraits Degas had painted: "The Millau-
dons left on 30 August, not without regret, I imagine. Did they say
when they planned to return? And you painted the portrait of Mas-
ter Philippe, not without difficulty, I'm sure. Poor Mme Ducros
must be very happy to be rejoining M. Marcel. Papa had to give
them his letters for Uncle Michel."
Unpublished letter, Naples to Paris, private collection.
September
Moreau returns to France by sea.
Mathieu 1974, p. 186.
1 October
Degas moves to 13 rue de Laval.
Empty envelope with this address, and rent receipt for a studio, made out
to M. Caze, private collection.
6 October
The painter Leopoldo Lambertini writes a long letter to Degas in
which he describes the situation in Italy in detail; he is connected
with another Italian friend of Degas's, the sculptor Stefano Galletti,
but has little news of him.
Unpublished letter, Bologna to Paris, private collection.
31 December
Tourny, who is in Rome, where he has just met Henner, writes to
Degas: "I was very pleased to hear that you had found a studio and
were preparing for the next exhibition. I hope to see a completed
work when I return." He also alludes to Degas's recent quarrel
with Lamothe: "You are too frank and too sincere to put up with
Jesuitism."
Jean-Jacques Henner, unpublished journal, Musee Henner, Paris; letter,
Rome to Paris, private collection.
1860
Degas does some rapid sketches after two works by Delacroix,
Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret and Mirabeau and Dreux-Breze, at an
exhibition organized by the Association des Artistes, 26 boulevard
des Italiens.
Reff 1985, Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 20 A), Notebook 18 (BN, Car-
net 1, p. 53).
21 March
Coming from Marseilles, Degas arrives in Naples for the first time
since his grandfather's death. He stays with his aunt Fanny (18 19-
1901), Marchessa di Cicerale and Duchessa di Montejasi. He finds
there his two sisters, Therese and Marguerite, accompanied by their
governess, Adele Loye. During his brief stay, he visits his Morbilli
cousins (22 March), makes an excursion to Posilipo, and visits the
museums.
Reff 1985, Notebook 19 (BN, Carnet 19, p. 1); unpublished letter from
Therese De Gas to her brother Rene, Naples to Paris, 31 March i860, pri-
vate collection.
2 April
Leaves Naples for Livorno and then goes to the Bellellis in Flor-
ence. He does a drawing of Gennaro Bellelli, in which he is posed
as he will be in the family portrait (cat. no. 20). (The date of De-
gas's departure is unknown, but he seems to have stayed in the Tus-
can capital less than a month before returning to Paris.)
Reff 1985, Notebook 19 (BN, Carnet 19, p. 3); Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre (Orsay), Paris, RF 15484.
7 July
In a letter to his father from Gabon, where he is serving on board
the Recherche, Achille worries about the progress of his brother's
work: "Is Edgar's canvas coming along? Doesn't he intend to ex-
hibit it at the next Salon?"
Unpublished letter, private collection.
9july
Rossini's Semiramis returns to the Opera. (This new run of per-
formances has been seen as a possible source for the painting by
Degas; see cat. no. 29.)
23 July
Following the expedition of Garibaldi's "Thousand" and the fall of
Francis II, Gennaro Bellelli can now return from exile. He leaves
Livorno for Naples. In 1861, he will be appointed a senator of the
Kingdom of Italy.
Raimondi 1958, pp. 247-48.
53
1861-1863
1861
ij January
"Edgar is so wrapped up in his painting that he writes to no one
despite our remonstrances. . . . When will his wishes, which are
ours as well, come true? The violin is still going well but very
slowly. Edgar is also learning to play."
Unpublished letter from Rene De Gas to his uncle Michel Musson, Paris to
New Orleans, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
early July
Achille De Gas returns to Paris.
Unpublished letter from Achille De Gas to his father, Goree to Paris, 3 1
May 1 86 1, private collection.
3 September
Degas registers as a copyist at the Louvre (De Gas, Edgar; age 26;
4 rue de Mondovi). He fictitiously lists his friend Emile Levy as his
teacher.
Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, LL10.
September-October
Degas spends three weeks with his friends the Valpincpns at their
country estate at Menil-Hubert, Orne, in Normandy. (On 13 Octo-
ber, Marguerite and Rene De Gas write to their uncle Michel Mus-
son in New Orleans: "Edgar has returned from a three-week trip in
Normandy and is slaving away at his painting.") Degas is to go to
Menil-Hubert on many other occasions throughout his life. With
Paul Valpingon, he visits Camembert and Haras du Pin, "I think of
M. Soutzo and Corot. They alone would lend some interest to this
calm."
Unpublished letter, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; Reff 1985,
Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 161).
1862
Dated work: The Gentlemen's Race: Before the Start (cat. no. 42).
Degas is interrupted by Manet while copying Velazquez's Infanta
Margarita directly onto a copper plate at the Louvre. This is their
first meeting.
Paul Jamot and Georges Wildenstein, Manet, Paris: Les Beaux-Arts, 1932,
p. 75; Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 36.
Fig. 20. Paul Valpingon (L99), 1861. Oil on paper,
i53/4 X i25/s in. (40 X 32 cm). The Minneapolis
Institute of Arts
January
Delaunay returns to France after five years at the Villa Medici.
14 January
Degas again registers as a copyist at the Louvre.
Reff 1964, p. 255.
17 January
Therese De Gas writes to her cousin Mathilde Musson in New Or-
leans: "There will be a change in our family in Naples; our uncle
Edouard is going to marry a Cicerale girl, a sister-in-law of my
aunt Fanny. She's not pretty, and she's about 27 or 28."
Unpublished letter, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
26 February
Mathilde Musson marries William Alexander Bell.
April
Exhibition of engravings by Manet at Cadart's, 66 rue de Richelieu.
20 May
Desire Dihau, who is to become a friend of Degas's and the princi-
pal model for The Orchestra of the Opera (cat. no. 97), joins the or-
chestra of the Opera as a bassoonist; he starts 1 July and remains
with the orchestra until 1 January 1890.
Archives, Bibliotheque de l'Opera, Paris.
31 May
Bracquemond founds the Societe des Aquafortistes.
18 September
The painter James Tissot (1 836-1902), who is traveling in Italy,
writes to Degas from Venice; he asks him about the progress of his
Semiramis and about some affair of the heart, of which we know
nothing: "And Pauline? What about her? Where are you now with
her? That pent-up passion is not being wasted only on Semiramis. I
can't believe that by the time I'm back your virginity in relation to
her will still be intact. You must tell me all about it."
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 230 n. 45.
21 November
"Our Raphael is still working, but has not produced anything that
is really finished, and the years are passing."
Letter from Auguste De Gas to his brother-in-law Michel Musson, Paris to
New Orleans, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; cited in part in Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, p. 41.
24 November
In Naples, Hilaire Degas's heirs take an inventory of his property in
the presence of a notary, Leopoldo Cortelli. Throughout his life,
Degas will make many trips to Naples, attempting to settle the in-
terminable division of his grandfather's estate, and later that of his
uncle Achille as well.
Raimondi 1958, p. 121.
1863
Rene-George Degas, the son of the painter's uncle Edouard, is born
in Naples.
6 March
"He works furiously, and thinks of only one thing, his painting. He
works so hard that he does not take time out to enjoy himself."
Letter from Rene De Gas, in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 41, 230 n. 41.
"What can I say about Edgar? We are waiting impatiently for the
opening of the exhibition. I myself have good reason to believe he
will not finish in time; he will scarcely have tackled what needs to
be done."
Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Michel Musson, Paris to New
Orleans, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
54
1863-1865
Fig. 21. Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Turkish Bath, 1863. Oil
on canvas, diameter 4.2V2 in. (108 cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris
16 April
Therese De Gas marries her first cousin Edmondo Morbilli at the
church of La Madeleine in Paris. Degas had painted his sister's
engagement portrait shortly before the marriage (fig. 54).
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 232 n. 59; 1984-85 Rome, no. 78.
IS May
The Salon des Refuses opens.
18 June
Odile Musson, the wife of Degas's maternal uncle Michel, arrives
in France accompanied by two of her daughters — Estelle, who is a
widow with a baby, and Desiree. They are fleeing New Orleans
and the Civil War, in which Estelle's husband was killed. Degas
writes to his uncle: "Your family arrived here last Thursday, 18 June,
and is now entirely our family." Following the advice of Odile's
doctor, they spend the better part of their eighteen-month visit at
Bourg-en-Bresse.
Letter from Degas to Michel Musson, in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 73.
24 June
"Edgar, who we had been told was so brusque, is thoroughly at-
tentive and friendly."
Letter from Desiree Musson, in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 73.
13 August
Death of Eugene Delacroix.
7 November
Therese Morbilli is having a difficult pregnancy — the baby is due in
late February. (She will lose this child, very likely before term,)
Unpublished letter from Desiree Musson, Bourg-en-Bresse to New Or-
leans, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; unpublished letter from
Marguerite De Gas to Michel Musson, Paris to New Orleans, 3 1 Decem-
ber 1863, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
November
Edgar alone encourages his brother Rene to move to America and
leave their father's business.
Unpublished letter from Desiree Musson, Bourg-en-Bresse to New Or-
leans, 18 November 1863, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
29 December
Degas leaves Paris for Bourg-en-Bresse to celebrate the New Year
with the Mussons. "He took with him a lot of pencils and paper in
order to draw, to do their portraits, and to sketch Didy's [Desiree's]
hands in all their aspects, for such pretty models are rare."
Letter from Marguerite De Gas to the Musson family, Paris to New Or-
leans, 31 December 1863, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; cited in
part in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 73.
1864
Degas visits Ingres, who has organized "a small exhibition in his
studio, in the manner of the old masters." At this exhibition, Degas
sees a Homer supported "by I do not know what companion"
{Homer and His Guide, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels) as
well as Mme Moitessier (National Gallery, London) and "a round
version of the Turkish bath" (fig. 21).
Moreau-Nelaton 193 1, p. 270.
$ January
"Edgar has done several sketches of little Joe but isn't happy with
them. It's impossible to make her hold still for more than five
minutes."
Letter from Desiree Musson to the Musson family, Bourg-en-Bresse to
New Orleans, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; cited in part in
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 73.
22 April
"Edgar is still working enormously hard, though he does not ap-
pear to be. What is fermenting in that head is frightening. I myself
think — I am even convinced — that he has not only talent, but ge-
nius. But will he express what he feels? That is the question."
Letter from Rene De Gas to the Musson family, Paris to New Orleans, Tu-
lane University Library, New Orleans; cited in part in Lemoisne [1946-49],
I, p. 41.
21 May
Death of Gennaro Bellelli in Vietri.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table VII, p. 287.
At the Salon, Moreau exhibits Oedipus and the Sphinx, which will
be purchased by Prince Napoleon. It is probably at the Salon that
Degas copies a work by Meissonier, Napoleon III at the Battle of
Solferino (fig. 68), which is to be exhibited at the Musee du Lux-
embourg in August.
Reff 1985, Notebook 20 (Louvre, RF5634 ter, pp. 29-31).
1865
Dated works: Helene Hertel, pencil drawing (cat. no. 62); study for
Woman Leaning near a Vase of Flowers, pencil drawing (cat. no. 61);
Woman Leaning near a Vase of Flowers (cat. no. 60).
January
Degas returns to Bourg-en-Bresse, where he draws a portrait of
Mme Michel Musson and her daughters (fig. 22).
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Mme Musson and Her Two Daughters," Art
Quarterly, XIX: 1, Spring 1956, pp. 60-64; Boggs 1962, p. 21.
i May
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45) is exhibited at the Salon.
1 June
The artist's sister Marguerite marries Henri Fevre, an architect, at
the church of La Madeleine. Except for Rene, the entire family,
including Therese and Edmondo Morbilli, is gathered for the occa-
sion.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 232 n. 56; unpublished letter from Auguste De
Gas to Michel Musson, Paris to New Orleans, 9 June 1865, Tulane Univer-
sity Library, New Orleans.
55
1865-1867
Fig. 22. Mme Michel Musson and Her Daughters Estelle and Desiree (BR43),
1865. Pencil and watercolor, I33AX 10V4 in. (35 X 26. 5 cm). The Art
Institute of Chicago
August
This is probably when Degas makes a quick pencil copy of Symphony
in White by Whistler, after a sketch sent by Whistler to Fantin-
Latour.
Reff 1985, Notebook 20 (Louvre, RF5634 ter, p. 17).
26 October
Receives permission from the Louvre to copy Sebastiano del Piom-
bo's Holy Family, attributed at the time to Giorgione.
Reff 1985, Notebook 20 (Louvre, RF5634 ter, pp. 3-8).
November
Moreau is invited by the emperor to one of the celebrated entertain-
ments at Compiegne.
Mathieu 1976, p. 94.
1866
Dated work: The Collector of Prints (cat. no. 66).
From this year to 1874, Degas appears on the electoral lists as a resi-
dent of rue de Laval.
1 May
Exhibits The Steeplechase (fig. 67) at the Salon.
12 November
The ballet La Source premieres at the Opera (see cat. no. 77).
Fig. 23. Drawing for The Steeplechase (IV:232.b), 1866. Pencil
and charcoal, i^A X 87/s in. (35 X 22.5 cm). Private collection
1867
Dated work: Mme Gaujelin (fig. 25).
14 January
Death of Ingres. He is buried at Pere-Lachaise on 17 January. A large
retrospective exhibition is held at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts.
21 January
Lucie Degas, the daughter of Edouard Degas, is born in Naples (see
cat. no. 145).
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table X, p. 290.
15 March
Degas writes to the Surintendant des Beaux-Arts requesting per-
mission to retouch the works sent to the Salon (see cat. no. 20).
Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, Salon of 1867; Rome 1984-85,
pp. 171-72.
IS April
Exhibits two works titled "Family Portrait" at the Salon (see cat.
nos. 20, 65).
April-May
Courbet's Pavilion du Realisme.
May-June
Degas visits the Exposition Universelle at the Champ-de-Mars, ap-
parently several times. He seems particularly interested in the exhi-
bition of works by English painters.
Reff 1985, Notebook 21 (private collection, pp. 30, 31, 3iv).
56
1867-1869
22 or 24 May
Manet's specially constructed pavilion opens outside the Exposition
Universelle, near Courbet's.
3 August
A study for the portrait of Mile Fiocre (fig. 71) is dated 3 August 1867.
after 10 August
Degas's ambiguous judgment of Moreau's art: "Moreau's painting
is the dilettantism of a greathearted man." Further, he notes: "Ah!
Giotto, let me see Paris, and you, Paris, let me see Giotto!"
Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 5).
24 December
Celestine, Daughter of Marguerite De Gas Fevre, in Her Bath (fig. 24),
drawn at the Fevre apartment, 72 boulevard Malesherbes, Paris.
Boggs 1962, p. 28, pi. 56.
1867-68
Degas meets the German painter Adolf Menzel at the home of
Alfred Stevens.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 233 n. 63; Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet
22, p. 116).
1868
Dated work: Evariste de Valernes (L177, Musee d'Orsay, Paris).
Estelle Musson De Gas becomes blind in her left eye; she retains
some vision in her right eye until 1875.
Unpublished letter from Odile De Gas Musson (daughter of Estelle Mus-
son) to Paul- Andre Lemoisne, Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
22 February
Giovanna Bellelli marries Marquis Ferdinando Lignola in Naples.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table VIII, p. 288.
spring
Degas frequents the Cafe Guerbois, 11 grande rue des Batignolles
(today 9 avenue de Clichy).
26 March
Registers for the last time as a copyist at the Louvre (Degas, Edgar;
age 33; 13 rue de Laval; again gives Emile Levy as his teacher).
Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, LL11.
Fig. 24. Celestine, Daughter of Marguerite De Gas Fevre, in Her Bath, 1867.
Pencil, 7V2 X 10V4 in. (19 X 26 cm). Private collection
1 May
Opening of the Salon. Degas exhibits Mile Fiocre in the Ballet "La
Source" (cat. no. 77).
29 July
From Boulogne-sur-Mer, Manet writes to Degas (at 4 rue de Mon-
dovi) suggesting that he accompany him to London: "I am of a
mind to test the waters on that side, perhaps there will be an outlet
for our wares." They would stay three or four days. If Degas
agrees, Manet will tell Legros, who is in London. In conclusion, he
asks Degas to persuade Fantin-Latour to come, and sends his re-
gards to Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and Zola.
Unpublished letter, private collection.
26 August
Manet writes to Fantin-Latour mentioning Duranty *s observation
that Degas "is on his way to becoming the painter of high life."
Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 103.
1869
16 February
Degas's brother Achille writes to the Mussons in New Orleans:
"Edgar came to Brussels with me. He has met M. Van Praet, one of
the king's ministers, who had purchased one of his paintings, and
he saw his work displayed in one of the most celebrated galleries in
Europe. That has afforded him a certain pleasure, as you can well
imagine, and has at last given him a little confidence in himself and
his talent, which is genuine. He has sold two other paintings during
his stay in Brussels, and a well-known art dealer, Stevens [Arthur
Stevens, brother of the painter Alfred Stevens], has proposed a con-
tract of twelve thousand francs a year." Nothing came of Stevens's
offer.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 63.
i May
Opening of the Salon. Degas exhibits Mme Gaujelin (fig. 25).
before 11 May
"Degas is mad about Yves's face" and begins to do a portrait (see
cat. no. 87, Mme Theodore Gobillard, nee Yves Morisot). The sittings
will continue until Yves's departure at the end of June.
Morisot 1950, pp. 31-32; Morisot 1957, pp. 35-36.
22 May
Manet tells Berthe Morisot of Degas's shyness with women.
Morisot 1950, p. 31; Morisot 1957, p. 35.
12 June
The artist's aunt, Mme Edouard Degas, nee Candida Primicile
Carafa, the mother of Lucie Degas, dies in Naples.
Raimondi 1958, genealogical table X, p. 290.
late June
Yves Gobillard-Morisot finishes sitting for her portrait, which
Degas will complete in his studio during July.
Morisot 1950, p. 32; Morisot 1957, p. 36.
July
From Boulogne-sur-Mer, Manet writes to Degas asking him to re-
turn the two volumes of Baudelaire that he had lent him.
Unpublished letter, n.d., private collection.
July-August
Degas visits Etretat and Villers-sur-Mer. He also goes to Boulogne-
sur-Mer to see Manet, who is spending the summer there. On the
Normandy coast, he does a series of pastel landscapes (L199-L205;
see cat. nos. 92, 93).
Reff 1985, Notebook 25 (BN, Carnet 24, pp. 58-59); Lemoisne [1946-49],
I, p. 61,
IS December
Death of Louis Lamothe in Paris.
57
1870
Fig. 25. Mme Gaujelin (L165), dated 1867. Oil on canvas, 23V4X
vf/% in. (59 X 44 cm). Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
1870
17-18 March
Estate sale of the collection of Gregoire Soutzo.
Catalogue d'estampes anciennes . . . formant la collection de feu M. le prince
Gregoire Soutzo, Paris, 1870.
12 April
Paris-Journal publishes a letter from Degas to the Salon jury, in
which he makes a number of proposals intended to improve the
way the works are displayed: two rows of paintings only, a distance
of at least twenty or thirty centimeters between each painting, a
mixture of drawings and canvases, and the right of each exhibitor
to withdraw his work after a few days.
IS April
Death of Edouard Degas, the artist's uncle, in Naples.
May
Ludovic Halevy publishes "Madame Cardinal" in La Vie Parisienne.
See "Degas, Halevy, and the Cardinals," p. 280.
J May
At the Salon, Degas exhibits Mme Camus in Red (fig. 26) and Mme
Theodore Gobillard (cat. no. 90).
2 May
Theodore Duret praises Degas in L'Electeur Libre.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 62.
8 May
Duranty comments on Mme Camus in Red in Paris-Journal.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 62.
17 May
In a short note, Champfleury (1 821-1889), the writer and critic
who has supported Courbet, informs Degas that he will pay him a
visit about ten o'clock.
Note from Champfleury to Degas, private collection.
igjuly
France declares war on Prussia.
September
Degas, in Paris, volunteers for the National Guard.
4 September
Proclamation of the Third Republic, after Sedan (2 September).
28 September
Frederic Bazille (b. 1841), the painter who had been a friend of the
future Impressionists, is killed at Beaune-la-Rolande near Orleans.
early October
Degas is posted to the Bastion 12 fortifications, north of the Bois de
Vincennes, under the command of Henri Rouart.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 67-68.
21 October
Degas's friend Joseph Cuvelier is fatally wounded at Malmaison;
Tissot, who returns with a drawing of him dying, is reproved by
Degas.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 67; Halevy i960, p. 157; Halevy 1964, p. 118.
26 October
Mme Morisot writes to her daughter Yves: "M. Degas was so
affected by the death of one of his friends, the sculptor Cuvelier,
that he was impossible. He and Manet almost came to blows argu-
ing over the methods of defense and the use of the National Guard,
though each of them was ready to die to save the country. . . . M.
Degas has joined the artillery, and by his own account has not yet
heard a cannon go off. He is looking for an opportunity to hear that
sound because he wants to know whether he can endure the deto-
nation of his guns."
Morisot 1950, p. 44; Morisot 1957, p. 48; cited in Lemoisne [1946-49], I,
p. 67.
ig November
"Degas and I are in the artillery, with the volunteer gunners."
Letter from Manet to Eva Gonzales, in Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 127.
Fig. 26. Mme Camus in Red (L271), 1870. Oil on canvas, 283/4X $6Va in.
(73 X92 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
58
1871-1872
1871
Dated work: Horses in the Field (L289),
27 February
"Degas is always the same, a little mad, but his wit is delightful."
Morisot 1950, p. 48; Morisot 1957, p. 53.
March
Dated work: Jeantaud, Linet, and Laine (cat. no. 100).
7 March
Achille De Gas, who has returned from America to fight, is on the
Loire.
Unpublished letter from Alfred Niaudet to Degas, Chalindrey to Paris,
private collection.
18 March
Proclamation of the Commune. During the Commune, The Or-
chestra of the Opera (cat. no. 97) is exhibited at Lille.
25 May
Mme Morisot writes to her daughter Berthe about the fires during
the Commune: "Should M. Degas have got a bit scorched, he will
have well deserved it."
Morisot 1950, p. 58; Morisot 1957, p. 63.
i June
Degas returns to Paris from Menil-Hubert in Normandy.
Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to his daughter Therese Morbilli,
Paris to Naples, 3 June 1871, private collection.
3 June
In a letter to his daughter Therese Morbilli in Naples, Auguste De
Gas recounts the events of the Bloody Week and gives news of the
dispersed family: his son-in-law Henri Fevre is in Paris; Henri's wife,
Marguerite, and her children are in Deauville; Achille is in Belgium.
Unpublished letter, private collection.
5 June
Mme Morisot writes again to her daughter Berthe: "Tiburce has
met two Communards, at this moment when they are all being
shot. . . . Manet and Degas! Even at this stage they are condemning
the drastic measures used to repress them. I think they are insane,
don't you?"
Morisot 1950, p. 58; Morisot 1957, p. 63.
I4july
Degas spends the evening at the Manets: "The heat was stifling,
everybody was cooped up in the one drawing room, the drinks
were warm. But Pagans sang, Mme Edouard played, and M.
Degas was there. This is not to say that he flitted about; he looked
very sleepy — your father seemed younger than he."
Morisot 1950, pp. 65-66; Morisot 1957, p. 70; cited in Lemoisne
[1946-49], I, p. 68.
31 August
Death of Degas's aunt Odile Musson in New Orleans.
30 September
Degas writes to Tissot who, exiled because of his Communard
sympathies, is living in London. He is considering a trip to Lon-
don, says that he has exhibited The Orchestra of the Opera (cat.
no. 97) on rue Laffitte, and complains of problems with his eyes.
Letter, Paris to London, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 1, pp. 11-12.
October
Finally visits London, which he had planned to do in 1870, before
the war prevented all such activity; stays at the Conte Hotel, Golden
Square. He probably sees the Second Annual Exhibition of the Society
of French Artists, 168 New Bond Street, organized by Durand-RueL
Letter from Tissot to Degas, Paris to Paris, 15 May 1870, private collec-
tion; letter from Degas to Alphonse Legros, London to London, October
1871, private collection; Reff 1968, pp. 88-89, n. 20; McMullen 1984, p. 208.
1872
Dated works: Woman with a Vase of Flowers (cat. no. 112); The Ballet
from "Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 103).
January
For the first time, Durand-Ruel buys three works directly from
Degas.
Durand-Ruel archives, Paris (stock nos. 943, 976, 979).
summer
Fourth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists in London; Degas ex-
hibits The False Start (fig. 69) and The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
(cat. no. 103).
Mme Morisot describes to her daughter Berthe the Stevenses' latest
Wednesday party: "They did not even attend. . . . The Manets and
M. Degas were playing host to one another. It seemed to me they
had patched things up."
Morisot 1950, p. 69; Morisot 1957, p. 73.
26 June
Rene, who has just arrived in Paris, writes to his family in New
Orleans, giving news of his brother, who now lives at 77 rue
Blanche: "I found Edgar at the station. He has aged, and there are a
few white hairs sprinkled in his beard; he is also calmer and more
serious. Father and I had dinner at his place, and afterward we went
to see Marguerite. Edgar is doing some really charming things. He
has a profile portrait of Mme Camus [fig. 26] in a garnet-red velvet
dress, seated on a brown chair and silhouetted against a pink back-
ground; for me, it's a pure masterpiece. His drawing is ravishing.
Unfortunately, his eyes are very weak and he is forced to use them
with the greatest caution. I have lunch with him every day. He has
a good cook and a charming bachelor apartment. Yesterday I had
dinner there with Pagans, who sings to the accompaniment of a
guitar." .
Letter to Michel Musson, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; cited in
part in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 70.
12 July
Rene writes again to New Orleans about his brother: "Edgar, with
whom I have lunch every day, tells me to give all of you his love.
His eyes are weak and he must be extremely careful. He is the same,
but has a mania for saying English words, and has repeated turkey
buzzard for a week."
Letter, Tulane University Library, New Orleans; cited in part in Lemoisne
[1946-49], I p. 7i.
17 July
"Although his eyes are better, he has to take care of them, and you
know how he is. Right now, he is painting small pictures, which
are what tire his eyes the most. He is doing a dance rehearsal that is
charming [see cat. no. 107]. As soon as the painting is finished, I'll
have a large photograph taken of it. Edgar has got it into his head
to come back with me and stay with us [in New Orleans] for a cou-
ple of months. ... I have lunch with him every day. . . . After
dinner, I go with Edgar to the Champs-Elysees and from there to
the cafe-chantant to listen to idiotic songs, such as the 'Song of the
Mason* and other absurd nonsense. Sometimes, when Edgar is in
high spirits, we dine in the country and visit the places made mem-
orable by the siege. Prepare yourselves to give a fitting reception to
the Gr-r-r-reat Artist. He asks that you not come to meet him at
the station with the Bruno Band, militia, firemen, clergy, etc."
Letter from Rene De Gas to his family, Paris to New Orleans, Tulane Uni-
versity Library, New Orleans; cited in part in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 71.
12 October
Edgar and Rene leave Liverpool for America on board the Scotia.
Reff 1985, Notebook 25 (BN, Carnet 24, p. 166).
59
1872-1873
24 October
The brothers arrive in New York, where they spend thirty hours
before taking the train to New Orleans.
Letter from Degas to Desire Dihau, New Orleans to Paris, 11 November
1872; Lettres Degas 1945, I, p. 16; Degas Letters 1947, no. 2, p. 13.
2 November
Fifth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists in London. Degas ex-
hibits At the Races in the Countryside (cat. no. 95) and Dance Class at
the Opera (cat. no. 107).
4 November
Degas is in New Orleans, staying with his family: "All day long I
am among these dear folk, painting and drawing, making portraits
of the family." Shortly after, in a letter to Tissot, he already speaks
of his longing for Paris and complains that he has heard nothing
from Manet.
Letter from Degas to Dihau, New Orleans to Paris, 11 November 1872;
Lettres Degas 1945, I, p. 19; Degas Letters 1947, no. 2, p. 15; letter from
Degas to Tissot, New Orleans to London, 19 November 1872, Biblio-
theque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947, no. 3, pp. 18-19.
19 November
Degas writes to Tissot: "I am doing some family portraits but I am
thinking above all of my return." Further on, he alludes to Children
on a Doorstep (New Orleans) (cat. no. in), which he has begun.
Letter, New Orleans to London, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 3, p. 18.
2j November
"Everything attracts me here, I look at everything. ... I accumu-
late plans that would take me ten lifetimes to complete. I will aban-
don them in six weeks, without regret, to return to and never again
leave my home. . . . My eyes are much better. True, I am working
very little, but what I am doing is difficult. Family portraits must
be done to suit the taste of the family, in impossible lighting, with
many interruptions, and with models who are very affectionate but
a little too bold — they take you much less seriously because you are
their nephew or cousin. I have just ruined a large pastel, to my con-
siderable mortification. If I have time, I plan to bring back some-
thing from this part of the world, but for myself, for my room."
Letter from Degas to Lorentz Frolich, New Orleans to Paris; Lettres Degas
1945, II, p. 23; Degas Letters 1947, no. 4, pp. 21-22 (translation revised).
$ December
"I shall certainly be back in January. To vary my journey I intend
going back via Havana. . . . The light is so strong that I have not
yet been able to do anything on the river. My eyes are so greatly in
need of care that I scarcely take any risk with them at all. A few
family portraits will be the sum total of my efforts. . . . Oh well, it
will be a journey I have made and very little else. Manet would see
lovely things here, even more than I do. He would not make any
more of them. One loves and gives art only to the things to which
one is accustomed."
Letter from Degas to Henri Rouart, New Orleans to Paris, 5 December
1872; Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 26; Degas Letters 1947, no. 5, pp. 24-25.
1873
18 February
Degas writes to Tissot that he is working on two versions of the
"Cotton Buyers* Office" (see cat. nos. 115, 116).
Letter, New Orleans to London, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 6, p. 29.
late March
Degas has returned to Paris and is once more living at 77 rue
Blanche.
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 81.
60
I.
Self-Portrait
1855
Oil on canvas
3 i7/s X 2sVa in. (81 X 64 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2649)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 5
In the 1 8 50s, Degas often used himself as a
model, painting eighteen self-portraits (Le-
moisne catalogues fifteen, and three more
are added by Brame and Reff).1 Sixteen of
these are busts, and the other two are half-
length portraits. The self-portrait in the
Musee d'Orsay is the largest, most complete,
and most ambitious of them all, a true paint-
ing rather than a sketch. It is often cited and
reproduced as a good example of the painter's
early work before he left for Italy, when he
was still a student of Louis Lamothe and
therefore under the influence of Ingres — as
is borne out by the comparison frequently
made with Ingres's famous Self-Portrait
(fig. 27) in the Musee Conde at Chantilly.
On the basis of two modest sketches that
appear in a notebook used in 18 54- 5 5, 2 Le-
moisne assigns the self-portrait to that period,
noting in passing Ernest Rouart's claim that
he "saw Degas rework the background about
1895."3
However, taking into account the date of
the painting, the artist's pose, the instru-
ment in his hand, the portfolio on which he
is leaning, and the generally acknowledged
reference to Ingres, some additional obser-
vations may be made. Unlike Ingres, Degas
did not portray himself as an artist but as a
young "bourgeois" gentleman. He is dressed
Fig. 27. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Self-
Portrait, 1804. Oil on canvas, $6¥s x 24 in. (77 x
61 cm). Musee Conde, Chantilly
1
in the severe black suit (over a brown vest
he rarely took off — see L13 and cat. no. 12)
that he is also wearing, not without affecta-
tion, in the two famous self-portraits of the
1 860s, Self-Portrait: Degas Lifting His Hat
(cat. no, 44) and Self-Portrait with Evariste de
Valemes (cat. no. 58). Unlike Ingres, he did
not portray himself as a painter but as a
draftsman, with a charcoal holder in his
right hand, while four thick awkward fin-
gers of his left hand rest on a portfolio, out
of which protrudes the edge of a sheet of
white paper (the paper appears to have been
covered by the marbled cardboard portfolio
at a later date4). The charcoal holder may
seem surprising, since Degas never drew
with charcoal in the 1850s, but it becomes
understandable once we realize that it was
commonly used for life drawing at the Ecole
des Beaux- Arts, where Degas studied brief-
ly after passing the entrance examination on
6 April 1855. The presence of the charcoal
holder and also the reference to (more than
the influence of) Ingres, whom Degas met
at this time through his friends the Valpin-
qons, and whose works he copied at the Ex-
position Universelle of 1855, make it possible
to date this self-portrait more precisely to
the spring of 1855.
Degas was not yet twenty-one, and this
was, without a doubt, his first major paint-
ing. The steady gaze of his large black ques-
tioning eyes and the thick pouting lips give
him the same air that he has in most of his
self-portraits: aloof and uncertain. One can
easily see in it the young painter's perplexed
reaction to a kind of teaching — that of the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts — that he found un-
congenial. However, the austerity of the
picture, the dark tones (scarcely relieved by
the few patches of white), and the deliberate
concentration on the face and hands to the
61
exclusion of anything that could be consid-
ered unessential are an assertion of Degas 's
fierce and tenacious resolve to sacrifice ev-
erything to his calling as an artist.
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, nos. 2-5, 11-14, 31-32,
37, 51, 103-05; Brame and Reff 1984, nos. 28-30.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN, Carnet 20, pp. 58B,
67).
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 5. If there was a later
reworking, it is barely discernible today.
4. "Les peintures de Degas au Musee d'Orsay: etude
du Laboratoire de Recherche des Musees de
France," unpublished report, May 1987.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 69, repr.);
bought at that sale by the Louvre, for Fr 150,000.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 2; 1933 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 82; 1936 Venice, no. 1; 1937 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 1, pi. 1; 1956, Limoges, Musee Mu-
nicipal, De Vimpressionnisme a nos jours, no. 6; 1969
Paris, no. 1; 1973, Pau, Musee des Beaux-Arts, April-
May, Uautoportrait du XVIIe Steele a nos jours, p. 44;
1976-77 Tokyo, no. 1, repr. (color).
SELECTED REFERENCES: Lafond I918-I9, I, p. IO3,
repr.; Paul- Andre Lemoisne, "Le portrait de Degas
par lui-meme," Beaux- Arts, i December 1927, repr.;
Paul Jamot, "Acquisitions recentes du Louvre," L'Art
Vivant, 1928, pp. 175-76; Guerin 193 1, repr.; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 5; Paris, Louvre, Impres-
sionnistes, 1958, no. 53; Boggs 1962, p. 9, pi. 12;
Minervino 1974, no. 112; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Peintures, 1986, III, p. 196, repr.
2.
Rene De Gas
1855
Oil on canvas
36V4 X 283/4 in. (92 X 73 cm)
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, 2
Massachusetts (1935:12)
Lemoisne 6
The portraits of Degas's early career are all
family portraits; not until the 1860s did he
also begin to depict a few close friends. In
the 1850s, he drew and painted his brothers
and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins — the
single exception was his father, who al-
though attentive to his son's first efforts
would not be portrayed until many years lat-
er, in the painting with the guitarist Pagans
(cat. no. 102). The artist's brother Rene,
eleven years his junior (born in 1845), was,
like his sisters Therese and Marguerite, a fre-
quent model, doubtless more available and
more amenable than their other brother, the
boisterous Achille; it is perhaps Rene whom
we see already in a small canvas painted
about 1853, Boy in Blue (BR24A), which
subsequently belonged to him. His recollec-
tions many years later are recorded in the
words of Paul- Andre Lemoisne: "Rene often
told us that when he came home from school,
he would barely have put away his books
when Edgar would get hold of him and
make him pose."1
In 1855, Degas did a number of prepara-
tory studies for this portrait, now at Smith
College. For the head alone, he did two
pencil drawings (Mellon collection, Upper-
ville, Va. ; Pierpont Morgan Library, New
York) and an oil sketch (L7). For the overall
composition, there are two rough studies in
a notebook2 and a more elaborate drawing
(fig. 28) that he gave and dedicated to his
brother. The final composition departs sig-
nificantly from this last drawing. Degas did
not stop at merely changing some of the de-
tails (the left hand, which had held a glove
and was hooked in the belt, now disappear-
Fig. 28. Study for Rene De Gas, 1855.
Pencil, 1 1 V2 x 9 in. (29. 2 x 22. 9 cm) .
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul
Mellon, Upperville, Va.
62
ing into the trouser pocket) but actually al-
tered the very conception of the portrait by
sacrificing the background, which in the
drawing is clearly legible even if only hastily
sketched. Its mantelpiece with a mirror
above, its wallpaper motifs, its oval frame
hanging on the wall, in short everything
that would have contributed to making this a
portrait in an interior in the tradition of Ingres
has disappeared. The schoolboy stands out
against a dark and uniform background (its
opaqueness concealing an already used can-
vas); he is resting his right hand on what
must be a table, upon which are piled one
thick book (probably a dictionary), two ex-
ercise books, a pen, and an inkwell — attri-
butes more than accessories, revealing, like
the sculpture in the hands of Bronzino's
young man (which Degas at the time was
copying in the Louvre3), the model's occu-
pation. The boy's tender age, his casual
bearing (hand in pocket) and simple outfit,
and the familiar, obviously well-worn every-
day objects that surround him contrast with
the complete absence of a setting, the severity
of the background, and the stiffness of the
pose that would seem to suggest something
of an official portrait.
It is a somber work, like those of many
painters of the 1850s, enlivened by brighter,
more resonant patches of color, such as the
red bow tie on the white collar. The face and
hand, vividly lit, loom up out of the dark;
they are painted with an obvious sensitivity,
showing us little Rene, the favorite, as seen
by his big brother, the younger so evidently
attentive to the older 's first efforts at painting.
1. Guerin 1931, preface by Lemoisne, n.p.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN, Carnet 20, pp. 32,
75).
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN, Carnet 20, p. 40).
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 72, repr.);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 90, 100; Knoedler and Co. , New York, 7 October
1933; bought by Bignou, Paris, January 1934; sent to
Bignou, New York, July 1934; bought by the museum
1935.
exhibitions: 1933, New York, M. Knoedler and
Co. , November-December, Paintings from the Am-
broise Vollard Collection, XIX-XX Centuries, no. 16,
repr.; 1934, London, Alex Reid and Lefevre, June,
Renoir, Cezanne and Their Contemporaries, no. 16;
1938 New York, no. 7; 1939, Boston, Institute of
Modern Art, 2 March-9 April/New York, Wilden-
stein and Co. , May, The Sources of Modem Painting,
no. 3, repr.; 1947 Cleveland, no. 1, pi. 15; 1948 Min-
neapolis, no number; 1949 New York, no. 2, repr. ;
r953» New York, M. Knoedler and Co., 30 March-
11 April, Paintings and Drawings from the Smith College
Collection, no. 11; 1954 Detroit, no. 65, repr.; 1955
San Antonio; i960 New York, no. 2, repr.; 1961,
Arts Club of Chicago, 11 January-15 February,
Smith College Loan Exhibition, no. 8, repr.; 1962,
Northampton, Smith College Museum of Art, Por-
traits from the Collection of the Smith College Museum of
Art, no. 16; 1963 , Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art Mu-
seum, 10-30 March, Youthful Works by Great Artists,
no. 22, repr.; 1963, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2
October-10 November, Style, Truth and the Portrait,
no. 89, repr. ; 1964, Chicago, National Design Cen-
ter, Marina City, Four Centuries of Portraits, no. 8;
1965 New Orleans, pi. XV, fig. 10 p. 21; 1968, Bal-
timore Museum of Art, 22 October-8 December,
From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by Eu-
ropean and American Artists, no. 59, repr.; 1969, Wa-
terville, Me., Colby College Art Museum, 3 July-21
September /Manchester, N.H., Currier Gallery of
Art, 11 October-23 November, Nineteenth and Twen-
tieth Century Paintings from the Smith College Museum
of Art, no. 24, repr. text and cover; 1970, Waterville,
Me., Colby College Art Museum, June- September/
Manchester, N.H., Currier Gallery of Art, 11-23
November, 19th and 20th Century Paintings from the
Collection of the Smith College Museum of Art, no. 16,
repr. ; 1972, New York, Wildenstein and Co. , 2 No-
vember-9 December, Faces from the World of Impres-
sionism and Post-Impressionism, no. 19, repr.; 1974
Boston, no. 1; 1978 New York, no. 2, repr. (color).
selected references: Marcel Guerin, "Remarques
sur des portraits de famille peints par Degas a propos
d'une vente recente," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XVII,
June 1928, pp. 371-72; J. A. (Jere Abbott], "Portrait
by Degas Recently Acquired by Smith College," The
Smith Alumnae Quarterly, XXVII:2, February 1936,
pp. 161-62, repr. p. 161; J. A. [Jere Abbott], "A Por-
trait of Rene de Gas by Edgar Degas," Smith College
Museum of Art Bulletin, 1936, pp. 2-5, repr. p. 2;
Smith College Museum of Art, Catalogue, Northamp-
ton, 1937, p. 17, repr. p. 77; Rewald 1946 GBA, pp.
105-26, fig. 10 p. 115; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 14,
II, no. 6; Boggs 1962, p. 8, pi. 9; 1967 Saint Louis,
p. 22; Minervino 1974, no. 113, pi. 1 (color).
3.
Therese De Gas
c. 1855-56
Pencil
i25/8 X 11 Vb in. (32 X 28.4 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Julia Knight Fox
Fund (31.434)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Degas did a number of portraits of his sister
Therese (see cat. nos. 63, 94) — the "heroic"
Therese, as he called her later when she was
married to an invalid.1 This is the best of
many drawings he did of her about 1855-
56, before his departure for Italy. Even
more than his other sister, the intelligent
and musical Marguerite (to whom he was
just as close, if not closer), Therese seems to
have been one of his favorite models, both
out of affection and for purely pictorial rea-
sons. He probably admired her perfectly
oval face — with the broad nose, full mouth,
and large, slightly protruding brown
eyes — and her shy, attentive, placid look,
her air of never understanding what was
happening. No doubt he particularly liked
the Ingresque appearance of this face, which
is reminiscent of Ingres's Mile Riviere or
Mme Devauqay, and which seems to invite
this firm, calm drawing.
63
4, RECTO
4, VERSO
I. Letter to Ludovic Halevy, 31 August 1893, Lettres
Degas 1945, CLXXVI, p. 196; Degas Letters
1947, no. 189, p. 186.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 17, repr.);
bought by the museum through Paul Rosenberg
193 1-
exhibitions: 193 i Cambridge, Mass., no. 15b; 1947
Cleveland, no. 54, pi. XL VII; 1947 Washington,
D.C., no. 25; 1948 Minneapolis, no number; 1965
New Orleans, p. 57, pi. X; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 4.
selected references: Philip Hendy, "Degas and the
de Gas," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
XXX: 179, June 1932, repr. p. 44.
4.
Achille De Gas
1855-56
Pencil
10V2 X 7V2 in. (26.7 X 19. 2 cm)
Vente stamp and atelier stamp lower left
On the verso, two pencil studies of the head of a
sleeping adolescent (presumably Rene De Gas)
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF29293)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Vente IV:i2i.c
Often considered a study for the portrait of
Achille De Gas now in the National Gallery
of Art in Washington (fig. 29), this pencil
drawing, very much imbued with the influ-
ence of Ingres, in fact precedes the painting
by several years. In the drawing, the paint-
er's younger brother is wearing the quiet,
unobtrusive attire of the Naval Academy,
where he was a student from 1855 to 1857;
in the canvas, however, he is dressed, rather
ostentatiously, in the more striking uniform
of a midshipman. The drawing was there-
fore executed sometime between 27 Sep-
tember 1855, the day Achille entered the
Naval Academy, and July 1856, when the
painter left for Italy. The canvas was in all
likelihood painted after Degas's return to
Paris in April 1859 and before Achille was
promoted to naval ensign on 8 February
1862. 1
The archives of the Lycee Louis-le-Grand,
as well as those of the Service Historique de
la Marine, describe the handsome Achille as
a turbulent, often impulsive boy and a con-
sistently average student. When he entered
the Naval Academy, before the age of sev-
enteen (he was born on 17 November 1838),
he went essentially unnoticed; but in July
1858, while a midshipman, he was put un-
der close arrest and threatened with dismis-
sal for unruliness and insubordination. The
intervention of Auguste De Gas, asking the
naval minister to ofTer the young man "an
assignment that would enable him to make
amends for his past mistakes," helped re-
solve the situation.2 Achille briefly continued
his naval career, without incident, first as a
midshipman first-class (6 February i860)
and then as a naval ensign (8 February 1862),
Fig. 29. Achille De Gas as a Naval Ensign (L3o),
c. 1859-62. Oil on canvas, 2$VsX zoVs in.
(64.5 X 46.2 cm). Chester Dale Collection,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
before resigning on 17 November 1864, dis-
appointed by the uneventful life he was lead-
ing. He later founded, along with Rene, the
firm of De Gas Brothers in New Orleans.
During the war with Germany, he entered
the service again for several months (from
12 November 1870 to 2 March 1871) and,
temporarily restored to his former rank,
served on the Loire.
64
1 . Archives, Service Historique de la Marine, file on
Achille De Gas.
2. Ibid.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, no. 121. c);
bought at that sale by Paul Jamot with nos. 121. a and
12 1. b, for Ft 700; his bequest to the Louvre 1941.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 74; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 85; 1969 Paris, no. 44.
Life Drawings
cat. nos. 5 — 7
After the directorship of Ingres (1835-40),
the French Academy in Rome on the whole
opened its doors, welcoming to its life classes
artists who were not pensioners but who
wished to work there.1 Since good models
were hard to find in Rome, this hdspitality
was appreciated, as Degas himself remarked
in a brief note sent in 1857 to the sculptor
Henri Chapu, in which he asked him, "given
the shortage of models," to try "a man who
is very handsome."2
The evening life classes quickly became a
"club," giving French artists not only a chance
to practice but a place to meet as well. De-
gas, like the others, must have been grateful
for the chance to work from models. After
meeting Gustave Moreau, who we know
had an immediate influence on him, Degas
probably came to share his new mentor's
less than favorable opinions about the com-
panions with whom they found themselves
every evening after dinner from seven to
nine-thirty. Moreau found Victor Schnetz,
the director of the Academy, vulgar and a
poor conversationalist, and the boarders,
while not unpleasant, seemed to him com-
mon, boastful, and lacking in talent — "a few
decent young fellows, who consider them-
selves artists, but are crassly ignorant."3
Degas, benefiting from the liberality of
the Villa Medici, drew a number of academic
nudes in Rome. When he came upon them
later, he often added the annotation "Rome
1856," a generic date for works executed
between 1856 and 1858. 4 For some of these
studies, the precise date can be ascertained
by comparing them with those in which the
same model was used by Moreau (or for
that matter by Delaunay, Chapu, or Bon-
nat). Thus, it is quite likely that the Seated
Male Nude (cat. no. 7) dates from 1858,
since a similar drawing in the Musee Gustave
Moreau bears that date.
A gesture, a movement, and a pose grad-
ually and almost inevitably suggest certain
subjects: the traps of an art that had become
routine, leading to stereotypes and, in the
I
0*T
s
correct sense, academicism. The models of-
ten assumed the poses of works that were
already celebrated: the muscular young
man, whose abundant dark hair makes it
clear that he is a ragazzo romano, becomes
the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus (cat. no. 6),
and the gaunt old man adopts the penitent
pose of Saint Jerome (cat. no. 5).
1. See H. Lapauze, Histoire de VAcademie de France a
Rome, II, 1802-1910, Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1924,
p. 236.
2. See 1984-85 Rome, p. 24.
3. Letters from Gustave Moreau to his parents,
Rome to Paris, 12 November 1857 and 3 March
1858, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
4. Reff 1963, pp. 250-51.
Study of an Old Man Seated
1856-58
Pencil on off-white laid paper
i25/s X 9% in. (32 X 23 . 5 cm)
Inscribed in pencil lower left: Rome 1856
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Marc Sand, Switzerland
Vente IV:97.e
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 19 19, no. 97. e);
bought at that sale by Pozzi with nos. 97. a, 97. b, 97. c,
97. d, and 97. f, for Fr 1,080. Galerie Proute, Paris;
bought by Marc Sand 1972.
exhibitions: 1984-85 Rome, no. 24, repr.
selected references: Paul Proute, Gauguin cata-
logue, Paris, 1972, no. 83, repr.
65
Standing Male Nude
1856-58
Pencil on pale green wove paper
i21/8 X 87/8 in. (30.7X22.5 cm)
Inscribed in pencil lower right: Rome 1856
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
Private collection, New York
Vente IV: 108. a
Seated Male Nude
1856-58
Pencil on pale green wove paper
12V4 X 87/s in. (3 1 X 22. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection, New York
Vente IV:83.c
Four Studies of the Head of a
Young Girl
1856
Pencil on pale buff wove paper
i81/8Xi2in. (45.9X30.5 cm)
Inscribed in pencil upper left: Rita Sora/ Cacciala;
lower right: Rome
Nepveu-Degas stamp lower left
Collection of Mrs. Noah L. Butkin
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, no. 108. a);
bought at that sale by Cottevielle with no. 108. b, for
Fr 220; Walter Goetz; bought by David Daniels, June
1965; present owner.
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 7; 1968, The Min-
neapolis Institute of Arts, 22 February-21 April /The
Art Institute of Chicago, 3 May-23 June/ Kansas
City, Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1 July-29
September/ Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum,
16 October-25 November, Selections from the Draw-
ings Collection of David Daniels, no. 45.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Reff I964, p. 25 1 n. l8.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, no. 83. c);
bought at that sale by Henriquet with nos. 83. a, 83. b,
and 83. d, for Fr 1,020; Marcel Guerin, Paris; Galerie
Cailac, Paris; David Daniels, New York; present
owner.
exhibitions: 1958, New York, Charles E. Slatkin
Gallery, 7 November-6 December, Renoir, Degas,
no. 5; i960, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1
July-15 August, Paintings from Minneapolis Collections;
i960, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
summer, Three Private Collections, no. 70; 1962 Balti-
more, no. 56; 1964, Iowa City, University of Iowa
Museum of Art, Drawing and the Human Figure, no. 93,
repr.; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 11, repr.
selected references: Reff 1964, p. 251 n. 19.
This drawing is an "expressive head," and
not, as has been suggested, a sketch for a
composition that has disappeared. It was
drawn in Rome in the fall of 1856. One of
Degas's notebooks in the Louvre contains a
watercolor after the same model, convinc-
ingly dated 1856 by Reff.1
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 7 (Louvre, RF5634, p. 45).
For another related drawing, see Degas Sonnets
1947, facing p. 4.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 1918-21; Nepveu-Degas collection,
66
Paris (Nepvcu-Degas sale, Drouot, Paris, 6 May
1976, no. 13); Shepherd Gallery, New York; Mrs.
Noah L. Butkin, Shaker Heights, Ohio.
exhibitions: 1976-77, New York, Shepherd Gallery,
French Nineteenth Century, no. 24, repr.; 1984-85
Rome, no. 31, repr.
9.
Two Studies of the Head of a Man
c. 1856-57
Pencil heightened with white chalk on
rose-brown paper
17^2 X iiV^ in. (44.5X28.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
WiUiamstown, Massachusetts (1393)
Vente IV:67
This drawing, which appeared in the cata-
logue of the fourth atelier sale as "Two Male
Heads (after a painting of the Italian school)," is
not a copy, but a study of one man from
two different angles, most probably executed
during Degas's first stay in Rome in 1856-57.
As did most of his contemporaries, Degas
devoted himself to the study of common
people, sketching an old man dressed in
rags, a pretty young girl in peasant cos-
tume, or, as here, a youth from the streets
in whom we can readily see the plebeian de-
scendant of the ancient Caesars.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 19 19, no. 67);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Fr 400
(stock no. 1 1542); Durand-Ruel, New York, 27 Sep-
tember 1929 (stock no. N. Y 502); bought by Robert
Sterling Clark, 6 July 1939; his gift to the museum
1955.
exhibitions: 1935, New York, Durand-Ruel Galle-
ries, 22 April-n May, Exhibition of Pastels and
Gouaches by Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Cassatt; 1959
WiUiamstown, no. 34, pi. XIX; 1970 WiUiamstown,
no. 10.
selected references: "Exhibition of Drawings of
Degas," Art News, XXXV, 28 December 1935, pp. 5,
12, repr.; WiUiamstown, Clark, 1964, I, pp. 74-75,
no. 149, II, pi. 143; WiUiamstown, Clark, 1987, no. 5,
repr. (color).
10.
Saint John the Baptist, study for
Saint John the Baptist and the
Angel
1856-58
Black chalk on off-white laid paper, squared for
transfer
17V2 X ii3/s in. (44.5 X 29 cm)
On the verso: a drawing of an angel blowing a
trumpet, inscribed lower right: Rome
Vente stamp lower left on verso
Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal
(KK1960/165)
Vente IV:70.a and IV:70.b
Between 1856 and 1858, in preparation for a
painting of Saint John the Baptist and the
Angel, Degas did a great number of draw-
ings, sketches of the overall composition
and of individual figures, and studies for the
background, all in varying degrees of detail.
But in spite of the copious documentation,
this unrealized work remains an enigma. In
67
Fig. 30. Paul Dubois, Saint John the Baptist as a
Child, 1 86 1. Bronze, height 64VS in. (163 cm).
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
fact, these efforts resulted only in a small
watercolor (L20) that, judging from repro-
ductions, appears to have been a disappoint-
ing work and not at all what might have
been expected from the preliminary studies.
The very subject is difficult to understand;
in his notebooks, Degas cites passages from
Revelation about John the Evangelist rather
than John the Baptist. Yet the watercolor
undoubtedly depicts Saint John the Baptist,
dressed in an animal skin and holding a
cross in his hand, just as Paul Dubois was to
represent him somewhat later (see fig. 30).
In the footsteps of Elijah, John the Baptist is
fulfilling the mission of the angel announced
by God — that is, preparing the way for the
Messiah; the angel, as foretold in the Old
Testament, is guiding him and speaking
through him.
The drawings Degas made in Rome for
this composition are among the most beauti-
ful of his youth. They include rigorous
studies of adolescent bodies, skillful render-
ings of drapery, and tireless repetitions of
the same movements. The drawing on the
recto of the Wuppertal sheet, which was
squared in preparation for an oil sketch (L21),
is also a particularly fine, highly articulated
academic drawing, made from a model in
spite of the transformation of his staff to the
cross of the Baptist, the precursor of Christ.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, nos. 70. a,
70. b); bought at that sale by Bernheim-Jeune, Paris,
for Fr 400; Dr. Eduard Freiherr von der Heydt, As-
cona; given to the museum 1952.
exhibitions: 195 1-52 Bern, no. 82; 1967 Saint Louis,
no. 26, repr. ; 1969, Saint-Etienne, Musee d'Art et
d'Industrie, 18 March-28 April, Cent dessins du Mu-
see Wuppertal, no. 19, repr.; 1984 Tubingen, no. 22,
repr.; 1984-85 Rome, no. 35, repr.
selected references: Hans-Giinter Wachtmann,
Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Veirzeichnis der
Handzeichnungen, Pastelle und Aquarelle, Wuppertal,
1965, no. 38, repr.; 1969 Nottingham, under no. 5;
Gunter Aust, Das Von der Heydt-Museum in Wupper-
tal, Rechlinghausen, 1977, p. 284, pi. 164; C. A. Na-
thanson and E. J. Olszewski, "Degas's Angel of the
Apocalypse," The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of
Art, 1980, p. 247, repr.
68
II
II.
Roman Beggar Woman
1857
Oil on canvas
39V2X 295/s in. (100.3 x 75*2 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 1857
Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery,
Birmingham, England (P44'6o)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 28
The provenance of this painting immediate-
ly gives it a special place in the history of
Degas 's work. When Degas deposited it and
Sulking (cat. no. 85) with Durand-Ruel on
26 December 1895, it was simply called "Beg-
gar Woman." Durand-Ruel bought it a year
and a half later, on 13 April 1897, and sold it
the same day to the dealer Decap. No earlier
work by Degas had ever entered the market
(the painter was to keep most of his early
works until his death). He signed it — prob-
ably at the time of one or the other of these
transactions — and dated it 1857, the period
of his first stay in Rome.
Like the Metropolitan's Old Italian Woman
(fig. 31), Roman Beggar Woman is part of a
tradition that the director of the French
Academy in Rome, Victor Schnetz, worked
zealously to help revive in the 1850s. As Le-
once Benedite was to point out, Schnetz
played "a key role in the Realist evolution of
our contemporary art"; he was a chronicler
of the "popular life of Italy," which along
with Leopold Robert he had raised from
69
Fig. 31. The Old Italian Woman (L29), dated
1857. Oil on canvas, 29V2 X 24 in. (75 X 61 cm).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
"genre" status to that of the "elevated style
of history," and it was his influence that was
responsible for the innumerable portraits of
Italian men and women in local costume to
which the Villa Medici students then devoted
themselves.1 In several notebooks and on
separate sheets, Degas made pencil sketches
and watercolors of people of this sort in
1856-57, though with less insistence and
certainly less conviction than some of his
contemporaries, such as Chapu, Delaunay,
Henner, or Clere. "I am not mad about this
well-known Italian picturesque," he noted
in July 1858. "Whatever moves us no longer
owes anything to this genre. It is a fashion
that will always be with us."2 His meeting
with Gustave Moreau, who was not very
interested in this fashion, probably made
him decide to give it up. It had become a
veritable commonplace by the end of the
1850s: painters and sculptors as well as pho-
tographers and even society ladies relent-
lessly pursued these unfortunate natives,
many of whom found it lucrative to become
professional models. Thus Mme Gervaisais,
in the novel of the same name by the Gon-
courts, admires what everyone has agreed
henceforth to admire, those "abraded colors
of moss green or touchwood; vermin-ridden
rags worn by all, with the slow movements
of Arcadian shepherds,"3 and she has one of
these women come to her house in order to
make sketches of her.
Degas was more conventional in his wa-
tercolors, but he demonstrated an unques-
tionable originality in the two canvases in
Birmingham and New York. Unlike Bou-
guereau, Hebert, or Bonnat, he did not
"stage a scene," nor did he proffer works of
"bourgeois sentimentality" (to use the un-
kind words of Paul de Saint- Victor4). There
is no indulgence in misery here, only the
careful study of two old women, monu-
mental isolated figures, to whom he gives,
in Taine's phrase, "the prominent traits of
the ancient race and of former genius."5
They are, to quote the Goncourts again,
cast "in a pose of sovereign reverie that Mi-
chelangelo might have drawn."6
Degas distinguished himself from his con-
temporaries just as Giacomo Antonio Ceruti,
in the tradition that he followed, distin-
guished himself from the hamboccianti of the
seventeenth century. Roman Beggar Woman is
certainly a portrait and a genre scene, but
more the former than the latter, because the
story, the local color, and the exotic refer-
ences are barely noticeable. The painter's at-
tention is focused on everything that suggests
old age, decay, and poverty: wizened skin,
gnarled hands, clothes that bespeak destitu-
tion, faded colors7 — dull, muted chords es-
tablishing a magnificent harmony of browns.
1. Leonce Benedite, "J. J. Henner," Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, XXXIX, January 1908, p. 49.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 11 (BN, Carnet 28, p. 94).
3. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Madame Gervai-
sais, Paris: A. Lacroix, 1869 (Folio, 1982, p. 139).
4. "Salon 1865," La Presse, 21 May 1865.
5. Hippolyte Taine, Voyage en Italie, Paris: Hachette,
1866 (1965 edition, Paris: Julliard, p. 132); Italy,
Rome and Naples (translated by J. Durand), 4th
edition, New York: H. Holt and Co., 1875, p. 118.
6. Goncourt, op. cit., p. 139.
7. See Degas's notes on this subject in Reff 1985,
Notebook 9 (BN, Carnet 17, p. 21).
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 26 December 1895 (as "Mendiante," de-
posit no. 8847); bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 13
April 1897, for 10,000 (stock no. 4158); bought
the same day by Maurice Barret-Decap, Biarritz, for
Ft 15,000 (Maurice B. sale, Drouot, Paris, 12 Decem-
ber 1929, no. 4, repr.); Paul Rosenberg, Paris; bought
by Mrs. Alfred Chester Beatty, London, after 1934;
Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, her husband, after 1952;
deposited with the Tate Gallery, London, 1955-60;
bought by the museum i960.
exhibitions: 1934, New York, Durand-Ruel Galle-
ries, 12 February-10 March, Important Paintings by
Great French Masters of the Nineteenth Century, no. 13,
repr.; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 4, repr.; 1937 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 2; 1962, London, Royal Academy of
Arts, 6 January-7 March, Primitives to Picasso, no. 212,
repr.
selected references: Camille Mauclair, The French
Impressionists, London: Duckworth, 1903, p. 77,
repr. ; Camille Mauclair, The Great French Painters,
London: Duckworth, 1903, p. 69, repr.; Mauclair
1903, p. 382; Camille Mauclair, L'impressionnisme: son
histoire, son esthetique, ses maitres, Paris: Baranger,
1904, p. 226; Geffroy 1908, p. 15, repr.; Lemoisne
1912, pp. 21-22, pi. Ill; Lafond 1918-19, II, repr.
facing p. 2; Jamot 1924, p. 129, pi. 1; Alexandre
1935, p. 154, repr.; Roberto Longhi, "Monsu Ber-
nardo," Critica d'Arte, III, 1938, pi. 99, fig. 34; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no, 28; Minervino 1974, no. 71;
Foreign Paintings in the Birmingham Museum and Art
Gallery: A Summary Catalogue, Birmingham, 1983,
p. 28, no. 41, repr. p. 29; 1984-85 Rome, pp. 116-
18, repr.
12.
Self-Portrait in a Soft Hat
1857
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
10V4 X 71/2 in. (26 X 19 cm)
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts (544)
Lemoisne 37
Initially dated 1855 and then moved by Le-
moisne closer to the etched Self-Portrait (cat.
nos. 13, 14) of 1857,1 the little Williams-
town picture is probably contemporary with
the etching. However, it is difficult to say
for certain whether the painting was executed
before the etching, and so might have been
a study for it, or whether these were two
independent works — variations, with differ-
ent techniques, on a single theme. Compar-
ing it with the self-portrait in the Musee
d'Orsay (cat. no. 1), one can see how far
the artist has come in two years, even taking
his differing intentions into account: the
1855 work is a finished, austere, somber
picture, whereas this is a brisk rough sketch,
with unexpected fa* presto qualities in the
treatment of the clothes.
The soft hat, which Degas wears also in
the drawings made of him at the time by
Stefano Galletti and Gustave Moreau,2 throws
half his face in shadow and gives his eyes a
dreamy, faraway look. Along with the or-
ange scarf and the white smock, it makes the
young man seem an artist; clearly, he wanted
to show himself at work. Just as in the self-
portrait of 1855 he was the draftsman, so
here Degas is the painter, possibly influ-
enced by the many small portraits done by
the students at the French Academy, but
discovering, along with a new freedom in
behavior, a freedom in handling hitherto rare
in his work.
1. Lemoisne 193 1, p. 284; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 37.
2. See 1984-85 Rome, pp. 25, 27, repr.
provenance: Marcel Guerin, Paris; Daniel Guerin,
his son, Paris; bought by Durand-Ruel, New York,
20 April 1948 (stock no. N.Y. 5747); bought the same
day by Robert Sterling Clark, New York, for $28,000;
his gift to the museum 1955.
exhibitions : 1925, Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs,
28 May-12 July, Cinquante ans de peinture francaise,
no. 27; 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 13, repr.; 1936
Philadelphia, no. 1, repr.; 1956, Williamstown, Ster-
ling and Francine Clark Art Institute, opened 8 May,
French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, no. 103,
repr.; 1959 Williamstown, no. 5, repr.; 1970 Williams-
town, no. 1, repr.; 1978, Chapel Hill, The William
Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, 5 March- 16
April, French Nineteenth Century Oil Sketches: David
to Degas, no. 23, repr.
selected references: Guerin 1931, p. 12, pi. 13; Le-
moisne 193 1, fig. 47 p. 284; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
70
no. 37; Boggs 1962, p. 11, pi. 15; List of Paintings in
the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williams-
town, 1972, p. 34, no. 544, repr.; Minervino 1974,
no. 125; List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 1984, p. 12, fig. 253;
Williamstown, Clark, 1987, no. 9, repr. (color) p. 6.
The Etched Self-Portrait of 1&57
cat. nos. 13, 14
From the very beginning of his career, De-
gas was keenly interested in printmaking.
This was highly unusual in the 1850s, when
most artists considered it merely a useful
means of reproduction and publication and
paid only cursory attention to what was
known as original printmaking. On 9 April
1853, Degas registered as a copyist at the
Cabinet des Estampes,1 which he frequented
regularly until his departure for Italy. At the
same time, he was advised by Prince Gregoire
Soutzo (18 18-1869), a Romanian nobleman
and engraver,2 and friend of Auguste De Gas
(Auguste considered him a little mad — "his
head is ... a little cracked"3). He was, above
all, a knowledgeable collector: the catalogue
drawn up for the sale of his estate lists prints
by Callot, Durer, van Dyck, Claude Lorrain,
Marcantonio Raimondi, and Rembrandt, as
well as the complete works of Adriaen van
Ostade.4 Degas was able to examine these
works at his leisure. Besides Soutzo, who
awakened Degas's interest in engraving and
taught him the rudiments of the art, there
was also Joseph Tourny, whom he was to
meet a little later in Rome, where Tourny
had been commissioned by Adolphe Thiers
to copy the Sistine Chapel frescoes. A pro-
fessional copyist, Tourny was also an engraver
and had reproduced works of art for Achille
Martinet. However, his correspondence with
Degas in 1858-59 (for the most part unpub-
lished) reveals an embittered artist who was
conscious of having to perform unworthy
tasks and who wanted to return to France to
do work more in keeping with his ambitions.
His fondness for engraving was limited: "I
will try to do some portraits, perhaps a little
engraving, although my eyes object and my
love for this art is not the greatest."5 Auguste
De Gas, who had had an opportunity to ex-
amine Tourny's copy of the Sistine Chapel
Jeremiah, was critical of the engraver's drafts-
manship and urged his son not to follow his
example: "The outline is correct, but it is soft,
weak, and without vigor; from a distance it
looks as if it had been drawn by a young
lady — it has that same fuzziness."6
Nevertheless, Degas's friendship with
Tourny can be discerned in the fine etched
portrait (RS5) that he did of him in Rome in
1857, largely inspired by Rembrandt's Young
Man in a Velvet Cap. In 1857, Degas also
dated an etching of himself (cat. no. 14) in
the pose of the Orsay self-portrait (cat. no. 1),
wearing the same soft hat as in the Williams-
town canvas (cat. no. 12), which was painted
about the same time. There is a black-chalk
drawing in the Metropolitan Museum in
New York that has sometimes been consid-
ered a study for this print. In style, however,
it is closer to Fantin. Its origin is unknown,
and it must be regarded with suspicion; it
first appeared in an exhibition at the Ny Carls-
berg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, in 1948, listed
as part of a private collection.
There are four known states of the etch-
ing. With each state the image becomes
more intense and more dramatic; the effects
of chiaroscuro are heightened, and shadow
progressively engulfs the face of the young
artist. Once again there is a suggestion of
Rembrandt, whom Degas discovered, oddly
enough, while examining the publications
of Charles Blanc during his stay in Italy.
Tourny's admiration for Rembrandt had been
one of the reasons Degas's father considered
him a harmful influence on his son. Auguste
would concede only that Rembrandt was a
painter "who astonishes us by his ability to
create a sense of depth."7
Degas must have been pleased with this
beautiful image of himself as a young man
(published by Lemoisne in 19 12) since he
distributed it to his friends, whereas no other
self-portrait left his studio during his lifetime.
He gave Burty the print that now belongs to
the Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, and
Soutzo the one now in Ottawa.
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 227 n. 13.
2. The only record of his work is a copy by Degas;
see fig. 13.
3. Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Ed-
gar, Paris to Florence, 14 October 1858, private
collection.
4. Catalogue d* estampes anciennes . . . formant la collec-
tion de feu M. le prince Gregoire Soutzo, Paris, 17-18
March 1870.
5. Unpublished letter from Tourny to Degas, Rome
to Paris, 31 December 1859, private collection.
6. Unpublished letter, Paris to Florence, 13 August
1858, private collection.
7. Unpublished letter to Edgar, Paris to Florence, 25
February 1859, private collection.
8. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to
Florence, 25 November 1858, private collection;
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 31.
71
13-
14.
15-
Self-Portrait
1857
Etching on white wove paper, second state
ioVi x 7V& in. (26 X 18.2 cm)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (28293)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Reed and Shapiro 8. II
provenance: Given by the artist to Prince Gregoire
Soutzo, Paris (Soutzo stamp, Lugt suppl. 2341, on
verso, lower right). Sale, Sotheby's, London, Nine-
teenth and Twentieth Century Prints, 16 June 1983, no.
52, repr. ; David Tunick, New York; bought by the
museum 1983.
exhibitions: 1983 London, no. 2.
selected references: Delteil 19 19, no. 1; Adhemar
1974, no. 13; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 8, p. 24.
Self-Portrait
1857
Etching on white laid paper, third state
14V8 X 10V4 in. (36 X 26 cm)
Signed and dated in pencil lower right:
Degas 1857
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Universites
de Paris (Fondation Jacques Doucet), Paris
(B.A.A. Degas 17)
Exhibited in Paris
Reed and Shapiro 8. Ill
provenance: Given by the artist to Philippe Burty.
Jacques Doucet, Paris; Fondation Jacques Doucet
1918.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 193; 1984-85 Paris,
no. 106, p. 383, fig. 230 p. 377.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 17-18,
repr; Delteil 1919, no. 1; Guerin 193 1, n.p.; Adhe-
mar 1974, no. 13; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 8,
p. 24.
Hilaire Degas
1857
Oil on canvas
207/8 x i6Vs in. (53X41 cm)
Inscribed and dated upper right, below the frame
on the wall: Capodimonte 1857
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF3661)
Lemoisne 27
On 16 July 1857, Hilaire Degas, then eighty-
seven years old, wrote a short letter to his
grandson in Rome asking him to come as
soon as possible to see him in his villa at San
Rocco di Capodimonte near Naples, where
he normally spent the summer. 1 Edgar ar-
rived fifteen days later, no doubt torn be-
tween joy at seeing his grandfather (from
whom he had parted ten months before)
and the bleak prospect of an extended stay
in the boring Capodimonte countryside.2
The previous year, he had made a pencil
72
m
Fig. 32. Auguste Flandrin, Woman in Green,
1835. Oil on canvas, 18V&X i33/4 in. (46 X
35 cm). Musee des Beaux- Arts, Lyons
portrait (head only) of Hilaire not once but
three times; but it was in the summer or fall
of 1857 that he executed the two painted
portraits: first, a picture of Hilaire Degas
wearing a cap, examining what must be a
drawing or an etched plate (L33, Musee
d'Orsay, Paris), and then the present work,
which shows him sitting on a sofa, legs
crossed, cane in hand. The first portrait,
which is unfinished, presents an informal
image of Hilaire that would reappear later,
disguised in red chalk, in The Bellelli Family
(cat. no. 20). The second, which is finished,
is more ambitious and solemn: Degas por-
trays an old man for whom he feels affection
and admiration, as is attested in family cor-
respondence and in the account he gave of
his grandfather's life to Paul Valery in 1904. 3
This painting must have been given to
Hilaire, for it remained in the family in Na-
ples until acquired by the Societe des Amis
du Louvre. Degas presumably arrived at the
format and pose with his grandfather, who
was not ignorant about painting and had as-
sembled an important collection of contem-
porary Neapolitan works. It is perhaps this
that explains Degas' s return here to a for-
mula at once provincial and old-fashioned,
namely that of the small-scale portrait in an
interior of the kind frequently found in Ly-
ons from the period of the July Monarchy,
one of the finest examples being Auguste
Flandrin's Woman in Green (fig. 32). Degas's
period of study under Louis Lamothe, who
was from Lyons, and his extended stay in
that city in the summer of 1855 had clearly
made him familiar with this type of portrait,
which in the 1850s seems to have survived,
much as the critics protested its "meanness"
and the "dryness" of its excessively meticu-
lous handling. But with this old-fashioned
formula, which would seem to have con-
demned him to the niggardly approach of
the miniaturist, Degas succeeded in creating
powerful effects with a paint that, as Marcel
Guerin noted, was "rich" and "smooth."4
This portrait of Hilaire, like the portrait of
Rene painted two years earlier (cat. no. 2),
has the trademark of all of Degas' s youthful
portraits: a mixture of austerity and good
nature, of rigor and familiarity — the rigor
here of a knowing geometric construction
and the familiarity of a summer portrait in
the country. The impressive stature of the
model is reinforced by the severe back-
ground of verticals and horizontals against
which he declares his individuality. The
light, coming (perhaps symbolically) from
the west, from the setting sun — a summer
light, entering only through small openings
that will not let it spread too far — casts the
rest of the room into a semidarkness in
which only the metal of a doorknob gleams.
Warm and golden, it falls irregularly on the
weary features of the old man — the very
long nose, the white hair through which his
pink pate is altogether visible, the hand
drooping on the armrest, the wrinkles, the
pendulous cheeks, the bags under the eyes—
and on the knob of the cane, bespeaking in-
firmity, that cane which sent a familiar
tapping through the house, a sound that,
following his death, his sons were to re-
member with sorrow.5
1 . Unpublished letter from Hilaire Degas to Edgar,
16 July 1857, private collection; cited in part in
1984-85 Rome, no. 40, pp. 124-25.
2. Unpublished letter from Edmondo Morbilli to
Edgar Degas, Naples to Paris, 30 July 1859, pri-
vate collection.
3. Valery 1965, pp. 55—57; Valery i960, pp. 26-27.
4. Guerin 1932, pp. 106-07.
5. Unpublished letter from Achille Degas to his
nephew Edgar, Naples to Florence, 15 September
1858, private collection.
provenance: Degas family, Naples; Marchesa Ed-
oardo Guerrero de Balde (nee Lucie Degas), the art-
ist's cousin, Naples; Signora Marco Bozsri (nee Anna
Guerrero de Balde), Lucie Degas's daughter, Naples,
1932; bought with the portraits of Giovanna Bellelli
(RF3662) and Edouard Degas (fig. 16), for 75,000 lire,
by the Societe des Amis du Louvre 1932.
exhibitions: 1933 Paris, Orangerie, no. 81; 1934,
Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, May-July, Les ar-
tistes jran$ais en Italie de Poussin a Renoir, no. 108;
1947, Paris, Orangerie, December, Cinquantenaire des
"Amis du Louvre" 1897-1947, no. 62; 1969 Paris, no. 3;
1984-85 Rome, no. 40, repr. (color).
selected references: Guerin 1932, pp. 106-07, repr.;
Lettres Degas 1945, p. 251; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 27; Fevre 1949, pp. 18-21, repr.; Boggs 1958,
p. 164, fig. 26; Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958,
no. 55; Raimondi 1958, pp. 121, 127, 256, pi. 15 p. 257;
Boggs 1962, p. 11, pi. 20; Boggs 1963, p. 273; Reff
1965, p. 610; Valery 1965, pp. 55-57; Minervino
1974, no. 120; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures,
1986, III, p. 197, repr.
16.
The Duchessa Morbilli di
Sant'Angelo a Frosolone, nee
Rose Degas
1857
Watercolor and pencil
i33/4 X nVs in. (35 X 29 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor
Thaw, New 'Vbrk
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 50 bis
By comparing this picture with a retouched
photograph published in Riccardo Raimon-
di's invaluable book on Degas's Neapolitan
family, Jean Sutherland Boggs was able to
identify the subject as the painter's aunt
Rose Degas, Duchessa Morbilli di Sant'An-
gelo a Frosolone.1 Raimondi, who married
the great-granddaughter of Rose Morbilli,
described the duchess as "tall and slender,
with blonde hair and blue eyes,"2 but marked
at the end of her life by accumulated tribula-
tions: repeated pregnancies (six in seven
years of marriage — "the woman is a pre-
cious asset to the fatherland," was her
brother Edouard' s ironic comment3), her
16
74
husband's death and the ensuing financial
difficulties, and the loss of three of her chil-
dren, most painfully that of her eldest son
Gustavo, who was killed on a barricade
during the Neapolitan uprising of May
1848.
Little is known about Degas's relations
with his "ever excellent aunt Rosine."4 As a
painter, he was not interested in her the way
he was in Laura or Fanny; there is no finished
painting of her, though this drawing, exe-
cuted during one of his visits to Naples in
1856 or 1857 (more probably the later date),
can, it is true, be regarded as a study for a
full-length portrait. Rose Morbilli adopts a
stilted pose, as if for a formal portrait. As he
did with most members of his family, Degas
conferred on her an image that is at once fa-
miliar and distant: the rigid frontality of the
pose is offset in part by the modesty of the
black dress (brightened by the big white apron)
and also by the fragility of the watercolor.
1. Raimondi 1958, pi. VII, pp. 140-41; Boggs 1963,
p. 255.
2. Raimondi 1958, p. 133.
3 . Letter from Edouard Degas to his mother, Paris to
Naples, 14 March 183 1, Raimondi 1958, pp. 86-87.
4. Unpublished letter from Rene De Gas to his
brother Edgar, Naples to Paris, 5 September 1859,
private collection.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, no. 102. b
[as "Femme au tablier blanc"]); bought at that sale by
Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Fr 1,550 (stock no. 11 546);
Durand-Ruel, New York, 17 December 19 19 (stock
no. N.Y. 43 11); bought by William M. Ivins, Mil-
ford, Conn. , 24 March 1920, for $300 (Ivins sale,
Parke-Bernet, New York, 24 November 1962,
no. 32, repr.); bought at that sale by present owners.
exhibitions: 1964, New York, E. V. Thaw, 29 Sep-
tember-24 October, 19th and 20th Century Master
Drawings, no. 10; 1965 New Orleans, pi. IX p. 56;
1967 Saint Louis, no. 22; 1969, Kunsthalle Bremen,
9 March-13 April, Handzeichnungen franzosischer
Meister des 19. Jahrhunderts, von Delacroix bis Maillol,
no. 51, repr.; 1975-76, New York, Pierpont Morgan
Library, 10 December 1975-15 February 1976/ The
Cleveland Museum of Art, 16 March-2 May/ The
Art Institute of Chicago, 28 May-5 July/Ottawa,
National Gallery of Canada, 6 August-17 Septem-
ber, Drawings in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene
V. Thaw, no. 92, repr. (color); 1984 Tubingen,
no. 31, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 50
bis; Boggs 1962, pp. 88 n. 49, 105, 125; Boggs 1963,
p. 275, fig. 33; Minervino 1974, no. 131.
17.
Study of a Draped Figure
c. 1857-58
Pencil heightened with white gouache
on beige laid paper
1 1 Vi X 87/s in. (29.2 X 22. 5 cm)
On the verso, a pencil copy of the Mona Lisa
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund (1975-5)
This drawing is probably a copy of a figure
in a late fifteenth-century Italian work, in a
style close to the paintings of Raffaellino del
Garbo. It seems to be a drawing "from the
antique" for Saint John the Baptist and the An-
gel (see cat. no. 10). The generosity of the
lines and the intensity of the white gouache
on the beautiful drapery, foreshadowing
Semiramis (cat. no. 29), lead to the proposal
of a date of c. 1857-58 for this drawing.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Jeanne Fevre, the artist's
niece, Nice (Fevre sale, Galerie Charpentier, Paris,
12 June 1934, no. 63 [as "Deux etudes d'apres l'an-
tique"]). Sale, Drouot, Paris, 8 June 1973, no. 34,
repr. Bought by the museum 1975.
exhibitions: 1975-76, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1 October 1975-4 January 1976, Eu-
ropean Drawings Recently Acquired, 1972-197$, no. 42;
1977 New York, no. 1 of works on paper; 1984-85
Rome, no. 16, repr.
75
Portrait of a Young Woman, after a
drawing then attributed to
Leonardo da Vinci
1858-59
Oil on canvas
25 x ijVz in. (63.5 X 44.5 cm)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (15222)
Lemoisne 53
Fig. 33. Portrait of a Young Woman,
after a drawing then attributed to
Leonardo da Vinci (IV:ii4.a),
1858-59. Pencil, I33/4X iolA in.
(35 X 26 cm). Private collection
Fig. 34. Formerly attributed to
Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of a
Young Woman. Red chalk, i53/sX
10V2 in. (38.9 X 26.7 cm). Galleria
degli Uffizi, Florence
During his first visit to Florence in 1858-59,
Degas copied in pencil (fig. 33) a red-chalk
drawing in the Uffizi, Portrait of a Young
Woman (fig. 34), attributed at that time to
Leonardo da Vinci (it was later given to
Pontormo and still later to Bacchiacca). From
it, he then painted the present portrait of a
proud-looking young woman, probably about
the same time he was beginning his studies
for The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20), for which
he may have found some inspiration in the
Uffizi drawing. The painting is an exercise
in style in the truest sense of the term. It is a
subtle variation on an ancient theme — of the
sort that was admired in the nineteenth
century — in which Degas assumes the role
of Leonardo himself, completing what the
master had only sketched.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Jeanne Fevre, the artist's
niece, Nice (Fevre sale, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 12
June 1934, no. 136). Paul Rosenberg, Paris, 1946.
Baron de Rothschild, Paris; Andre Weil, Paris; Paul
Petrides, Paris (Petrides sale, Galerie Charpentier,
Paris, Tableaux modemes, 12 May 1950, no. 24, repr.);
R. W. Finlayson, Toronto, 1950-66 (sale, Sotheby's,
London, 23 October 1963, no. 46, repr., bought in);
bought by the museum 1966.
exhibitions: 1957, Art Gallery of Toronto, njanu-
ary-3 February, Comparisons, no. 63 c; 1958 Los An-
geles, no. 2, repr.; i960 New York, no. 5, repr.;
197 1, Halifax, Dalhousie Art Gallery, 25 February-
5 March/ St. John's, Memorial University Art Gallery,
20 March-4 April /Charlottetown, Confederation
Art Gallery and Museum, 15 April-6 May /Frederic-
ton, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 10-25 May/ Quebec
City, Musee du Quebec, 30 May-15 June, French
Painting 1840-1924 from the Collection of the National
Gallery of Canada, no. 3, repr.; 1975, Ottawa, National
Gallery of Canada, 6 August- 5 October, Exploring
the Collections: Degas and Renaissance Portraiture, p. 1;
1984-85 Rome, no. 21, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 53;
Bernard Berenson, J disegni dei pittori fiorentini, Mi-
lan: Electa, 1961, p. 460, fig. 973; Boggs 1962, p. 12,
pi. 25; RerT 1964, p. 255; Minervino 1974, no. 47.
cuted. We know from a letter written by
Auguste De Gas that in the last few months
of 1858 the young painter was bored with
drawing the portraits he was undoubtedly
persuaded to do (as later in New Orleans) to
satisfy family propriety.4 Some of these —
for example, one of Baroness Bellelli, men-
tioned by her daughter-in-law Laura in a
letter to Degas5 — have been lost.
Here, on pink paper, Degas used black
crayon, a medium with which he was not
familiar; he normally preferred pencil. He
gave his young sitter the same focused,
questioning look that her cousin Giovanna
would have in The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20),
heavily shadowing her face and upsetting its
strict frontality with the angle of the chair
on which the nape of her neck rests.
1. Letter from Laura Bellelli to Degas, 31 July 1858,
private collection. See Chronology I.
2. RefF 1963, pp. 250-51.
3. Rene de Gas estate sale, Drouot, Paris, 10 No-
vember 1927, no. 7, repr. (later Koenigs collec-
tion, Netherlands, and now lost); and IV:9o; both
reproduced in 1984-85 Rome, under no. 49.
4. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, 11 No-
vember 1858, private collection; cited in part in
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 30.
5. Letter, 19 July 1859, private collection.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 19 19,
no. 98. a); bought at that sale by Paul Jamot, Paris,
with nos. 98. b and 98. c, for Fr 1,410. (Sale, Hotel
George V, Paris, Tableaux modemes, 25 May 1976,
no. 187, repr.; Galerie Wertheimer, Paris; Arnoldi-
Livie Gallery, Munich; private collection, San Fran-
cisco, 1978.
exhibitions: 1984 Tubingen, no. 33, repr. (color).
SELECTED REFERENCES: BoggS 1955, P- 1^8; BoggS
1962, p. 115; RefF 1964, p. 251 n. 15.
19.
Mile Dembowska
1858-59
Black crayon on pink paper
i7Vs x ii3/s in. (44 x 29 cm)
Inscribed lower right: Flor, 1857 /Mile Dembowski
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection, San Francisco
Vente IV:98.a
During his Italian trip, Degas stayed in
Florence only from 4 August 1858 to March
1859.1 Later, he mistakenly inscribed a
number of drawings "Florence 1857,"
whereas they should in fact have been dated
1858 or 1859.2 One such drawing is the por-
trait of Mile Dembowska, the daughter of
the renowned astronomer Baron Ercole
Federico Dembowski (18 12-188 1) and of
Enrichetta Bellelli, a sister of his uncle Gen-
naro Bellelli (see cat. no. 20). At the same
time, Degas did two pencil drawings of
Enrichetta Dembowska, showing her sitting,
her body three-quarters and her head in
profile.3 These drawings, as well as the one
of the young girl, were probably studies for
a portrait that was either lost or never exe-
20.
Family Portrait, also called
The Bellelli Family
1858-67
Oil on canvas
78V4 X 98% in. (200 X 250 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2210)
Lemoisne 79
Family Portrait, latterly identified as a por-
trait of the Bellelli family, was undoubtedly
the highlight of the atelier sales held after
Degas' s death. It immediately stood out as
the masterpiece of his early years, and is still
recognized as such. At the time of his last
move, on 22 February 19 13, Degas had left
this painting at Durand-Ruel,1 along with
some other cumbersome canvases (see cat.
no. 255); there it remained, apparently in
very poor condition: "It isn't much to look
77
at, has been very badly treated by time, and
even appears not to have been given the care
it should have received in the artist's studio.
It has a shabby makeshift frame, the canvas
has been torn, and it is covered with an an-
cient coat of dust that has not been disturbed
for years."2
Although this was a portrait of his beloved
relatives and a painting on which he had la-
bored for several years, Degas does not
seem to have regarded it with the same in-
terest and affection he displayed for Semir-
amis (cat. no. 29) and Young Spartans (cat.
no. 40). It remained hidden from the few
visitors he had — perhaps rolled up in a cor-
ner of each of his successive studios.
Since it is so difficult to trace the history
of this work prior to its sudden appearance
in 19 1 8, there has even been some question
as to whether or not Degas exhibited it at
the Salon. However, it seems improbable
that he would have tackled such a large
painting — only The Daughter of Jephthah
(cat. no. 26), which he began soon after, is
comparable in size — simply as a remem-
brance of his Florentine relatives or to thank
them for their extended hospitality. He
clearly hoped to have it accepted at the Salon
and to make his debut with an enormous
work. In April 1859, without referring spe-
cifically to the project, he wrote to his father
asking him to look for a studio so that he
could work on a canvas for the exhibition.3
The only Salon at which the painting could
conceivably have been exhibited was some
years later, in 1867. The catalogue for that
year gives the same title, "Family Portrait,"
for the two paintings Degas exhibited under
nos. 444 and 445 — and that was the only
name by which this work was known until
the scholarly research of Louis Gonse, Paul
Jamot, and Marcel Guerin between the wars
made it possible to identify the sitters.4 Un-
fortunately, the reviews in 1867 were even
more niggardly than in 1866, when The
Steeplechase (fig. 67) was exhibited at the Sa-
lon. Only Castagnary, without going into
any detail, praised Degas's "Two Sisters,"5
which has led some to believe that he may
have been referring to the Los Angeles dou-
ble portrait (cat. no. 65). However, two
comments from a later period corroborate
the hypothesis that The Bellelli Family was
exhibited at the Salon of 1867. The clearest
is a reference made by the critic Thiebault-
Sisson, who met with Degas on several oc-
casions. In 1879, he had a chance to see "the
admirable Family Portrait of 1867" in the
artist's studio; his description is undoubtedly
of the Bellelli family portrait.6 In January
1 88 1, in conversation with Emile Durand-
Greville, Jean-Jacques Henner (who knew
Degas at the beginning of the 1860s) discussed
his colleague's early difficulties and men-
79
tioned his successive failures at the Salon:
"Degas used to exhibit at the Salon. He
stopped doing so because his work was bad-
ly hung and, in his opinion, the public did
not pay enough attention to it, although the
artists gave him the appreciation he deserved.
The portrait of his brother-in-law (I believe)
and his family is a great work.'*7 Despite the
vague identification of the painting, Henner's
remarks explaining Degas's bitterness and
desire to renounce any sort of official career
must surely refer to The Bellelli Family. It
probably also explains why there were so
few comments about this masterpiece: if the
painting was poorly hung, it would have
been difficult to see, in spite of its size.
There is one other indication that The
Bellelli Family was indeed exhibited in 1867:
in several places (most notably in the multi-
colored embroidery lying on the table), the
paint has developed a crackle because of hasty
retouching before the canvas had had time
to dry. We know from a letter Degas wrote
to the Surintendant des Beaux-Arts shortly
before the opening of the Salon that at the
last minute the painter wanted to retouch
the two works he had already sent to the
Palais de l'lndustrie, where the Salon was
held.8 He was finally granted permission to
remove them for three days, which he did.
In his haste, Degas used a large amount of a
drying agent, which mixed with the paint
layer and produced blackish streaks in places.
While the condition of the canvas, together
with the recollections of Henner and Thie-
bault-Sisson, leads to the conclusion that the
painting was indeed exhibited in 1867, its
fate up to the time of Degas's death in 1917
remains a mystery. Riccardo Raimondi, a
Neapolitan lawyer who married one of the
painter's grandnieces, has proposed a very
different history for this canvas.9 According
to him, the painting remained at the Bellelli
apartment when Degas left Florence in the
spring of 1859, and was brought to Naples
when the family finally returned from exile.
Many years later, at the home of Giulia Bel-
lelli-Maiuri (the little girl on the right, the
painter's cousin), the canvas fell on an oil
lamp, which left holes and burns. Sometime
between 1898 and 1909, after one of his trips
to Naples, Degas brought the canvas back
to Paris to restore it and "neglected" to re-
turn it to those who, for nearly forty years,
had been its owners. This account is widely
accepted, but it appears to be pure fantasy.
For one thing, it is contradicted by the evi-
dence that the work was exhibited at the Salon
of 1867 and seen in the painter's studio about
1880. Nor does it tally with the condition of
the painting itself, which, as its restorer Sa-
rah Walden confirmed in 1984, appears not
to have been burned, but rather torn by
some sharp object (as Andre Michel had
Fig. 35. Giovanna and Giulia
Bellelli (L65), c. 1858. Oil on
canvas, 2^/2X2^% in. (70 X
60 cm). Private collection
earlier observed). Finally, the large size of
the canvas would have made transportation
and handling difficult. It therefore seems
certain that it never left any of the painter's
studios until it was stored with Durand-Ruel
in 1913.
Contrary to what Raimondi and most other
writers say, The Bellelli Family could not have
been finished when Degas left Florence. Once
again, however, unclear accounts leave room
for doubt. The story begins late in the sum-
mer of 1858. Degas arrived in Florence,
which he had never visited before, early in
August and was staying with his uncle Gen-
naro Bellelli, who had been exiled to the
Tuscan capital. Relations between the two
were cool and sometimes difficult. 10 Degas
was bored; his only companions were the
taciturn John Pradier and the English water-
colorist John Bland. He was impatiently
awaiting the arrival of his aunt Laura and his
two cousins, who had been delayed in Naples
by the death of Hilaire Degas on 3 1 August.11
As he would do in Paris the following year,
Degas bided his time, copying some works
by Venetian artists — Giorgione, Veronese —
and (on the advice of Gustave Moreau, who
was in Venice) reading Pascal's Les provin-
ciates, "in which regarding oneself as hateful
is recommended." He was like someone
who "has only himself in front of himself,
sees only himself, thinks only of himself.'*12
He made little effort to hide his boredom at
having to do portraits of some of his Floren-
tine relatives.13 After the arrival of his aunt
and cousins early in November, however,
he started on what was to become, after
many transformations, The Bellelli Family.
This was to be not just another portrait, but
a picture ("un tableau" — in a letter to Moreau,
he repeated the word and underlined it14). It
was to be a large and ambitious work, with
a wide variety of models for inspiration; in
his correspondence, Degas mentions a pot-
pourri of names including van Dyck, Giorgio-
ne, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Mantegna, and
Fig. 36. The Bellelli Family (L64), c. 1859. Pastel,
2i5/aX24y4in. (55X63 cm). Ordrupgaardsam-
lingen, Copenhagen
Carpaccio. He wrote of painting his two
young cousins, experimenting (as in the fi-
nal canvas) with tones of black and white: "I
am doing them in their black dresses and
their little white pinafores, in which they
look delightful."15 Impatient letters from
Auguste De Gas in Paris, awaiting his son's
continually postponed return, provide infor-
mation about the work's progress: "If you
had begun the portrait of your aunt, I could
understand your wanting to finish it. But
you haven't even roughed it out, and the
sketch must dry for some time before you
can go back and add something, or else you
make a mess of it. If you want this to be
good and lasting, it is unfortunately impos-
sible for you to do it in a month, and the
more rushed you are, the more your impa-
tience will make you do it and redo it and
thus waste time. It seems to me, therefore,
that rather than begin a canvas you'll have
to limit yourself to making a drawing. Take
my advice, leave your aunt a drawing that
shows off your talents and then hurry and
pack up your belongings and get back here."16
Auguste continued to send more advice — "If
you have begun painting your aunt's por-
trait in oil, you'll find yourself making a
mess in your hurry to finish"17 — as well as
warnings. He was torn between wanting to
be reunited at last with the son he had not
seen for over two years and wanting him to
finish the work he had begun without ruin-
ing it.
In late December, Degas abandoned what
seems to have been a double portrait, de-
picting only his cousins,18 in order to start
work on a large picture. It is not clear
whether he was already working on the Or-
say canvas or was doing more sketches in
preparation for this large work. His father
wrote: "You start such a large painting on
29 December and think you will finish it by
28 February. That's extremely doubtful. If I
can give you a piece of advice, it's to do it
calmly and patiently; otherwise you run the
80
risk of not finishing it at all and giving your
uncle Bellelli good reason to complain.
Since you decided to undertake this picture,
you must finish it and finish it properly. I
dare to hope that your habits have changed,
but I admit that I have so little faith in your
resolutions that it will be a great weight off
my mind when your uncle writes to tell me
that you have completed your painting and
completed it well."19 In any case, Degas's
sketches were beginning to include the fig-
ure of Gennaro Bellelli, which would ex-
plain Auguste's concern, for he knew his
brother-in-law's irascible nature. In a sketchy
canvas, now in a private Italian collection,
Degas depicts Gennaro standing alone be-
hind his two daughters (fig. 35).
It is not clear exactly how much work the
young painter had done when, in late March
1859, he finally made up his mind to leave
Florence. Certainly The Bellelli Family was
not finished, since Degas made and dated
another drawing of Gennaro Bellelli when
he returned to Florence for a month in i860
(Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre
[Orsay], Paris, RF15484, inscribed "Flor-
ence i860"). It is unlikely that he had begun
painting the huge Orsay canvas; he could
hardly have done anything as large in the
bourgeois apartment in the Piazza Maria
Antonia, where there was no studio. The
theory advanced by Hanne Finsen in the
very comprehensive catalogue for the Bellelli
Family exhibition (1983 Ordrupgaard) seems,
in the absence of any further documentation,
the most plausible.20 Finsen postulates that
when he left Florence, Degas took with him,
besides the numerous sketches he had done
in his notebooks, a number of studies on
separate sheets of paper (see cat. nos. 21-
25) — some very detailed, such as the Dum-
barton Oaks study of Giulia Bellelli (cat.
no. 25) — and a compositional study in pas-
tel, now in Ordrupgaard (fig. 36), which
Fig. 37. Honore Daumier, A Man of Property.
Lithograph. Published in Le Charivari,
26 May 1837
shows the pose and position of each figure
but is noticeably different from the final
painting in its treatment of the room.
In the first few months after his return to
Paris, it seems that Degas did not enjoy the
peace of mind he needed to work on such a
complex painting. He was slow to readjust
to Parisian life, had no studio for several
months, missed the encouragement of Mo-
reau, who was still in Italy, clashed with his
father over financial matters,21 was appar-
ently very much absorbed by a brief and
mysterious love affair with a Mile Breguet
(could it have been the Louise Breguet who
was to marry Ludovic Halevy?),22 and was
soon busy with another painting, probably
suggested to him by the Peace of Villafranca,
The Daughter of Jephthah (cat. no. 26). He
could not have made much progress with
The Bellelli Family. Assuming that the Or-
drupgaard pastel gives an indication of the
work as Degas had planned it in 1859 and
that the Orsay canvas was exhibited, after
last-minute retouching, at the Salon of 1867,
the most notable differences are in the set-
ting: in place of the pastel's simple arrange-
ment (the background unbroken except for
a gilt frame and an opaque mirror), Degas
developed a more elaborate setting, bright-
ening the blue wall with a sprinkling of
white flowers, opening the view to another
room on the left, and reflecting in the mir-
ror the crystal pendants of a chandelier, part
of a painting (apparently a racing scene,
which, since Degas did not use this theme
earlier, would confirm a date in the 1860s),
and a door or window frame. Much later,
perhaps in the 1890s, when he restored the
damaged painting, Degas sewed up — or
had Chialiva sew up — the tears, put a little
gesso on them, and redid the badly dam-
aged face of Laura Bellelli, at the same time
retouching the faces of his uncle and cous-
ins. An overzealous restorer, probably when
Fig. 38. Francisco Goya, The Family of Charles IV,
1800. Oil on canvas, 110% X 132^4 in. (280 X
336 cm). Museo del Prado, Madrid
the canvas was being relined before the
sale,23 must have thought the entire work
had been repainted, and scraped off Degas's
last retouchings, seriously marring the faces
of Giulia and Gennaro.
The Bellelli Family is not merely a group
portrait, but rather, as Degas himself stressed,
a "picture" — one in which he displays, to
use Jamot's felicitous words, "his taste for
domestic drama, a tendency to discover hid-
den bitterness in the relationships between
individuals . . . even when they seem to be
presented merely as figures in a portrait."24
In November 1858, after awaiting her return
with great impatience, Degas was reunited
with his aunt Laura, clearly his favorite
among his father's sisters. The young wo-
man's health was fragile, and she seems to
have been slightly unbalanced. In the letters
she wrote to her nephew after his return to
Paris, she dwelt on the sorrows of a pro-
longed exile, far from her Neapolitan family
and in a "detestable country,"25 and on her
sad life with a husband whose character was
"immensely disagreeable and dishonest."26
She refers constantly to the madness she
thought was stalking her ("I truly believe
that I will end up in a hospital for the in-
sane"27) and to her imminent death, which
would find her abandoned by those closest
to her ("I believe you will see me die in this
remote corner of the world, far from all
those who care for me."28 "Living with
Gennaro, whose detestable nature you
know and who has no serious occupation,
shall soon lead me to the grave"29). Suffer-
ing from what could be called a persecution
complex, convinced that the very heavens
were utterly against her ("Am I right in say-
ing that nothing goes my way in this world,
and that even my most innocent desires are
forbidden me by chance, or by I know not
what fate that hounds me right to the
grave?"30), and plunged into despair at the
Fig. 39. Leon Bonnat, Mother
Bonnat with Two Orphans,
1850-60. Oil on canvas.
Location unknown
8l
slightest disagreement with her husband,31
Laura found support and consolation only in
the affection of her nephew.
It stands to reason that, what with the
"disagreeable countenance" of a bitter and
always idle Gennaro on one hand and the
"sad face"32 of a seriously neurotic Laura on
the other, there must have been days when
the atmosphere in the apartment was suffo-
cating, despite the lively presence of the two
little girls. Enlarged to the size of a history
painting, The Bellelli Family depicts a family
drama: Laura, lost in her black thoughts,
poses as if for an official portrait; Giovanna,
as in the 1856 portrait (Lio, Musee d'Orsay,
Paris), gazes intently at the painter; Genna-
ro, reading by the fireplace and, to use the
cruel words of his wife, "without any seri-
ous occupation to make him less boring to
himself,"33 deigns, with a show of indiffer-
ence, to turn his head slightly; Giulia, in the
center of the painting, is the only link be-
tween a mother and father who are visibly
estranged. She sits awkwardly on her small
chair, showing signs of the boisterousness
and impatience to be expected in a child her
age, and breaks the oppressive and solemn
atmosphere. The recently departed Hilaire
Degas good-naturedly surveys the entire
scene: on the wall, Degas has hung his most
informal image of his grandfather — here the
artist is playing with a small oil he had painted
some time before (L33, Musee d'Orsay,
Paris), disguising it with red chalk, a gray
mat, and a wide gilt frame to make it look
like a "master drawing."
It would be difficult to find, among paint-
ings done at the time, a work equivalent to
this masterpiece. Many diverse influences
have been cited, including works by the old
masters — Holbein and (especially for Laura's
pose) van Dyck, whom Degas discovered
with admiration on his trip to Genoa in
April 1859. There are the works of nineteenth-
century artists as well, such as Ingres with
his family portraits and even Courbet's After
Dinner at Ornans, which could have influ-
enced the overall composition. However, as
Daniel Schulman points out in a forthcom-
ing publication, Degas's picture may be
closest to Daumier; the composition is strik-
ingly similar to that of an 1837 caricature by
Daumier entitled A Man of Property (fig. 37).
The group formed by Laura and her two
daughters is reminiscent of Goya (whom
Degas must have discovered through Bon-
nat) and his Family of Charles IV (fig. 38). It
also recalls Bonnat and his portrait Mother
Bonnat with Two Orphans (fig. 39), painted
in the 1850s. Bonnat's picture too plays
with tones of black and white and with the
monumentality of its protective figure who,
like one of the Virgins of Mercy, looks after
waifs and strays. But Degas sets himself
apart from Daumier by the large scale of his
canvas and from Bonnat by the complex ar-
rangement of his interior scene. This remote
and difficult painting, "conceived, painted,
and presented without any desire to please
and without the slightest concession to the
taste of the average viewer,"34 thus remains
unique in the painter's oeuvre and unique
among the works of his contemporaries.
This explains the universal astonishment
caused by its appearance after Degas's death
and its immediate purchase by the Musee
du Luxembourg. The enormous price that
the French National Museums paid to ac-
quire it before the atelier sales provoked an
animated response from the press, giving
the diehards a chance to let fly. "The family
portrait," said Sar Peladan, "is as dull as a
Flemish interior, although the dry technique
is distinctive. . . . 400,000 francs for the
Degas family portrait! And what a ballyhoo
over this name! It is certainly not at all sin-
cere."35 A "Fevre nephew," during the diffi-
cult negotiations with the museums, even
went so far as to maintain that "it was not
one of his uncle's better paintings."36
Although the critics were obviously baf-
fled by a work they did not know how to
approach, the admiring reviews carried the
day. These were especially favorable and
emotional because, in a country still at war,
the profoundly French character of The
Bellelli Family was not unnoticed. Francois
Poncetton asked that it be hung in the
Louvre next to the Pieta of Avignon: "The
faces of the woman and of the children have
the same grave quality we so admire in the
calm, radiant faces of the donors. This mod-
ern primitive renews that gentle tradition."37
Paul Paulin, an old friend of Degas's, felt the
same way, and, running out of superlatives,
in his enthusiasm he mixed together some
very illustrious references: "This work
should be in the Louvre. It is so beautiful
and personal; it definitely reminds one of
Ingres, but it is pure Degas; the little girl's
slender leg is inspired, and the woman's face
recalls Holbein as well as Ingres."38
1. Durand-Ruel archives, Paris, deposit no. 10255.
2. Andre Michel, "E. Degas/' Journal des Debats
Politiques et Litteraires, 6 May 1918.
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 32.
4. See 1924 Paris, no. 13 (with note by Marcel
Guerin), and Selected References below.
5. "The Two Sisters by M. E. Degas — a remarkably
skilled newcomer — shows that this artist has an
accurate feeling for nature and life." Castagnary,
Salons (18 $7-1870), Paris: Bibliotheque Charpen-
tier, 1892, pp. 246-47.
6. Frangois Thiebault-Sisson, "Edgar Degas:
Thomme et l'oeuvre," feuilleton in Le Temps, 18
May 1918.
7. Entretiens de J. J. Henner: notes prises par Emile
Durand-Greville, Paris: A. Lemerre, 1925, p. 103.
8. Letter, 13 March 1867, Archives, Musee du
Louvre, Paris; 1984-85 Rome, p. 171.
9. Raimondi 1958, p. 261.
10. Letter from Laura Bellelli to Degas, Florence to
Paris, 20 June 1859, private collection.
11. Reff 1969, p. 281.
12. Ibid.
13. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, 11 De-
cember 1858, private collection; cited in part in
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 31.
14. Letter from Degas to Gustave Moreau, 27 No-
vember 1858, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris; Reff
1969, p. 283.
15. Ibid.
16. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 31.
17. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 30.
18. Probably the canvas that the painter Cristiano
Banti, in a letter to Boldini dated 11 February
1885, claims to have seen in Degas's studio. See
1984-85 Rome, p. 165; 1983 Ordrupgaard,
p. 84; Cristiano Banti, un macchiaiolo nel suo tempo,
1824-1904 (catalogue by Giuliano Matteucci),
Milan, 1982.
19. Letter, 4 January 1859, private collection; cited in
part in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 31-32.
20. 1983 Ordrupgaard, no. 44, p. 90.
21. Letter from Laura Bellelli to Degas, Florence to
Paris, 19 July 1859, private collection.
22. Letters from Laura Bellelli to Degas, 17 Decem-
ber 1859 and 19 January i860, private collection.
23. Unpublished letter from Paul Paulin to Paul
Lafond, Paris to Pau, 14 April 191 8, private
collection.
24. Jamot 1924, p. 43 .
25. Letters, 25 September 1859 and 19 January i860,
private collection; for all of Laura's letters quoted
here, see also 1984-85 Rome, pp. 175-76.
26. Letter, 20 June 1859, private collection.
27. Letter, 19 July 1859, private collection.
28. Letter, 20 June 1859, private collection.
29. Letter, 19 January i860, private collection.
30. Letter, 19 July 1859, private collection.
3 1 . For example, when Gennaro refused to let her go
to Livorno to greet Rene De Gas and his sisters
on their arrival; letter, 19 July 1859, private col-
lection.
32. Letter, 5 April 1859, private collection.
33. Ibid.
34. Michel, op. cit.
35. Sar Peladan, "Le Salon de 191 8," La Revue Heb-
domadaire, 19 18, pp. 254-56.
36. Unpublished letter from Paul Paulin to Paul
Lafond, Paris to Pau, 14 April 19 18, private
collection.
37. "Press Chppings Collected by Rene de Gas,'*
Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
38. Unpublished letter from Paul Paulin to Paul La-
fond, Paris to Pau, 7 March 19 18, private collec-
tion.
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 22 February 19 13 (as "Portrait de fa-
mille," deposit no. 10255); bought before the first
atelier sale (Vente I, 19 18, no. 4), by the Musee du
Luxembourg, for Fr 300,000, including a Fr 50,000
contribution from the Comte and Comtesse de Fels
(Rene de Gas, the artist's brother, lowered the origi-
nal price of Fr 400,000 by Fr 100,000).
exhibitions: (?) 1867, Paris, 15 April-5 June, Salon,
no. 444 or 445 (as "Portrait de famille"); 19 18 Paris,
no. 8; 1924 Paris, no. 13 (as "Portrait de la famille
Bellelli," c. 1862); 1926, Venice, XVe Esposizione in-
temazionale d'arte delta cittd di Venezia, p. 195, no. 15c;
193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 17; 1936 Venice, no. 6,
repr. ; 1967-68 Paris, Jeu de Paume; 1969 Paris, no. 7,
repr.; 1974-75 Paris, no. 9, repr. (color); 1980 Paris,
no. 1, repr.; 1983 Ordrupgaard, no. 1, repr. (color);
1984-85 Rome, no. 54, repr. (color).
82
at
21
2Z
21.
22.
selected references: Paul Jamot, "The Acquisitions
of the Louvre during the War," pt. 4, Burlington Mag-
azine, XXXVII:2i2, November 1920, pp. 219-20,
repr. facing p. 219; Fosca 192 1, p. 20; Louis Gonse,
"Etat civil du 'Portrait de famille' d'Edgar Degas,"
Revue de VArt Ancien et Modeme, XXXIX, 192 1,
pp. 300-02; Lemoisne 192 1, pp. 223-24; Leonce Be-
nedite, he Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, 1924, no. 163,
repr. p. 63; Marcel Guerin, "Remarques sur les por-
traits de famille peints par Degas," Gazette des Beaux-
Arts, XVIL788, June 1928, pp. 371-75; Pauljamot,
"Acquisitions recentes du Louvre," VArt Vivant, 1
March 1928, p. 176; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 79;
Boggs 1955, pp. 127-36, fig. 8; Raimondi 1958,
pp. 152-58, 173-89, 258-62, pi. 19 (color); Boggs
1958, pp. 199-202; Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes,
1958, no. 59; Boggs 1962, pp. 11-17, 58, 88-90
nn. 51-90, repr.; Keller 1962; Boggs 1963, pp. 273-
76; Reff 1965, pp. 612-13; Theodore Reff, "Degas's
Tableau de Genre," Art Bulletin, LIV:3, September
1972, pp. 324-26; Minervino 1974, no. 136, plates IV,
V (color); R. H. Noel, "La famille Bellelli," L'Ecole
des Lettres, 11, 15 March 1983, pp. 2-7, 67, repr.;
[Denys Sutton], "Degas and the Bellelli Family," Apol-
lo, October 1983, pp. 278-81, repr.; Britta Martensen-
Larsen, "Degas and the Bellelli Family: New Light
on a Major Work," Hajhia, 10, 1985, pp. 181-91,
repr. ; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III,
p. 195, repr.; Pascale Bertrand, "Degas: La famille
Bellelli," Beaux- Arts Magazine, 47, June 1987, pp. 81-
83, repr. (color).
Giulia Bellelli, study for
The Bellelli Family
1858-59
Black chalk, gray wash, and essence heightened
with white on cream-colored paper
9V4 X 73/4 in. (23.4 X 19.6 cm)
Atelier stamp at bottom
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF11689)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 20
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 8, repr.);
bought by the Musee du Luxembourg, for Fr 18,500.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 89; 1934, Par-
is, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, May-July, Les artistes
fiangais en Italie de Poussin a Renoir, no. 409; 1935, Par-
is, Orangerie, August-October, Portraits et figures de
femmes, no. 41; 1938, Lyons, Salon du Sud-Est, no. 20;
1955-56 Chicago, no. 148, repr.; 1957, Paris, Cabi-
net des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, June-October
Uenfant dans le dessin du XVe au XIXe s., no. 43;
1959-60 Rome, no. 178, repr.; 1967, Copenhagen,
Statens Museum for Kunst, 2 June-10 September,
Hommage a Vart fiangais, no. 36, repr.; 1969 Paris,
no. 65, repr.; 1980 Paris, no. 12, repr.; 1983 Ordrup-
gaard, no. 26, repr.
selected references: Leymarie 1947, no. 7, pi. VII;
Boggs 1955, pp. 130-31, fig. 6.
Giovanna Bellelli, study for
The Bellelli Family
1858-59
Black chalk on pink paper
i27/8 X 93/8 in. (32.6 X 23 . 8 cm)
Atelier stamp lower right; estate stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF16585)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 20
provenance: Atelier Degas. Possibly one of the nine
drawings acquired from Marcel Guerin by the Musee
du Luxembourg 1925; transferred to the Louvre
1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 88; 1934, Par-
is, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, May-July, Les artistes
Jrangais en Italie de Poussin d Renoir, no. 411; 1957, Par-
is, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, L'enfant
dans le dessin du XVe au XIXe s., no. 44; 1969 Paris,
no. 64; 1980 Paris, no. 5, repr.; 1983 Ordrupgaard,
no. 9, repr. (color); 1984-85 Rome, no. 58, repr.
selected references: Keller 1962, p. 31.
83
23-
Laura Bellelli, study for
The Bellelli Family
1858-59
Pencil heightened with green pastel on gray
paper, squared for transfer
ioxA x 8 in. (26. 1 x 20.4 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF11688)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 20
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 13, repr.);
bought at that sale by the Louvre.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 90; 1937 Par-
is, Orangerie, no. 61; 1962, Rome, Palazzo Venezia,
II ritratto francese da Clouet a Degas, no. 72, pi. XXXII;
1967 Saint Louis, no. 23, repr.; 1980 Paris, no. 15,
repr.; 1984-85 Rome, no. 61, repr.
selected references: Boggs 1955, PP- 130-31; Keller
1962, p. 30; 1983 Ordrupgaard, no. 22, p. 85, repr.
24.
Giovanna Bellelli, study for
The Bellelli Family
1858-59
Pencil, black crayon, and gouache on blue-green
wove paper
ii5/8X85/sin. (29.5X21.8 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left; Nepveu-Degas stamp
lower right; present owner's stamp lower right
Private collection, Paris
See cat. no. 20
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21; Nepveu-Degas collection,
Paris (Nepveu-Degas sale, Drouot, Paris, 6 May
1976, no. 30); bought at that sale by the present
owner.
exhibitions: 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 19; 1983 Ordrup-
gaard, no. 31, repr.; 1984-85 Rome, no. 60, repr.
(color).
selected references: Louis-Antoine Prat, La cigu'e
avec toi, Paris: La Table Ronde, 1984, p. 133.
25-
Giulia Bellelli, study for
The Bellelli Family
1858-59
Essence on buff wove paper mounted on panel
isVsXioVfcin. (38.5x26.7 cm)
Signed lower right in crayon: Degas
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection, Washington, D.C. (H.37.12)
Lemoisne 69
See cat. no. 20
provenance: Manzi collection, Paris (Manzi sale,
Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 13-14 March 1919,
no. 32, repr.). Dikran Khan Kelekian, New York
(Kelekian sale, American Art Association, New York,
30-31 January 1922, no. 101, repr., bought in through
Durand-Ruel, at $2,900). Robert Woods Bliss, 1937-40;
gift of Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss to Harvard Univer-
sity, for the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection, November 1940.
exhibitions: 192 1, New York, Brooklyn Institute of
Arts and Sciences, 26 March-24 April, Paintings by
Modern French Masters, no. 74; 1924 Paris, no. 21,
repr. p. 215; 193 1 Paris, Rosenberg, no. 51; 1934
New York, no. 4; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 59, repr.;
1937. Washington, D.C, Phillips Memorial Gallery,
15-30 April, Paintings and Sculpture Owned in Wash-
ington; 1938, Washington, D.C, Museum of Modern
Art Gallery, 22 February-20 March, Portraits of Chil-
dren; 1940, Washington, D.C, Phillips Memorial
Gallery, 7 April-i May, Exhibition of Great Modern
Drawings, no. 36; 1947, San Francisco, California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, 8 March-6 April,
19th Century French Drawings, no. 89, repr.; 1958-59
Rotterdam, no. 33, repr. (color), in Paris and New
York no. 159, pi. 152; 1962 Baltimore, no. 30; 1983
Ordrupgaard, no. 33, repr. (color).
selected references: Collection Kelekian: tableaux de
Vecole Jrancaise modeme, Paris, 1920, repr. ; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 69; Boggs 1955, p. 131, fig. 11;
Minervino 1974, no. 141.
26.
The Daughter of Jephthah
c. 1859-61
Oil on canvas
77Xii51/2in. (195.5X293.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton,
Massachusetts (1933-9)
Lemoisne 94
When Degas returned to Paris after a three-
year stay in Italy, his first task was to find a
studio; his father had been making inquiries
since the beginning of 1859, and Gregoire
Soutzo had offered his own apartment on
rue Madame.1 Rents were high, and a suit-
able place was not easy to find, but Degas
finally found what he was looking for that
summer at 13 rue de Laval.2
All this might seem inconsequential, but
it inevitably had an effect on the young mas-
ter's production. The painful separation
from his aunt Laura, the need to leave Italy
at last, and the difficult reentry into Parisian
life after the long stay abroad all help to ex-
plain this period of several months, from
April to the fall of 1859, in which an indeci-
sive and indolent Degas was, as his friend
Antoine Koenigswarter observed, down in
the dumps.3
In the fall, Degas' s situation improved
markedly. For one thing, he finally had a
large studio — the first rent receipt, from a
M. Caze, is dated October.4 For another
thing, his mentor Gustave Moreau returned
to France from Italy in September.
Degas could now settle down to work.
He had brought from Florence the studies
for The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20), which
had occupied all the winter of 1858-59. The
large Paris studio allowed him to do what
85
he had never been able to before — not in his
father's apartment on rue de Mondovi, nor
in Naples, nor in the Bellellis' Florentine
apartment — to attempt large paintings,
which he obviously intended to exhibit at
the Salon. It was at this point that he set to
work on The Daughter of Jephthah, a painting
that is little known and often misjudged today,
even though it was the largest and perhaps
the most ambitious of his history composi-
tions. Its size at once gives it a special place
among the artist's works and demonstrates
his frequently recorded ambition to pit his
efforts against the great history composi-
tions of Delacroix. Its size also makes all the
more striking his return to small or medium-
sized works afterward — with the exception
of The Bellelli Family, which he was to com-
plete later but had already begun.
The subject of The Daughter of Jephthah is
from the Book of Judges: Jephthah the Gile-
adite is the son of a harlot but a devout man,
a valiant warrior with a band of followers;
he has been recalled from exile by the Israel-
ites to fight the Ammonites, who have de-
clared war. In order to guarantee his victory,
he vows before the Lord to sacrifice "what-
soever cometh forth of the doors of my house
to meet me, when I return in peace from the
children of Amnion." He returns home vic-
torious, and the first to greet him is his
daughter, his only child. As vowed, he sac-
rifices her to God, after granting her two
months in which to "bewail her virginity."5
Throughout the nineteenth century, this
biblical tale inspired many writers, including
Byron, Chateaubriand, and Vigny, whose
poem ha file de Jephte is, as Reffhas shown,
a possible source for Degas's work.6 There
were both romantic and political reasons for
this sustained interest. The story of Jeph-
thah's daughter is the biblical equivalent of
the tragedy of Iphigenia, and thus lends it-
self to the same poetic flights. Furthermore,
the many passages in Judges telling of Is-
rael's battles to recover the territory prom-
ised to it were often invoked in relation to
the struggles of oppressed peoples through-
out history fighting for their independence.
It is therefore tempting to see in Degas's
choice of this particular episode from the
Bible (a source he used less than the Divine
Comedy or the ancient classics) some con-
nection with recent events in Italy, which
for many reasons, including the fate of his
aunt, had profoundly affected him. The em-
peror of France, Napoleon III, was, after
all — with his past as a Carbonaro and his
turbulent accession to the throne — but a
modern Jephthah who had inexplicably sac-
rificed Italy at the Peace of Villafranca (u
July 1859), just when the victories won had
made it possible to hope that the country
would be liberated.
In all likelihood begun in 1859, the canvas
was evidently still not finished by 186 1 (see
cat. no. 27). Its slow development, its clear-
ly unfinished condition, the numerous bor-
rowings from the old masters, and Degas's
subsequent lack of interest in the work — in
contrast to what happened with Semiramis
(cat. no. 29) and Young Spartans (cat. no. 40) —
are all evidence of unresolved difficulties and
the painter's profound dissatisfaction with
it. The Daughter of Jephthah remains unique,
however, because of its power, its savagery,
and its strident, barbarous rhythms. From
the outset, Degas's ambitions were firmly if
not altogether clearly expressed: to combine
"the spirit and love of Mantegna with the
verve and color of Veronese."7 And unlike
86
the drawings for Semiramis, all the studies
(drawn rapidly, sometimes frenetically)
point in one direction — toward a violent,
turbulent composition.
Without spoiling the homogeneity of the
canvas, Degas included a number of quota-
tions from other artists, such as Girolamo
Genga (in the Academy of Siena) for the
half-naked prisoner with his hands bound
and for the soldier with his back to the
viewer in the foreground,8 and Mantegna
for the man on the left holding a banner
(from The Triumph of Caesar, at Hampton
Court) and for the grouping of Jephthah's
daughter and her companions (from the holy
women in The Crucifixion; see cat. no. 27).'
The Daughter of Jephthah, like Degas' s other
history paintings, has no real equivalent
among pictures of the period. Delacroix's
influence, frequently mentioned, is more ev-
ident in the ambitious nature of the work
than in its treatment or composition. There
is a great similarity between Degas' s prepar-
atory studies and those Moreau was draw-
ing at the same time for a large composition
on a history subject, Tyrtaeus Singing during
the Battle (Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris); in
1864, Moreau, while indexing his copy of
the Magasin Pittoresque, listed in the margin,
as one of his planned subjects, "The Daugh-
ter of Jephthah."10
The Daughter of Jephthah was painted just
when Delacroix's influence over Degas was
most strongly felt. Oddly enough, it was
during his stay in Italy that Degas had dis-
covered Delacroix, thanks to Moreau; on
returning to Paris he had begun to show a
keen interest in the artist's work.11 Here color
dominates everything, and means everything.
Degas wrote in a notebook: "A blue-and-
gray sky in which the lights are transparent
and, of course, the shadows are black. For
the red of Jephthah's robe remember the
orange-red tones of that old man in Dela-
croix's Pietd. The hill with its dull, pale sea-
green tones. Reduce the countryside to
patches."12 None of this appealed to Au-
guste De Gas, who had already felt com-
pelled to warn his son: "You know that I do
not share your opinion of Delacroix; he
abandoned himself to the spirit of his ideas
and neglected, unfortunately for him, the
art of drawing, the Ark of the Covenant on
which all else depends; he is completely
lost."13 And in fact the young painter would
never again achieve the effect he does here:
intense and dull areas are juxtaposed, some-
times inexplicably, resonating here and
there with touches of red, yellow, and or-
ange. More than Jephthah's exaggerated,
theatrical gesture, more than the disordered
movement of troops, it is this dominance of
color or, more precisely, the deliberate and
emphatic contrast between vibrant and dull
colors, the violent and the muted, that so
admirably renders the barbarism and latent
paganism of biblical times and gives the
painting its syncopated rhythm. It is also
this element that gives the painting its mod-
ern flavor, as does the astonishing country-
side, simplified to the extreme ("reduce the
countryside to patches"), with its geomet-
rically rolling vegetation and softly curving,
morphologically incomprehensible hills.
1 . Letter from Gregoire Soutzo to Auguste De Gas,
6 April 1859, private collection.
2. Letter from Edmondo Morbilli to Degas, 30 July
1859, private collection.
3. Unpublished letter to Moreau, 30 April 1859,
Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
4. Private collection.
5. Judges 11.
6. Reff 1976, pp. 153-54, 320 nn. 26, 27; Degas's
niece Jeanne Fevre tells us that Degas considered
Vigny a poet of the first rank, just slightly below
Musset (Fevre 1949, p. 117).
7. Reff, Notebook 15 (BN, Carnet 26, p. 40).
8. Eleanor Mitchell, "La fille de Jephte par Degas:
genese et evolution," Gazette des Beaux- Arts,
XVIII: 140, October 1937, fig. 3 p. 176, fig. 13
p. 183.
9. Tietze-Conrat 1944, p. 420, fig. 6.
10. Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
11. In the notebooks of that period he copied Apollo
Conquers the Serpent Python in the Gallery of
Apollo in the Louvre, and the Pieta of Saint-
Denis-du-Saint-Sacrement; Reff 1985, Notebook
14 (BN, Carnet 12, pp. 73, 72, 70, 65, 64, 63,
59), Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 35).
12. Reff 1985, Notebook 15 (BN, Carnet 26, p. 6).
13. Letter, 4 January 1859, private collection.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 6. a);
bought at that sale by Seligmann, Durand-Ruel, Vol-
lard, Bernheim-Jeune, for Fr 9, 100 (Seligmann sale,
American Art Association, New York, 27 January
192 1, no. 71, repr.); bought at that sale by Carlos
Baca-Flor, for $1,700; Wildenstein, New York;
bought by the museum 1933.
exhibitions: 1933 Northampton, no. 5, repr.; 1935,
University of Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery,
French Exhibition; 1935, Kansas City, William Rock-
hill Nelson Gallery of Art, Mary Atkins Museum of
Fine Arts, 3 1 March-28 April, One Hundred Years:
French Painting 1820-1920, no. 20, pi. V; 1936 Phila-
delphia, no. 7, repr.; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 3,
pi. 2; 1946, Poughkeepsie, Vassar College; 1953,
New York, Knoedler Galleries, 30 March-11 April,
Paintings and Drawings from the Smith College Collec-
tion, no. 12; 1956, New York, Brooklyn Museum of
Art, 2 October-13 November, Religious Painting,
ifth-igth Century: An Exhibition of European Paintings
from American Collections, no. 25, repr.; i960 New
York, no. 7, repr.; 1961, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg
Art Museum, 20 April-20 May, Ingres and Degas:
Two Classic Draftsmen, no. 17; 1961, The Arts Club
of Chicago, 11 January-15 February, Smith College
Loan Exhibition, no. 8; 1969, The Minneapolis Insti-
tute of Arts, 3 July-7 September, The Past Rediscov-
ered: French Painting 1800-1900, no. 25, repr.; 1974
Boston, no. 2, fig. 3; 1978-79 Philadelphia, no. VI-
41, repr. (English edition), no. 209, repr. (French ed-
ition); 1984-85 Rome, no. 51, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne 19 12, p. 30; Lafond
1918-19, I, repr. p. 17, II, p. 2; Lemoisne 1921,
p. 222; "Smith College Buys Huge Work by Degas,"
Art Digest, VIII: 5, 1 December 1933, p. 38, repr.;
"Degas, Smith College," American Magazine of Art,
XXVII: 1 , January 1934, p. 43, repr. ; Jere Abbott, "A
Degas for the Museum," The Smith Alumnae Quar-
terly, XXV:2, February 1934, p. 166, repr.;J.A.
[Jere Abbott], "La Fille de Jephte," Smith College Mu
seum of Art Bulletin, 15, June 1934, pp. 2-12; figs. 4-
7 (details), repr. p. 2 and cover; Eleanor Mitchell,
"La fille de Jephte par Degas: genese et evolution,"
Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XVIII: 140, October 1937,
pp. 175-89, figs. 4, 5, 24, 25 (detail); Smith College
Museum of Art Catalogue, Northampton, 1937, p. 17,
repr. p. 79; Tietze-Conrat 1944, p. 420, fig. 6; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 94; George Heard Hamilton,
Forty French Pictures in the Smith College Museum of
Art, Northampton, 1953, pp. iv, xiv, xvi, xxi,
no. 23, repr.; Germain Seligman, Merchants of Art:
1880-1960: Eighty Years of Professional Collecting, New
York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1961, p. 156; Phoe-
be Pool, "Degas and Moreau," Burlington Magazine,
CV:723, June 1963, p. 253; Reff 1963, pp. 241-45;
Phoebe Pool, "The History Pictures of Edgar Degas
and Their Background," Apollo, LXXX:32, October
1964, pp. 310-11; Reff 1964, pp. 252-53; Reff 1971,
PP- 537-38; Minervino 1974, no. 102; Reff 1976,
pp. 45, 58-60, 152, 313 n. 18, pi. 32 (color), fig. 35
(detail) p. 61; Reff 1977, fig. 3 (color); 1984-85 Paris,
fig. 14 p. 16; Reff 1985, pp. 8, 19-21, 24, 29, Note-
book 12 (BN, Carnet 18, p. 93), Notebook 13 (BN,
Carnet 16, p. 58), Notebook 14 (BN, Carnet 12,
pp. 2, 6, 8-10, 13, 22, 25, 30-31, 33, 35-36, 38, 52,
80), Notebook 14 A (BN, Carnet 29, pp. 17-18, 20-
23, 30, 32), Notebook 15 (BN, Carnet 29, pp. 6, 11,
17-18, 23-24, 26-33, 35. 39, 4°, 42), Notebook 16
(BN, Carnet 27, pp. 5, 8, 12-15, 25, 27, 29, 37, 39,
41), Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 5-6, 17, 21,
51, 59, 61, 67, 76-77, 79, 85, 92, 94, 99, 139), Note-
book 19 (BN, Carnet 19, pp. 53-57, 102A).
27.
The Crucifixion, after Mantegna
1861
Oil on canvas
27V8 X 363/8 in. (69 X 92. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Tours (934-6-1)
Lemoisne 194
Degas's position was uncompromising and
continually reasserted: "The masters must
be copied over and over again, and it is only
after proving yourself a good copyist that
you should reasonably be permitted to draw
a radish from nature."1 His was not a servile
admiration of the masters that could lead to
a narrow attachment to the past or rigid ac-
ademicism, but only a desire to discover in
the work of his predecessors the "mot juste,"
the right formula. The bias that he noted in
others ("No bias in art? And the Italian
Primitives, who paint the softness of lips by
using hard lines and who bring eyes alive by
cutting off the eyelids as with a pair of scis-
sors . . . "2) he adopted for his own use
when it suited his purposes.
87
Fig. 40. Andrea Mantegna, The Crucifixion,
1456-59. Oil on panel, 263/sX365/8 in.
(67 X 93 cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris
The vast majority of Degas's copies date
from his formative years between 1853 and
1 861; some others he did later in his career
(see cat. no. 278). While they are mostly
copies after the old masters, especially the
Italians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-
ries, they also include copies of works from
the ancient world (Assyrian, Egyptian,
Greek, and Roman) and of course from the
nineteenth century — David, Ingres, Dela-
croix, and Daumier, and contemporaries
like Meissonier, Menzel, and Whistler.3
Such eclecticism is not at all surprising — it
was typical of most of the artists of Degas's
time, including his friends and acquaintances
Moreau, Bonnat, Delaunay, and Henner.
But Degas repeatedly went back to the Ital-
ians of the Renaissance, who were also pre-
ferred by his father. For Auguste De Gas,
"the masters of the fifteenth century are the
only true guides; once they have thoroughly
made their mark and inspired a painter un-
ceasingly to perfect his study of nature, re-
sults are assured."4 When he felt that his son
was on the wrong path and that, under the
influence of Moreau, he was inclined to give
himself up exclusively to studying the col-
orists (Rubens, Delacroix), he brought him
back into line: "Have you carefully exam-
ined, contemplated those adorable fresco
painters of the fifteenth century? Have you
saturated yourself in them? Have you drawn,
or rather made watercolor copies so as to
remember their colors?"5
From his earliest copies (before departing
for Italy, he made a pencil sketch, about
1855, of the impenitent thief from The Cruci-
fixion at the Louvre6) until his latest (BR 144,
Minerva Chasing Vice from the Garden of Vir-
tue, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), Degas studied
Mantegna. It was an interest he reaffirmed
many times over and never more striking-
ly than in this "copy" of The Crucifixion
(fig. 40). Lemoisne placed the work rather
late, c. 1868-72, and Reff then narrowed it
to c. 1 868-69. 7 It should probably be moved
further back by several years, making it
contemporary with The Daughter of Jephthah
(cat. no. 26). Degas himself said that Man-
tegna was one of the sources of inspiration
for that work, the largest of his history
paintings. In a notebook he wrote, some-
what obscurely, that he sought to combine
"the spirit and love of Mantegna with the
verve and color of Veronese."8 The group
made up of Jephthah's daughter and her
companions, which appears on the final
canvas and in the last of the compositional
studies,9 is taken directly from Mantegna's
group of holy women at the foot of Cal-
vary. It is very likely that Mantegna's paint-
ing finally provided Degas with the solution
he had been seeking for several months.
This copy of The Crucifixion may therefore
be placed in the last quarter of 1861 — Degas
reregistered as a copyist at the Louvre on 3
September.10 Although he used a canvas the
same size as Mantegna's, Degas did not
paint a scrupulously accurate copy, but rather
produced an exercise in style, a variation on
a theme, "with a deeply Christian feeling, a
firm touch, the tonality more acid perhaps
than in the original, exactly the hallmarks of
the copyist."11 To Mantegna's "spirit and
love" he added "the verve and color of Ve-
ronese." Bought at the atelier sale by Jeanne
Fevre, one of Degas's nieces, the copy had,
according to reports at the time in the press,
been promised to the Carmelite order in
Nice, to which one of her sisters (a niece
and heir of the artist) belonged.12 It ended
up, more prosaically, and through the ef-
forts of the Compagnie Generale du Gaz, in
the Musee des Beaux-Arts at Tours in 1934.
1. Vollard 1924, p. 64.
2. Halevy i960, p. 56; Halevy 1964, p. 49 (transla-
tion revised).
3. For the copies, see Reff 1963; Reff 1964; Theo-
dore Reff, "Addenda on Degas's Copies," Bur-
lington Magazine, CVII:747, June 1965, pp. 320,
323; Reff 1971, pp. 534-43-
4. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, Paris to
Florence, 4 January 1859, private collection.
5. Letter, 25 November 1858, private collection;
cited in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 31.
6. See 1984-85 Rome, nos. 6 and 7, repr.
7. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, no. 194; Reff 1963,
p. 245, n. 22.
8. Reff 1985, Notebook 15 (BN, Carnet 26, p. 40).
9. BR36; Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1),
used between 1859 and 1864.
10. Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, "Registre
description."
11. Cri de Paris, 19 May 1918.
12. Ibid.; "Degas's Picture to Find Home in a Carmel-
ite Convent?" Herald Tribune, "Press Clippings
Collected by Rene de Gas," Musee d'Orsay, Par-
is. The painter's niece, Madeline Marie Pauline
Fevre, was a sister in the Carmelite order.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 103);
bought at that sale by Jeanne Fevre, the artist's niece,
for Fr 17, 500 (Fevre sale, Galerie Charpentier, Paris,
12 June 1934, no. 116); bought by the Compagnie
Generale du Gaz pour la France et l'Etranger, who
gave it to the museum.
exhibitions: I937> Kunsthalle Basel, Kunstlerkopien,
no. 105; 1951-52 Bern, no. 12; 1952 Amsterdam,
no. 9, repr. ; 1952 Edinburgh, no. 9, pi. II; 1957, Vi-
enna, Palais Lobkowitz, November-December, Chefs-
d'oeuvre du Musee de Tours, no. 49; 1964-65 Munich,
no, 77, repr.; 1984-85 Rome, no. 23, repr. (color);
1987 Manchester, no. 36, repr. (color).
selected references: Cri de Paris, 19 May 19 18;
"Musee de Tours: une copie de Degas d'apres le
88
'Calvaire* de Mantegna," Bulletin des Musees de France,
June 1934, no. 6; Tietze-Conrat 1944, pp. 418-19,
fig. 7; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, repr. between pp. 12
and 13, II, no. 194; Fevre 1949, p. 28; Minervino
1974, no. 59; Alistair Smith, Second Sight: Mantegna
"Samson and Delilah," Degas "Beach Scene," London:
National Gallery, 1981, pp. 18-19, repr.
28.
The Triumph of Flora,
after Poussin
c. i860
Pen and ink and wash on off-white laid paper
9% X i25/s in. (23. 5 X 32 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection, Zurich
Vente IV:8o.c
Degas, like Ingres, always had a great ad-
miration for Poussin and envied his success-
ful career.1 In the 1850s and 1860s, he copied
many of Poussin's works, including, most
notably, The Plague at Ashdod (IV: 8 5. a) and
* The Rape of the Sabine Women (L273, Norton
Simon Museum, Pasadena), the latter copy
an oil on canvas the same size as the origi-
nal. Theodore Reff has pointed out a short
story by Duranty in which the hero, while
copying Poussin's painting in the Louvre
about 1863, notices "beside him, also strug-
gling with the Poussin, . . . Degas, an artist
of rare intelligence, preoccupied with ideas."2
Duranty adds, "Degas was copying the
Poussin admirably.*'3
In undertaking The Triumph of Flora
(fig. 41), Degas was not tackling one of Pous-
sin's most reproduced works. Far more pop-
ular were The Assumption of the Virgin, copied
by Fantin-Latour in September 1852, or Et in
Arcadia Ego, copied by Cezanne in April
1 864. 4 The Triumph of Flora attracted very
little attention in the nineteenth century. Al-
Fig. 41. Nicolas Poussin, The Triumph of Flora,
c. 1627. Oil on canvas, 65 X 947/s in. (165 X
241 cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris
though we know some contemporary cop-
ies by artists such as Bouguereau (private
collection) and the little-known Oscar-
Pierre Mathieu (Musee Rolin, Autun), the
Louvre registers show that the painting was
not often copied between 185 1 and 1871.
Degas did not produce an exact copy,
which would have meant, above and be-
yond the same support and medium, a
drawing that was more defined and truer to
the original. Instead, he used the seven-
teenth-century technique of pen and wash
to re-create what could have been a quick,
lively preliminary drawing by Poussin him-
self, giving only the broad outline and the
spirit of the final composition.
1. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 28; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 5, p. 26.
2. Reff 1964, p. 255.
3 . Edmond Duranty, "La simple vie du peintre Louis
Martin," Le Steele, 13-16 November 1872; re-
printed in Le pays des arts, Paris [1881], pp. 315-50.
4. Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, LL22, "Co-
pistes. Ecoles Francaise et Flamande, 1851-1871."
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, no. 80. c
[as "Le triomphe de Venus"]); bought at that sale
through Durand-Ruel, Paris, by Olivier Senn, Le
Havre, with nos. 80. a and 80. b, for Fr 1,400. Bignou
estate; acquired by the present owner 1962.
exhibitions: 1984 Tubingen, no. 37, repr. (color).
selected references: Walker 1933, p. 184; Reff 1963,
p. 246; Minervino 1974, no. 25.
29.
Semiramis Building Babylon
c. 1860-62
Oil on canvas
59 X ioi5/s in. (150 X 258 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2207)
Lemoisne 82
Degas always showed great fondness for his
history paintings, even long after he had left
them to turn his talents exclusively to sub-
jects from contemporary life. He knew that,
contrary to what others believed, they were
not "unsuccessful efforts" or proof that his
genius had been stunted by his devotion to
ancient formulas. As very few critics have
recognized, the painter was right. From
Alexander and Bucephalus (L92, private col-
lection, Lugano) to The Daughter of Jephthah
(cat. no. 26) and Young Spartans (cat. no. 40),
he produced a series of disturbingly original
works unlike anything anyone else was do-
ing at the time. It is admittedly difficult to
see a consistent progression from one com-
position to the next, and, despite years of
hard work during the late 1850s and early
1 860s, Degas does not seem to have known
exactly where he wanted to go. The works
that influenced him were diverse as well:
while The Daughter of Jephthah recalls Dela-
croix, Semiramis Building Babylon is reminis-
cent of Moreau, and Scene of War in the Middle
89
Fig. 42. Compositional study for Semiratnis (L86), Fig. 43. Compositional study for Semiramis (L85
c. 1860-62. Pencil and brown wash, ioVaX bis), c. 1860-62. Watercolor, 9V2 X i63/s in. (24 X
13V4 in. (25.9 X 33.8 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, 41.6 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre
Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF15533) (Orsay), Paris (RF 12275)
Fig. 44. Compositional study for Semiramis Fig. 45. Compositional study for Semiramis
(L84), c. 1860-62. Oil on paper mounted on (L85), c. 1860-62. Pastel, i$3AX26¥s in. (40 X
canvas, 97/s X i$3A in. (25 X 40 cm). Private 67 cm). Musee d' Orsay, Paris
collection
Ages (cat. no. 45) evokes Puvis de Chavannes.
It would nevertheless be a mistake to follow
the majority of critics, who disregard these
ambitious works (which Degas spent so long
planning and returned to again and again)
and who consider only the admirable pre-
liminary drawings of nudes and draperies,
which according to Paul Jamot are "infinitely
superior to the paintings for which they
were the studies."1 The complimentary re-
marks made by Andre Michel soon after the
acquisition of Semiramis by the Musee du
Luxembourg (granted he was somewhat
weary of "bathrooms, baths, and bidets")
remain virtually unique in the work's criti-
cal fortunes: "There is not one part, not one
element of the painting — with its rich, vi-
brant hues, at once enveloping and delicate-
ly balanced, the grave and almost solemn
simplicity of the draftsmanship, and the
original arrangement of the figures — that
does not assert itself with a slow and per-
suasive authority."2
Throughout his life, Degas retained a
genuine affection for Semiramis, as he did for
Young Spartans; he did not hide this youthful
work, but showed it readily to those who
visited his studio, including George Moore,
Paul- Andre Lemoisne, and probably Jacques-
Emile Blanche3 — not to mention Manet,
who reportedly advised him to exhibit it,
adding maliciously, "It will make for some
variety in your work."4 In 188 1, Degas al-
lowed Durand-Greville to examine the prelim-
inary drawings.5 Five of them were selected by
Degas himself to be reproduced in the 1897
album Vingt dessins, published by Michel
Manzi.
The subject is easy to read and does not
pose the difficult problems of interpretation
presented by Young Spartans or Scene of War.
Semiramis, accompanied by attendants,
warriors, and ministers, is standing on a
terrace, from which she is surveying the
progress of the construction of Babylon, the
city she has founded on either side of the
Euphrates. Although the suggestion made
by Lillian Browse is often repeated,6 Degas
was not in the least inspired by Rossini's
Semiramis, which returned to the Opera for
several performances beginning 9 July i860.
On the contrary, he seems to have deliber-
ately distanced himself from the Babylonian
sets designed by Cambon and Thierry
(which consisted of painted backdrops with
lush, overgrown vegetation and huge, gaudy
buildings) to strive for the simpler lines of a
dignified and serene style of architecture,
rendered in monochrome. Disregarding the
mannered costumes designed by Alfred Al-
bert for Rossini's characters, eschewing
fringes, shawls, pompons, tiaras, and heavy
jewels, he dressed Semiramis and her at-
tendants in long belted robes in muted colors.
Degas's Babylon is concocted pell-mell out
of the latest discoveries in Assyriology, in-
novations in the theater, and, more vaguely,
the climate of the times.
A useful comparison may be drawn here
with Salammbo, begun by Flaubert in Sep-
tember 1857, finished in April 1862, and
published on 24 November of that year,
probably while Degas was still working on
his canvas. The world of Salammbo, like that
of Semiramis, hardens and turns to rock.
Pierre Moreau's comments on Flaubert's
novel could be applied equally well to Semi-
ramis: "Even nature and living beings seem
to be made of metal and wrought by a gold-
smith. The large shimmering lagoon is like
a silver mirror. . . . The pomegranate trees,
almond trees, and myrtles stand immobile,
as if their leaves had been bronzed. . . .
Even the unremittingly pure expanse of sky
is as smooth and cold as a metal dome."7
Flaubert's Carthage — "conical roofs atop
hexagonal temples, staircases, terraces, ram-
parts"8— is akin to Degas's Babylon. There
is no evidence of a direct influence. "Degas
would naturally have been interested in
reading Salammbo" his niece Jeanne Fevre
wrote. "In those sometimes hallucinatory
pages he should have found some beautiful
pictorial motifs — but he did not say or write
so."9 However, the similarity of atmosphere
and intention is apparent.
Degas drew primarily on the image given
to us by Diodorus Siculus in his Biblioteca
historica (which had been retranslated by
Ferdinand Hoefer in 185 1) of the queen
who built and founded the city of Babylon.
He also took certain details (Semiramis's
hair and the chariot on the right) from As-
syrian works which had recently been ac-
quired by the Louvre.10 Notebooks from
this period reveal the diversity of his bor-
rowings and the originality of his approach:
he accumulated a veritable wealth of docu-
mentation, borrowing not only from Assyr-
ian reliefs, but also from Mughal miniatures
and Egyptian and Persian wall paintings.11 He
Fig. 46. Gustave Moreau, The Magi (detail),
c. i860. Oil on canvas, i67/sX243/8 in. (43 X
62 cm). Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris
90
29
did copies of the Parthenon frieze (on which
he based the horse in the center of his pic-
ture) and parts of works by Luca Signorelli
and Clouet, and he sought out uncommon
sources and unusual and eclectic references,
usually from periods known then as "primi-
tive." These influences make Semiramis,
more than any other of Degas's paintings, a
striking testimony to the deliberate "primi-
tivism" that was evident throughout the
nineteenth century, from Ingres to Gauguin
to Matisse.
It is impossible to know when Degas be-
gan this painting. A letter from James Tis-
sot, however, tells us that although the
painter was apparently working on it inten-
sively, it was still not finished in September
1 862. 12 The large number of preliminary
drawings and the diversity of the composi-
tional sketches — thoroughly analyzed by
Genevieve Monnier13 — attest to a particu-
larly long and difficult evolution. With the
exception of two canvases (L83, L84, private
collections, Paris), all were purchased by the
Musee du Luxembourg at the atelier sales.
Starting with a pyramidal composition ani-
mated by a rearing horse and dense overgrown
foliage (fig. 42), Degas moved progressively
toward a serene friezelike arrangement
(figs. 43, 44). In the final version, everything
seems frozen. Stony architecture predomi-
nates, confining the now sparser foliage; the
water is leaden and slack, the sky is evenly
calm, and the poses of the figures are fixed.
Here nothing stirs: any sign of movement
that could be detected in the preceding
sketches has disappeared.
Along with the compositional sketches,
Degas did detailed individual studies of the
figures of Semiramis and her attendants.
The numerous drawings that have been pre-
served (see cat. nos. 30-38), together with
those for Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat.
nos. 46-57), are among the artist's finest
works. They include drapery studies height-
ened with white gouache (which seem to
derive from Panathenaic scenes), drawings
of a model that reveal her progressive trans-
formation from a little Parisian with a com-
monplace face into the hieratic companion
of the Queen of Babylon, and a drawing of
the immobile profile of a horse inspired by
Greek sculpture.
The evolution of Degas's canvas closely
mirrors the changes in his relationship with
Moreau. At the beginning, there is an obvi-
ous affinity between the two artists: the
subject matter could have been inspired by
Degas's mentor from the Italian years, and
the first compositional studies bear witness
to common research they had undertaken at
the same time (see fig. 46 and cat. nos. 26,
39, 40). However, Moreau's influence fades
from one sketch to the next, giving way
(even more clearly in the Orsay painting) to
that of the fifteenth-century Italians, includ-
ing Pisanello (Saint George and the Princess,
Sant'Anastasia, Verona) and especially Piero
della Francesca (whose Queen of Sheba Ador-
ing the Holy Wood Degas must have discov-
ered in San Francesco, Arezzo, on his way
to Florence in the summer of 1858). By the
time Degas finished the painting (perhaps
1862 or 1863, though he later repainted parts
of it, including the sky), the links with Mo-
reau were already weakening. Rejecting the
tinsel, the often disorderly jumble, and the
marked fondness for jewelry seen in some
of his master's canvases, Degas opted for
simplicity, bareness, rigor, and even deliber-
ate stiffness. There is nothing about Semi-
ramis to suggest an early prefiguration of the
tedious "fin-de-siecle" women. It is, rather,
like Young Spartans, a perfectly original re-
sponse to the frequently debated problem of
history painting: an artist could not restore
life to this moribund genre through scrupu-
lous archaeological reconstruction in the
manner of Gerome, nor (to use the cruel
words Degas flung at Moreau) with unlim-
ited jewelry;14 rather, it was necessary, rely-
ing on the example of the old masters and
translating antiquity as carefully as the
91
painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-
ries, to seek another and in the end truer re-
ality than some laborious reconstruction.
Degas's Semiramis, like Paul Valery's,
looks down on the city she has founded, in-
dulging her "desire for unyielding temples"
and contemplating the "evidence of her au-
thority."15 Degas's canvas contains an implicit
criticism of contemporary town planning.
While he was still in Florence, his friend
Tourny had already warned him of the
changes taking place: "When you see Paris
again, in spite of all the immense buildings
being erected, you will often miss our beau-
tiful Italy. What a detestable stench of tar
and gas!"16 To create his imaginary Baby-
lon, the painter borrowed from Italian ar-
chitecture: the Temple of Castor and Pollux
in the Forum, the column of the Piazzetta in
Venice surmounted by Saint Mark's lion,
the fortified towers of medieval towns, Tus-
can churches sitting on the tops of hills. In
the Paris that Haussmann built — "the new
Babylon" — Degas expressed his longing for
an imaginary city that would replace the
cold monotony of gray buildings lined up
along straight avenues; hence this pictur-
esque and monumental tangle of stairways,
terraces, palaces, and ramparts, all con-
structed by "wise Semiramis, enchantress
and monarch."17
1. Jamot 1924, p. 27.
2. Andre Michel, "Degas et les Musees Natio-
naux," Journal des Debate, 13 May 19 18.
3. Lemoisne 19 12, p. 24.
4. Moore 1891, p. 306.
5. Entretiens de J. J. Henner: notes prises par Emile
Durand-Greville, Paris: A. Lemerre, 1925, p. 103.
6. Browse [1949], p. 50.
7. Pierre Moreau, introduction to Gustave Flaubert,
Salammbo, Paris: Folio, 1974, pp. 24-25.
8. Ibid., p. 63.
9. Fevre 1949, p. 51.
10. For example, the reliefs Sargon, a Vizier and Gov-
ernment Official (Inv. Napoleon 2872) and King
Sargon's Chariot from Khorsabad (AO-19882),
acquired in 1847 and already published by P. E.
Botta and E. Flandrin {Monument de Ninive, Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1849-50, I, pi. 17). Fur-
thermore, in 1 86 1, when Degas was working on
his canvas, Sir H. C. Rawlinson published the
inscription from the Statue of the God Nadir,
which contained the name Sammuraat and final-
ly caused history to coincide with the ancient
legend ( The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia,
I, London: British Museum, 1861). Finally, there
are some similarities between Assyrian architec-
ture, as known at the time through Sir A. H.
Layard's famous plates (in particular, A Second
Series of the Monuments of Nineveh, 71 plates, Lon-
don: J. Murray, 1853), and some details of De-
gas's Babylon: massive structures with feeble
projections, colonnades up above, and whole
walls with very few openings.
11. See Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1).
12. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 230.
13. Monnier 1978, pp, 407-26.
14. Huyghe 193 1, p. 271.
15. Paul Valery, "Air de Semiramis," Album de vers
andens, in Oeuvres, I, Paris: Editions de la Plei-
ade, 1980, pp. 91-93.
16. Unpublished letter from Joseph Tourny to Degas,
Ivry to Florence, 13 July 1858, private collection.
17. Valery, op. cit. , p. 94.
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 22 February 19 13 (deposit no. 10252)
(Vente I, 1918, no. 7. a); bought at that sale by the
Musee du Luxembourg, for Fr 33,000.
exhibitions: 19 19, Paris, Musee du Louvre, Collec-
tions nouvelles; 1943 , Paris, Galerie Parvillee, Veau
vue par les peintres contemporains et quelques maitres du
XIXe siecle, no. 10; 1967-68 Paris, Jeu de Paume;
1969 Paris, no. 6; 1984-85 Rome, no. 65, repr.
(color).
selected references: "L'atelier de Degas,'* L'lllustra-
tion, 16 March 1918; Jamot 1918, pp. 145-50, repr.
facing p. 150; Andre Michel, "Degas et les Musees
Nationaux, n Journal des Dibats, 13 May 19 18; Lafond
1918-19, I, p. 148, repr. p. 19; Catalogue des collections
nouvelles formees par les Musees Nationaux de 1914 a
1919, Paris, 1919, no. 181; Meier-Graefe 1920, pp. 6-7;
Paul Jamot, "The Acquisitions of the Louvre during
the War," pt. 4, Burlington Magazine, XXXVIL212,
November 1920, p. 220; Leonce Benedite, he Musee
du Luxembourg, Paris, 1924, no. 160, repr. p. 62;
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 42-44, II, no. 82; Browse
[1949], p. 50; J. Nougayrol, "Portrait d'une
Semiramis," La Revue des Arts, Musees de France,
May-June 1957, pp. 99-104; Phoebe Pool, "The
History Pictures of Edgar Degas and Their Back-
ground," Apollo, LXXX, October 1964, p. 310; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 91; Reff 1976, pp. 196, 224, 326,
no. 199; Monnier 1978, pp. 407-26; Denys Sutton,
"Degas: Master of the Horse," Apollo, CXIX: 226,
April 1984, p. 282; Reff 1985, pp. 19, 21, Notebook
18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 15, 197, 222, 224, 230, 232);
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III, p. 194,
repr.
30.
Head of a Young Girl, study for
Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil
loYs x 8V4 in. (26. 3 X 22.2 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp lower right
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15525)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 29
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, as part of
lot no. 7.b); bought at that sale by the Musee du
Luxembourg, for Fr 29,000.
92
exhibitions: 193 1, Bucharest, Muzcul Toma Stelian,
8 November-15 December, Desenul francez in secolele
al XlX-si al XX, no. 100; 196 1, Compiegne, Musee
Vivenel, June-August, Les courses en France, no. 19;
1969 Paris, no. 99; 1979 Bayonne, no. 20, repr.; 1984-
85 Rome, no. 71, repr.
selected references: Monnier 1978, p. 420, repr.
31.
Nude Woman Crouching,
study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Black chalk heightened with pastel on off-white
wove paper
i$Vs x 87/s in. (34. 1 x 22.4 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Inscribed in pencil upper right: la grande lumiere
est sur l'epaule/et un peu sur la cuisse ployee
Vente stamp lower left
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15488)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 76a; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 60, repr.; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 64; 1967-68
Paris, Jeu de Paume; 1969 Paris, no. 93; 1970, Ram-
bouillet, Sous-prefecture, 11-22 April, Degas, danse,
dessins: Vequilibre dans Vart, no. 28, repr.; 1972, Darm-
stadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, 22 April-18 June,
Von Ingres bis Renoir, no. 25, repr.; 1980, Montauban,
Musee Ingres, 28 June-7 September, Ingres et sa pos-
terite jusqu' a Matisse et Picasso, no. 183; 1984-85
Rome, no. 72, repr.
selected references: Vingt dessins [1897], pi. 1; La-
fond 19 1 8-19, I, repr. (color) facing p. 20; Jamot
1924, p. 25; Monnier 1978, pp. 408, 417, fig. 22.
32.
Drapery, study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil and watercolor heightened with white
gouache on gray-blue paper
x 12V4 in. (24. 4 x 3 1. 1 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF22615)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 77; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 61, repr.; 1959-60 Rome, no. 179, repr.; 1962,
Paris, Musee du Louvre, March-May, Premiere expo-
sition des plus beaux dessins du Louvre et de quelques
pieces cilebres des collections de Paris, no. 125; 1969 Paris,
no. 95; 1983, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du
Louvre, L'aquarelle en France au XIXe siecle: dessins du
Mush du Louvre, no. 41, repr.
selected references: Monnier 1978, pp. 408-10,
fig. 23.
33-
34-
35-
A Horse with Attendants of
Semiramis, study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil and black chalk heightened with green
crayon on buff wove paper
io5/s x 13V8 in. (26.8 X 34.7 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left; vente stamp lower right
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15530)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 38, repr.; 1969
Paris, no. 104.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, I, repr. (color)
between pp. 36 and 37; Monnier 1978, p. 408, fig. 52.
Woman Seen from Behind,
Climbing into a Chariot, study
for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil
12 X 87/s in. (30. 4 X 22. 6 cm)
Signed lower center: Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15515)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 79a; 193 1, Bucharest,
Muzeul Toma Stelian, 8 November-15 December,
Desenul jrancez in secolele at XlX-si at XX, no. 102;
1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 66; 1952-53 Washington,
D.C., no. 152, pi. 41; 1967-68 Paris, Jeu de Paume;
1969 Paris, no. 80; 1976-77, Vienna, Albertina, 10
November 1976-25 January 1977, Von Ingres bis Ce-
zanne, no. 48, repr.; 1984-85 Rome, no. 69, repr.
selected references: Vingt dessins [1897], pi. 4;
Jamot 1924, p. 132, pi. 7b; Monnier 1978, pp. 408,
416, fig. 20.
Woman Holding a Horse's Bridle,
study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Black chalk
i4Vs$X9in. (35.9 X 23 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp lower right
On the verso, a study of drapery in pencil
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15490)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 102; 1984-85 Rome,
no. 73, repr.
selected references: Monnier 1978, pp. 408, 424,
fig- 49.
33
36.
\
Standing Woman, Draped,
study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil heightened with watercolor and gouache
on blue-green paper
11V2 X 85/s in. (29. 1 X 21.9 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15502)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 79b; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 62; 1969 Paris, no. 91, repr.; 1983, Paris, Cabinet
des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, L'aquarelle en France
au XIXe siecle: dessins du Musee du Louvre, no. 40,
repr.
selected references: Lemoisne 19 12, pi. IV, after
p. 24; Jamot 1924, pi. 7a.
94
39-
37-
Standing Woman, Draped, Seen
from Behind, study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil
12 X 9V6 in. (30.6X23.2 cm)
Signed bottom center: Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15485)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 29
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1955-56 Chicago, no. 149; 1969 Paris,
no. 109.
selected references: Monnier 1978, pp. 408, 417,
fig. 27.
Woman on a Terrace, also called
Young Woman and Ibis
1857-58; reworked c. 1860-62
Oil on canvas
3 85/s X 29V8 in. (98 X 74 cm)
Collection of Stephen Mazoh
Lemoisne 87
Attribution of this painting to Degas has not
been a straightforward matter. The inventory
made after his death placed a question mark
beside his name as its author. When the pic-
ture was sold in 19 18, it was not as from his
studio but as part of his collection of works
by other artists. The canvas is indeed dis-
concerting and seems unlike any other by
Degas. Yet this peculiarity must not be
grounds for suspicion: among the works that
can reliably be assigned to the young Degas,
there are in the space of a few years a great
many that are so different from each other,
so dissimilar in handling and technique, and
so varied in subject matter that in the ab-
sence of any historical evidence the most
practiced eye would probably never ascribe
them to one artist.
In this particular case, there can be no
doubt about the attribution, as there are sev-
eral pencil sketches for the veiled woman:
two rather pale drawings in a notebook,1 a
study of the drapery on the back of a drawing
in the Metropolitan Museum (1980.200),
and a nude study of the figure, repeating a
38
provenance: See cat. no. 30.
exhibitions: 1967-68 Paris, Jeu de Paume; 1969 Paris,
no. 106.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, pi. 6; Mau-
rice and Arlette Serullaz, L'ottocento francese, Milan:
Fabbri, 1970, p. 81, repr.; Monnier 1978, pp. 408,
416, fig. 21.
3^
Drapery, study for Semiramis
c. 1860-62
Pencil and watercolor heightened with gouache
47/s x 9J/4 in. (12. 3 x 23 . 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15538)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 29
96
drawing of the woman in the same pose but
clothed (IV:io8.b).
The two drawings on separate sheets
were later inscribed by Degas "Rome 1856";
the notebook in question, as RefF convinc-
ingly demonstrates, was used during the
second stay in Rome, between the end of
October 1857 and the last days of July
1858.2 Since dates inscribed by Degas long
after the fact — most probably in the early
1890s when he was preparing to publish re-
productions of a selection of drawings with
the Italian painter and publisher Michel
Manzi — are not very trustworthy,3 it is
preferable, on the evidence of the notebook
dates, to assign this group of studies and the
first phase of the canvas itself to the period
of Degas's second stay in Rome.
Degas modified this work in the early 1860s.
At first, it had been but an insignificant trans-
lation of Dreaming (fig. 47), a famous canvas,
now lost, by Hippolyte Flandrin. Degas
added the background of the Oriental, or
rather pseudo-Oriental, city (Gerome would
certainly have found it "Turkish" enough
for his taste4), the quickly sketched pink
flowers, and above all, the red ibis, which
appear in none of the studies from 1857 to
1858 but which give the picture its charac-
ter. This last change may have been suggested
by Gustave Moreau, whom Degas was see-
ing regularly at the time. Drawing up a list
of possible subjects in a notebook he began
using in 1863, the mentor of Degas's years
in Italy imagined a scene of "a young Egyp-
tian girl feeding ibis."5 It should also be noted
that these changes were made when Degas
was working out Semiramis (cat. no. 29,
c. 1860-62), slowly and with difficulty. It
was while he was thinking about the larger
painting (which is closely related in compo-
sition to the present work) that he went back
to this canvas that he had begun in Rome.
The red ibis were drawn summarily in a
notebook6 and temporarily inserted in com-
positional sketches for Semiramis (fig. 44;
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre
[Orsay], Paris, RF15527). One of the reasons
they were added to this work was to test the
effect produced by their vivid red patches;
incongruously framing the figure of the
veiled woman, their presence, almost by ac-
cident, turns the trite Woman on a Terrace
into the strange and baffling Young Woman
and Ibis,
1. RefF 1985, Notebook 11 (BN, Carnet 28, pp. 4,
39)-
2. Reff 1985, p. 67
3. RefF 1963, pp. 250-51.
4. See George Moore, Impressions and Opinions,
New York: Scribner's, 1891, p. 306.
5. Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris. The first page is
inscribed: "The book was given to me by my best
friend — Alexandre Destouches — Saturday, 30 June
i860— G.M."
6. RefF 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 24).
39
Fig. 47. Hippolyte Flandrin, Dreaming,
1855. Oil on canvas. Location unknown
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Collection II,
1918, no. 56); bought by Gerard, for Fr 1,050.
Svensk-Fransk Konstgalleriet, Stockholm. Paul Toll,
Stockholm. Sale, Sotheby's, London, Impressionist
and Modem Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 4 De-
cember 1968, no. 17, repr. (color); bought at that
sale by Mario di Botton, for $25,000. Sale, Sotheby
Parke Bernet, New York, 18 May 1983, no. 20A,
repr. (color); bought at that sale by present owner.
exhimtions: 1954, Liljevalchs, Kunsthalle, Fran Ce-
zanne till Picasso, no number; 1958, Stockholm, Na-
tionalmuseum, Cinq siecles d'art jrancais, no. 146;
1976-77 Tokyo, no. 6, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 87;
Minervino 1974, no. 98; 1984-85 Rome, pp. 20,
100, 205, repr. p. 21; RefF 1985, Notebook 11 (BN,
Carnet 28, pp. 4, 39), Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1,
p. 24).
97
40.
Young Spartans
c. 1860-62; reworked until 1880
Oil on canvas
4.2VB X 61 in. (109 X 155 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Trustees of the National Gallery, London
(3860)
Lemoisne 70
Degas never disowned the works of his youth;
it was the critics who did so. His friend
Daniel Halevy tells us of Young Spartans: "In
his later years, Degas was very fond of this
painting; he had taken it from the vast re-
serves where he concealed his life's work
and displayed it prominently on an easel be-
fore which he often stood — a unique honor
and sign of his fondness for it."1 Arsene Al-
exandre, who came upon it in rather poorer
circumstances, "unframed, on the floor, amid
the clutter of our dear friend's apartment,"
was dazzled by it, though he changed his
mind later, on the "great day of the atelier
sale," when it appeared to him as "agreeable
but with a thin story."2
Many years earlier, Degas had hoped to
show it at one of the Impressionist exhibi-
tions— the fifth, in 1880 — where, against
his recent portraits and scenes of the dance,
as well as the works of Cassatt, Gauguin,
Morisot, and Pissarro, it would have been
manifestly identifiable as a history painting.
It would inevitably have contrasted sharply
with the other works, but would have proved,
as was undoubtedly his intention, that the
"new painting" included not only landscapes,
portraits, and genre scenes, but also history
paintings. For reasons unknown to us, this
work, which was catalogued as no. 33,
"Petites filles spartiates provoquant des gar-
c/mis (i860)," was not shown. In a review
published in he Voltaire (6 April 1880), Gus-
tave Goetschy regretted its absence, com-
menting: "M. Degas isn't an 'Independant'
for nothing! He is an artist who produces
slowly, as he pleases, and at his own pace,
without concerning himself about exhibi-
tions and catalogues. . . .We will not see his
Dancer [cat. no. 227], nor his Young Spartans,
nor a number of other works he has an-
nounced." Even though he must have worked
and reworked this painting, as was his habit,
right up to the last minute, he was probably
still not satisfied with it.
Although we must therefore do without
the enlightening critical comments that
would certainly have been elicited by the
exhibition of this painting, its listing in the
catalogue at least provides us with the exact
title chosen by Degas, which, curiously, is
seldom used. It was followed by the date
"i860," which was also "chosen" by the art-
ist and may not have been absolutely accu-
rate. Degas often deliberately backdated his
canvases — a flagrant example is The Gentle-
men's Race: Before the Start (cat. no. 42) —
assigning the date of original conception,
without regard to successive reworkings.
It seems that Degas's choice of this sel-
dom painted subject (Douglas Cooper, in
his learned discussion of the work, mentions
an 1836 fresco by Giovanni Demin in Villa
Patt, near Sedico3) can be explained only by
his excellent knowledge of classical authors.
Phoebe Pool, Martin Davies, and, more re-
cently, Carol Salus have indicated the direct
sources for the painting/ First there was
Plutarch, who in his Life of Lycurgus com-
ments on the very manly upbringing of
young Spartan girls. Daniel Halevy recalled
Degas explaining to him, as they stood be-
fore the painting, "'It is young Spartan girls
challenging the young boys to combat,' and
I think he added, *I read about it in Plu-
tarch.*"5 A second and undoubtedly more
direct influence was Abbe Barthelemy, who
in his once famous Voyage du jeune Anacharsis
en Grece provides a few details that may have
impressed the painter: "Spartan girls are not
raised at all like those of Athens. They are
not obliged to stay locked up in the house
spinning wool, nor to abstain from wine
and rich food. They are taught to dance, to
sing, to wrestle with each other, to run
swiftly on the sand, to throw the discus or
the javelin, and to perform all their exercises
without veils and half naked, in the presence
of the kings, the magistrates, and all the cit-
izens, not excepting the young boys, whom
the girls incite to glory by their examples,
or by flattering praise or stinging irony."6
The choice of this unusual subject may be
a result of Degas's frequent reading of the
"great authors." Contrary to popular belief,
however, it was not at Louis-le-Grand that
he became steeped in the classics. ("Nothing
is more deadly," wrote the headmaster in
1845, "than the need to return each year to
the same authors. In Rhetoric, for instance,
two tragedies are studied over and over,
while all the rest of Greek drama is neglect-
ed."7) It is much more likely that the impetus
came from some prolonged conversations
with Gustave Moreau.
In the same period, Moreau was begin-
ning his first studies for a large composition,
Tyrtaeus Singing during the Battle, glorifying
the Spartan poet who led the Greek youths
to victory.8 It is tempting to compare the
two compositions on the theme of Sparta
(curiously, several years earlier, Delacroix,
at the Palais Bourbon, had already contem-
plated linking these two subjects but decided
to abandon the idea), particularly since the
preliminary drawings for both these works
have an undeniable similarity. Perhaps the
Fig. 50. Young Spartans (L71), c. i860. Oil on
canvas, 38V2 X 551/3 in. (97.4 X 140 cm). The Art
Institute of Chicago
Fig. 48. Attributed to Polidoro Caldara,
Group of Women Arguing. Red chalk, n X
7V4 in. (27,9 X 18.5 cm). Cabinet des Dessins,
Musee du Louvre, Paris (Inv.949)
98
young painter and his mentor wished, at
one time, to carry out parallel studies in the
field of history painting, the imminent demise
of which was regularly being prophesied,
and, using similar methods, to find an
original solution.
Degas began this canvas in i860. Like
The Daughter of Jephthah (cat. no. 26), already
in progress, and Semiramis (cat. no. 29),
which was almost contemporary, Young
Spartans would undergo a number of trans-
formations before the final version — Lon-
don's— was completed. Many studies,
ranging from a simple rough outline to a
detailed large oil painting, show a marked
development of the composition; although it
is difficult to trace the chronology, it is quite
likely that the changes go beyond i860. The
starting point may have been a jotting by
Degas in a notebook: "Young girls and
young boys wrestling in the plane-tree grove,
under the eyes of the aged Lycurgus along-
side some mothers." He added: "There is a
red-chalk drawing by Pontormo portraying
some old women, seated, quarreling and
showing something"9 — referring to a draw-
ing in the Louvre today attributed to Poli-
doro Caldara and formerly attributed to
Rosso Fiorentino (fig. 48).
Fewer preparatory drawings remain for
Young Spartans than for Semiramis or Scene of
War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45). The
notebooks of this period contain almost
nothing for this composition. However, the
inventory compiled after Degas's death lists,
in addition to eight separate studies, "thirty-
seven drawings for Sparta, in pencil, pen
and ink, and watercolor,"10 which appeared,
in all likelihood, in the first atelier sale
(I:62.b). Today, most of these have disap-
peared, and we are unfortunately unable to
piece together more than a few fragments of
this important material. The first composi-
tional study (fig. 49) appeared at a recent
sale.11 This drawing in pen and ink with
brown wash (very similar to Moreau's
works) shows, in accordance with Degas' s
description, the two antagonistic groups of
boys and girls "in the plane-tree grove," but
without Lycurgus and the mothers. Degas 's
attention subsequently shifted (the evolution
of Semiramis is comparable in many ways)
toward an increasingly spare composition in
which the landscape is gradually reduced to
its simplest form, and in which the young
boys and girls quickly take their final posi-
tions and are set in their poses of tranquil ri-
valry. The large monochromatic canvas in
Chicago (fig. 50) is not a sketch at an inter-
mediate stage, but a version abandoned by
the artist before its completion. Unlike the
London version, it has elements that are ob-
viously "Greek" — in the landscape (the
plane-tree grove is represented by a few
spindly trunks), the features of the young
people, and the central architecture.
Next, Degas abandoned all specific refer-
ence to ancient Greece, suppressing the ar-
chaeological details and, as has often been
noted, modeling the faces of his girls and
boys on the commonplace faces of the chil-
dren of the streets of Paris.
The explicit title given by Degas himself
in 1880 (as Devin Burnell has shown, Degas
most likely reworked the canvas in succes-
sive stages up to that date) has not stopped
scholars from providing their own learned
interpretations. The most recent and most
99
astute, by Carol Salus, attempts to prove
that Degas, so interested in matters of mat-
rimony, set out to portray a nuptial rite:
Spartan girls choosing young husbands.
Linda Nochlin, in response, has rightly ob-
served that there is no single meaning, and
that Degas constantly played with ambiguity
and polysemy.12 Rather than venture into
this slippery area of interpretation, it seems
preferable to focus on the obvious originality
of Degas's solution to the by then vexing
problem of history painting.
It is known that when Gerome expressed
utter surprise at this canvas, which bore little
resemblance to his own work, Degas mock-
ingly retorted: "I suppose that it is not
Turkish enough for you, Gerome?"13 De-
gas's choices were, in fact, clear and, one is
tempted to say, resolutely modern: the re-
jection of exoticism and archaeology, the
search for a historical truth which, far from
being a laborious resurrection of a distant
past, would be "truer" than the studied ex-
actitude of his fellow history painters. The
trees disappear, and the Spartan plain corre-
sponds less to the ancient vision of Pausanias
than to the sad picture of it as described by
Larousse: "A stream which empties into the
Eurotas is the only sign of the location of
the plane-tree grove, stripped of the trees
which had once adorned it."14 Ancient
Sparta is here not the proud rival of Athens,
but a Greek village, with the cubes of its
white, ochre, and pink houses scattered in
the distance — thus did Aline Martel observe
it in 1892 — the seat of power of King
Othon, "who had attempted to bring back
all the great names of Greece."15 Only the
costumes and hairstyles of the mothers and
the discreet presence of Lycurgus give this
canvas a hint of Hellenism.
Very different from neo-Greek painters
with their scholarly, cold reconstructions,
Degas rejected the stereotypical Greece with
its permanently blue sky, and instead put
forward a very personal image, for which
there is no equivalent in contemporary
French painting. He took a fresh look at
Greek history, like a producer who succeeds
in giving new life to a play that has been
performed again and again by breaking with
the conventions that have accumulated over
the years. Jeanne Fevre, his devoted and
possessive niece, who expressed her admira-
tion for the Voyage dujeune Anacharsis, was
right when she stated quite simply: "Degas
had a very lively, very keen, and very intel-
lectual sense of ancient Greece."16
1. Daniel Halevy in 1924 Paris, p. 24.
2. Alexandre 1935, p. 153.
3. Douglas Cooper, "List of Emendations to the
Courtauld Catalogue," Burlington Magazine,
XCVI, April 1954, p. 120.
4. Phoebe Pool, "The History Pictures of Edgar
Degas and Their Background," Apollo y LXXX,
October 1964, pp. 307, 311; Martin Davies, Na-
tional Gallery: French School, London, 1957, pp. 70-
71; Carol Salus, "Degas* Young Spartans Exercis-
ing" Art Bulletin, LXVIL3, September 1985,
pp. 501-06.
5. Halevy i960, p. 184; Halevy 1964, p. 115.
6. Jean-Jacques Barthelemy, Le voyage du jeune
Anacharsis en Grece, Paris: Chez De Bure, 1788
(reprint, Paris: A. Payen, 1836), p. 293.
7. Cited in Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, Du College de
Clermont a Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris: Bastard,
1922, II, p. 223.
8. See Mathieu 1976, p. 86.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 202).
10. Durand-Ruel archives, Paris, no. 201 1.
11. Sale, Christie's, London, 2 December 1986,
no. 205, repr. (color).
12. Devin Burnell, "Degas and His 'Young Spartans
Exercising,'" The Art Institute of Chicago Museum
Studies, 4, 1969, pp. 49-65; Salus, op. cit.; Linda
Nochlin, "Degas's 'Young Spartans Exercising,'"
Art Bulletin, LXVIII:3, September 1986, pp. 486-
88.
13. Cited in Moore 1891, p. 306.
14. Pierre Larousse, under "Sparte," in Grand diction-
naire universel, Paris, 1873.
15. Aline Martel, "Sparte et les gorges du Taygete,"
Annuaire du Club Alpin Francais, Paris, 1892, p. 9.
16. Fevre 1949, p. 51.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 20 [as
"Jeunes spartiates s'exerqant a la lutte"]); bought at
that sale by Seligmann, Bernheim-Jeune, Durand-
Ruel, Vollard, for Fr 19,500 (Seligmann sale, Ameri-
can Art Association, New York, 27 January 192 1,
no. 67, repr., bought in at that sale by Seligmann,
Bernheim-Jeune, Durand-Ruel, Vollard); deposited
with Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 21 April-21 May 192 1;
bought by Durand-Ruel, New York, and Vollard,
Paris, in half shares, from Bernheim-Jeune and Selig-
mann, 2 July 192 1 (stock no. N.Y. 4669); deposited
by Durand-Ruel, New York, with Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 4 July 192 1 (deposit no. 12559); deposited by
Durand-Ruel, Paris, with the Goupil Gallery, Lon-
don, 26 September 1923; bought (from Goupil? no
trace of a transaction in the Durand-Ruel archives)
by the museum with the aid of the Courtauld Fund
1924.
41
exhibitions: 1880 Paris, no. 33 (listed in the cata-
logue but not exhibited); 1922, Paris, Galerie Barba-
zanges, 17-31 November, Le sport dans I'art, p. 13;
1923, London, Goupil Gallery, October-December,
Salon, no. 87; 1952 Edinburgh, no. 4; 1955-56,
Paris, Orangerie, 27 October 1955-8 January 1956,
Impressionnistes de la collection Courtauld de Londres,
no. 18, repr.
selected references: Goetschy 1880; Moore 1 89 1,
pp. 306, 311; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 70; Martin
Davies, National Gallery: French School, London,
io57, PP- 69-72; William M. Ittmann, Jr., "A Draw-
ing by Edgar Degas for the Petites fiUes spartiates
provoquant des garcpns," The Register of the Museum
of Art, the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas,
111:7, I9^<5, pp. 38-49, repr,; 1967 Saint Louis, pp. 60-
67; Devin Burnell, "Degas and His 'Young Spartans
Exercising,'" The Art Institute of Chicago Museum
Studies, 4, 1969, pp. 49-65, repr.; Minervino 1974,
no. 86; 1984 Chicago, pp. 32-35; Carol Salus, "De-
gas' Young Spartans Exercising,'* Art Bulletin, LXVIL3,
September 1985, pp. 501-06, repr.; B. A. Zernov,
Tvorcestvo E. Degas i vnefrancuzskie hudozestvennye
tradicii, Leningrad: Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Ermi-
taza, 1985, pp. 124-28, 156; Linda Nochlin, "De-
gas's 'Young Spartans Exercising,'" Art Bulletin,
LXVIIL3, September 1986, pp. 486-88; 1986 Wash-
ington, D.C., pp. 300-01; 1987 Manchester, pp. 33-
39, repr.
41.
Young Spartan Girl, study for
Young Spartans
c. i860
Pencil and black crayon on tracing paper
9 X 14V8 in. (22.9 X 36 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF11691)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 40
IOO
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no num-
ber, sold under no. 20 [sketches and studies]); bought
at that sale by Rene de Gas, the artist's brother, Paris
(Rene de Gas estate sale, Drouot, Paris, 10 Novem-
ber 1927, no. 24. a, repr.); bought at that sale by the
Musee du Luxembourg, for Fr 8,400.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 72.
42.
The Gentlemen's Race: Before
the Start
1862; reworked c. 1882
Oil on canvas
i87/sX24in. (48X61 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas 1862
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1982)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 10 1
The date on this canvas, 1862, has always
been questioned. For those who tend to see
Degas's depictions of modern life as coming
somewhat later, this work usually appears
to have come slightly before its time; after
all, Semiramis (cat. no. 29) would be exactly
contemporary. Degas's notebooks of the late
1 8 50s and early 1860s show, however, that
he was not neglecting contemporary life and
that racecourse scenes, which as we know
would become one of his favorite subjects,
were already emerging. In fact, there are a
number of examples — quick sketches of horses
running free in the traditional Roman races
on the Corso — made as early as his stay in
Rome.1 The first jockey makes a timid ap-
pearance in a slightly later notebook, used
between August 1858 and June 1859 — a
pale, moving effigy framed by the more usual
images of leaping horses.2
Once Degas had returned to France, such
scenes increased in number; the reason for
this has been seen in his repeated visits to
his friends the Valpincpns in Normandy.
The Valpincpns had a beautiful estate in
Orne at Menil-Hubert, near the national
stud farm at Haras du Pin and the Argentan
racecourse (see "The Landscapes of 1869,"
p. 153). In a notebook used between 1859
and 1864, Degas did elaborate drawings of
the stud farm (the Chateau du Pin and sur-
rounding land) and the nearby village of
Exmes, but not, curiously, of the horses.
He did, however, record his enthusiasm for
the countryside, which was so new to him
and so different from anything he had seen
before, especially around Saint- Valery-sur-
Somme, where nature seemed "much less
thick and bushy than here."3 It reminded him
of "England precisely. Pastures, small and
large, enclosed by hedgerows; damp foot-
paths, ponds green and umber. "4
The constant references to England — its
painters and landscapes ("I remember the
backgrounds of English genre pictures"), as
well as its writers (he was reading Fielding's
Tom Jones at the time) — played a key role
when Degas began his first racecourse
scenes. Another, more overlooked influence
was that of two artists who had not formerly
attracted his attention: Gericault, whose
works he had copied in the Louvre on his
return from Italy, and Alfred De Dreux,
whose lithographs he studied carefully.5
What is rarely noted is that the impetus
definitely came from Gustave Moreau, who
apparently became interested in the subject
through De Dreux in the 1850s and made a
few drawings of jockeys about i860.6 Most
curiously, then, it was the master of the
Jasons and Salomes who turned Degas toward
this modern subject that he would explore
for the rest of his life.
IOI
Fig. 51. At the Races: The Start (L76), c. 1860-
62. Oil on canvas, 12 X 18V2 in. (30.4 X 47 cm).
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Mass.
Fig. 52. At the Races (L77), c. 1860-62. Oil on
canvas, i67/sX 2$3A in. (43 X65.5 cm). Kunst-
museum Basel
The combined interest in England, Geri-
cault, and De Dreux and the constant prox-
imity of Moreau would give rise to a first
series of racecourse scenes about 1860-62.
Lemoisne catalogues within this period four
small canvases (L75-L78; see figs. 51, 52)
that display as many similarities as marked
differences when compared to the Orsay
painting. Thus in At the Races: The Start
(fig. 51), which has a similar composition —
horses in a frieze in the foreground, crowd
scattered in the background — the mounts
seem more spindly and tense, the jockeys
less substantial. The X-radiograph of The
Gentlemen's Race — in which there is a fuzzy
effect apparent in all the horsemen {a sign of
the painter's hesitations and reworkings) —
shows that this work was originally very sim-
ilar to At the Races: The Start.
Later, Degas reworked The Gentlemen's
Race considerably; these important altera-
tions, which were made before 14 February
1883 (since Durand-Ruel bought it from
Degas on that date), give the canvas its pres-
ent appearance, making it more a work of
the 1 8 80s than of the early 18 60s. These
changes were preceded by — or accompanied
by, for these may have been contemporane-
ous variations on a single theme — three pas-
tels (L850, L889 [fig. 217], L940) of a similar
composition, depicting not only (as has al-
ways been noted) the landscape, but also
horses and jockeys. Only the figures in the
background, which are very similar to those
in At the Races (fig. 52) — gray, black, and
pink silhouettes very delicately painted and
standing out against a dark green back-
drop— have clearly not moved; they are the
sole evidence for the early date of 1862 that
Degas (anxious to establish that his scenes
from modern life preceded those of other
artists, most notably Manet) claimed for the
picture and deliberately inscribed on it when
it was sold in 1883.
When Degas went back to this painting,
about 1882, he remodeled the landscape,
probably by adding the central hill and the
smokestacks, which lend a curiously subur-
ban look to what previously had been flat
countryside, and reworked the jockeys,
who no longer seem anonymous as in the
1860-62 canvases but have faces with distin-
guishable features, such as that of the gen-
tleman rider in the middle, whose name, M.
de Broutelle, is known to us from a draw-
ing of the time (III: 160.2). Despite all the
changes, Gentlemen's Race remains a somber
picture, where all that stands out under a
leaden sky and against the emerald fields are
the bright tones of the jackets and caps —
mostly imaginary, although a few were col-
ors that were actually used at the time
(white, green sleeves, green cap, J. Fou-
quier; blue, blue cap, J. Conolly; yellow,
red sleeves, red cap, Captain Saint-Hubert;
red, yellow cap, Baron de Varenne).7
However, in cutting through a rider and his
mount on the right, opening onto country-
side at the left, arranging the three principal
horses in a frieze as in some antique relief,
and creating a bouquet of multicolored caps
and jackets in the middle, Degas has imme-
diately achieved a completely original com-
position, very different from the racecourse
scenes of English painters or the equestrian
scenes of De Dreux or Gericault. From here,
the variations on this theme will multiply,
chiefly in pastel. Eliminating the spectators
or any other reference to a particular track,
Degas will draw or paint his jockeys wan-
dering peacefully through undefined
countrysides, walking their horses, heading
we do not know quite where, or why.
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 8 (private collection, p. 24V).
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 12 (BN, Carnet 18, pp. 15-16).
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 161).
4. Ibid.
5. Reff 1985, Notebook 13 (BN, Carnet 16).
6. See 1984-85 Rome, p. 34, repr.
7. Information provided by M. Jean Romanet.
provenance: Acquired from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 14 February 1883, for Fr 5,000 (as
"Courses de gentlemen," stock no. 2755, label on
the back); deposited with Durand-Ruel, 9 boulevard
de la Madeleine, Paris, 8 August-12 September 1883
(perhaps for an exhibition); deposited with Fritz
Gurlitt, Berlin, 25 September 1883-17 January 1884;
deposited with M. Cotinaud, Paris, 6 June 1884 (to
whom the work appears to have belonged during the
1884-85 exhibition, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris).
Hector Brame, Paris; deposited with Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 12 June 1889 (deposit no. 6784); acquired by
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 16 August 1889, for Fr 7,500
(stock no. 2437); deposited with Manzi, 19 August
1889, who bought it the next day, for Fr 8,000; ac-
quired from Manzi by Comte Isaac de Camondo,
April 1894, for Fr 30,000; his bequest to the Louvre
1911; exhibited 19 14.
EXHmrriONS: 1883, London, Dowdeswell and Dow-
deswell, April-July, Paintings, Drawings and Pastels by
Members of "La Societe des Impressionnistes " no. 6;
(?) 1884-85, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 14 Decem-
ber 1884-31 January 1885, Le sport dans I'art, no. 28;
1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 5; 1955, Brive/La Ro-
chelle/Rennes/Angouleme, Impressionnistes et precur-
seurs, no. 16; 1961, Vichy, June- August, D'Ingres a
Renoir: la vie artistique sous le second empire, no. 57;
1961-62, Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art,
3 November 196 1-1 5 January 1962 /Kyoto, City Art
Museum, 25 January-15 March, Exposition d'art fran-
qais 1840-1940, no. 65, repr. p. 73; 1962, Mexico
City, Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, October-
November, Cien anos de pintura en Francia de i8$o a
nuestros dtas, no. 36, repr.; 1965, Lisbon, Calouste
Gulbenkian Museum, March- April, Un seculo de pin-
tura Jrancesa 1850-1950, no. 38, repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 9;
1970-71 Leningrad, p. 25; 1971 Madrid, no. 32, repr.;
1974, Bordeaux, Galerie des Beaux-Arts, 3 May-i
September, Naissance de I'impressionnisme, no. 90,
repr. ; 1980, Athens, National Picture Gallery and Al-
exander Soutzos Museum, 30 January-20 April, Im-
pressionnistes et post-impressionnistes des musees fiancais
de Manet a Matisse, no. 8, repr.
selected references: Jamot 1914, p. 459; Paris,
Louvre, Camondo, 1914, no. 158; Lafond 19 18-19,
II, p. 41; Jamot 1924, p. 95; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 10 1 ; Minervino 1974, no. 209; Reff 1977, fig. 64
(color); Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986,
III, p. 194, repr.; Sutton 1986, p. 147.
43-
Leon Bonnat
1863
Oil on paper mounted on panel
303A x 2oVi8 in. (78 x 51 cm)
Private collection, Paris
Lemoisne 150
The subject of this little-known and rarely
exhibited portrait was correctly identified
by Waldemar George in 1925 as the painter
Leon Bonnat.1 In the catalogue of the 193 1
exhibition, Paul Jamot, for reasons un-
known, entitled it "Portrait of a Man" even
though its owner, Dr. Viau, had clearly speci-
fied "Portrait of Bonnat" on the loan form.2
Fifteen years later, Lemoisne opted for
"Portrait of an Artist" and dated it between
1866 and 1 8 70, 3 much later than the pre-
102
viously accepted date, about 1864. Compar-
isons of this portrait with the one in Bayonne
(fig- 53) and with a pen-and-ink self-portrait
by Bonnat in Paris (Cabinet des Dessins,
Musee du Louvre [Orsay], Paris, RF29974)
substantiate the identification proposed by
Waldemar George.
Bonnat himself stated that Degas painted
his portrait in 1863 / The two may have met
at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts: Bonnat was
enrolled 6 April 18 54, 5 while Degas passed
through briefly in 1855. But it was in Italy
that they became friends: Bonnat, who had
missed the Prix de Rome, spent two years
there (1858-60) thanks to a scholarship
from the city of Bayonne, and joined the
group of Moreau, Henner, Delaunay, Chapu,
and Degas. His not inconsiderable work of
the 1 8 50s, and especially his numerous por-
traits of friends and relations, often show an
interesting closeness to Degas's pursuits (see
cat. no. 20 and fig. 39). Aside from Moreau,
Fig. 53. Leon Bonnat (Lin), 1863. Oil on
canvas, i67/sX 14.V8 in. (43 X 36 cm).
Musee Bonnat, Bayonne
who was a true mentor and had an influence
on Degas, there is no doubt that it was
Bonnat, a completely original artist then,
who was closest to him in the late 1850s and
early 1860s.
The famous canvas in the Musee Bonnat
was delivered by Degas to his sitter long after
their relations had become distant and their
friendship had dissolved through a mutual
lack of understanding. Bonnat subsequently
mentioned only this one portrait painted by
the friend he had known in Rome. The
painting in the exhibition is very probably
an unfinished sketch for it, larger in size and
of a different character. Here Bonnat is not
the elegant young bourgeois of the Bayonne
picture, in whom Degas saw the air of a
"Venetian ambassador,"6 but an artist at
work. The emaciated face with jet-black
beard and hair and the dark eyes that disap-
pear in their sockets give him an arresting
expression, dramatic and troubled (unusual
for Degas, who is normally more staid: one
is reminded of the slightly earlier self-portraits
by Fantin-Latour) — an expression whose
tormented gaze belies the later image of the
formal, corpulent Bonnat, official portrait
painter to the notables of the Third Republic.
1. Waldemar George, "La collection Viau," L' Amour
de VArt, 1925, pp. 362-68.
2. Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris, files for 193 1
Paris, Orangerie.
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 150.
4. Lemoisne 1912, p. 27.
5. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ52235.
6. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 111.
provenance: Presumably atelier Degas (photographed
by Durand-Ruel, probably during the inventory of
the studio). Dr. Georges Viau, Paris. Private collec-
tion, Paris.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 29; 1932,
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Cent ans de peinture fian-
farsc, no. 57.
selected references: Waldemar George, "La collec-
tion Viau," V Amour de VArty 1925, pp. 362-68, repr.
(as "Portrait de Leon Bonnat"); Lemoisne [1946-49],
II, no. 150 (as "Portrait d'artiste"); Minervino 1974,
no. 236; 1984-85 Rome, p. 32, repr. (as "Portrait de
Bonnat").
103
Fig. 54. Therese De Gas (L109),
1863. Oil on canvas, 35 X 263/s in.
(89 X 67 cm). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Fig. 55. Anonymous, Edgar Degas,
c. 1860-65. Photograph printed
from a glass negative in the Biblio-
theque Nationale, Paris
44.
Self Portrait: Degas Lifting His Hat
c. 1863
Oil on canvas
363/8 X 26V8 in. (92. 5 X 66. 5 cm)
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2307)
Lemoisne 105
Like the other self-portraits, this painting
offers the historian few footholds — it is ob-
viously unfinished, bears no date, and is ac-
companied by no preparatory sketches. The
picture displays no accessories that might
enable us to identify its location; only the
subject's apparent age permits us to place
the picture in the early 1860s, when the
painter was approaching thirty. Such, at
least, is the view of all those who cautiously
bracket this work somewhere between 1862
and 1865. The date 1863 is proposed here, a
year of intense activity (Rene De Gas is our
source1) in which the artist also painted a
portrait of Therese De Gas (fig. 54). The
latter can be compared with the Lisbon pic-
ture: it is the same size, the figure is posi-
tioned in the same way, there is the same
smooth and, in places, very thin paint, and
there is even the same simplified background of
verticals in the tradition of sixteenth-century
portraits.
Once again, Degas does not represent him-
self as the painter at work, but as a young
gentleman, neither dandy nor sloven, but
simply wearing with casual elegance the cos-
tume and attributes (the gloves, the hat) of
his station in life. The young artist's greeting
to his public has been seen as reminiscent of
the more supercilious attitude of Courbet
meeting Bruyas on the Montpellier road;2
everything in this canvas, however, removes
us from Courbet — its composition, its han-
dling, even the demeanor of the painter here,
which is at once unaffected and well man-
nered, indeed rather affable, with none of
Degas's already legendary brusqueness.3
Degas never portrayed himself in an inte-
rior; here, as in the self-portrait of 1855 (cat.
no. 1), the background is neutral, even
though there is on the right a hint of sky
104
and possibly a landscape. In contrast to the
portrait of Tissot (cat. no. 75), there is no
studio, but in conformity with a tradition
that was reviving, there is an inexplicable
break in what must be a wall, comparable to
backgrounds in certain portraits by Titian,
particularly that of Paul III, which Degas
had copied in Naples several years earlier.4
Back in Paris in 1859, Degas had asked him-
self, "How does one do an epic portrait of
Musset?" and apparently found no solution,
since he limited himself to just a rough
sketch in a notebook.5 In this self-portrait
(which has sometimes been seen, incorrectly,
as but an enlarged, canvas-size, photogra-
phic "visiting card'*; see fig. 55), Degas,
true to the lessons of the old masters and
using (one is tempted to say, "exalting") all
the most prosaic items of dress available —
frock coat and black tie, white shirt, top hat,
buff-colored gloves (again, a discreet hom-
age to Titian) — in short, all the trappings of
the bourgeois uniform (as they will also be
worn in his other portraits of painters: Manet,
Tissot, Moreau) — succeeded in creating an
"epic portrait" of himself, finding at last, to
use his own term, "a composition that
paints our time."6
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 41 n. 41.
2. Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, Musee Fabre,
Montpellier.
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 73.
4. Reff 1985, Notebook 4 (BN, Carnet 15, p. 20).
5. Reff 1985, Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 6).
6. Ibid.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Jeanne Fevre, the artist's
niece, Nice. Andre Weil, Paris; bought by Calouste
Gulbenkian, Paris and Oeiras (Portugal), 1937; de-
posited with the National Gallery, London, with part
of the Gulbenkian collection, 1937-45; Calouste Gul-
benkian Foundation, Lisbon, 1956 (museum opened
2 October 1969).
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 15; 193 1 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 27; 1936, London, Burlington Fine Art
Club, 1-3 1 October, French Art of the XlXth Century;
1937-50, London, National Gallery, Pictures from the
Gulbenkian Collection Lent to the National Gallery, hors
catalogue; 1950, Washington, D.C., National Gal-
lery of Art, European Paintings from the Gulbenkian
Collection, no. 8, repr.; i960, Paris, Tableaux de la
Collection Gulbenkian; 1961-63, Lisbon, Museu Na-
cional de Arte Antiga, Pinturas da colecqao da Fundacao
Calouste Gulbenkian, no. 16; 1964, Porto, Museu Na-
tional Soares dos Reis, Colecqao Calouste Gulbenkian:
Artes plasticas francesas de Watteau a Renoir, no. 34,
pi. 35; 1965, Oeiras, Palacio Pombal, Fundacao Ca-
louste Gulbenkian: Obras de arte da Colecqao Calouste
Gulbenkian, no. 268.
selected references: Guerin 1931, n.p., repr.; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 105; Boggs 1962, p. 20,
pi. 33; Works of Art in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collec-
tion, Lisbon: Oeiras, 1966, no. 268; Museu Calouste
Gulbenkian: Arte europeia, Lisbon, 1969, no. 837; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 151; Museu Calouste Gulbenkian,
Lisbon, September 1975, no. 959; Calouste Gulbenk-
ian Museum Catalogue, Lisbon, 1982, p. 150, no. 959,
fig. 959; Rona Goffen, The Calouste Gulbenkian Mu-
seum, New York: Shorewood Fine Art, 1982, p. 136,
repr. (color) p. 137.
45-
Scene of War in the Middle Ages,
erroneously called The
Misfortunes of the City of Orleans
c. 1863-65
Essence on several pieces of paper joined and
mounted on canvas
3i7/8X 577/8 in. (81 X 147 cm)
Signed lower right: Ed. De Gas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2208)
Lemoisne 124
The brief description of this painting given
in the 1947 Jeu de Paume catalogue ends in a
terse sentence that sums up the almost uni-
versally held view of it: "The work was
the artist's last attempt at history paint-
ing."1 Shortly after it was acquired by the
Musee du Luxembourg, Paul Jamot set the
tone when he praised, as he did also with
Semiramis (cat. no. 29), only the preparatory
drawings, calling them "infinitely superior
to the paintings for which they were the
studies."2 He pointed out, however, the sig-
nificant part played by this unusual work in
the discovery, at the time of the atelier sales
held after the artist's death, of another De-
gas, very different from the Degas who was
until then known only as a "painter of danc-
ers." Jamot termed the history paintings
"very strange documents . . . completely un-
anticipated by those who had Degas pegged
as a sort of congenital Realist," and saw
them as evidence "not only of a long, dili-
gent period of classical and, one might say,
academic training, but also of the spontane-
ous awakening of a thoroughly bold and in-
dividual style."3 And so this "document"
met the fate of the other history paintings,
receiving some guarded interest, due pri-
marily to the admirable preliminary draw-
ings but heightened by the fact that it had
been included in the Salon of 1865 and, above
all, by the strangeness of its subject matter.
Degas himself does not seem to have been
as fond of this painting as of Semiramis or
Young Spartans (cat. no. 40). It was not shown
in any subsequent exhibition, nor were the
preliminary drawings included in the album
of reproductions of twenty drawings by De-
gas published by Manzi about 1897. 4 In-
stead, the work remained buried in his studio;
there is no indication of its having been no-
ticed by anyone, apart from a mention by
the journalist and art critic Emile Durand-
Greville in 1925 that he had seen preliminary
sketches for the "Horrors of War" in Degas 's
studio a few days before 16 January 1881.5
The work's original title, "Scene of War in
the Middle Ages," was used for the 1865
Salon but was not accompanied by any ref-
erence or quotation that might point to a lit-
erary source for the theme of this "pastel"
(as it was described). That title was then
eclipsed for decades by another, "The Mis-
fortunes of the City of Orleans," used at the
brief exhibition that opened at the Petit Pa-
lais on 1 May 19 18; it appeared again in the
catalogue for the atelier sale. No one really
knows how the painting came by this title,
but Helene Adhemar, to whom we owe an
interesting analysis of this difficult work,
has proposed the most ingenious explana-
tion.6 She considers the painting to be an al-
legory of the cruelty of the Northern soldiers
toward the women of New Orleans after
that city's capture by Union forces on 1 May
1862, and she traces its erroneous title to a
misreading. Some list or document must
have read: "Les malheurs de la Nile Or-
leans" (The Misfortunes of New Orleans),
and the abbreviation of "nouvelle" (new),
sometimes used by Degas, must have been
read as "ville" (city). This is a plausible hy-
pothesis and a tempting one, since it fully
supports Adhemar's interpretation of the
work. It should be noted, however, that in
the inventory made after the artist's death,
the painting is listed as "Archers and Young
Girls (Scene from the Hundred Years'
War)"7 — this being, in effect, an intermedi-
ate title between that of the Salon and that
of the atelier sale.
This work clearly is an allegory, in the
tradition of enigmatic Renaissance paintings,
and it is unfair to label it a history painting.
In fact, two eminent experts on the four-
teenth century, Philippe Contamine and
Francpise Autrand, have confirmed that this
strange scene does not depict a precise his-
torical event. The medieval history of Or-
leans (if it 15 Orleans) does not contain any
episodes of cruelty directed so specifically
against women. Degas apparently did not
do any special research, as he did for Semir-
amis, and was unconcerned about the many
anachronisms in the picture. While the men-
at-arms are in costume (hoods, armor) that
can be dated about 1470, they are riding stir-
rupless horses whose harnesses are barely
sketched in, and are using fanciful bows (the
bows of that time actually measured about
six feet, or nearly two meters, and could
not possibly have been used by men on
horseback) to shoot their arrows at naked
women in an indistinct, ravaged country
setting with a vaguely Gothic church.
Helene Adhemar seems correct in linking
this allegorical painting to contemporary
events in New Orleans, events of which De-
gas was certainly aware. On 1 May 1862,
the capital of Louisiana, where his entire
maternal family resided, was captured by
Northern soldiers, who treated the women
of the city with indisputable cruelty. About
105
45
a year later, on 1 8 June 1863, Odile Musson,
the wife of Degas's maternal uncle Michel
Musson, left New Orleans for France to-
gether with her daughters Estelle (wid-
owed in the Civil War, mother of a baby)
and Desiree.8 On the advice of Odile's doc-
tor, they spent the better part of their eigh-
teen-month stay at Bourg-en-Bresse, but
Degas, who was extremely fond of them,
saw them often, first in Paris and then at
Bourg-en-Bresse, where he visited them
early in 1864. He was undoubtedly struck
by their accounts of "atrocities," and these
accounts, allegorized and transposed to the
time of notorious barbarism that the Middle
Ages represented to the nineteenth century,
were the inspiration for the Scene of War. It
should be noted, finally, that it was about
this period that Degas could have acquired
the 1863 edition of Goya's Disasters of War,
which is still in the possession of the painter's
family. There he would have found, though
in a completely different style, striking im-
ages of the sufferings of war in every age —
acts of cruelty, rape, and torture.
Along with the painting in the Musee
d'Orsay, which was purchased in 19 18,
came the complete lot of pencil studies, and
like the drawings for Semiramis, they form
an invaluable record. Most are studies of
single figures in poses generally used for the
final work. In addition there are two quick
sketches of armor (RF15498, RF15499) and,
most important, a drawing (cat. no. 46) that
provides the only indication we have of an
earlier state of the composition.
Unlike the case with The Daughter of Jeph-
thah (cat. no. 26) or Semiramis (cat. no. 29),
no series of compositional studies has sur-
vived that would enable us to retrace the
successive transformations of this work with
any certainty. Even Degas's notebooks do
not contain any sketches or any mention of
this work. Two explanations may be ad-
vanced: first, Degas did not in this instance
conduct any archaeological investigations, as
he did for the other works; and second, he
does not seem to have experienced the end-
less vacillations that characterized the devel-
opment of the history paintings. This time,
the studies and the painting cohere perfectly,
indicating that there was little indecision and
that the work was probably executed quickly.
The rather strange pencil study (cat. no. 46)
already shows, despite some notable vari-
ations, the general outlines of the composi-
tion: a group of naked women on the left,
two horsemen on the right, fires burning
here and there in the background, and,
perched on a small hill off in the distance, a
town oddly like Exmes, in Orne, which
Degas had sketched in a notebook during a
stay at the Valpincons.9 The abject women,
looking more tired than terrified, plead in
Fig. 56. Nude Woman Holding a Bow, study for
Scene of War in the Middle Ages, c. 1863-65.
Pencil, 9 X 14 in. (22.8 X 35.6 cm). Cabinet des
Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris
(RF15522)
Fig. 57. Puvis de Chavannes, Bellum, 1861.
Oil on canvas, i4i3/4 X 215 in. (360 X 545 cm).
Musee de Picardie, Amiens
106
vain with the indifferent men, who are al-
ready continuing on their way; this group of
men, drawn on a sheet that was subsequently
glued on the drawing, replaces a previous
arrangement that cannot be seen.
It is a curious drawing, at once precise, al-
most meticulous (as in the gnarled tree at the
center of the composition), and yet stiff —
some might say awkward — and deliberately
primitive. In any case, it is utterly unlike
the more fluid and boldly drawn watercolor
sketches for Semiramis, and instead shows a
determined rigidity that has no equivalent
anywhere else in Degas's work. Two hypoth-
eses have been proposed. The first is the
rather tenuous suggestion that the sketch is
a very early and as yet clumsy study (which
would have to date back to before Degas's
sojourn in Italy), reworked to create the
Scene of War as we know it. The other possi-
bility is that it was Degas's original inten-
tion to imitate the occasionally harsh drawing
style of the "adorable fresco painters" (Au-
guste De Gas's phrase)10 of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries — an intention which,
though blunted in the end, did. not interfere
with the references to early painting. These
women were to change and somehow come
to life. The composition, which in the study
is strangely calm despite the horror, was to
gain in tension and violence. Some of the
sketches remain incomprehensible: the nude
woman shooting an arrow (fig. 56), clearly
redone as the hooded man, oddly weakens
the impression of male barbarism evoked by
the final painting. She may in fact have been
taken directly from Semiramis, for which
some sketches show the figure of a woman
with a bow, which in turn comes from The
Death of Procris, an anonymous fifteenth-
century Florentine work in the Campana
Collection at the Musee du Petit Palais in
Avignon.11 The horsemen in armor may
have had an even more remote origin in two
unexplained sketches in a notebook used in
1 8 59-60. 12
After making the compositional study,
Degas worked on each figure separately (see
cat. nos. 46-57). Some were not included in
the final composition, such as the dazed
woman crouching at the foot of the tree —
though he did prepare a finished and squared
drawing of her (cat. no. 50) — or the woman
standing in the center foreground, who was
painted out only at the last minute and is
still detectable in the Orsay painting, just to
the left of the horsemen. These drawings,
which together with the studies for Semir-
amis rank among Degas's finest, are remark-
ably alike, which suggests that Degas drew
them in one campaign. It is quite possible
that Scene of War in the Middle Ages was
painted, or begun, about 1863, not to be ex-
hibited at the Salon until 1865.
The aberrant cruelty of the subject — sol-
diers shooting arrows but inflicting no ap-
parent wounds — serves as a pretext for a
somewhat clinical observation of the female
figure: the women's bodies writhe, their
hair tumbles down, their genitals show
through the rents in their clothing; there are
inanimate women, women fleeing, women
crawling on the ground, women riveted to a
tree as if crucified. There are definitely some
Renaissance references, as others have pointed
out (the woman lying under the horse's
hooves is from Maineri, the group of wailing
women at the left suggests the Andrea del
Sarto at the Annunziata in Florence), but as
in The Daughter of Jephthah and Semiramis,
the references are so submerged and so care-
fully integrated that their direct source is
forgotten; one is struck rather by how amaz-
ingly the figures here foreshadow all the fe-
male nudes yet to come. The women in this
picture, who seem to be posing, like studio
models strewn about a desolate countryside,
strike the same immodest attitudes as the
women Degas would later depict in the act
of bathing, drying themselves, combing
their hair, or sleeping — in this picture re-
vealing themselves because they have been
hunted down, raped, or killed, and in the
later pictures because they are performing
their most intimate ablutions unobserved.
The complete silence with which this
work was greeted at the Salon of 1865 can
be explained largely in terms of its strange
subject matter (an extreme instance of vio-
lence between the sexes, an eruption of the
absurd), the difficulty of interpreting the al-
legory, and the very technique used by De-
gas for this essence painting, which has, to
borrow a phrase from Moreau, "the matte
tones and the gentleness of a fresco."13
Puvis de Chavannes supposedly compli-
mented Degas on it (according to Rewald,
who cites no source14); a few years earlier,
Puvis himself, in his Bellum (fig. 57), had
produced one of the few works that can be
compared with this painting. A compliment
from Puvis would not have been surprising,
because only he (though probably also Mo-
reau, for other reasons) could have truly ap-
preciated this work, praised the allegory
that distinguishes it from ordinary history
painting, admired its muted hues, envied its
flawless draftsmanship, and perceived finally
that this was no mere "essay" but in fact a
masterpiece, isolated in its time and, even
today, misunderstood.
1. Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1947, no. 53,
p. 32.
2. Jamot 1924, p. 27.
3. Ibid., p. 28.
4. Vingt dessins [1897].
5. Entretiens de J. J, Henner: notes prises par Emile
Durand-Greville, Paris: A. Lemerre, 1925, p. 103.
6. Helene Adhemar, "Edgar Degas et 'La scene de
guerre au moyen age/" Gazette des Beaux- Arts,
LXX, November 1967, pp. 295-98.
7. Durand-Ruel archives, Paris, no. 204.
8. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 72-74.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 173).
10. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Edgar, 25 No-
vember 1858, private collection; cited in Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, p. 31.
11. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 231).
12. Reff 1985, Notebook 14 (BN, Carnet 12, pp. 62,
61, 60).
13. Unpublished letter, Moreau to his parents, [5
February 1858], Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.
14. Rewald 1973, p. 122.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 13 [as
"Les malheurs de la ville d'Orleans"]); bought at that
sale by the Musee du Luxembourg, for Fr 60,000.
exhibitions: 1865, Paris, 1 May-2oJune, Salon,
no. 2406 (as "Scene de guerre au moyen age, pastel");
19 1 8 Paris, no. 10 (as "Les malheurs de la ville d* Or-
leans"); 1924 Paris, no. 17; 1933-34, lent to the Ber-
lin, Cologne, and Frankfurt museums in exchange
for Renoir paintings; 1967-68 Paris, Jeu de Paume;
1969 Paris, no. 12.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, I, repr, p. 15,
II, p. 41; Leonce Benedite, he Musee du Luxembourg,
Paris, 1924, no. 161, repr. p. 62; Jamot 1924, pp. 11,
23-24, 27, 29; Walker 1933, p. 180, fig. 15; Ricardo
Perez, "La femme blessee dans l'oeuvre de Degas,"
Aesculape, March 1935, pp. 88-90; Lemoisne [1946-
49], II, no. 124; Pierre Cabanne, "Degas et 'Les mal-
heurs de la ville d'Orleans,'" Gazette des Beaux- Arts,
May-June 1962, pp. 363-66, repr.; Helene Adhe-
mar, "Edgar Degas et 'La' scene de guerre au moyen
age,' " Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXX, November 1967,
pp. 295-98, repr.; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, "Un
ricorso ferrarese di Degas," Bollettino Annuale Musei
Ferraresi, 197 1, pp. 23-29; Minervino 1974, no. 107;
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III, p. 195,
repr.
107
Compositional study for Scene
of War in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil and gray wash on two pieces of pale buff
wove paper joined, the whole framed with a
pencil outline
10V2X i55/s in. (26.6 X 39.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15534)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 45
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no num-
ber, sold under no. 13 [sketches and studies]); bought
by the Musee du Luxembourg.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 116.
47-
Nude Woman Lying on Her Back,
study for Scene of War in the
Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil on pale buff wove paper
10V2 X i37/s in. (26. 5X35.1 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15519)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 122.
Nude Woman, study for Scene
of War in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
i45/s X 73/4 in. (37. 3 X 19.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12261)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 117.
49.
Two Nude Women Standing, study
for Scene of War in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
12% X 77/8 in. (3 1 X 19. 8 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15505)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 120.
50.
Nude Woman Seated, study for
Scene of War in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil with black crayon on pale buff wove
paper, squared for transfer
12V4 X io7/s in. (3 1. 1 X 27.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12265)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1959-60 Rome, no, 180; 1964 Paris,
no. 68; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 39, repr.; 1969 Paris,
no. 119; 1977, Paris, Musee du Louvre, 21 June-26
September, Le corps et son image: anatomies, academies,
no number.
selected references: Maurice and Arlette Serullaz,
L'ottocento fiancese, Milan: Fabbri, 1970, pp. 91-92,
repr. p. 73; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, "Un ricorso
ferrarese di Degas," Bollettino Annuale Musei Ferraresi,
1971, pp. 26-27, 35. repr.
SI-
Nude Woman Lying on Her
Stomach, study for Scene of War
in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
87/sXi4in. (22.6 X 35.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12267)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no, 46.
exhibitions: 1947, Strasbourg/Besancon/Nancy, Les
origines de la peinture contemporaine: de Manet a Bonnard,
no number; 1969 Paris, no. 133; 1980, Montauban,
Musee Ingres, 28 June-7 September, Ingres et sa po~
sterite jusqu'a Matisse et Picasso, no. 188.
108
109
52.
Nude Woman Lying on Her Back,
study for Scene of War in the
Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
9x14k (22.8X35.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
On the verso, a study of the same figure,
reversed
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12833)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 45
54.
Nude Woman Lying on Her Back,
study for Scene of War in the
Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
87/s X 14 in. (22.6 X 35.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12271)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 45
5^
Standing Nude Woman,
study for Scene of War in the
Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Black crayon and pencil, with a touch of water-
color, on pale buff wove paper, with strip of
paper added at bottom.
15V2 X 87/s in. (39.3 X 22.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15517)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1949, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts,
November-December/ 1950, Paris, Orangerie, Feb-
ruary-March, Le dessin frangais de Fouquet d Cezanne,
no. 95, repr.; 1955-56 Chicago, no. 150; 1958, Ham-
burger Kunsthalle, 1 February-16 March /Cologne,
Wallraff-Richartz Museum, 22 March- 5 May /Stutt-
gart, Wurttembergischen Kunstverein, 10 May-7 June,
Franzdsische Zeichnungen, von den Anfdngen bis zum
Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, no. 178; 1967, Copenhagen,
Statens Museum for Kunst, 2 June-10 September,
Hommage d Vart fiancais, no. 38; 1969 Paris, no. 124.
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1948, Kunstmuseum Bern, 11 March-
30 April, Dessins fiancais du Musee du Louvre, no. 112;
1969 Paris, no. 128; 1979 Bayonne, no. 22, repr.
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 84a; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 68, repr.; 1952-53 Washington, D.C., no. 153,
pi. 42; 1962, Paris, Musee du Louvre, March-May,
Premiere exposition des plus beaux dessins du Louvre et de
quelques pieces celebres des collections de Paris, no. 126,
repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 139; 1987 Manchester, no. 25,
repr.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, I, repr. after
p. 14; Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 13; Jamot 1924, pi. 8b;
Maurice Serullaz, Dessins du Louvre: ecole fianqaise,
Paris: Flammarion, 1968, no. 91.
53-
Seminude Woman Lying on Her
Back, study for Scene of War
in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
9 x14 m. (22.8 X 35.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
On the verso, a study of the same figure,
reversed
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12834)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 45
55.
Standing Nude Woman,
study for Scene of War in the
Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil heightened with white
14X9 in. (35.6X22.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF15516)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 45
57.
Nude Woman Lying on Her
Stomach, study for Scene of War
in the Middle Ages
c. 1863-65
Pencil
9x14 m. (22.8 X 35.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
On the verso, a summary sketch of a head, in
pencil
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF12274)
Exhibited in Ottawa
See cat. no. 45
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1936-37, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-
Arts, December 1936-February 1937, Les plus beaux
dessins fiancais du Musee du Louvre, no. 99, repr.; 1937
Paris, Palais National, no. 637, repr.; 1939-40, Buenos
Aires, no. 40; 1939, Belgrade, Prince Paul Museum,
La peinture fianqaise au XIXe siecle, no. 125; 1962,
Mexico City, University of Mexico, October-No-
vember, 100 anos de dibujo fiances 1850-1950, no. 21,
repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 126; 1976-77, Vienna, Albertina,
19 November 1976-25 January 1977, Von Ingres bis
Cezanne, no. 49, repr.
selected references: Leymarie 1947, no. 11, pi. XI.
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1964, Bordeaux, Musee des Beaux-
Arts, 22 May-20 September, La femme et Vartiste de
Bellini a Picasso, no. 113; 1969 Paris, no. 138; 1977,
Paris, Musee du Louvre, 21 June-26 September, Le
corps et son image: anatomies, academies, no number;
1982, Paris, Musee Hebert, 19 May-4 October, Mu-
siciennes du silence, no number.
provenance: See cat. no. 46.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 146; 1979 Bayonne,
no. 21, repr.
IIO
Ill
£8-
Self-Portrait with Evariste de
Valernes
c. 1865
Oil on canvas
455/sx35in. (116X89 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF3586)
Lemoisne 116
Self-Portrait with Evariste de Valernes is the
last of Degas's self-portraits. Whereas in the
1 8 50s he frequently depicted himself alone,
here he shows himself in the company of
another artist, a painter like himself, who
was about twenty years his senior (Valernes
was born in 18 16) and whom he probably
met about 1855 at tne Louvre, where they
both used to copy the old masters.1
Degas's choice of Valernes — it resulted in
the other artist's being immortalized — is
hard to understand. Given what we know
of his friendships and affinities at the time,
he might have been expected to show him-
self in the company of Manet, or Tissot, or
Stevens, rather than the obscure Valernes,
who in spite of his sincere and touching ef-
forts never achieved the glory to which he
aspired. A descendant of a noble family
originally from the Vaucluse, Valernes was a
struggling painter with no family fortune —
in 1863, he was "nearly poverty-stricken,"
noted one of his patrons, the Marquis de
Castelbajac.2 He eked out a living by making
copies commissioned by some ministry.3
Fig. 58. X-radiograph of Degas and Valernes
(cat. no. 58)
His situation was especially distressing be-
cause he did have true artistic ambitions.
Some twenty years later, having retired to
Carpentras, resigned though not bitter, he
looked back on his hopes and efforts of the
past with pangs of regret, and attached this
note to the back of another portrait Degas
had painted of him in 1868 (L177, Musee
d'Orsay, Paris): "My portrait, a study from
life, painted by my famous and intimate
friend Degas in Paris at his studio on rue de
Laval, in 1868, at the time I was on the
verge of success and close to becoming
famous."
That "intimacy" was probably the pri-
mary reason for this double portrait. Degas,
whose friends often shared his background
rather than his talents, must have enjoyed
the company of this indifferent artist but
affable gentleman who shared his passion
for Delacroix, an artist the two men still ad-
mired and discussed in 1890. Valernes was
also an admirer of Duranty, and had been
one since the novelist's debut (he once drew
a pencil portrait of him); when La nouvelle
peinture appeared, he wrote the author a
long letter expressing his admiration and
support.4
The X-radiograph of this work (fig. 58)
shows that originally Degas too was wear-
ing a top hat, his frock coat was open to re-
veal more of his white shirt, and he had not
raised his hand to his chin. The last of these
changes can be traced through a preliminary
drawing (cat. no. 59). In the accuracy and
deliberate rigidity with which the features
are drawn, it is very similar to a study De-
gas made about the same time for Woman
Leaning near a Vase of Flowers (cat. no. 60),
which suggests a slightly later date than that
given by most writers: it must be about
1865. The familiar gesture, which character-
ized Degas from then on, indicated, accord-
ing to Georges Riviere, who knew him later,
reflection or some hesitation while thinking.5
Seated beside Valernes, who appears to be
either indifferent or already sure of his
achievement, the young artist is obviously
perplexed. Some years later, in the famous
letter he sent to Valernes in Carpentras on
16 October 1890, Degas harked back to his
state of mind at that time, depicting himself,
in contrast to Valernes's constancy ("You
have always been the same man, my old
friend. . . . "), as vacillating, hesitant, and
unintentionally brusque and hurtful: "I felt
myself so badly formed, so badly equipped,
so weak, whereas it seemed to me that my
calculations on art were so right. I brooded
against the whole world and against myself."6
In adopting the formula of the double
portrait, Degas placed himself in a Renais-
sance tradition. This particular work is
more reminiscent of Raphael's Raphael with
a Friend (fig. 59) than of the portrait in the
Louvre attributed at that time to Gentile
Bellini and said to depict Giovanni and Gentile
Bellini, which he copied (L59, private collec-
tion). But Degas was using an old format to
create a new image, substituting, in place of
the usual neutral background, a large stu-
dio window looking out onto a vast hiero-
glyphic city — a magnificent arrangement of
grays, blacks, blues, and pinks, against
which domes and columns emerge.
Abandoning the traditional timeless ap-
parel (such as Ingres wears in his self-por-
trait) and rejecting the garb of the artist,
Degas dressed his figures, as in most of his
portraits of himself (see cat. nos. 1, 12) and
of his painter friends a little later (see cat.
nos. 72, 75), in the completely black bour-
geois suit, without any show of excessive
severity or elegance. This is Degas's most
classical, most deliberate composition since
the 1855 self-portrait (cat. no. 1): the two
artists are enclosed within a circle which,
with Valernes's heart at its center, coincides
with the edges of the long canvas on the left
and the right, and is enclosed by Valernes's
thigh below and Degas's head and his friend's
hat above. More than any possible influence
of the daguerreotype, what we see in this
work is the reaffirmation of a principle that
Degas continued to proclaim throughout his
life: modern painting proceeds from study
of the old masters.
1 . Valernes's address is written in a notebook used by
Degas during that period; Reff 1985, Notebook 3
(BN, Carnet 10, p. 3).
2. Archives Nationales, Paris, F21i86.
3. In 1 861, he was quick to apply for a commission
to do a full-length portrait of Napoleon III, but he
seems not to have won the commission in spite of
the aristocratic support he enjoyed; Archives Na-
tionales, Paris, F21i86.
Fig. 59. Raphael, Raphael with a Friend, c. 15 19.
Oil on canvas, 39 X 325/s in. (99 X 83 cm).
Musee du Louvre, Paris
112
H3
4. Crouzet 1964, pp. 270-71, 338.
5. Riviere 1935, p. 108.
6. Lettres Degas 1945, CLVII, pp. 178-79; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 170, p. 171.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Gabriel Fevre, the art-
ist's nephew, Nice, 1918-3 1; his gift to the Louvre
1931.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 3 (as "Degas et son ami
Fleury," c. i860); 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 40, pi.
V; 1932, Munich, June; 1939, San Francisco, Golden
Gate International Exposition, 18 February-2 De-
cember, Masterworks of Five Centuries, no. 146, repr.;
195 1, Rennes, Musee des Beaux- Arts, June, Origines
de Vart contemporain, no. 21; 1957 Paris, no. 82; 1964-
65 Munich, no. 78, repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 11; 1978,
Paris, Palais de Tokyo, 8 March-9 October, Autopor-
traits de peintres des.XVe-XIXe siecles, no. 57; 1980,
Montauban, Musee Ingres, 28 June-7 September,
Ingres et sa posterite jusqu'd Matisse et Picasso, no. 186;
1982, Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, 17
April-13 June, L'angilus de Millet: tendances du rea-
lisme en France 1848-1870, no. 22, repr. (color); 1983,
Paris, Grand Palais, 15 November 1983-13 February
1984, Hommage a Raphael: Raphael et Vart fiancais,
no. 65, pi. 144; 1984-85 Rome, no. 80, repr. (color).
selected references: Jean GuifFrey, "Peintures et
dessins de Degas," Bulletin des Musees de France,
March 193 1, no. 3, p. 43; Pauljamot, "Une salle
Degas au Musee du Louvre," L' Amour de VArt, 193 1,
pp. 185-89; Guerin 193 1, n.p.; Lemoisne [1946-49],
II, no. 116; Fevre 1949, pp. 77-78, repr.; Cabanne
!957. PP- 104-05, repr.; Paris, Louvre, Impression-
nistes, 1958, no. 62; Boggs 1962, pp. 18-19, pi- 34;
De Valemes et Degas (exhibition catalogue), Musee de
Carpentras, 1963, n.p.; Bulletin du Laboratoire des
Musees de France, 1966, pp. 26-27 (repr. and X-radi-
ograph); Minervino 1974, no. 161; Koshkin-'Yburitzin
1976, p. 38; Sophie Monneret, L'impressionnisme et
son epoque, Paris, 1978-81, III, p. 13; Eunice Lipton,
"Deciphering a Friendship: Edgar Degas and Eva-
riste de Valemes,*' Arts Magazine, LVI, June 198 1,
pp. 128-32, fig. 1; Theodore RerT, "Degas and Val-
emes in 1872," Arts Magazine, LVI, September 198 1,
pp. 126-27; McMullen 1984, pp. 120-22, repr.; Paris,
Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III, p. 197, repr.
59.
Self-Portrait, study for
Self Portrait with Evariste
de Valemes
c. 1865
Pencil on tracing paper, laid down on
bristol board
i43/s X 95/s in. (36. 5 X 24. 5 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left; estate stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF24232)
Exhibited in Paris
See cat. no. 58
provenance: Atelier Degas; Jeanne Fevre, the artist's
niece, Nice (Fevre sale, Galerie Charpentier, Paris,
12 June 1934, no. 42, repr.); bought at that sale by
the Societe des Amis du Louvre, for Fr 7,918.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 113.
selected references: Jean Vergnet-Ruiz, "Un por-
trait au crayon de Degas," Bulletin des Musees de
France, June 1934, no. 6, p. 108.
60.
Woman Leaning near a Vase of
Flowers (Mme Paul Valpingon?),
erroneously called Woman with
Chrysanthemums
1865
Oil on canvas
29 X 16V2 in. (73.7 X 92.7 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: 186 5 /Degas
[over earlier: Degas/ 1865]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.128)
Lemoisne 125
It was Paul Lafond who first put forward
the often repeated claim that the woman in
this painting is Mme Hertel1 — the same
Mme Hertel whose daughter Helene be-
came Contessa Falzacappa (see cat. no. 62).
This identification can no longer be main-
tained. A drawing by Degas in the Louvre
(RF29294) inscribed "Mad. Hertel" shows
the regular, commonplace features of the
mother of the Roman countess, quite differ-
ent from the more pronounced features (with
that strangeness that so pleased Degas) of
the subject of the so-called "Woman with
Chrysanthemums," who is quite clearly
someone else.
The picture is of a country scene. The
window opens on a mass of greenery, and
the flowers gathered in an enormous bouquet
are freshly cut garden flowers — not chry-
santhemums, as is generally thought, but a
mixture of white, pink, and blue asters,
black and yellow stock, centaurea, gaillardia,
and dahlias: end-of-summer flowers which,
in all well-kept grounds, normally grew in
the cut-flower beds next to the vegetable
garden. Casually dressed, her protective
gloves doffed and lying on the table, a black
scarf wrapped around her neck, the sitter —
or let us say, rather, the mistress of the
house — has gone out in the morning to
gather flowers for her bouquet; she has put
them in water and, tired now, stops for a
moment to rest. It is out of that final moment
in a bourgeois ritual that Degas produced
this magnificent portrait.
ft
The time of year (August to September),
the rural setting, and the woman's age all
point to the possibility that she is a member
of the Valpincpn family. Starting in the early
1860s, Degas often stayed at their Menil-
Hubert property, and it clearly became one
of his favorite places. Though we do not
know how he spent the summer of 1865, it
is not unreasonable to suppose that he went
there and found an opportunity to carry out
a long-delayed project he had been consider-
ing since the early 1860s — a portrait of
"Paul's wife."2 He had made a drawing of
her with her husband in 186 1 (fig. 84).
Degas's description of her several years later
in At the Races in the Countryside (cat. no. 95)
is unfortunately too small to provide any
supporting evidence. The only corrobora-
tion of our hypothesis comes from a small
drawing probably removed from a notebook
that Degas used at Menil-Hubert in 1862.
(The present location of any of these draw-
ings is not known; all the sheets are the
same size and are inscribed with the names
of the people represented and "Menil-Hubert/
1 862 /Degas.") Among some other carica-
tured figures drawn in pencil, occasionally
heightened with red chalk, there appears the
distinctive face of "Mme Paul" (fig. 60),
with her lively dark eyes open wide, her
large, flat face, and her wide mouth, which
could be those of our hitherto unidentified
sitter.
The other problem raised by this canvas is
how it was composed. It is generally thought
that Degas first painted the vase of flowers,
and that he added the off-center figure of
the young woman much later. The partially
erased date in the lower left corner of the
canvas — usually read as "1858," or some-
times "1868" — situated next to the very leg-
ible "1865" would appear to corroborate this
supposition. However, the hypothesis of an
original still life hardly seems plausible. Sty-
listically, this bouquet cannot have been
painted during the artist's stay in Italy, and
these flowers do not grow in the south but
only in a more moderate climate. If this
bouquet were to be set alone on this table, it
Fig. 60. Mme Paul Valpinqon, c. 1862. Pencil.
From an unpublished notebook. Location
unknown
115
Fig. 61. Gustave Courbet, The Trellis, 1862. Oil
on canvas, 43V4X 53V4 in. (109.8 X 135.2 cm).
The Toledo Museum of Art
would be the only example in Degas's
oeuvre of a bouquet in an interior. Finally, it
appears, according to a recent X-radiograph,
that the reading of "1858" is incorrect and
that this date too should be read as "1865."
The fine drawing of the figure alone (cat.
no. 61), in the position she would occupy in
the canvas, does not prove that she was a
later addition — any more than the drawing
for Degas's self-portrait means that the
painter added himself to a picture in which
Valernes originally appeared alone (see cat.
no. 58). The portrait differs profoundly
from two others with which it has often
been compared: Courbet's The Trellis
(fig. 61) and Millet's Bouquet of Daisies
(fig. 62), both of which are true genre scenes.
The "familiar and typical"3 pose of the sitter
is reinforced by her off-center position, but
she is by no means peripheral. Placing her at
the edge of the painting, Degas paradoxically
gives her greater prominence. The luxuriant
bouquet nuzzling her neck and encroaching
on her sleeve becomes, like Rene De Gas's
inkwell (cat. no. 2), an attribute of the sitter's
circumstances.
Everything here speaks of what might be
called a calm disarray — femininity, comfort,
blossoming, maturity, gentility: the explo-
sion of multicolored flowers (their hues muted
but from which burst forth, here and there,
patches of yellow or white), the worn and
crumpled dressing gown, the carelessly
donned scarf, the curls on the forehead, the
ruffles on the bonnet, the rich pattern of the
tablecloth, the interlacing floral motifs of the
wallpaper, and the luxuriance of the garden,
just glimpsed in the distance.
P- 96),
p. 46).
1. Lafond 19 18-19, II, p. 11.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1
Notebook 19 (BN, Carnet 19, p. 51).
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 13 (BN, Carnet 21
provenance: Bought from the artist by Theo van
Gogh for Goupil et Cie (as "Femme accoudee pres
d'un pot de fleurs"), 22 July 1887, for Fr 4,000; de-
posited with Goupil Gallery, The Hague, 6 April-9
June 1888; bought by Emile Boivin, 28 February
Fig. 62. Jean-Francois Millet, Bouquet of Daisies,
c. 1871-74. Pastel, 275/sX325/8 in. (70.3X83 cm).
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
1889, for Fr 5,500; Mme Emile Boivin, his widow,
1909-19; deposited with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 10 June
1920 (deposit no. 12097); bought from the heirs of
Emile Boivin by Durand-Ruel, New York, 3 July
1920 (stock no. N.Y. 4546); sent to Durand-Ruel,
New York, 11 November 1920; bought by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 28 January 192 1, for
$30,000; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1930 New York, no. 45, repr.; 1936
Philadelphia, no. 8, repr.; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no.
6, pi. VI; 1938, Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, 25
January-15 February, The Painters of Still Life, no. 55;
1947 Cleveland, no. 8, p. VII; 1950-51 Philadelphia,
no. 72, repr.; 1974-75 Paris, no. 10, repr. (color);
1977 New York, no. 3 of paintings, repr.
61
selected references: Hourticq 1912, pp. 109-10; Le-
moisne 1912, pp. 33-34, pi. IX;Jamot 1918, pp. 152,
156, repr. p. 153; Lafond 1918-19, II, p, 11; Jamot
1924, pp. 23, 47ff., 53ff., 90-91, 133, pi- n ; Henri
Focillon, La peinture aux XIXe et XXe siecles: du rea-
lisme a nos jours, Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1928, II,
p. 182; Burroughs 1932, pp. 144-45, repr.; Lemoisne
[1946-49], I, pp. 55ff-, 239 n. 117, repr. facing p. 56,
II, no. 125; Fosca 1954, p. 29, repr. (color) p. 28;
Boggs 1962, pp. 3 iff., 37, 41, 59, 119, pi. 44; New
York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 57-60, repr. and detail
cover (color); Rewald 1973 GBA, pp. 8, 11, fig. 5; Reff
1977, fig. 10 (color); Moffett 1979, p. 61, plates 7, 8
(color); Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 240, 257, fig. 162.
6l.
Study for Woman Leaning near
a Vase of Flowers (Mme Paul
Valpinqon?)
1865
Pencil on off-white wove paper
i4X9l/4in. (35.5x23-4 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 1865
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs (1965.253)
Vente 1:312
See cat. no. 60
Il6
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 312);
bought at that sale by Paul Rosenberg, Paris, for Fr
5,300; bought by Paul J. Sachs, 1927; bequeathed to
the museum 1965.
exhibitions: 1929 Cambridge, Mass., no. 34, p. 25;
1930, New York, Jacques Seligmann and Co. , Draw-
ings by Degas, no. 19; 1932, Saint Louis, City Art
Museum, Drawings by Degas; 1933-34, Pittsburgh,
Junior League, 12 December 1933-6 January 1934,
Old Master Drawings, no. 31; 1935 Boston, no. 120;
1936 Philadelphia, no. 69, repr.; 1937 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 73; 1939, New York, Brooklyn Institute of
Arts and Sciences Museum, Great Modern French
Drawings, no. 11, repr. cover; 194 1, Detroit Institute
of Arts, 1 May-i June, Masterpieces of 19th and 20th
Century Drawings, no. 20; 1945, New York, Buch-
holz Gallery, 3-27 January, Edgar Degas Bronzes,
Ehrawings, Pastels, no. 58; 1946, Wellesley College,
Farnsworth Art Museum; 1947 Cleveland, no. 62,
repr.; 1947, New York, Century Club, Loan Exhibi-
tion; 1947 Washington, D.C., no. 31; 1948 Minneap-
olis, no. 10; 1950-51 Philadelphia, no. 94, repr.;
1952, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
March- April, French Drawings from the Fogg Art Mu-
seum; 1955 Paris, Orangerie, no. 69, repr.; 1955 San
Antonio; 1956, Waterville, Me., Colby College, 22
April-23 May, An Exhibition of Drawings, no. 28,
repr. cover; 196 1, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Mu-
seum, 24 April- 20 May, Ingres and Degas — Two
Classical Draftsmen, no. 8; 1965-67 Cambridge, Mass.,
no. 57, repr.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, II, pi. 59;
Arthur Pope, "The New Fogg Museum: The Col-
lection of Drawings," Arts, XII: 1, July 1927, p. 32,
repr.; Fogg Art Museum Handbook, Cambridge,
Mass., 193 1, p. 112, repr.; Mongan 1932, p. 65, repr.
cover; Paul J. Sachs, "Extracts from Letters of Henri
FociUon," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXVI, July-De-
cember 1944, pp. 11-12; 1965 New Orleans, p. 74,
repr.
62.
Helene Hertel
1865
Pencil
io7/s X 73/4 in. (27.6 X 19.7 cm)
Signed and dated upper right: Degas/ 1865
On the verso, a summary sketch of the head of a
woman, in pencil
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF5604)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Vente L313
Published by Manzi and Degas about 1897
as "Portrait of a Young Person" in the
album Degas: vingt dessins, 1861-1896, this
beautiful pencil drawing bearing the date
1865 appeared as "Portrait of Mile Helene
Hertel (Comtesse Falzacappa)" at the first
atelier sale; that identification has never been
questioned. It is listed in the inventory
drawn up after Degas's death,1 and there it
is related to twelve sketches called "Portrait
of Mile Hertal" [sic],2 which are otherwise
unknown. "About i860," if we accept the
annotation that he added later, Degas drew
Helene's mother, Mme Hertel, nee Charlotte
Matern (Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du
Louvre [Orsay], Paris, RF29294), who is
often mistakenly identified as the sitter in
Woman Leaning near a Vase of Flowers (cat.
no. 60). Mme Hertel was from a Hamburg
family and the wife of a man of property
who had settled in Paris, Charles Hertl (this
seems to be the original spelling of the
name, Hertel being the French version).
Their daughter Helene was born in Paris on
4 January 1848. On 5 July 1869, in Rome,
where her mother's sister Mme Luigi Manzi
lived, she married Conte Vincenzo Falza-
cappa, of a noble family from Corneto.3
The 1865 drawing was perhaps a study for
an unfinished, or lost, oil portrait. In a style
that Degas began using in the late 1850s,
Helene' s dress is sketched rapidly, but the
hands, and even more so the face, are care-
fully drawn, with fuller, firmer, calmer lines.
Emphasized in the three-quarter view of her
face are the somewhat broad nose and espe-
cially the wide, dreamy eyes of the seven-
teen-year-old girl.
1 . Durand-Ruel archives, Paris, no. 924.
2. Ibid., no. 2024.
3 . On the Hertl and Falzacappa families, see Archivio
del Vicariato, Rome, notai, Ufficio IV "Positiones,"
no. 8195 (information kindly provided by Olivier
and Genevieve Michel).
117
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no. 313);
bought at that sale by Reginald Davis, for Fr 5,700.
Marcel Bing, Paris; his bequest to the Louvre 1922.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 87; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 107; 1935, Kunsthalle Basel, 29 June-18 Au-
gust, Meisterzeichnungen franzbsischer Kunstler von
Ingres bis Cezanne, no. 158; 1936 Venice, no. 16; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 74; 1969 Paris, no. 114; 1972,
Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, 22 April-18
June, Von Ingres bis Renoir, no. 26, repr.
selected references: Vingt dessins [1897], pi. 6; Le-
moisne 1912, pp. 31-32, repr.; Riviere 1922-23, I,
pi. 10; Jamot 1924, pi. 12; Boggs 1962, p. 119.
63^
M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli
c. 1865
Oil on canvas
457/8X 343/4 in. (116.5X88.3 cm)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Robert
Treat Paine II (31.33)
Lemoisne 164
Little is known about this double portrait
apart from the identity of the sitters. The
uncertainty of the chronology for the 1860s,
the absence of dated sketches, and the delay
in the appearance of this canvas until the sale
of the estate of Rene de Gas in 1927 do not
make the historian's task any easier; one is
left having to resort to stylistic evidence or
psychological assessments. Therese De Gas,
who in the 1850s (see cat. no. 3) and 1860s
(see cat. no. 94) was one of her brother's fa-
vorite subjects, is shown here at the side of
her husband and first cousin Edmondo
Morbilli, whom she had married in 1863.
The few letters that we have from Therese
suggest a modest girl of few enthusiasms
and probably only average intelligence,
without the talents and "prima donna" side
of her sister Marguerite. As for Edmondo,
he seems to have been rather dull and a bit
sententious; he clearly had little understand-
ing of Degas's vocation, and yet (even
though he was a year and a half Degas's
junior) was quite prepared to scold him.1
Before their marriage, the couple saw a
lot of each other when Edmondo spent the
winter of 1858-59 in Paris,2 and after that
during Therese's repeated stays in Naples.
The idea of marriage, which no doubt arose
then, became a reality despite the fact that
they were blood relations and needed papal
dispensation to marry. On 16 April 1863, at
the Madeleine, Therese married Edmondo
Morbilli, "a young Neapolitan with little
money, high hopes, twenty-six years behind
him, and a great deal of love."3 Therese's
poor health,4 the absence of children —
Therese adored them, and lost a child that
was due in February 18645 — and the modesty
of Edmondo' s fortune and situation did not
make them a particularly happy couple.
They led a quiet and uneventful life, attract-
ing, like the Fevres but for different reasons,
the sympathy of the painter.
Degas had first painted them together
presumably not long after their marriage,
during Therese's pregnancy, in a canvas that
is now in Washington (fig. 63). Although it
is the same size as the Washington painting,
the Boston double portrait is very different.
The arrangement is not the same, the scale
has been altered, and the positions of the
figures have been changed, even in the way
they face and look at each other. The back-
ground, which in the first picture is more
elaborate (an open door framing a woman's
silhouette, a wallpaper or fabric motif on
the wall, two frames hanging in the next
room), is here no more than the neutral and
nondescript background of certain Renais-
sance paintings: a mustard-yellow hanging
curving behind Edmondo and opening onto
bluish white net curtains. Therese, previ-
ously in the foreground, is now no more
than the shadow of her husband. Whereas
in the earlier painting the female element
dominates, with Therese's ample dress and
the woman in the background behind
Edmondo, here it has become a man's world.
The lifelike, lively, spirited portrait in
Washington yields to a stricter, more mon-
umental composition in the tradition, as
Denys Sutton has noted, of Titian.6 Proba-
bly equally pictorial were Degas's reasons
for choosing to paint his sister and brother-
in-law twice (while he never did a portrait
of Marguerite with her husband Henri
Fevre). With his long beard, aquiline nose,
and undeniable presence, the imposing
Edmondo is like a sixteenth-century lord —
Agnes Mongan has perceptively compared
the preparatory drawing in Boston (cat. no.
64) to a pencil drawing by Clouet. Therese's
perfectly oval face, broad nose, full mouth,
and large, somewhat protruding black eyes
recall Ingres 's faces of Mile Riviere or Mme
Devauqay; the delicate hand supporting the
chin is equally reminiscent of his portraits of
Mme Gonse, Baronne de Rothschild, and
Comtesse d'Haussonville (fig. 83). But
Therese's usual placidity is here replaced by
an anxiety that is underscored by her in-
tense, melancholy look, her body half hidden
behind the table, her lips parted, her hand
seeking her husband's shoulder. Clearly,
time has passed since the last portrait; the
faces have matured, the roles have been
defined. It is probably about 1865 — the por-
trait may have been occasioned by the cou-
ple's arrival in Paris to celebrate the wedding
of Marguerite De Gas and Henri Fevre on 9
June.7 Therese is not yet the cool and distant
woman of the small pastel of 1869 (cat.
no. 94), and Edmondo no longer has the
smiling unselfconsciousness of the Washing-
ton portrait. Lord and master, he wears — in
his blue tie fixed with a gold pin — the colors
of his lady.
1 . Unpublished letter from Edmondo Morbilli to
Degas, Naples to Paris, 30 July 1859, private
collection.
2. Letter from Therese De Gas to Edgar, Paris to
Florence, 4 January 1859, private collection.
3 . Letter from Rene De Gas to Michel Musson, Paris
to New Orleans, 6 March 1863, Tulane University
Library, New Orleans.
4. Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to Ed-
mondo Morbilli, Paris to Naples, n.d., private
collection.
5. Letter from Desiree Musson, Bourg-en-Bresse to
New Orleans, 7 November 1863, and letter from
Marguerite De Gas to Michel Musson, Paris to
New Orleans, 31 December 1863, Tulane Univer-
sity Library, New Orleans.
6. Sutton 1986, p. 68.
7. Letter from Auguste De Gas to Michel Musson,
Paris to New Orleans, 9 June 1865, Tulane Uni-
versity Library, New Orleans.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 71, repr., for
Fr 265,000). Wildenstein and Co., New York; Robert
Treat Paine II, Brookline, Mass.; his gift to the mu-
seum 193 1.
exhibitions: 1933 Northampton, no. 3; 1936 Phila-
delphia, no. 10, repr; 1941, Boston, Museum of Fine
Arts, 19 February-6 April, Portraits through Forty-Jive
Centuries, no. 144; 1970, New \brk, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 24 May-26 July, 100 Paintings from
the Boston Museum, no. 51, repr. (color); 1978-79
Philadelphia, no. vi-42, repr. (English edition),
no. 210, repr. (French edition).
Fig. 63. M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli (L131),
c. 1863. Oil on canvas, 46!/sX 353/s in. (117. 1 X
89.9 cm). Chester Dale Collection, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
118
H9
selected references: Paul-Andre Lemoisne, "Le
portrait de Degas par lui-meme," Beaux- Arts, De-
cember 1927, p. 314; Philip Hendy, "Degas and the
de Gas," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
XXX: 179, June 1932, repr. p. 43; Catalogue of Oil
Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1932, repr.;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 164; Boggs 1962, pp. 16,
18-20, 24, 59, 125, pi. 39; Minervino 1974, no. 228;
Petra Ten Doesschate Chu, French Realism and the
Dutch Masters, Utrecht, 1974, p. 60, pi. 117; S. W.
Peters, "Edgar Degas at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts," Art in America, LXII:6, November-December
1974, PP- 124-25; Kirk Varnedoe, "The Grand Party
That Won the Second Empire," Art News, LXXVII:
10, December 1978, pp. 50-53, repr. p. 53; Alexandra
R. Murphy, European Paintings in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue, Boston,
1985, P- 75, repr.
Wildenstein and Co., New York; bought by the mu-
seum 193 1.
exhibitions: 193 i Cambridge, Mass., no. 15a; 1934,
Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 6-22 De-
cember, One Hundred Years of French Art 1800-1900,
no. 152; 1936 Philadelphia, no, 72, repr.; 1937 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 76; 1947 Cleveland, no. 65,
pi. XL VII; 1947 Washington, D.C., no. 21; 1948
Minneapolis, no number; 1953, Montreal Museum
of Fine Arts, October-November, Five Centuries of
Drawings, no. 208; 1958-59 Rotterdam, no. 162,
repr.; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 48, repr.
selected references: Philip Hendy, "Degas and the
de Gas," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
XXX: 179, June 1932, p. 45, repr.; Mongan 1932,
p. 64, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, under no. 164.
64.
Edmondo Morbilli, study for
M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli
c. 1865
Pencil
^VsXoin. (31.7X22.8 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Julia Knight Fox
Fund (31.433)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
See cat. no. 63
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 9, repr.);
64
120
65^
Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli
c. 1865-66
Oil on canvas
36^4 x 283/4 in. (92 x 73 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Los Angeles, Mr. and Mrs. George Gard
De Sylva Collection (M.46.3.3)
Lemoisne 126
Paul-Andre Lemoisne was the first to iden-
tify the sitters as the two Bellelli sisters,
Giovanna and Giulia (or, as they were called
in the Degas family, Nini and Julie), the
blonde and the brunette, painted a few years
after they had posed for the large Family
Portrait (cat. no. 20), meaning, according to
Lemoisne's scheme, about 1865. 1
Though the identification of the sitters
has, quite rightly, been accepted without
dispute, the work has generally been dated
earlier, about 1862-64; this is the period to
which it was assigned, for example, by Jean
Sutherland Boggs, who has written the
most pertinent remarks on the subject.2
However, some difficulties arise as a result
of the apparent ages of the sisters in this pic-
ture. Giovanna, on the left, would have to
have been between thirteen and fifteen years
old if we are to accept the usual dating (she
was born 10 December 1848); Giulia, on the
right, would have to have been between
eleven and thirteen (she was born 13 July
185 1). But these figures are far from the little
girls sketched in 1858: even if they are still
lacking in polish, these are developed young
ladies (the preparatory drawing in the Boy-
mans-van Beuningen [fig. 64] is more tell-
ing on this point than the final canvas),
wearing the modest jewelry and severe
dresses of their peers. Nini is probably about
seventeen years old, which would make Julie
fourteen or fifteen and permit a date of
about 1865-66 for the double portrait.
There are other arguments to support this
later dating. A rough sketch of the final
composition, only inverted, appears in a
notebook that Degas is known to have used
between 1864 and 1867 — very likely in
1865-66, to be more precise.3 Furthermore,
there is an oil study of the head of Giulia
Bellelli (L139, private collection), turned to
the left as in the notebook sketch, largely
covered by a study for The Collector of Prints
(cat. no. 66), a work of 1866. Finally, the
dresses of half-mourning worn by the two
sisters suggest that a full year has already
gone by since the death of their father, Gen-
naro Bellelli, in Naples on 21 May 1864.
Degas thus painted his two cousins at a
time when he had still not finished the large
Bellelli Family, begun seven years earlier,
where they appear as little girls in sober
schoolgirl dress. This metamorphosis,
which he was able to consider daily in his
studio, was something he no doubt found
amusing. To make the comparison even
more striking, he returned, as Boggs has
noted,4 to his first idea for The Bellelli Family,
which shows the two sisters in the very
same position as here (see fig. 35). Like
photographs taken with the same pose from
one year to the next, which inevitably con-
vey a sense of maturing or aging, the two
canvases permit us to measure the passage
of time, the transformation of the little girls
into young ladies who are still a bit ponder-
ous and awkward, the disappearance of the
father, and, for Degas, the distance he has
traveled as an artist. Perhaps these are the
best reasons to claim that this work was
presented at the Salon of 1867, where it
would have seemed like an echo of the other
"Family Portrait," The Bellelli Family. Nev-
ertheless, in spite of the few words of praise
of Castagnary for "les deux soeurs" (see cat.
no. 20), the title of "Family Portrait," which
was used in the Salon, seems totally inap-
propriate for a composition that, according
to common sense, could only have been tided
"Two Sisters."
Although the title inevitably calls to mind
Chasseriau's painting of his sisters (his pupil
Gustave Moreau, whom Degas was still
seeing about this time, had a photograph of
this famous picture hanging in his apart-
ment5), Degas's canvas has little in common
with its celebrated predecessor (fig. 65).
Whereas Chasseriau played on the striking
resemblance of the twins, Degas, despite the
physical likeness and similar attire, empha-
sizes the sisters* differences by pointing
them away from each other; it is as if only
the accident of being in the same family and
the obstinacy of a cousin who was a painter
could have brought these young ladies
together — sisters whom their mother de-
scribed as being very unlike each other.6
A marked influence of the daguerreotype
image has been noted in the composition of
this double portrait, as also in that of Self-
Portrait: Degas Lifting His Hat (cat. no. 44),
Self-Portrait with Evariste de Valernes (cat.
no. 58), and Woman Leaning near a Vase of
Flowers (cat. no. 60). A few years earlier,
however, Degas himself had already coun-
tered this notion: on a page of one of his
notebooks (fig. 66), he had done a sketch of
two young women, probably sisters, pressed
against each other in a setting typical of a
photographer's studio, with the obligatory
drapery and "period" chair or balustrade,
and mischievously signed it "Disderi photog.,"
thus pointing out not only that his art owed
nothing to the conventions of photography,
but that in this particular case he felt these
conventions to be vulgar.
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 126.
2. Boggs 1955, pp. 134-36.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 20 (Louvre, RF5634 ter,
P- 19).
4. Boggs 1955, p. 134-
5. Mathieu 1976, p. 32.
6. Unpublished letters from Laura Bellelli to Edgar
Degas, Florence to Paris, 25 September and 17
December 1858, private collection.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 84);
bought at that sale by Paul Rosenberg, Paris, for Fr
34,000; Henri-Jean Laroche, Paris, 1928; Jacques La-
roche, Paris, 1937. Paul Rosenberg, New York; Mr.
and Mrs. George Gard De Sylva, Holmby Hills,
Calif. ; their gift to the museum 1946.
exhibitions: (?)i867, Paris, 15 April-5 June, Salon,
no. 444 or 445 (as "Portrait de famille"); 1928, Paris,
Galerie de la Renaissance, 1-30 June, Portraits et figures
defemmes de Ingres d Picasso, no. 52; 1937 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 7, pi. V; 1947 Cleveland, no. 13,
pi. XII; 1949 New York, no. 8, repr.; 1954 Detroit,
Fig. 64. Giovanna and Giulia
Bellelli (IIL156.3), c. 1865-66.
Pencil, 11 x j7A in. (28 x 20 cm).
Museum Boymans-van Beu-
ningen, Rotterdam
Fig. 65. Theodore Chasseriau,
Two Sisters, 1843. Oil on canvas,
707/sX 53V8 in. (180 X 135 cm).
Musee du Louvre, Paris
Fig. 66. Notebook drawing
inscribed "Disderi photog.,"
1859-64. Brown ink, 10 X
75/s in. (25.4 X 19.2 cm).
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
Dc327d, Carnet 1, p. 31 (Reff
1985, Notebook 18)
no. 67, repr.; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 12, repr.; i960
New York, no. 9, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 54,
II, no. 126; W. R. Valentiner, The Mr. and Mrs. Gard
De Sylva Collection of French Impressionist and Modern
Paintings and Sculpture, Los Angeles County Museum,
Los Angeles, 1950, no. 3, repr.; Boggs 1955, pp. 134-
36, fig. 12; Boggs 1962, pp. 16, 20, pi. 28; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 215; 1983 Ordrupgaard, p. 94, no. A,
repr. (color) p. 72.
121
66.
The Collector of Prints
1866
Oil on canvas
20% X i$3A in. (53 X 40 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: Degas/ 1866
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.44)
Lemoisne 138
The anonymity of the sitter has often meant
that this little canvas has been considered
more as genre than as a portrait. However,
just as much as the paintings of Tissot (cat.
no. 75) or of Mile Dubourg (cat. no. 83), it
is a portrait in an interior, following a for-
mula Degas developed in the 1860s: the
man's features are perfectly discernible and
indeed (note the size of the nose) imbued
with character; having been disturbed as he
looks through a portfolio of prints, he strikes
a pose for a fleeting moment and gazes at
the spectator. Even if the allusion to Dau-
mier is clear, we are far from those figures
of Daumier's who, leafing through portfo-
lios or contemplating a canvas, are, with
their indistinct faces, archetypes of the col-
lector, the amateur. Degas was to come
much closer to the caricaturist fifteen years
later, in a panel, now in the Cleveland Mu-
seum of Art, commonly referred to as The
Collectors (L647, c. 1881), which is a portrait
of two of his friends, Paul Lafond and Al-
phonse Cherfils. In The Collector of Prints,
on the other hand, the assurance of the line,
the smooth and precise handling, and the
legibility of the objects surrounding the
model take us far from Daumier.
Dated 1866 (a date probably inscribed in
1895, when Degas sold the painting to Mrs.
Havemeyer after tripling the advertised
price and making her wait two years on the
pretext that retouching was needed), this
portrait was preceded by a study of the
man's head (L139, private collection), painted
over a sketch for the portrait of Giovanna
and Giulia Bellelli (cat. no. 65); the study is
comparable to other sketches of bearded
men in soft hats that Degas did later (for ex-
ample, L170, L293). The pictures in the
portfolio, scattered on the table, or stuck to
the wall, and the horse in the display cabinet
have been identified by Theodore Reff:1 col-
ored lithographs by Redoute, a T'ang dynasty
horse, and samples of Japanese or Japanese-
inspired fabrics (actually, they look as much
like ordinary European textiles) pinned on
the bulletin board with photographs and
visiting cards — unless this board is a trompe
l'oeil, of a kind often made throughout the
nineteenth century. From the evidence, this
man is not what might be called a great col-
lector but a hunter after outmoded and
cheap images. Perhaps — and this might help
to identify him — he is looking for the prints
that Redoute did during the July Monarchy
as models for floral-patterned fabrics or
wallpaper, prints that were not highly re-
garded at the time. As for the man's outfit,
Reff very aptly quotes Degas 's recollections
late in life (as told to Etienne Moreau-Nela-
ton) of how he would go with his father to
visit Marcille and La Caze, both of whom
left a great impression on him: "He [Mar-
cille] wore a hooded cape and a rumpled
hat. People in those days all wore rumpled
hats."2
In this portrait, Degas depicts a type that,
in the Second Empire, was thought to be a
vanishing breed: the enthusiastic collector, a
fanatic more anxious to acquire than to
show — in short, what Degas himself a few
years later would become. At the opposite
pole was the man who paid a fortune for his
acquisitions, thus driving prices up — a per-
son with no true taste, no avowed passion,
who only made buying all the more difficult
for the genuine collectors. Zola, in the notes
he was assembling for L'Oeuvre, pinpointed
this change in the marketplace: "The specu-
lation of the Empire is upon us, the madness
for gold; much money is made, people reach
for the moon and the stars, and collectors
122
multiply; but they don't know the first
thing about it anymore."3
Degas, in turn, painted the sort of man
who throughout nineteenth-century litera-
ture, from Balzac to Rene Maizeroy, had
become a familiar character — one of "those
bizarre fanatics who end up falling into
curios, becoming merchants without shops
who traffic in knickknacks the way other
people traffic in stocks and bonds."4 Here
we see this fanatic rummaging through his
folios amid all the evidence of his collector's
passion: the precious object carelessly dis-
played, the jumble of etchings, the hodge-
podge of multicolored pictures, their vivid
touches of red, pink, and green on white
backgrounds thrown around his severe
black coat.
1. Reff 1976, pp. 98-101.
2. Moreau-Nelaton 1931, p. 267.
3. Emile Zola, Camets d'enquete, Paris: Plon, 1986,
pp. 245-46.
4. Rene Maizeroy [pseud.], La fin de Paris, Paris:
Victor Havard, 1886, pp. 124-25.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Mr. and
Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York, for Fr 3,000
(sent to New York, 13 December 1894, through
Durand-Ruel); Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, from 1894; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, from 1907; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1930 New York, no. 47; 1977 New
York, no. 5 of paintings, repr.; 1978 New York, no.
4, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 138;
Havemeyer 1961, p. 252; New York, Metropolitan,
1967, p. 61 , repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 219; Reff
1976, pp. 90, 98-101, 106, 138, 144-45, figs. 65, 66;
Moffett 1979, p. 7, pi. 12; Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 81,
pi. 34.
67.
Runaway Horse, study for
The Steeplechase
1866
Charcoal
9^8 X 14 m. (23.1 X35.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts (1397)
Vente IV: 241. a
In 1866, Degas submitted a large painting to
the Salon, The Steeplechase (fig. 67; see cat.
no. 351). Like Scene of War in the Middle Ages
(cat. no. 45) the year before, it attracted little
attention. Edmond About spared two words
of praise for "this brisk and lively composi-
tion."1 A more verbose anonymous author
praised "the clarity and delicacy of tone" of
this painting, "somewhat in the English style,"
before attacking the faulty rendering of the
animals: "Like the jockey, this painter is not
yet entirely familiar with his horse."2 Years
later, Degas admitted his earlier incompetence
to the journalist Thiebault-Sisson during a
stay at Mont-Dore:
You are probably unaware that about 1866
I perpetrated a Scene de steeplechase, the
first and for long after the only one of my
pictures inspired by the racecourse. Even
though I was quite familiar with "the no-
blest conquest ever made by man," even
though I had had the opportunity to
mount a horse quite often, even though I
Fig. 67. The Steeplechase (L140), 1866, re-
worked 1880-81. Oil on canvas, 707/sX597/8 in.
(180 X 152 cm). Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
could distinguish a thoroughbred from a
half-bred without too much difficulty,
even though I had a fairly good under-
standing of the animal's anatomy and my-
ology, having studied one of those plaster
models found in all the casters' shops, I
was completely ignorant of the mechanism
of its movements, and I knew infinitely
less than any noncommissioned officer,
who, because of his years of meticulous
practice, could imagine from a distance
the way a certain horse would jump and
respond.3
The Clark Art Institute drawing, which is
a detailed study for the horse in the fore-
ground of the painting — in the painting its
head is lowered — proves beyond any doubt
the truth of Degas's later confession. Never-
theless, with all four hooves in the air, cov-
ering, as on the canvas, the entire width of
the paper, and boldly displaying his ana-
tomical absurdities, just as Ingres's women
show off their extra vertebrae, the animal
has a force that nothing seems able to bridle.
1 . Edmond About, Salon de 1866, Paris: Hachette,
1867, p. 229.
2. Salon de 1866, Paris, 1866.
3. Thiebault-Sisson 192 1.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919,
no. 24 1. a, repr.); bought at that sale by Knoedler,
with no. 241. b, for Fr 500; Robert Sterling Clark,
New York, 1919-55; his gift to the museum 1955,
exhibitions: 1959 Williamstown, no. 20, pi. V; 1970
Williamstown, no. 22, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, under
no. 140; Williamstown, Clark, 1964, I, pp. 81-82,
no. 159, II, pi. 159; Williamstown, Clark, 1987,
no. 19, repr.
123
68.
Racehorses before the Stands
1866-68
Essence on paper mounted on canvas
i81/sX24in. (46X61 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1981)
Lemoisne 262
Once again, we are faced with problems in
dating a famous work which, though often
reproduced and discussed, still has an uncer-
tain history and raises a number of questions.
Racehorses before the Stands, known in French
as Le defile, is traditionally believed to have
been exhibited in 1879 at the fourth Impres-
sionist exhibition, which to Germain Bazin
meant that it was executed that year.1 The
few comments of the critics make it difficult
to identify the work exhibited then as no. 63,
"Racehorses (essence)," but the mention of
essence narrows the choice to this picture or
the Barber Institute's Jockeys before the Race
(fig. 180). In La Vie Moderne of 24 April
1879, Armand Silvestre wrote, "I also very
much like the semilunar light that bathes
the racecourse of no. 63," clearly referring
not to Racehorses before the Stands — a sunny
painting of high summer — but to the Barber's
picture, lit by a "pale winter sun."2
The preparatory drawings permit us to be
somewhat more definite about the chronol-
ogy. In a notebook used basically from 1867
to 1869 — its contents include sketches for
the portrait of James Tissot (cat. no. 75) and
for Interior (cat. no. 84) — we find, if not a
compositional study, several sketches of de-
tails: a group of women in the open air,3 and
a jockey seen from behind,4 next to partial
copies of Meissonier's celebrated painting
Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino (fig. 68),
which was exhibited at the Salon of 1864
and was immediately acquired by the Musee
du Luxembourg.5 For the horse in the center
of his composition, Degas adapted, in reverse,
one of the mounts by Meissonier — an artist
he held in derision (dubbing him the "giant
of the dwarfs"6) but whose knowledge of
horsemanship he respected (see "The First
Sculptures," p. 137). Furthermore, the Art
Institute of Chicago's drawing (cat. no. 70),
which has often been related to the Orsay
picture and is part of a whole series on the
theme of mounted jockeys (L151-L162),
was published by Manzi about 1897 with
the date of 1866 provided by Degas, who
selected the plates and supervised the publi-
cation.7 In addition, there is a letter of 4 Jan-
uary 1869 from Fantin-Latour to Whistler
which mentions, on the subject of Degas,
that Fantin was then seeing Degas "once or
twice a week ... in the Cafe des Batignolles"
and had seen "some small racing pictures
that are spoken of very highly."8 Theodore
Reff thinks that the works referred to could
only be this picture and The False Start
(fig. 69), but two other possibilities could be
added — At the Racetrack (L184, Weil Enter-
prises and Investments, Ltd. , Montgomery)
and Racehorses at Longchamp (cat. no. 96).
Racehorses before the Stands should therefore
presumably be dated 1866-68, somewhat
earlier than Lemoisne's proposal of 1869-72.
Degas uses a highly personal technique,
mounting paper on canvas — as he often did,
starting with the self-portrait in the Clark
Art Institute (cat. no. 12) — leaving the pa-
per blank in many places and staining it in
the darkest parts of the composition. The
preparatory drawing, very largely visible, is
reworked almost everywhere with a pen;
thus, in the architecture of the stands the
construction lines, traced in ink, can be
clearly distinguished. (For the related False
Start [fig. 69], he made a pencil drawing of
the stands, now in a private collection in
New York.)
The use of this technique, as much as the
originality of the composition, is responsible
for its novelty, and distinguishes it not only
from Degas's previous and contemporary
racecourse scenes (see cat. no. 70) but also
from those by Tissot (Races at Longchamp,
c. 1866-70), by the lesser-known Olivier
Pichat (Grand Prix de Paris, Salon of 1866,
no. 1545, photographed in the Michelez al-
bums, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), and above all
by Manet, who about this time painted his
Races at Longchamp (1867?, The Art Institute
of Chicago) and later the Races in the Bois de
Boulogne (1872, private collection, New
\brk), canvases that are basically very dif-
ferent but which, as Moreau-Nelaton has
pointed out, owe an undeniable thematic
debt to Degas.9
It is difficult to know exactly where this
scene is set. Contrary to what has often
been suggested, Degas does not seem to
have placed his races at Longchamp, whose
stands, built in 1857 and enlarged in 1863,
appear in Cesar Daly's 1868 publication
Revue generale d} architecture. 10 While the
stands in the Orsay picture present an iden-
tical structure of cast iron and wood, they
also show a central pavilion topped with a
turret, which is not to be found at Long-
champ; furthermore, the point of view
chosen by Degas would mean that the mill
and the hills on the other side of the Seine
would be visible instead of the improbable
smokestacks. Perhaps, then, this is the more
popular track at Saint-Ouen. It could also
be some provincial racecourse, though the
substantial development of the facilities
makes this hypothesis somewhat improbable.
Whereas in Manet's racetrack scenes the
swarming crowd presses as an indistinct
mass of black and gray against the wooden
barriers, here the crowd is calmer and thinner,
with the dark spots of men's suits rising in
tiers to the top of the stands and the scattered
white and bluish patches of parasols shading
the women in their bright summer dress
(see cat. no. 69). Separated from the public
by a thin barrier of white wood, seven horse-
men, casting broad shadows that indicate it
is late in the afternoon, file past under the
uniform light of summer or of a warm
spring. Their vivid colors — we can recog-
nize only those of Captain Saint-Hubert
Fig. 68. Ernest Meissonier, Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino, 1863. Oil on panel, iyV& X 297/s in.
(43-5 x 76 cm). Musee National du Chateau, Compiegne
124
AH
Fig. 69. 77ie Fafce Start (L258), 1866-68. Oil
on panel, i25/sX i$3A in. (32 X 40 cm). Yale
University Art Gallery, New Haven
(yellow, red sleeve, red cap) and of Baron de
Rothschild (blue, yellow cap),11 the others,
once again, seemingly fictitious — are muted,
due to the use of essence. In this extraordi-
narily tranquil scene, barely disturbed by a
horse rearing before an indifferent public,
there is nothing of the turbulence of Gericault.
Nor is there anything of the busy animation
described by Zola in a famous passage in
Nana — nothing of the flurry of elegant
dresses, of the "whirlwind of the most lively
colors, of the confusion of the most dazzling
subtleties"12 that turn the entire racetrack,
as the contemporary Paris-guide put it, into
"a lively meadow on which one would say
Diaz had poured forth his palette."13
1 . Germain Bazin, Impressionist Paintings from the
Louvre, London: Thames and Hudson, 1958,
p. 190.
2. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, p. 366, no. 649.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8,
pp. 109-17)-
4. Ibid. (p. 129); Reflf 197 1, p. 538, figs. 56-58.
5. Reflf 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, pp. 123,
127), Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 41).
6. Valery 1949, p. 109; Val£ry i960, p. 69.
7. Vingt dessins [1897], no. 7.
8. University Library, Glasgow; letter mentioned in
Reflf 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 109).
9. Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 139.
10. "Longchamp — Hippodrome," XVI, plates 13-18.
11. Information provided by M. Jean Romanet.
12. Emile Zola, Nana, Paris: G. Charpentier, 1880,
chapter 11.
13. Amedee Achard, Paris-guide, pt. 2, Paris, 1867,
p. 1236.
provenance: Jean-Baptiste Faure, Paris, from 1873
or 1874 to 1893; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 2
January 1893 (stock no. 2568), for Fr 10,000; bought
by Comte Isaac de Camondo, 18 December 1893,
for Fr 30,000; his bequest to the Louvre 191 1; exhib-
ited 19 14.
exhibitions: 1968, Amiens, Maison de la Culture,
March- April, Degas aujourd'hui, no number; 1969
Paris, no. 18.
selected references: Mauclair 1903, repr. facing
p. 384; Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 105; Jamot 1914,
p. 29; Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914, no. 165;
Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 42; Jamot 1924, pi. 48b; Jamot
1928, pi. 50; Rouart 1945, p. 13; Lemoisne [1946-49],
II, no. 262; Reflf 1971, p. 538; Minervino 1974,
no. 194, pi. XV (color); Reff 1985, Notebook 22
(BN, Carnet 8, pp. 109-17, 129), Notebook 31 (BN,
Carnet 23, p. 68); Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pein-
tures, 1986, III, p. 194, repr.; Sutton 1986, p. 146.
125
6*
Women before the Stands, study
for Racehorses before the Stands
c. 1866-68
Essence and brown wash, heightened with
white gouache on ochre-colored paper
prepared with oil
i8V8 X i27/s in. (46 X 32. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF5602)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 259
For Racehorses before the Stands (cat. no. 68)
and The False Start (fig. 69), Degas did this
study and two others (L260, L261) of women
before the stands on large sheets of oiled pa-
per, probably in his studio and using the
same model for all the figures. In the final
pictures, he grouped them differently,
spreading them out and emphasizing the
bright patches of their umbrellas and
springlike dresses. The variety of their ac-
tivities, their apparent indifference to the ap-
proaching race, and the way they are scattered
about on the sand-colored background of
the paper explain why certain authors have
titled the three sketches "Women on the
Beach."
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19,
no. 153. 1); bought at that sale by Marcel Bing, with
no. 153.2, for Fr 3,300; his bequest to the Louvre
1922.
exhibitions : 1935, Kunsthalle Basel, 29 June-18 Au-
gust, Meisterzeichnungen franzdsischer Kunstler von Ingres
bis Cizanne, no. 160; 1969 Paris, no. 158; 1979 Edin-
burgh, no. 1, repr.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, II, pi. 65; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 259; Leymarie 1947, no. 19,
pi. XIX; Minervino 1974, no. 195.
70.
Four Studies of a Jockey, study
for Racehorses before the Stands
1866
Essence heightened with white gouache on
brown paper
i73/4 X i23/s in. (45 X 3 1. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs.
Lewis Lamed Coburn Memorial Collection
(1933.469)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 158
See cat. no. 68
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 114. 1);
bought at that sale by Fiquet, Paris, with nos. 114. 2
and 1 14. 3, for Fr 3,050; with Nunes, Paris; Mr. and
Mrs. Lewis Lamed Coburn, Chicago; their gift to
the museum 1933.
exhibitions: 1939, Seattle; 1946, The Art Institute of
Chicago, Drawings Old and New, no. 15, repr.; 1947
Cleveland, no. 63, pi. LII; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 16;
1963, New York, Wildenstein Gallery, 17 October-
30 November, Master Drawings from the Art Institute of
Chicago, no. 103; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 46; 1974,
Palm Beach, Society of Four Arts, Drawings from the
Art Institute of Chicago, no. 10, repr. ; 1976-77, Paris,
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, 16 October
1976-17 January 1977, Dessins fiangais du XVIIIe au
XXe Steele de VArt Institute of Chicago de Watteau a Picasso,
no. 58, repr.; 1977, Frankfurt, Stadtische Galerie,
10 February-10 April, Franzdsische Zeichnungen aus
dent Art Institute of Chicago, no. 59, repr. ; 1984 Chicago,
no. 17, repr. (color).
selected references: Vingt dessins [1897], pi. 7; Le-
moisne 1912, pp. 35-36, repr. (detail); Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 158; Agnes Mongan, French Draw-
ings, Great Drawings of All Times, III, New York:
Sherwood Press, 1962, no. 778, repr.; Minervino
1974, no. 186; The Art Institute of Chicago, 100
Masterpieces, Chicago, 1978, III, repr.
71.
Portrait of a Man
c. 1866
Oil on canvas, with strip of canvas at bottom
33^2 X 2$5/s in. (85 x 65 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection
Fund, New York (21. 112)
Lemoisne 145
Ever since its appearance at the first atelier
sale, this portrait has baffled viewers because
of the sitter's odd physiognomy and the
strangeness of the setting. Expected to sell
for Fr 10,000, the canvas was sold for only
Fr 6, 500, to Vollard, Bernheim-Jeune, Du-
rand-Ruel, and Seligmann, who had made
an agreement to buy a number of works to-
gether. The sitter remains unidentified.
Agreement cannot even be reached on a
simple description of the setting or the ob-
jects surrounding him: on the table covered
with a white cloth, an opulent dish of trot-
ters and sausage, a pear, and probably a
glass; on the wall, a white canvas partially
covered with oil sketches, framed by a wide
strip of dark wood and half hidden by a
white veil; on the floor, on a wooden board,
cuts of meat (some observers have seen a
woman's hat there) in which the white of
the fat and the dark red of the eye are dis-
tinctly visible.
The nature and disposition of these acces-
sories belie the notion of a guest at table in a
restaurant or of a middle-class gentleman
who has strayed into a butcher shop. Quite
clearly, then, we are in a painter's studio:
the pieces of meat are for still lifes, very
cursory red-and-white sketches of which
can be found on the wall, and the host of
these premises is some Realist artist or per-
haps some critic who has recommended the
study of these bloody subjects. Unfortu-
nately, we cannot attach a name to the ex-
traordinary face, with its low forehead and
large nose, half in shadow.
Degas plays on the incongruity of this
figure, in his very bourgeois attire, calmly
sitting with these pieces of meat, and under-
scores the strangeness — today, we would
say the surrealism — of the trotters and sau-
sage combined with a pear and perhaps a
glass forming a little picture finely painted
on a white ground of studio drapery. It is
also an opportunity for him to work in a
reduced and subtle harmony of browns and
blacks, as he often does, but also of whites
and reds, thus heralding the later, almost
two-tone experiments of After the Bath (cat.
no. 342) and The Coijjure (cat. no. 345).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no. 36);
bought at that sale by Vollard, Bernheim-Jeune,
Durand-Ruel, Seligmann, for Fr 6, 500 (Seligmann
sale, American Art Association, New York, 27 Feb-
ruary 192 1, no. 35, for $1,750); bought at that sale
by the museum.
exhibitions: 192 i, New York, The Brooklyn Muse-
um, 26 March-24 April, Paintings by Modern French
Masters, no. 72; 1922-23, New York, The Brooklyn
Museum, 29 November 1922-2 January 1923 , Paint-
ings by Contemporary English and French Painters,
no. 159; 1947 Cleveland, no. 6, pi. V; 1953-54 New
Orleans, no. 72; 1967-68, New York, The Brooklyn
Museum, 3 October-19 November/ Richmond, Vir-
ginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1 1 December 1967-19
January 1968 /San Francisco, California Palace of the
Legion of Honor, 17 February-3 1 March, The Tri-
umph of Realism, no. 6, repr.; 1978 New York, no. 5,
repr. (color); 1980-82, Cleveland Museum of Art,
12 November 1980-18 January 198 1 /New York, The
Brooklyn Museum, 7 March-10 May/ Saint Louis
Art Museum, 23 July-20 September/ Glasgow Art
Gallery and Art Museum, 5 November 198 1-4 Janu-
ary 1982, The Realist Tradition, no. 149, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no.
145; Minervino 1974, no. 222.
127
72.
Edouard Manet Seated, Turned
to the Right
c. 1866-68
Etching on off-white wove paper, first state
1 i3A X 85/s in. (29. 8 X 21 . 8 cm)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (9487)
Reed and Shapiro 18. 1
A few years after meeting him in the Louvre
(see cat. no. 82), Degas drew three portraits
of Manet in preparation for three etchings,
two of which show him sitting on a chair,
the other half-length. In the drawing in New
York (cat. no. 73), the painter of Olympia
looks as if he is on a visit and has sat down
for only a minute (still wearing his overcoat
and holding his hat) in what we know is an
artist's studio. The generally suggested dat-
ing of 1864-65 seems a little early for this
drawing; it should probably be placed closer
to later studies for the portrait of James Tis-
sot (cat. no. 75) because of the comparable
pose, the identical circumstances, the fine,
keen line, and the use of the stump for ac-
cents. It was probably drawn during the
years 1866-68, which correspond, as far as
we know, to the period when the friendship
between the two painters was closest and
when Degas was preoccupied with a series of
portraits of artists, beginning timidly with the
small painted likeness of Gustave Moreau
(L178, Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris).
The etching exhibited here, which was
preceded also by a pencil drawing now in a
private collection in Paris, shows a calmer,
more thoughtful Manet. He has thrown off
his overcoat. Beginning with the second
state — this is the first — the top hat he previ-
ously held between his fingers can be seen
lying on the ground. The interior of the stu-
dio, not visible in the drawing, is now care-
fully indicated by a large frame resting
against the wall, forming a flat background
of verticals and horizontals against which
Manet is drawn somewhat askew, his ap-
parent lassitude and his tilt contrasting with
the geometric severity of the background.
The large number of impressions made of
this etching (we know of forty from the
four successive states) proves that Degas was
satisfied with this portrait of his infamous
colleague and was eager to have it distributed.
It also represents part of his noteworthy
contribution to the revival of original print-
making in the 1860s, although greater con-
tributions were actually made by friends of
his from this period — Bracquemond, Le-
gros, Fantin-Latour, Whistler, and Manet.
Degas was not even a member of the Soci-
ete des Aquafortistes, founded in August
1 86 1. Nevertheless, he produced a few spo-
radic masterpieces using this technique,
then considered a minor art.
provenance: Charles B. Eddy, New York (sale,
Kornfeld und Klipstein, Bern, 9-10 June 196 1,
no. 194, repr. frontispiece); William H. Schab, New
York; bought by the museum 1962.
exhibitions: 1979-80 Ottawa.
selected references: Delteil 1919, no. 16; Adhemar
1974, no. 19; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 18,
pp. xix-xx.
128
73-
Edouard Manet Seated
c. 1866-68
Black chalk on off-white wove paper
13 x 9 in. (33.1 x 23 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund (1918. 19.51.7)
Vente 11:2 10. 2
Study for cat. no. 72
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 210.2);
bought at that sale through Jacques Seligmann, with
nos. 210. 1 and 210.3, f°r the museum, with the aid
of the Rogers Fund, for Fr 4,000.
exhibitions: 1936, New London, Conn., Lyman Al-
lyn Museum, 2 March-15 April, Drawings, no. 155;
1955 Paris, Orangerie, no. 67, repr.; 1973-74 Paris,
no. 27, pi. 56; 1977 New York, no. 8 of works on
paper; 1984-85 Boston, no. 17. a, repr.
selected references: Burroughs 19 19, pp. n 5-16,
repr. ; Jacob Bean, 100 European Drawings in The Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art, New York: The Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art, 1964, no. 75.
bly conceal a pregnant body. Under her soft
hat, which is placed back on her head, the
long twisted curl that falls over her shoulder
is reminiscent of a drawing Jeanne Fevre
published of her mother, the painter's sister
Marguerite De Gas Fevre, with a similar
curl.2 There is a note on that drawing that
she was dressed for a costume ball one or
two years before her marriage, which took
place in June 1865. It is not impossible that
sometime in 1866, pregnant with her first
daughter, Celestine, Marguerite might have
posed for her brother.
Degas drew the model very gently, in
particular using a little pink wash on the
lower lip to give the expressive mouth a
hint of color. He also brushed in to the right
of her head some pink that would originally
have been rose, as one can see from the edge
of the drawing. The pink smudge in any
case draws us to the round eyes of the bin-
oculars, which are also emphasized by the
74
black used in the drawing of the glasses and
the hands, whereas the rest of the lines are
dark brown. Degas used some white on the
top of the hat, a faint white wash on the
forehead, and an even thinner white on the
rest of the face — all handled with refinement
and sensitivity.
The young woman is undoubtedly a first
thought of what Degas would eventually
plan as a complex racecourse composition.
She is barely detectable in the Metropoli-
tan's pencil drawing of a jaunty Edouard
Manet (II:2io.3), in which the horses are
presumably the object of her attention as she
is the object of his. Faintly drawn and placed
back in what could be regarded as a protected
position in the Metropolitan's drawing, or
gently restrained and feminine in this draw-
ing, she does not seem to symbolize the
power that Eunice Lipton has seen in her
successors.3
JSB
74.
Young Woman with Field Glasses
1866
Essence on pink paper
11 X 9 in. (28X22.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Trustees of the British Museum, London
(1968-2-10-26)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 179
This drawing of a young woman at the race-
track looking through her binoculars is clearly
a prototype for three other drawings Degas
made in the 1870s of a slimmer young woman
wearing a hat of the period tilted down over
her forehead (cat. no. 154; fig. 131; L269,
private collection, Switzerland). These three
drawings were undoubtedly related, if only
as afterthoughts, to the production of the
painting At the Racetrack (L184, Weil Enter-
prises and Investments, Ltd., Montgomery),
over which Degas was to suffer such anxie-
ties and where he would paint out the young
woman. 1
The drawing has a youthful tenderness,
although the concept of the figure's looking
directly at us through her binoculars has
great daring. Even more than in the later
works, Degas emphasized the field glasses
that make possible the magnifying of her vi-
sion, which in itself must have fascinated
him. But he did not ignore the young wom-
an, whose simple loose jacket and skirt proba-
129
1 . See Ronald Pickvance on the history of this work
in 1979 Edinburgh, no. 10, p. 14, pi. 2 (color)
P- 34-
2. Fevre 1949, facing p. 81.
3. Lipton 1986, pp. 66, 68.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919, no.
26 1. c); bought at that sale by Marcel Guerin; Cesar
M. de Hauke, Paris and New York; his bequest to
the museum 1968.
exhibitions: 1936 Philadelphia, no. 81, repr.; 1979
Edinburgh, no. 3; 1984 Tubingen, no. 60.
selected references: Lemoisne 193 1 , p. 289, pi. 59;
Mongan 1938, p. 295; Rouart 1945, p. 71 n. 29; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 179; Benedict Nicolson,
"The Recovery of a Degas Race Course Scene," Bur-
lington Magazine, CII:693, December i960, pp. 536-
37; 1967 Saint Louis, under no. 55; Minervino 1974,
no. 232; Thomson 1979, p. 677.
75-
James Tissot
1867-68
Oil on two pieces of canvas
59V2 X 44V8 in. (151 X 112 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund (1939.39. 161)
Lemoisne 175
Little is known of the origins of what seems
to us the unexpected friendship between
Degas and Tissot. Tissot had not, however,
always been the "plagiarist painter" whom
the Goncourts began denouncing in 1874. 1
In the 1860s, he not only shared certain
tastes with Degas, but brought to French
painting of the time, in both his history
compositions and his portraits, a new note,
original solutions (even if the influence of
the Belgian Henri Leys was overly evident),
and a skillful mixture, which we may now
find somewhat adulterated, of respect for
tradition and attention to the fashions of the
moment. At nineteen years of age, Tissot
left his native Nantes and advanced on Paris;
he became a student of Lamothe's, as Degas
had been a little earlier, and enrolled in the
Ecole des Beaux- Arts. If their paths crossed
at that time, it could only have been very
briefly in Lamothe's class: Tissot's name
does not appear in Degas's notebooks of the
period, nor is there any record of Degas's
having mentioned him during his three-year
sojourn in Italy.
They became acquainted in the early
1 860s, possibly through Elie Delaunay, also
a native of Nantes, who returned to Paris in
January 1862 after spending five years in
Rome. The first evidence of their friendship
is a long letter2 that Tissot wrote to Degas
from Venice during his Italian trip in late
1862. This letter, which is important for the
dating of Semiramis (cat. no. 29), also shows
that the two artists were already friendly:
Tissot was following Degas's work as well
as the progress of his love affairs, about
which he inquires with labored innuendo.
Tissot's fine education, his charming man-
ners, and their common taste for fifteenth-
century Italian painters sealed a friendship
that would last about fifteen years. It has
been said by many that Degas broke with
Tissot on learning that he had sided with
the Communards in 1871, but the letters
(now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris)
that Degas sent to him between 1871 and
1874 m London, where Tissot had gone into
exile, prove that this was not the case; Degas
at that time must have known the reasons
for his friend's flight.
The notebooks used by Degas in the early
1860s show his interest in the work of the
young Tissot: partial copies, no doubt done
from memory, of The Dance of Death (Salon
of 1861; Museum of Art, Rhode Island
School of Design, Providence) and of A Walk
in the Snow (1858; Salon of 1859), 3 and studies
for compositions in the manner of Tissot.4
In portrait painting, the two artists often used
the same formula, inherited from Ingres, of
the portrait in an interior. However, in Tissot's
case it is accomplished with a meticulous-
ness, a taste for the anecdotal, a stylishness,
and a porcelain-like surface that we do not
find in the work of Degas, which is spacious,
more powerful, and more meaningful — in
short, it possesses the very qualities that dis-
tinguish a series of pleasant, mundane canvases
from an uninterrupted flow of masterpieces.
Generally dated between 1866 and 1868,5
this large portrait — apart from The Bellelli
Family (cat. no. 20), it is the largest of the
portraits Degas painted in the 1860s — was
preceded by three detailed drawings of Tis-
sot: a single sheet with two studies of his
head (III: 158.2, private collection), and two
full-length studies on separate sheets, one
showing him in a position similar to that in
the final work (III: 158. 3), and the other a
quick sketch giving the general plan of the
composition (III: 15 8.1, Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, Mass.).
Tissot is at the center of the canvas, a bit
weary and apathetic, elegant, toying with
his stick, sitting down for just a moment, a
visitor (note the hat and overcoat) in a studio
that is neither his nor that of any other par-
ticular painter. The black top hat placed
against a brightly colored painting and the
carelessly deposited overcoat here serve in
place of the usual studio hangings. Contrast-
ing with the deliberate nonchalance of both
the man and his possessions is the rigidity of
the frames and stretchers, which (as in
Poussin's Self-Portrait in the Louvre) provide
the setting for the sitter. Theodore Reff has
assiduously identified the works decorating
this studio: behind Tissot, the only fully
legible work, Cranach's portrait of Frederick
the Wise (Frederick III); at the top, a long
composition on a Japanese theme; on the ta-
ble, a canvas that seems to portray some
women in contemporary costume under
trees with thick, brightly lit trunks; finally,
on the easel, a fragment of an outdoor scene
that appears to be a Finding of Moses.
For his portrait of Frederick the Wise, Degas
surely reproduced, from among the many
known copies, the one in the Louvre, which
had been part of Napoleon's booty. He does
not present it as a copy, however, but as an
original in its old wide frame hung in the
place of honor; to make it more conspicu-
ous, he enlarges it appreciably (the panel in
the Louvre measures $Vs by 5V2 inches, or
13 by 14 centimeters). He had shown his in-
terest in Cranach earlier, when in a brief en-
try in a notebook used between 1859 and
1864, he imagined "a portrait of a lady with
a hat extending to her waist," making it
"the size of the Cranach" and seeing it in a
"supple color scale, bright, as tightly drawn
as possible."7 The canvas with the Japanese
theme is perhaps a Western transcription of
a makimono scroll (magazines like Tour du
Monde were publishing some very free adap-
tations of Japanese works as faithfully en-
graved reproductions) or more probably a
Japanese-inspired invention in the manner of
Tissot or Stevens. In any case, of all the
works in this studio, it is the only one that
might be by Tissot. It is difficult to connect
any names with the two outdoor scenes (they
seem the work of two different painters),
and especially so with the Moses, which is
more fragmentary and less legible. Perhaps,
as Reff believes, the biblical scene is a refer-
ence to the interest Degas and Tissot shared
in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Vene-
tian painting, which often treated this sub-
ject. It is even more likely that there is a
connection between the silhouette of Phar-
aoh's daughter and the figure of Mile Fiocre
in the Brooklyn Museum's painting (cat.
no. 77): the similarity in their situations
(standing over a river in one case, a spring
in the other) and their poses is striking, and
suggests that the two pictures were done very
close together in time, in 1867-68.
The portrait of Tissot is ambiguous, as
was the man himself — he seemed to Edmond
de Goncourt (much later, it is true) "a com-
plex creature, half mystic and half trickster."8
The painter is in a studio, but unlike Henri
Michel-Levy (L326, Calouste Gulbenkian
Museum, Lisbon) he is not at work; he is in
bourgeois attire, like Manet, Moreau, or Va-
lernes, but unlike them he is surrounded by
canvases that reveal his profession as well as
130
his tastes. The portrait of Frederick the Wise —
the protector, it should be noted, of Luther,
who figured in a work by Tissot at the 1861
Salon, Martin Luther's Doubts (Art Gallery of
Hamilton) — alludes to the interest Degas
and Tissot shared in sixteenth-century Ger-
man painting, and more particularly to the
subjects Tissot in the 1860s increasingly
chose from German history. The "Japanese"
canvas emphasizes Tissot's enthusiasm for
Japanese art, of which he was one of the
first collectors. The outdoor scenes would
be evidence of his interest in the work of
artists such as Manet and Monet. The five
canvases surrounding Tissot may also be
seen as samples of the genres in which he
was achieving success — portraiture, exotic
compositions, outdoor scenes, history paint-
ing. But the eclecticism of his gifts cannot
mask the precariousness of his situation.
Here we see Tissot before us, perfectly at
ease, it is true, but in an unstable position.
Although earning a handsome livelihood
and residing in a town house on the avenue
de rimperatrice, he is no longer an innova-
tive artist but has become a fashionable
painter. Degas captures him at this pivotal
moment in his career, treating him with cu-
riosity and sympathy, but also with a touch
of envy and some irony. Perhaps the big
"Japanese" canvas, a, simple picturesque var-
iation on an Oriental theme — everything
that Degas detested — is there to remind us
of the danger of yielding in a facile way to
exotic reference, which was to be Tissot's
normal style of painting to the end of his
days. For the moment, Degas is amused by
the nonchalance of the painter who has "ar-
rived," but he is not duped; the severe counte-
nance of the Lutheran prince, which repeats
that of the Parisian dandy like a Renaissance
echo, is not simply a subtle reminder of Tis-
sot's tastes, but also a warning.
1. Journal Goncourt 1956, II, p. 1001.
2. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 230-31, n. 45.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 109).
4. Ibid. (pp. 11, 133, 183).
5. It is dated 1866 in Boggs 1962, p. 32; 1868 in Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 175; 1866-68 in Reff
1976, p. 103.
6. Reff 1985, Notebook 21 (private collection, p. 6).
7. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 194).
8. Journal Goncourt 1956, III, p. 11 12.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 37
[as "Portrait d'homme dans un atelier de peintre"]);
bought at that sale by Jos Hessel, Paris, for Fr 25,700;
deposited with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 14 March 192 1
(deposit no. 12384); bought by Durand-Ruel, New
York, 28 April 192 1 (stock no. N. Y. 8087); bought
by Adolph Lewisohn, New York, 6 April 1922, for
$1,400; Jacques Seligmann, New York, 1939; ac-
quired by the museum 1939.
exhibitions: 193 i Cambridge, Mass., no. 3; 1931,
New York, The Century Association; 1936, Cleve-
land Museum of Art, 26 June-4 October, Twentieth
Anniversary Exhibition, no. 268, repr.; 1937 New
York, no. 2, repr.; 1938 New York, no. 9; 1941 New
York, no. 34, fig. 40; 195 1, New York, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, 2 November-2 December,
The Lewisohn Collection, no. 22, repr. p. 33; i960 New
York, no. 14, repr.; 1968, Providence, Rhode Island
School of Design, 28 February-29 March /Toronto,
The Art Gallery of Ontario, 6 April- 5 May, James
Jacques Joseph Tissot 1836-1902, no number, repr.
frontispiece; 1972, New "fork, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, 18 January-7 March, Portrait of the Art-
ist, no. 22; 1974-75 Paris, no. 11, repr. (color); 1977
New York, no. 6 of paintings.
selected references: Renaissance de Vart jrancais, I,
1918, p. 146; Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 15; Stephan
Bourgeois, The Adolph Lewisohn Collection of Modem
French Paintings and Sculptures, New York: E. Weyhe,
1928, pp. 98ff., repr.; Louise Burroughs, "A Portrait
of James Tissot by Degas," Metropolitan Museum Bul-
letin, XXXVI, 1941, pp. 35-38, repr. cover; Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, pp. 56, 240, II, no. 175; Boggs
1962, pp. 23, 32, 54, 57, 59, 106, 131, pi. 46; New
York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 62-64, repr.; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 240; Reff 1976, pp. 28, 90, 101-10,
138, 144, 145, 223-24, pi. 68 (color), figs. 69, 71, 73,
75 (detail); Moffett 1979, pp. 7-8, pi. 9 (color); Mi-
chael Wentworth, James Tissot, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1984, pp. xv, 49, 59, pi. 37; 1985, Paris, Petit
Palais, 5 April-3oJune, Tissot, pp. 43-44; 1987
Manchester, pp. 26-27, rePr-
76.
Julie Burtey (?)
c. 1867
Pencil heightened with white on off-white
wove paper
14V4 X io3/4 in. (36. 1 X 27.2 cm)
Inscribed in black crayon upper right: Mme Julie
Burtey [?]
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Massachusetts. Be-
quest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs (1965.254)
Vente IL347
It was probably in the 1890s, in putting his
drawings in order, that Degas most conscien-
tiously added the name of the sitter to this
study for a painting now in Richmond
(fig. 70). But the handwriting is partly il-
legible, and the young woman's name has,
since 19 18, been read in so many different
ways as to produce a comic collection of
misnomers. The inventory drawn up after
Degas*s death (Durand-Ruel archives, Paris)
mentions a "Julie Burty"; the catalogue of
the atelier sale has her as "Julie Burtin," the
most widely adopted version of the name;
an inscription, not by Degas, on a study of
the head alone in the Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown (111:304), reads "Mme Jules
Bertin"; and in addition to "Burley" there is
also the "Lucie Burtin" invented in the cata-
logue for the Degas exhibition of 1924. 1
Theodore Reff has proposed the most
likely identification, that of Julie Burtey, a
dressmaker whose address, according to the
Paris street directory for 1864-66, was 2 rue
Basse-du-Rempart, in the Ninth Arron-
dissement, near the Opera.2 Three other
studies for Julie Burtey are contained in a
notebook used between 1867 and 1874,
which also includes studies for Mme Gau-
jelin (fig. 25), James Tissot (cat. no. 75), and
Interior (cat, no. 84). 3 This notebook, which
is consistent in style, was definitely not used
before 1867, apart from a drawing dated
1 86 1, which was obviously pasted in later.4
The date 1863 inscribed by Degas on the
Williamstown drawing would therefore seem
to be inexplicable. We must assume either
that the notebook was used partly in 1863
and then set aside for four or five years, or
that the artist put an incorrect date on the
Fig. 70. Julie Burtey (?) (L108), c. 1867. Oil on
canvas, 283/4X 23V2 in. (73 X 59.7 cm). Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Williamstown drawing later on, as he often
did. The latter explanation seems the more
reasonable: the beautiful Cambridge study is
very similar, for example, to sketches for
the portrait of Victoria Dubourg (cat.
no. 83) — in the description of the clothing,
the details of the hands, and the shadows on
the face. The lines Degas uses here are more
accentuated and forceful, deliberately harder
and sharper than in the drawings of the early
1 860s. The simple placing of the sitter, the
stiffness of her bearing against a background
of very rapidly drawn verticals and horizon-
tals, the absence of any setting other than a
tawdry "period" chair, the precision of the
132
contours, the lack of affectation — all these
ingredients give it a primitive purity and ele-
gance which, even more than in the works
of Ingres, are reminiscent of sixteenth-
century pencil drawings.
1. 1924 Paris, no. 81.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 37).
3. Ibid. (pp. 3% 39. 41).
4. Ibid. (p. 9).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 347
[as "Femme assise dans un fauteuil. Etude pour le
portrait de Mme Julie Burtin"]); bought at that sale
by Reginald Davis, Paris, for Fr 5,500. Mme De-
motte collection, Paris, 1924; bought by Paul J.
Sachs, Cambridge, Mass., 3 July 1928, to 1965; Meta
and Paul J. Sachs bequest to the museum 1965.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 81 (as "Lucie Burtin");
1929 Cambridge, Mass., no. 32; 1930, New York,
Jacques Seligmann and Co., 30 October-8 Novem-
ber, Drawings by Degas, no. 17; 1935 Boston, no. 119;
1935, Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, January, Master
Drawings, no. 114; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 64, repr.;
1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 69, pi. IV; 1939, New
York, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences Muse-
um, Great Modem French Drawings; 1940, Washing-
ton, D.C., Phillips Memorial Gallery, 7 April-i
May, Great Modern Drawings, no. 16; 1941, Detroit
Institute of Arts, 1 May- 1 June, Masterpieces of 19th
and 20th Century Drawings, no. 16; 1945, New York,
Buchholz Gallery, 3 -27 January, Edgar Degas, no. 57;
1946, Wellesley, Farnsworth Art Museum, 16 Febru-
ary-10 March, Drawings by Degas; 1947, New York,
Century Club, 19 February-10 April, Loan Exhibition;
1947, San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion
of Honor, 8 March-6 April, 19th Century French Draw-
ings, no. 87; 1948 Minneapolis, no number; 195 1,
Detroit Institute of Arts, 15 May-30 September,
French Drawings from the Fogg Museum of Art, no. 33;
1952, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
French Drawings from the Fogg Art Museum; 1956, Wa-
terville, Me., Colby College, hors catalogue; 1958
Los Angeles, no. 13, repr.; 1958-59 Rotterdam,
no. 160, pi. 155; 196 1, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art
Museum, 24 April-20 May, Ingres and Degas: Two
Classical Draughtsmen, no. 4; 1965-67 Cambridge,
Mass., no. 55, repr.; 1966, South Hadley, Mass.,
Mount Holyoke College; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 47,
repr.; 1970 Williamstown, no. 17, repr.; 1974 Bos-
ton, no. 73; 1979, Tokyo, National Museum of West-
ern Art, European Master Drawings from the Fogg Art
Museum, no. 89; 1984 Tubingen, no. 55, repr.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, pi. 56; Mongan
1932, pp. 64-65, repr. cover; Cambridge, Mass.,
Fogg, 1940, I, no. 663, III, pi. 339; Lassaigne 1945,
p. 6, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, under no. 108;
Degas Letters 1947, pi. 6 facing p. 48; R. Schwabe,
Degas: The Draughtsman, London: Art Trade Press,
1948, p. 8, repr.; James Watrous, The Craft of Old-
Master Drawings, Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1957, pp. 144-45, repr.; Rosenberg 1959,
p. 108, pi. 201; Boggs 1962, pp. 17-18, III, pi. 35;
Williamstown, Clark, 1964, pi. 62 p. 80; Reff 1965,
p. 613 n. 88; Gabriel Weisberg, The Realist Tradition:
French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900, Cleveland
Museum of Art, 198 1, pp. 3off., pi. 50.
77-
Mile Fiocre in the Ballet
"La Source"
1867-68
Oil on canvas
5i1/sX 57V8 in. (130 X 145 cm)
The Brooklyn Museum, New York. Gift of
A. Augustus Healy, James H. Post, and
John T. Underwood (21.111)
Lemoisne 146
This work is often mistakenly regarded as
Degas's first painting of the ballet. It is in
fact a problematic masterpiece that is diffi-
cult to classify. It is important to keep in
mind the rather enigmatic title under which
this work was exhibited at the Salon of 1868:
"Portrait de Mile E. F. . . ; a propos du ballet
de la Source." Although the phrase "a propos
de" (in connection with) is difficult to in-
terpret, the subject is easy to discern: a break
in a rehearsal of the ballet (and not, as is or-
dinarily claimed, a moment of rest during
the actual performance). La Source, in three
acts and four scenes, with libretto by Charles
Nuitter and Saint-Leon, choreography by
Saint-Leon, and music by Ludwig Minkus
and Leo Delibes, opened in Paris on 12 No-
vember 1866. Ingres and Verdi, among
others, attended the particularly brilliant
dress rehearsal.1 The ballet was a great suc-
cess; on 5 January 1875, an excerpt was chosen
133
for performance at the inaugural celebration
of the new Opera, the Palais Gamier. Its tale
of the hunter Djemil's love for the cruel and
unapproachable Nouredda, a beautiful Geor-
gian woman, provided the pretext for an
Oriental as well as magical theme, and the
ballet was a showcase for the talents of its two
female protagonists, Fiocre as Nouredda and
Salvioni as Naila the sacrificial nymph.
Though much about the canvas has already
been well documented — the dating is fixed,
since the painting was submitted to the Sa-
lon of 1868 and the ballet had opened a year
and a half earlier, and there are numerous
preliminary studies to shed light on its de-
velopment— Degas's purpose in painting it
has remained an enigma. Newly discovered
documents suggest a possible explanation.
The first, very sketchy, compositional
studies are found in a notebook in the
Louvre2 and in another notebook in a pri-
vate collection;3 both already indicate what
was to be the final composition, with the
single, notable difference of an attendant in-
August 1867 and gave to her as well.
These studies were preceded by two por-
traits of the dancer made from photographs.
Members of her family recognized the por-
traits and bought them at the atelier sale after
Degas's death (L129 [identified in Minervino
1974, no. 212] and IV:96.b [fig. 73]). Before
beginning to work in oil, Degas again
sketched the attendant on the left playing
the gusla (IV:79.a, The Art Institute of Chi-
cago) and the attendant crouched near the
water (IV: 77. a, IV: 79.0), from which (per-
haps later, as Daniel Halevy believed) he
made the beautiful detail of the foot she is
wiping, in pastel (IV: 18).
As in Semiramis (cat. no. 29), and follow-
ing Ingres's method, Degas then painted, on a
slightly reduced scale, a study (cat. no. 78)
of the nude figures of Fiocre and the seated
attendant, but putting them closer together
and giving them the same features — those
of the model who posed in the studio. For
the horse drinking, he made use of a wax
statuette that was one of his first works of
some more. He engaged a restorer who
succeeded, more or less, in removing
what remained of the varnish and who
gave instructions for retouching it and re-
pairing the damage Degas had done to his
own painting. He was only half satisfied
with the result.4
Like earlier works Degas had exhibited at
the Salon, the portrait of Eugenie Fiocre re-
ceived little attention. Only Zola devoted a
few laudatory but ambiguous lines to it. In
the final article he wrote on the Salon for
UEvenement Illustre (9 June 1868), he grouped
under the heading "some good canvases"
artists and styles that he had not managed to
classify in his preceding accounts — Manet,
the "naturalistes" (Pissarro), the "actualistes"
(Monet, Bazille, Renoir), and the landscape
painters (Jongkind, Corot, the Morisot sis-
ters). After a long discussion of Courbet,
Bonvin, and Valernes, he comes to the "well-
observed and very fine" Portrait de Mile E. F.
. . . ; a propos du ballet de la Source. He does
Fig. 71. Eugenie Fiocre, dated 3 Au-
gust 1867. Pencil. Private collection
Fig. 72. Eugenie Fiocre, dated Au-
gust 1867. Pencil. Private collection
Fig. 73. Eugenie Fiocre (IV:96.b),
c. 1866. Charcoal, I33/4X io5/s in.
(35 X 27 cm). Location unknown
serted between the ballerina and the drink-
ing horse. Several pencil studies of Fiocre
follow. The first (IV: 102, private collection,
New York) shows the dancer in informal
dress rather than in costume, and without
the tiara that she wears in the painting. A
second study, published here for the first
time (fig. 71), given by Degas to the model
and kept by her descendants, shows her in
precisely the same pose, but wearing her
stage costume. This study is dated 3 August
1867 and therefore helps establish the time
in which the work was painted: between
August 1867 and April 1868 (it was shown
at the Salon from 1 May). About the same
time, Degas made a study of the dancer's
head (fig. 72), which he signed and dated
sculpture (cat. no. 79). As he later told Er-
nest Rouart, he continued painting the final
canvas right up to the eve of the Salon (the
same thing had happened the year before).
At the last minute, the artist applied a coat
of varnish to the still wet paint; he was not
pleased and later had the varnish removed.
It was "a disaster," to quote Rouart.
Naturally, in removing the varnish, half
the paint was removed. So as not to de-
stroy the whole thing, the work had to be
left unfinished. The canvas sat like that in
a corner of the studio for years. It was
only much later (between 1892 and 1895,
I believe) that Degas came across the pic-
ture and got it into his head to work on it
not like the title; he would have preferred A
Halt beside a Pool. "Three women are gath-
ered at the water's edge; beside them a horse
is drinking. The horse's coat is magnificent
and the women's clothes are handled with
great delicacy. There are exquisite reflec-
tions in the river. As I looked at this paint-
ing, which is a little thin and has strange
embellishments, I was reminded of Japanese
prints, so artistic in the simplicity of their
handling of color."
It is unlikely that anyone reading Zola's
commentary would think, unless reminded
by Degas's title, that the painting was sup-
posed to be of a ballet. It suggests instead
some "naturaliste" or "actualiste" scene,
such as those painted by Pissarro or Monet.
134
77
Furthermore, the words used by Zola in
this brief paragraph to describe the paint-
ing— "delicacy,'* "exquisite," "embellish-
ments"— all evoke something quite different
from the solid, compact work seen today,
which has none of the thinness or delicacy
of some earlier works. The obscure, well-
meaning Raoul de Navery shared Zola's
view when he labeled Degas one of the
many gentleman painters exhibiting at the
Salon (it is true that in the catalogue Degas' s
name is still written with the particle) and
praised the "very harmonious and very re-
markable" canvas on which Degas had por-
trayed "one of the great beauties of Paris."5
Although a portrait of the celebrated Eu-
genie Fiocre could not but invite comments
from the fashionable world (as would not be
the case the next year with the portrait of
the obscure Josephine Gaujelin or, more ac-
curately, Gozelin), Degas's friends of the
Cafe Guerbois, just like the viewer of today,
must have found it difficult to understand
his compulsion to paint this portrait. Eu-
genie Fiocre, born in Paris on 22 July 1845
(she died there on 6 June 1908), soon be-
came, with her sister Louise, one of the stars
of the Opera, more for her charm and vi-
vacity, her body, and her truly Parisian
manner than for any real talent as a dancer.
She first began to attract attention in Nemea
ou V Amour Venge, a soon forgotten ballet by
Minkus, Meilhac, Halevy, and Saint-Leon,
in which she created a sensation in the role
of Love. She looked like "a flawlessly beau-
tiful statue," recalled the not overly fond
Marie Colombier, "so wonderfully desirable
that one would have said she was not merely
a representation, but Love itself."6 From
then on, she pursued the career — both chore-
ographic and sentimental — of a dancer, with
frequent stage appearances and numerous
wealthy lovers, until her brilliant marriage
in 1888 to the Marquis de Courtivron, a de-
scendant of an excellent Burgundian family.
When Degas began his portrait of Eu-
genie Fiocre in August 1867, between two
performances of La Source (the thirteenth,
on Saturday, 27 July, and the fourteenth, on
Monday, 5 August), he took as his model a
woman who was one of the most glittering
135
celebrities of Paris. The image he presents of
this young woman, who is posing for him
and whom he obviously admires (according
to her descendants, there is a tradition that
the Degas family and the Fiocres were re-
lated), is not the more worldly one offered
by Carpeaux (plaster, Musee d'Orsay, Paris;
marble, private collection, Paris) or by Win-
terhalter (private collection, France). He does
not represent her as a dancer any more than
he emphasizes her curves — hiding the well-
developed figure under the billowing Oriental
costume. "What a figure to kneel before —
and behind!" was the ribald comment of an
old Opera subscriber.7 Even her very dis-
tinctive features, the slight squint and the
long pointed nose — "a nose one would have
to make an umbrella for"8 — which are so
clearly depicted in the unpublished drawing
mentioned above, have been effaced in the
painting. If Degas ever had an opportunity
to become a "painter of high life,"9 it was
surely in portraying this most celebrated Pa-
risian, and the fact that he did not seize the
opportunity is an indication that this was
not his goal. One explanation for the reac-
tion to the painting lies in the unquestion-
able discomfort that Zola, Castagnary, and
Duranty must have felt when confronted
with the effigy of someone who was not at
all of their world, a visual symbol of the fete
imperiale. On the other hand, it was also in-
comprehensible to the society critics, the ce-
lebrity lovers, and the habitues of the wings
at the Opera who did not recognize "their"
Fiocre.
This no doubt explains the "a propos" in
Degas's title, otherwise an utter mystery.
He portrays a celebrated ballerina, but not
as a star, or even as a dancer, since nothing
in the setting enables us to guess that the
scene is on a stage. The rocks, as Charles F.
Stuckey has correctly pointed out, do not
appear to be made of painted canvas, but
rather seem to be genuine, with the solidity
of Courbet's Franche-Comte boulders.10 In
fact, never was the influence of Courbet so
strong as in this work. The comments made
by Zola and Navery, together with Rouart's
later remarks concerning the repainting of
the canvas, might suggest that it was only la-
ter, in the nineties, that Degas "solidified" a
canvas that had left him perplexed, and that
at the Salon of 1868 the painting might have
been thinner and smoother, without the
thick paint of the background. This is un-
likely. The portrait of Mile Fiocre was
painted in the midst of passionate discus-
sions about Courbet. Whistler, whose Sym-
phony in White, No. 3 (Barber Institute of
Fine Arts, Birmingham), which Degas copied
at this time, is cited by Reff as a possible
source for the composition of the Brooklyn
canvas,11 acknowledged his debt to Courbet.
Castagnary, in his Salon de 1866, champi-
oned Courbet, thereby arguing, to use his
own words, the cause of "all the idealistic
and realistic young artists who will come
after," and extolling, according to Marcel
Crouzet, "a monstrous alliance of realism
and idealism as a definition of the contem-
porary pictorial movement."12 In this paint-
ing, Degas apparently followed Castagnary
to the letter, introducing magical elements
into a realistic setting. The landscape behind
Nouredda and her attendants contains noth-
ing of the exotic setting described in the li-
bretto of La Source: "A pass in the Caucasus:
impenetrable rock everywhere. A spring
trickles from the sides of a boulder; green
plants flourish round about. Beside the
stream, creeping vines coil up the rough
surface of the rock to the top, from which
they tumble down again bearing clusters of
blue flowers."13 Instead, we see a harsh,
compact pile of rocks lapped by dark, glassy
water. The stillness and lassitude of the
three figures and the quiet pose of the drink-
ing horse contrast with this somewhat for-
bidding mass. Against this mixed backdrop
of browns and deep greens, taken from
studies of rocks said to have been done at
Bagnoles-de-rOrne during a stay at the Val-
pinqons (see L191 and L192, dating a little
later, 1868-70), the gowns of the two at-
tendants and, in particular, the costume of
Nouredda-Fiocre stand out: "a Tartar head-
dress in flaming red satin. Embroidered
with white jet, black pearls, red pearls, and
gold spangles ... a jeweled belt and a bod-
ice embellished with Moses gems; earrings
and a necklace of gems tones; an outer dol-
man in sky-blue Pekin silk trimmed with
silver braid. "u
Better understood, Degas's canvas could
have acted as a manifesto, breathing new life
into what was already a Realist heritage. But
perhaps this was not Degas's intention, and
it was certainly not his style.
The painting, which went virtually un-
noticed, has now, with the passage of time,
become one of Degas's masterpieces, sum-
ming up all the work he did in the 1860s in
studying the art of history painting (for
Fiocre also descends from Semiramis) and
foreshadowing the dancers to come, through
the strange and moving appearance, be-
tween the solid hooves of the horse, of a
pair of little pink ballet slippers.
1. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13505.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 20 (Louvre, RF5634 ter,
pp. 20-21).
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 21 (private collection,
pp. 12-13).
4. Rouart 1937, p. 21.
5. Raoul de Navery, Le Salon de 1868, Paris, 1868,
no. 686, pp. 42-43.
6. Marie Colombier, Memoires: fin d* empire, Paris:
Flammarion [1 898-1900], I, p. 98.
7. Un vieil abonne [An Old Subscriber], Ces demoi-
selles de VOpera, Paris: Tresse et Stock, 1887,
p. 196.
8. Ibid., p. 195.
9. Letter from Manet to Fantin-Latour, 26 August
1868, cited in Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 103.
10. 1984-85 Paris, p. 21.
11. Reff 1985, Notebook 20 (Louvre, RF5634 ter,
P- 17).
12. Crouzet 1964, pp. 237-38.
13. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13505.
14. Manuscript, Bibliotheque de l'Opera, Paris.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 8. a);
bought at that sale by Seligmann, Bernheim-Jeune,
Durand-Ruel, and Vollard, for Fr 80,500 (Seligmann
sale, American Art Association, New York, 27 Janu-
ary 1921, no. 68); bought at that sale through Durand-
Ruel by A. Augustus Healy, James H. Post, and John
T. Underwood; their gift to the museum.
exhibitions: 1868, Paris, 1 May-2oJune, Salon, no.
686; 1918 Paris, no. 9; 192 1, New York, The Brook-
lyn Museum, Paintings by Modern French Masters, no.
71, repr. frontispiece; 1922-23, New York, The
Brooklyn Museum, 29 November 1922-2 January
1923, Paintings by Contemporary English and French
Painters, no. 158; 193 1 Paris, Rosenberg, no. 37a;
1932 London, no. 340 (391); 1933 Chicago, no. 285;
1933 Northampton, no. 9; 1934, San Francisco, Cali-
fornia Palace of the Legion of Honor, 8 June- 8 July,
Exhibition of French Painting, no. 88, repr.; 1935 Boston,
no. 10; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 9, repr.; 1940, New
York World's Fair, October, European and American
Paintings, 1500-1900, no. 277; 1942, Art Association
of Montreal, 5 February-8 March, Masterpieces of
Painting, no. 65; 1944, New York, Wildenstein,
13 April-13 May, Five Centuries of Ballet, 1575-1944,
no. 226 (as "Mile Fiocre dans le role de Nomeeda");
1947 Cleveland, no. 12, pi. XI; 1949 New York,
no. 13, repr.; 1953-54 New Orleans, no. 73; i960
New York, no. 13, repr.; i960 Paris, no. 4; 1971,
New York, Wildenstein, 4 March-3 April/ Philadel-
phia Museum of Art, 15 April-23 May, From Realism
to Symbolism: Whistler and His World, no. 63, repr.
p. 27; 1972, New York, Wildenstein and Co. , 2 No-
vember-9 December, Faces from the World of Impres-
sionism and Post-Impressionism, no. 21, repr.; 1978-79
Philadelphia, no. VI-43 (English edition), no. 211,
repr. (French edition).
selected references: Raoul de Navery [pseud.], Le
Salon de 1868, Paris: Librairie Centrale, 1868, pp. 42-
43, no. 686; Castagnary, Le bilan de Vannee 1868, Par-
is: A. Le Chevalier, 1869, p. 354; Jamot 1924, pp. 25,
57» 58, 97, 135-36, pi. 18; 1924 Paris, pp. 9-1 1; Rouart
1937, p. 21; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 60, 62-63,
II, no. 146; Browse [1949], pp. 21, 28, 51, 335, pi. 3;
H. Wegener, "French Impressionist and Post-
Impressionist Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum,"
The Brooklyn Museum Bulletin, XVI: 1, Autumn 1954,
pp. 8-10, 23, fig. 4; Rewald 1961, pp. 158, 186, repr.
p. 175; Reff 1964, pp. 255-56; Minervino 1974,
no. 282, pi. IX (color); Emile Zola, "Mon Salon,"
Le bon combat: de Courbet aux impressionnistes, Paris:
Hermann, 1974, pp. 121-22; Reff 1976, pp. 29-30,
214, 232, 298, 306, 327 n. 33, fig. 9; 1984-85 Paris,
pp. 18-19, fig. 16 (color) p. 18.
136
78.
Study of Nudes, for Mile Fiocre in
the Ballet "La Source"
1867-68
Oil on canvas
32X253/8in. (81.3X64.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
Gift of Paul Rosenberg and Co., 1958 (58:2)
Lemoisne 148
See cat. no. 77
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 38);
bought at that sale by Alphonse Kann, Saint-Germain-
en-Laye, for Fr 14, 500; the heirs of Alphonse Kann,
from 1948; Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich, 1952; Paul
Rosenberg and Co., New York, 1952; his gift to the
museum 1958.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 26; 1961, Art Gallery of
Toronto, 21 June-25 September, Two Cities Collect,
no. 9.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 148;
Browse [1949], p. 33$, under no. 3; Minervino 1974,
no. 283; Stephen Nash et al., Albright-Knox Art Gal-
lery, Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942,
New York: Rizzoli, 1979, p. 212, repr. p. 213.
The First Sculptures
cat. nos. 79-81
It is not clear when Degas began making
sculpture. The sculptor Bartholome, de-
scribing himself to Lemoisne in 19 19 as a
friend of Degas 's "from way back," said
that he "remembered seeing him make —
very early, before 1870 — a large and very
attractive bas-relief in clay, half life-size, of
young girls picking apples."1 As Charles
Millard has correctly pointed out, Bartho-
lome became very close to Degas in the
1 8 80s and remained so for the rest of his
life, but he was not in any sense a friend
"from way back"; born in 1848, he certainly
did not know the painter before 1870. Pierre
Borel in his summary book on the works of
sculpture mentions a letter written by Degas
during his Italian trip "to his friend Pierre
Cornu" (about whom we know nothing) in
which the young artist questions his voca-
tion: "I often wonder if I will be a painter or
a sculptor. I have to say I am very unde-
cided."2 More interesting than this letter —
which appears to be sheer fantasy — are cer-
tain remarks by Auguste De Gas in a letter
to his son in 1858, when Degas was staying
with his uncle Gennaro Bellelli in Florence.
There was some question of two plasters
belonging to Degas that had been sent to
his friend Emile Levy in Paris and which
Auguste had arranged to pick up. "I sent to
Mme Levy's for the plasters, and Pierre
found M. Levy junior there, who said that
the plasters had been broken en route and
that he had had them repaired together with
some of his own."3 After a month, Auguste
wrote: "M. Levy told Pierre he had given
your two plasters to the caster to be re-
paired."4 Given such limited information, it
is difficult to say for certain whether these
references are to original works or — more
likely — to the commercial Italian casts that
cluttered almost every artist's studio.
The most valuable testimony is supplied
by the journalist Thiebault-Sisson, who met
Degas at Clermont-Ferrand during the
summer of 1897 and then spent two days
with him at Mont-Dore, where the painter
was taking a cure but was bored. Delighted
to have someone to whom he could talk,
Degas reminisced, including a great deal
about sculpture. "When I asked him," re-
ported the journalist, "if he had had diffi-
culty learning this new craft, he exclaimed,
'But I've been working in this medium for a
long time! I have been making sculpture for
more than thirty years. Not, it is true, on a
regular basis, but from time to time, when
it appealed to me or I needed to.'"5 In ex-
planation of this "needed to," Degas spoke
of a technique used by Dickens. According
to the novelist's biographers, "whenever he
began to get lost in the complicated weave
of his characters," he constructed figures
bearing their names and made them talk. It
was this need to "resort to the three-dimen-
sional" that Degas said he had felt while
painting The Steeplechase in 1866 (see cat.
no. 67). Not having Marey's or Muybridge's
photographs (which later would analyze the
animal's movements) to rely on, and reluc-
tant to condemn himself to spending hours on
the Champs-Elysees "studying the mounted
horsemen and the beautiful smart carriages
as they go by" (as Meissonier had done —
"one of the most knowledgeable men when
it came to horses [that Degas had] ever
known"), he took up modeling. There is no
trace of a wax horse made in preparation for
The Steeplechase, but conditions in Degas 's
studio were not the best for the preservation
of such works. Rewald is probably right,
however, in connecting Horse at a Trough
(cat. no. 79) with Mile Fiocre in the Ballet
"La Source" (cat. no. 77), dating it 1866-
68 — though I would limit it further to
1867-68, since the positions of the horses
and the slightly sloping ground are identical
in both works.
137
79-
Horse at a Trough
Fig. 74. X-radiograph of the wax Horse at Rest (cat. no. 80)
However, it is much more difficult to date
the thoroughly classical Horse at Rest (cat.
no. 80), which Degas may have used for
one or another of the racing scenes he did in
the 1 860s. It is not directly related to any
known work from that period, unless it is
the horse seen from an angle and reined in
by Paul Valpincon in Boston's At the Races
in the Countryside (cat. no. 95). It is tempt-
ing here to suggest a date close to 1869,
when the often cited influence of the medio-
cre sculptor Cuvelier (who specialized in
statuettes of horses and whose death in 1870
had such a profound effect on Degas) could
still make itself felt.
A recent exhibition published an X-radio-
graph (fig. 74) of the Musee d' Orsay wax,
revealing Degas's genius.6 The artist impro-
vised the sculpture's armature with a net-
work of tightly twisted metal rods and shaped
the animal's head around a cork. As Degas
was fond of saying, this was part of the
pleasure of making sculpture: working with
an unfamiliar material, improvising, experi-
menting in an effort to hold it together, ad-
vancing cautiously into unknown territory,
leaving the work in a corner of the studio
and taking it up again later, until finally he
produced with the means at hand some of
the finest sculpture of the nineteenth century.
79, METROPOLITAN
1. Lcmoisne 19 19, p. 110.
2. Pierre Borel, Les sculptures inedites de Degas, Geneva:
Pierre Cailler, 1949, p. 7.
3. Letter, 28 August 1858, private collection.
4. Letter, 6 October 1858.
5. Thiebault-Sisson 192 1. This source escaped Re-
wald, and Millard, too, oddly enough, did not
make use of it.
6. 1986 Paris, pp. 58-59-
1867-68
Bronze
Height: 6V2 in. (16,4 cm)
Original: red wax. Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
Rewald II
selected seferences: 1921 Paris, no. 42; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 13 A; Paris, Louvre, Sculp-
tures, 1933, no. 1759, p. 70, Orsay 13P; Rewald
1944, no. II, Metropolitan 13 A (as 1865-81); John
Rewald, "Degas Dancers and Horses," Art News,
XLIILn, September 1944, p. 23, repr.; Rewald
1956, no. II, Metropolitan 13 A; Beaulieu 1969,
pp. 370-72, fig. 2, Orsay 13P; Minervino 1974,
no. S42; Millard 1976, pp. 5-6, 20, 97, 100 (as 1875-
81); Paris, Orsay, Sculptures, 1986, p. 132, repr.
p. 33, Orsay 13P.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 13
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2106)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired in 1930 thanks to the gener-
osity of the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard
family; entered the Louvre 193 1.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 42 of sculp-
tures; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 228; 1969 Paris, no.
226; 1971 Leningrad, p. 58; 1971 Madrid, no. 105,
repr.; 1973, Paris, Musee Rodin, 15 March-30 April,
Sculptures de peintres, no. 46; 1984-85 Paris, no. 98
p. 210, fig. 222 p. 214.
138
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 13
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.433)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 45; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1947 Cleveland, no. 75; 1974 Dallas, no number;
1977 New York, no. 6 of sculptures; 1978 Rich-
mond, no. 36.
80.
Horse at Rest
c. 1869
Wax with wooden base
Signed on base near left hind leg: Degas
Height: n5/a in., with base i23/s in. (29.5 cm,
with base 31.5 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Gift of Paul Mellon'
(RF2772)
Exhibited in Paris
Rewald III
provenance: Atelier Degas; the artist's heirs; A. -A.
Hebrard, Paris, 1919-c. 1955; on consignment with
M. Knoedler and Co. , New York; bought by Paul
Mellon 1956; his gift to the Louvre 1956.
exhibitions: 1955 New York, no. 2; 1967-68 Paris, gj metropolitan
no. 328; 1969 Paris, no. 227; 1986 Paris, no. 64, repr.
selected references: Rewald 1956, no. Ill, no. 47,
pp. 4-5; Beaulieu 1969, no. 6, p. 373; Minervino
1974, no. S47; Millard 1976, pp. 20, 35; Paris, Or-
say, Sculptures, 1986, p. 138, repr.
8l.
Horse at Rest
c. 1869
Bronze
Height: uYs in. (29 cm)
Original: red wax. Musee d'Orsay, Paris
(RF2772). See cat. no. 80
Rewald III
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 47; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 3 8 A; Paris, Louvre,
Sculptures, 1933, no. 1764, p. 70, Orsay 38P; Re-
wald 1944, no. Ill, Metropolitan 38A (as 1865-81);
Rewald 1956, no. Ill; Pierre Pradel, "Quatre cires
originates de Degas," La Revue des Arts, January-
February 1957, repr. p. 30, fig. 2, wax; Beaulieu
1969, p. 373; Minervino 1974, no. S47; Millard 1976,
pp. 20, 35 (as 1875-81); Paris, Orsay, Sculptures,
1986, p. 133, repr., Orsay 38P.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 38
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2111)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired in 1930 thanks to the gener-
osity of Degas's heirs and of the Hebrard family; en-
tered the Louvre 193 1.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 47 of sculp-
tures; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 231; 1969 Paris,
hors catalogue; 1971 Leningrad, p. 58; 1971 Madrid,
no. 105, repr.; 1984-85 Paris, no. 92 p. 209, fig. 217
p. 212.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 38
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.425)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 50; 1923-25 New
York; 1925-27 New York; 1930 New York, nos. 390-
458, under bronzes; 1974 Dallas, no number; 1977
New York, no. 3 of sculptures.
82.
M. and Mme Edouard Manet
c. 1868-69
Oil on canvas
2$Vs X 28 in. (65 X 71 cm)
Vente stamp on added canvas lower right
Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art (0-119)
Lemoisne 127
References to the relationship between De-
gas and Manet are often made but rarely doc-
umented. We know about it from sketchy
sources that are difficult to confirm, espe-
cially since the only surviving letters be-
tween the two men are a few from 1868-69.
The story of their first meeting is like a fairy
tale, reminiscent of the quasi-mythical en-
counters of other pairs of great artists, such
as Cimabue and Giotto or Perugino and
Raphael. According to Moreau-Nelaton,
Manet was spending a day at the Louvre
(we are told by Tabarant that this was in
18621), when he noticed the young Degas —
Manet was his senior by two and a half
years — starting to etch a copy of Velazquez's
Infanta Margarita directly onto a copper plate.
Manet gave an exclamation, astonished at
the young painter's daring, and seeing that
he would not have much success with the
copy he had begun, ventured some advice.
Moreau-Nelaton reports: "Degas was not
getting along well at all, and would never
forget (he told me so himself) the lesson he
received from Manet that day along with his
lasting friendship."2 Regardless of the accu-
racy of this account, what is clear is that the
friendship between the artists was at its most
intense in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Of
this there is ample evidence in Berthe Mo-
risot's correspondence, Degas's correspon-
dence with Tissot, the unpublished letters
from Manet to Degas, the obvious mutual
interest that is discernible in their works (see
cat. no. 68), and not least this double por-
trait. Their admiration for each other (after
Manet's death, Degas put together a mag-
nificent collection of the older artist's work)
was clouded by harsh words on both sides,
avidly reported by followers who were
amused by the rivalry — malicious com-
ments made by Manet about Degas's lack of
interest in women,3 and caustic remarks by
Degas, which became more common in the
1 870s, concerning Manet's bourgeois re-
spectability and his desire to "make it."4 Yet
this was the same Manet who, finding him-
self bored at Boulogne-sur-Mer the summer
of 1868, said he missed most of all the con-
versation of "Degas the great aesthetician,"
and wished he would write.5 Degas, four
years later, complained in a letter to Tissot
from New Orleans that he had not heard
from Manet.6
Four unpublished letters from Manet to
Degas now in a private collection, datable to
1868-69 and constituting the only direct
records that we have of their friendship (all ,
the rest being secondhand statements or
hearsay), give us a clearer view of the nature
of their relationship. These letters consist of
an undated invitation to dinner with the Ste-
venses and Puvis de Chavannes; a brief note
in which Manet expresses his regrets at hav-
ing missed Degas at the Tortonis and the
Stevenses recently and asks if Auguste De
Gas is receiving visitors the next day; a letter
dated 29 July 1868 and mailed from Calais,
in which Manet suggests that Degas accom-
pany him to London, where "perhaps there
will be an outlet for our wares"; and a note
(mentioned by Reff, who dates it July 18697)
in which Manet asks Degas to return the two
volumes of Baudelaire he has borrowed.
While they do not indicate a close friend-
ship, these letters do show that the two men
saw each other often and shared common
interests. To a large extent, Degas moved in
the same circles as Manet: the habitues of
the Cafe Guerbois, Duranty, Fantin-Latour,
Zola (in the letter of 29 July 1869, Manet
sends him regards), Alfred Stevens (who re-
ceived on Wednesdays), the Morisots, and
Nina de Callias. Often they met at the apart-
ment of Manet's mother on rue de Saint-
Petersbourg or in the salon of Degas senior
on rue de Mondovi. Since Degas painted
portraits of several of his artist friends, it is
not at all surprising that he also painted Ma-
net, who so impressed and irritated him at
the same time.
The portrait of the Manets has attracted a
great deal of attention because of the inci-
dent to which it gave rise. We are told Ma-
net's side of the story by Moreau-Nelaton
and Degas's side by Ambroise Vollard, both
of whom were writing in the 1920s, long af-
ter the fact. Around the turn of the century,
when he was visiting Degas in his studio
one day, Vollard noticed "one of his canvases
representing a man seated on a sofa and a
woman on the side who had been cut in half
vertically." (In a photograph from that same
period showing Degas in his apartment with
Bartholome [fig. 75], we can see the double
portrait on the wall next to Manet's Ham,
exactly as it would have looked to Vollard.
Framed by a strip of dark wood with white
or gilt beveling, it was not yet extended by
the band of prepared canvas that Degas — no
doubt intending, as he had said, to "restore"
Mme Manet — must have had added a little
later, because that is how it appeared at the
first atelier sale.) Vollard's account of the in-
cident goes as follows:
Vollard: Who slashed that painting?
Degas: To think that it was Manet who
did that! He thought that something about
Fig. 75. Albert Bartholome and Degas, c. 1895-
1900. Photograph from a glass negative in the
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Fig. 76. Edouard Manet, Mme Manet at the
Piano, c. 1867-68. Oil on canvas, 15 X iSVs in.
(38 X 46 cm). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
140
Mme Manet wasn't right. Well . . . I'm
going to try to "restore" Mme Manet.
What a shock I had when I saw it at
Manet's. ... I left without saying good-
bye, taking my picture with me. When I
got home, I took down a little still life he
had given me. "Monsieur," I wrote, "I
am returning your Plums"
Vollard: But you saw each other again
afterward.
Degas: How could you expect anyone
to stay on bad terms with Manet? Only
he had already sold the Plums. What a
beautiful little canvas it was! I wanted, as
I was saying, to "restore" Mme Manet so
that I could return the portrait to him, but
by putting it off from one day to the next,
it's stayed like that ever since.8
Vollard's account of the affair tallies with
that given by Moreau-Nelaton, who attrib-
utes the incident to Manet's being unable to
tolerate "a distortion of his dear Suzanne's
features," but does not mention Degas's
sending back the Plums. Vollard gives no
indication of the date of this incident, but
Moreau-Nelaton includes it in the chapter of
his book devoted to the years 1877-79, when
Degas had already been a friend of Manet's
"for twenty years."9
Although the date this painting was com-
pleted is not known, it is reasonable to assume
that Manet did not wait years to commit his
infamy and that the slashing of the canvas
must have taken place soon after its delivery
to the Manets. It is, however, out of the
question to date the work 1877-79; more
weight should probably be given to Mme
Morisot's reference, in 1872, to a "patching
up" of a disagreement between the two art-
ists; she does not specify the cause of the dis-
agreement, but it could well have had to do
with the mutilation of the double portrait. 10
The Plums, which, according to Vollard,
Manet had given to Degas in return for the
141
portrait, might be a valuable source of in-
formation. But Denis Rouart and Daniel
Wildenstein in their catalogue raisonne of
Manet's work make no reference to a Plums
until much later (1880). 11 There is no men-
tion of the work in the 1860s, unless it is the
Walnuts in a Salad Bowl (1 866), 12 an attribu-
tion rejected by Tabarant,13 reportedly given
by Manet to Degas after a dinner party at
which Manet had broken a salad bowl. De-
gas apparently returned it after a quarrel,
the reason for which is not known, though
it could be the argument in question.
While it is thus difficult to determine the
time of the incident, the painting itself can
be dated more precisely. One clue is found
in a small picture by Manet of 1867-68 that
represents Mme Manet at the piano (fig. 76).
It was painted in Manet's mother's third-
floor apartment on rue de Saint-Petersbourg,
which Manet and his wife did not occupy
until October 1866. 14 All the evidence sug-
gests that Degas used the same setting for
his painting: the same armchairs with white
slipcovers, the same placing of the piano along
the wall, the same chair on which Mme
Manet is seated, and — though the setting is
very sketchy in Degas's picture — above the
figure of Manet sprawled on the sofa, the
two parallel gold lines of the same wain-
scoting. The generally accepted date of 1865
given by Lemoisne must, therefore, be
moved forward by at least one year; the ear-
liest possible date for the double portrait is
late 1866 or early 1867. It is even more like-
ly that it was painted during the period
when Degas and Manet saw each other
most frequently, about 1868-69; there is
support for this in the lightness and delicacy
of the painting, which make it more like
Mme Theodore Gobillard (cat. no. 87) than
Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli (cat. no. 65) or
M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli (cat. no. 63).
Here, for the last time until his later por-
traits of the Rouarts (L1437-L1444), Degas
painted a married couple. Mme Manet ap-
pears to be concentrating on her piano play-
ing, while her husband lolls on a sofa;
Jacques-Emile Blanche15 and George Moore,16
who saw Manet often, vouched for the ac-
curacy of the pose and demeanor. Evidently
bored — though Moreau-Nelaton saw him
as "intoxicated by the enveloping perfume
of the melody"17 — Manet (who, according
to his friend Antonin Proust, had no ear for
music18) seems to be only half listening to
his wife (who was an excellent musician).
Nonchalant (at the home of Degas senior,
he would sit cross-legged on the floor19), he
does not "pose," like Gustave Moreau or
James Tissot (see cat. no. 75), and there is
nothing of "the artist" about him.
But Degas, amused by this debonair im-
age, portrays Manet with obvious pleasure
and, as a great fan of his work, competes
with its luminosity, using, as later in The
Song Rehearsal (cat. no. 117), a fluid range of
whites, grays, and salmon pink, darkened
only by the black suit. And in the words De-
gas himself was to use soon after to praise
his sitter's talents, he was painting in a style
that shows "finish" and a "caress."20
1 . Adolphe Tabarant, Manet et ses oeuures, Paris:
Gallimard, 1947, p. 37.
2. Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p, 36.
3. Morisot 1950, p. 31; Morisot 1957, p. 35.
4. See Degas Letters 1947, no. 17, p. 39.
5. Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 102.
6. Degas Letters 1947, no. 3, p. 19.
7. Reflf 1976, p. 150.
8. Vollard 1924, pp. 85-86.
9. Moreau-Nelaton 1926, I, p. 36.
10. Morisot 1950, p. 69; Morisot 1957, p. 73.
11. Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein, Edouard
Manet: catalogue raisonne, 2 vols., Lausanne/Paris:
La Bibliotheque des Arts, 1975, RW363.
12. Ibid., RW119.
13. Tabarant, op. cit., p. 519.
14. Letter from Manet to Zola, 15 October 1866, in
Manet (exhibition catalogue), Paris, 1983, p. 520
(English edition, New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, p. 519).
15. Blanche 19 19, p. 148.
16. Moore 1891, p. 321.
17. Moreau-Nelaton 1926, II, p. 40.
18. Antonin Proust, Edouard Manet: souvenirs, Paris:
Renouard, 1913, p. 11.
19. Marcel Guerin, "Le portrait du chanteur Pagans
et de M. De Gas pere par Degas," Bulletin des
Musees de France, 3 March 1933, pp. 34-35.
20. Letter from Degas to Tissot, 30 September 1871,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters
1947, no. 1, p. 11.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 2);
bought at that sale by Trotti, for Fr 40,000. Wilhelm
Hansen, Copenhagen, 1918-23; bought by Kojiro
Matsukata, Paris and Tokyo, 1923; Kyuzaemon Wada,
Tokyo; private collection, Tokyo, 1967; deposited
with the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo,
1971-73; bought by the museum 1974.
exhibitions: 1922, Copenhagen/ Stockholm /Oslo,
Foreningen for Fransk Kunst, Degas, no. 6; 1924
Paris, no. 20; 1924-25, San Francisco, California Pal-
ace of the Legion of Honor, Inaugural Exposition of
French Art, no. 16; 1953, Osaka, Fujikawa Galleries,
Occidental Renowned Paintings, no. 4; 1953, Tokyo,
National Museum of Modern Art, Japan and Europe,
no. 72; i960, Tokyo, National Museum of Western
Art, Selected Masterpieces of Collection Matsukata, no. 29;
1974, Kitakyushu, Opening Exhibition of Kitakyushu
Municipal Museum, no. 10 1.
selected references: Moore 1891, p. 321; Lafond
19 1 8-19, II, repr. between pp. 12 and 13; Blanche
1919, p. 148; Vollard 1924, pp. 85-86; Moreau-
Nelaton 1926, I, p. 36; Boggs 1962, pp. 22-24, 91
nn. 10, ii} 15, pi. 42; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 51,
II, no. 127; Minervino 1974, no. 214; Y. Yamane,
Degas, "Portrait de M. et Mme Manet, " Kitakyushu,
1983.
83^
Victoria Dubourg
c. 1868-69
Oil on canvas
32X25V2U1. (81.3X64.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Toledo Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and
Mrs. William E. Levis (63.45)
Lemoisne 137
Born in 1840, Victoria Dubourg was a
painter of still lifes (she exhibited regularly
starting with the Salon of 1869) who is re-
membered today mainly as the not seduc-
tive but certainly attentive wife, and later
widow, of Henri Fantin-Latour. Degas proba-
bly met her in the Manet-Morisot circle,
which he frequented at the end of the 1860s,
unless it was at the house of her father,
whose address, "47 r[ue] N[eu]ve St Au-
gustin," he jotted down in a notebook he
used from 1867.1
There are a number of drawings for the
Toledo portrait, which show minor but in-
teresting variations with the final composi-
tion. Degas apparently found the pose he
wanted right at the outset: Mile Dubourg in
a chair set against a wall, holding her hands
together, her head and shoulders tilted slightly
forward. After making a compositional study
(111:239.3, private collection), he made sepa-
rate studies of the face (111:238.2) and hands
(111:239.2, private collection). In addition, he
drew the main outlines of the composition
in a quick sketch in one of his notebooks,2
suggesting in very summary fashion the set-
ting he would develop later. Although it is
difficult to make out what is framing Victo-
ria Dubourg on the right — a drawing on the
wall or the rough outline of a mantelpiece —
a small, thick-framed picture stands forth in
the center, hung just behind the young
woman's head. When we compare this sketch
with the one for the portrait of Tissot (cat.
no. 75) in the same notebook, the similarity
is striking and suggests that they were drawn
at almost the same time.3
When he moved on to the oil painting,
however, Degas chose to abandon (though
only at a later stage — signs of the change are
still discernible on the now bare wall) the
idea of having a picture adjacent to the head
of the woman painter, which, as in the Tis-
sot portrait, would almost certainly have
been closely tied to the sitter's activities and
tastes. He erased it, and thereby suppressed
all explicit reference to Mile Dubourg's vo-
cation; even so, this portrait is more closely
related to the pictures of his artist friends
than to the more worldly pictures of, say,
Mme Camus (L207, E. G. Buhrle Collec-
tion, Zurich; fig. 26) or even Yves Gobillard
142
(cat. no. 87). Seated in a straight chair in a
not very feminine posture in a corner of a
bourgeois living room, wearing a plain brown
dress with a green ribbon around her neck
as the only bright bit of finery, Victoria
Dubourg fixes her intelligent gaze on the
painter as she attentively watches him work-
ing. Her joined hands, in full light, are set
off against the dark background of the fabric
of her dress and take on extreme importance
right at the center of the composition, as a
discreet allusion to the metier of the sitter,
who "works with her hands"; the bouquet
on the mantelpiece further reminds us that
her talents were devoted to painting flowers.
The date proposed by Lemoisne, 1866,
seems somewhat early. The notebook with
the sketch was used in 1867-68; further-
more, Victoria Dubourg appears not to have
actually entered the Manet-Degas-Morisot
circle until about 1868-69. 4 One key ele-
ment corroborates this hypothesis: the empty
chair against the wall. There are some signs
of hesitation in if, indicating that it was
probably added at a later date; it does not
appear in the overall study and remains very
vague in the notebook sketch. This empty
chair is already the chair of Fantin-Latour. In
the spring of 1869, in answer to a letter from
her sister Berthe Morisot, Edma Pontillon
passed severe judgment on Fantin-Latour:
"The latter has certainly fallen even lower
since his intimacy with Mile Dubourg. I
cannot believe that he is the person we ad-
mired so much last year."5 Thus we learn
that Fantin-Latour and Victoria Dubourg
were already close by the end of 1868, and
that Degas, who was not inattentive to the
gossip of this malicious circle — he too paid
the price — was, like everyone else, in the
know. And so, in his own manner, he did
this double portrait of the young woman and
the phantom of her fiance — they were to be
married some years later, in 1876 — giving
his sitter a solidity and a presence that his
female portrait subjects do not always have.
True, he hesitated to show her as an actual
painter in a studio, brush in hand — for a
woman, that was probably just not done —
but through her eyes, her hands, the bouquet,
and the empty chair, he acknowledged that
she too was, as he would have put it, in the
trade.
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 202).
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 21 (private collection, p. 27).
3. Ibid., p. 6v.
4. In the Morisot correspondence, she is first men-
tioned in a letter of 2 May 1869. See Morisot
1950, p. 27; Morisot 1957, p. 31.
5. Morisot 1950, p. 29; Morisot 1957, p. 33.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 87 [as
"Portrait d'une jeune femme en robe brune"]); bought
at that sale by Mme Lazare Weiller, Paris, for Fr 71,000;
Paul-Louis Weiller, her son, Paris; with Paul Rosen-
berg, New York; Mr. and Mrs. William E. Levis,
Perrysburg, Ohio; their gift to the museum 1963.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 23, repr. (as "Portrait de
Mile Dubourg [Mme Fantin-Latour]"); 193 1 Paris,
Rosenberg, no. 26, pi. IV; 1936 Venice, no. 10;
1940-41 San Francisco, no. 29, pi. 68; 1941, Los An-
geles County Museum of Art, June-July, The Paint-
ing of France since the French Revolution, no. 35; 194 1
New York, no. 35, fig. 41; 1966, The Hague, Mau-
ritshuis, 25 June-5 September, In the Light of Vermeer,
no. 43, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 56,
II, no. 137; Boggs 1962, pp. 31, 48, 92 n. 50, 117,
fig- 50; !9<57 Saint Louis, pp. 84-86; Minervino
1974, no. 221; The Toledo Museum of Art, European
Paintings, Toledo, 1976, p. 52, pi. 244; 1987 Man-
chester, pp. 17, 20-21, fig. 12.
84.
Interior, also called The Rape
c. 1868-69
Oil on canvas
3i7/8X455/8 in. (81X116 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Henry P.
Mcllhenny Collection. In memory of Frances
P. Mcllhenny (1986-26-10)
Lemoisne 348
Interior may be Degas's most baffling work;
it is assuredly one of his masterpieces. "Among
his masterpieces, the masterpiece," wrote
Georges Grappe,1 while Arsene Alexandre
declared: "There is not a more arresting pic-
ture in all modern painting, nor one more
austere or of greater morality; next to it,
H3
Rousseau's Confessions are mere platitudes."2
Uncertainty surrounds the very title of
the painting. Lemoisne, in 19 12, was the
first to claim that it was originally "Le viol"
(The Rape), a title that many writers con-
tinued to use because it suited their reading
of the scene.3 Ernest Rouart maintained that
Degas himself ("God knows why") gave it
that title.4 However, there is no evidence to
corroborate this claim. When Degas entrusted
the canvas to Durand-Ruel on 15 June 1905,
it was simply entitled "Interior" (in 1909, it
was "Interior Scene") . Paul Poujaud, who
was a close friend of the painter's and saw
the painting for the first time in 1897, stated
that Degas never called it "The Rape" —
"That title is not from his lips. It must have
been invented by a literary man, a critic."5
The date of execution is equally disputed.
Lemoisne dates it c. 1874, Boggs 1868-72,6
and RefF 1868 -69. 7 For a number of rea-
sons, we are in complete agreement with
the dating proposed by Reff (which Poujaud
had already proposed in 1936: sometime
"before 1870"8). RefF published a detailed
analysis of this work in 1972, producing new
material and arriving at some convincing
conclusions.9 A rough sketch of the compo-
sition— it is the only such drawing known
to exist and differs from the final canvas in
many respects — is scribbled on the back of a
card announcing a change of address and bear-
ing the date 25 December 1867 (fig- 77)- In
a notebook used between 1867 and 1872 (un-
like Reff, I do not believe it was used any
later than that), Degas did a pencil sketch of
the empty room, without the bed but with
the box open on the table,10 and two pages
later, a sketch of the man leaning against the
wall.11 Apart from one other sketch of the
bed alone (IV:266), Degas then worked only
on isolated figures of the man and woman,
in an effort to find the most expressive atti-
tude for each. The model for the man — there
is a pastel study of his head (L349) — may
have been the painter Henri Michel-Levy,
later depicted by Degas in Levy's studio
(L326, Calouste Gulberikian Museum, Lis-
bon); more likely, it was a M. Roman or de
Saint-Arroman (BR51), about whom noth-
ing but his name is known. Among all these
sketches, there is one (fig. 78) that is trou-
bling: a young woman in street clothes, her
face hidden by a veil and a muff in her hand,
stands in the doorway behind the man, who
leans against the wall. This study suggests
that Degas temporarily considered a differ-
ent version.
While he was working on this canvas,
Degas received advice from one of his
friends, scribbled on an envelope addressed
to him at his studio at 13 rue de Laval. The
anonymous author, after apologizing for the
delay that caused him to miss the painter —
"Jenny turned out of the house, Pierre very
annoyed, carriage difficult to find, delay be-
cause of Angele, arrived at the cafe too late,
a thousand apologies" — poured out his
thoughts on the work-in-progress that he
had just seen in the studio: "I shall compli-
ment you on the picture only in person. Be
careful of the rug beside the bed, shocking.
The room too light in the background, not
enough mystery. The sewing box too con-
spicuous, or rather not vivid enough. The
fireplace not enough in shadow (think of the
vagueness of the background in the 'green
woman' by Millais without succumbing to
his influence). The floor too red. The man's
legs not proprietary enough. Only hurry
up, there is just enough time. I shall be at
84
144
Stevens's tonight. For the mirror here is the
effect, I think [a rough sketch of the mirror
above the fireplace]. The ceiling should be
lighter in the mirror, very light, while
throwing the room into shadow." And, af-
ter repeating "hurry up, hurry up," he con-
tinued on the back of the envelope: "Beside
the lamp on the table, something white to
thrust the fireplace back, a spool of thread
(necessary) [a quick sketch of the table, with
the open box, the lamp base, and a spool of
thread with pins stuck in it]. Darker under
the bed. A chair there or behind the table
would perhaps be good and would make the
rug beside the bed acceptable [a sketch of
the table, with a chair in front of it]."12
Unfortunately, the identity of this friend
is not known. Poujaud, to whom the mys-
terious envelope belonged, ruled out Guerin's
suggestions of Duranty ("Degas did not take
advice from critics") and Bracquemond (De-
gas "admired him but found him unsympa-
thetic"). Poujaud believed it was some other
painter: "The reference to Millais may sug-
gest a painter from England . . . Whistler,
Edwards, Legros. . . . Perhaps it was some
forgotten painter, a patron of the Cafe Guer-
bois."13 Reff, after identifying the two people
mentioned as the painter Pierre Prins and
the musician Jenny Claus, concluded, prob-
ably correctly, that the anonymous corre-
spondent was James Tissot (which would
lend support to a dating prior to 187 1, since
after the Commune Tissot had to go into
exile in London). In any case, Degas seems
to have followed some of the advice, accentu-
ating the shadow, darkening the floor, adding
a touch of white on the table, and lightening
the ceiling in the mirror.
The completed canvas was apparently al-
tered, according to Ernest Rouart, "about
1903," with the help of Chialiva, "a very
knowledgeable painter who was technically
very well versed . . . which enabled him,
after so many years, to tackle this painting
and retouch it without altering it in the
slightest."14 Poujaud is more cautious: "You
probably remember that [Interior] was hung
in a room at Durand-Ruel's on rue Laffitte
late in the nineteenth century or early in the
twentieth [in fact, between 1905 and 1909,
the date of its purchase by Jaccaci]. I re-
member hearing that Degas — who could
hardly see at all by that time — had taken his
painting and done some retouching. . . . the
people at Durand-Ruel say that the little red
and green flowers on the lampshade were
added. I myself think that the small green
pearl adorning the woman's earlobe was
added at the same time, since it does not ap-
pear on the study of the woman that I bought
at the Marcel Bing estate sale and which
originally came from the atelier sale. The
painting is very faithful to this study, except
that in the painting, apart from the pearl,
Degas put a small upturned nose and a not
very pretty hand in the light, whereas in my
Fig. 78. Study for Interior
(L353), c. 1868-69. Oil on
canvas, i35/s X jV% in. (34. 5 X
20 cm). Private collection
study the (straight) nose and the hand are in
shadow."15 The canvas in fact seems very
uniform, and any retouching must have been
quite limited.
Since its appearance at the turn of the cen-
tury, this painting has given rise to many
interpretations, largely because of the recur-
rence of the title "The Rape." Degas himself
made no pronouncements on it; showing it
to Poujaud — "on the floor against the wall" —
about 1897, he said simply, "You know my
genre picture, don't you?"16 Some years later,
Lemoisne commented on "the desperate,
abandoned pose of the little working girl
and the dullness of the man, mixed with a
certain brutality."17 Riviere was the first to
propose a possible literary source for this
work, which he saw in one of Duranty's
novels, Les combats de Francoise Du Quesnoy. 18
The date of publication, 1873, makes Riviere's
suggestion impossible, though it should be
noted that the book is a recycling of "Les
combats de Francoise d'Herilieu," originally
published in serial form in L'Evenement II-
lustre between 29 April and 1 July 1868. In
any case, there seems to be no scene in this
story comparable to Degas 's, except per-
haps for a vaguely suggestive passage in
which the indignant husband beats his wife
and smashes the cabinet containing her lover's
letters.19 Jean Adhemar suggested a more
likely source in Zola's Madeleine Ferat (pub-
lished in 1868). Relying on a now lost draw-
ing that he considered to be a representation
of Madeleine and Francis at the inn and an
early study for the painting, he thought that
Degas had illustrated the climax, "the hotel
scene where Madeleine weeps, saying to
Francis: *You suffer, for you love me and I
cannot be yours.'"20 More recently, Reff
read in the painting an episode from another
novel by Zola, Therese Raquin, which ap-
peared in the bookstores in December 1867
after being published in three installments in
the August, September, and October 1867
issues of L' Artiste. The scene in the novel is
the one in which the two lovers, now mar-
ried after having murdered Therese' s first
husband, meet a year later for their wed-
ding night:
Laurent carefully shut the door behind
him, then stood leaning against it for a
moment looking into the room, ill at ease
and embarrassed. A good fire was blazing
in the hearth, setting great patches of
golden light dancing on the ceiling and
walls, illuminating the whole room with a
bright and flickering radiance, against
which the lamp on the table seemed but a
feeble glimmer. Mme Raquin had wanted
to make the room nice and dainty and ev-
erything was gleaming white and scented,
like a nest for young and virginal love.
She had taken a delight in decorating the
bed with some extra pieces of lace and
filling the vases on the mantelpiece with
big bunches of roses. . . . Therese was
sitting on a low chair to the right of the
fireplace, her chin cupped in her hand,
staring at the flames. She did not look
round when Laurent came in. Her lacy
petticoat and bodice showed up dead
white in the light of the blazing fire. The
bodice was slipping down and part of her
shoulder emerged pink, half hidden by a
tress of her black hair.21
Fig. 77. Study for Interior, c. 1868-69. Pencil and stump,
40V2X $iVb in. (103 X 130 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF31779)
145
There is indeed a striking similarity be-
tween the poses of the characters as described
in the novel and the figures in the painting,
and it is quite likely that Degas's Interior was
inspired by this book (it had just come out
and had caused something of a scandal).
However, his intention was plainly not to il-
lustrate this precise episode from Therese
Raquin. There are many differences between
the painting and the scene in the book: apart
from some rather trivial details such as The-
rese's "tress of black hair," these differences
are mainly in the decor of the room. There
are no roses in the vases, no lace on the bed,
nothing to suggest a room lovingly prepared
for a wedding night by a deluded mother-
in-law; instead, Degas depicts a girl's mod-
est room, neat and sinister, in which two
objects take on considerable significance: the
narrow single bed (which could not be the
matrimonial bed of Therese Raquin) and the
box lined with pink cloth sitting wide open
on the table.
Any number of readings are possible. Cer-
tainly Degas intended to show a man intrud-
ing where he had no business, to suggest a
"rape" committed by a young bourgeois
gentleman. The open box may suggest a
hasty search for some jewel that was hidden
there. Apart from the obvious signs of re-
jected intimacy — the corset lying on the floor,
the man's clothing strewn about — there had
not, since Greuze's Broken Pitcher (Musee du
Louvre, Paris), been a more expressive
symbol of lost virginity than that gaping
box, with its pink lining glaringly exposed
in the lamplight.
The painting also embodies purely picto-
rial ambitions, such as those outlined in a
notebook from the period: "Work a great
deal on nocturnal effects, lamps, candles,
etc. The fascinating thing is not always to
show the source of light but rather its ef-
fect."22 But it should also be pointed out that
in this painting Degas was breaking what
for him was new ground, in literary terms
much closer to Zola than to Duranty. This
painting could have been a response to
Zola's mixed review of his 1868 Salon paint-
ing, Mile Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (cat.
no. 77). Abandoning the "artistic" and
"strange embellishments" of pseudo-Japanese
inspiration, Degas produced a dark, dense
painting with nothing "thin" or "exquisite"
about it, choosing a subject that had very
little to do with elegant Parisian society. Per-
haps it was also his intention — seemingly
confirmed by Tissot's intervention and the
reference to Millais — to create something
for the English market, which Degas and
Manet saw at the time as a possible outlet
for their work.
Interior is a deliberately ambiguous can-
vas, loaded with meaning. As has often been
pointed out, it also raises the question of
Degas 's difficult relationships with women.
In this connection, two quotations are illu-
minating even if they seem contradictory.
The first is a bit of gossip passed from Ma-
net to Berthe Morisot in 1869: "He lacks
spontaneity, he isn't capable of loving a
woman."23 The second is a passage scrib-
bled by Degas in a notebook used twelve or
thirteen years earlier, before his departure
for Italy: "I cannot say how much I love this
girl since she turned me down on Monday,
7 April. I cannot refuse to . . . say it is
shameful ... a defenceless girl."24 The rest
is illegible.
1. Grappe 1936, p. 52.
2. Alexandre 1935, p. 167.
3. Lemoisne 1912, p. 62.
4. Rouart 1937, p. 21.
5. Letter to Marcel Guerin, 11 July 1936, Lettres
Degas 1945, p. 255; Degas Letters 1947, p. 235.
6. 1967 Saint Louis, no. 61, p. 98.
7. Reff 1976, p. 201.
8. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 256; Degas Letters 1947,
p. 236.
9. Theodore Reff, "Degas's Tableau de Genre," Art
Bulletin, September 1972, reprinted in Reff 1976,
pp. 200-38.
10. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 98).
11. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 100).
12. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, n.a. fr. 24839;
published in English in Reff 1976, pp. 225-26.
13. Letters from Paul Poujaud to Marcel Guerin,
Paris, 6 and 11 July 1936, Bibliotheque Natio-
nale, Paris, n.a. fr. 24839.
14. Rouart 1937, p. 21.
15. Letter from Poujaud to Guerin, 6 July 1936, Bi-
bliotheque Nationale, Paris.
16. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 255; Degas Letters 1947,
P- 235.
17. Lemoisne 19 12, p. 62.
18. Riviere 1935, pp. 97-98.
19. See Crouzet 1964, p. 260.
20. Entile Zola (exhibition catalogue), Paris: Biblio-
theque Nationale, 1952, no. 114, p. 20.
21. Translation by Leonard Tancock, London: Pen-
guin, 1962; quoted in Reff 1976, p. 205.
22. Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 45).
23. Morisot 1950, p. 31; Morisot 1957, p. 35.
24. Reff 1985, Notebook 6 (BN, Carnet 11, p. 21).
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 15 June 1905 (as "Interieur 1872," deposit
no. 10803); deposited with Durand-Ruel, New York,
26 August 1909; bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 30 August 1909, for Fr 100,000; bought
by M. Jaccaci, New \brk, the same day, for Fr 100,000;
A. A. Pope, Farmington; Harris Whittemore, Nau-
gatuck, 191 1 ; J.H. Whittemore Co.; bought by Henry
P. Mcllhenny, Philadelphia, 1936, to 1986; his be-
quest to the museum 1986.
exhibitions: 191 1 Cambridge, Mass., no. 2; 1924-
26, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art;
1932 London, no. 346 (438); 1935 Boston, no. 13;
1936, Paris, Galerie Rosenberg, 15 June-11 July, he
grand siecle, no. 17; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 23; 1937
Paris, Palais National, no. 303; 1937 Paris, Orangerie,
no. 20, repr. ; 1944, New York, Museum of Modern
Art, Art in Progress, p. 219, repr. p. 20; 1947, Phila-
delphia Museum of Art, May, Masterpieces of Philadel-
phia Private Collections, no. 12; 1962, San Francisco,
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 15 June-3 1
July, The Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection, no. 16, repr.
(color); 1977, Allentown Art Museum, 1 May-18
September, French Masterpieces of the igth Century
from the Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection; 1979, Pitts-
burgh, Carnegie Institute, 10 May-i July, French
Masterpieces from the Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection;
1984, Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 25 May-30
September, The Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection: Nine-
teenth Century French and English Masterpieces, no. 18.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 61-62,
repr.; Jamot 1924, pp. 70, 72, 84, pi. 41; Riviere
193 5, PP- 49. 97. repr.; Rouart 1937, p. 21; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no, 348; Degas Letters 1947, pp. 235-
36; Emile Zola (exhibition catalogue), Paris: Biblio-
theque Nationale, 1952, no. 114, p. 20; Quentin Bell,
"Degas: Le Viol" Charlton Lectures on Art, Newcastle-
upon-Tyne, 1965, n.p.; Minervino 1974, no. 374;
Sidney Geist, "Degas* Interieur in an Unaccustomed
Perspective," Art News, LXXV:87, October 1976,
pp. 80-81, repr.; Reff 1976, pp, 206-38, fig. 134
(color).
85.
Sulking
c. 1869-71
Oil on canvas
i23/4 X 18V4 in. (32.4 X 46.4 cm)
Signed lower right: E. Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.43)
Lemoisne 335
It has long been assumed that the mysterious
title of this work — in French, "Bouderie" —
first appeared in a critical article by Georges
Lecomte in 1910;1 for this reason, it was re-
garded with some skepticism as his inven-
tion. In fact, it dates back to 27 December
1895, when Degas stored the painting with
Durand-Ruel; thus it is quite probable that it
was the artist's title. This small canvas has
on occasion been identified as "Le banquier,"
which was sold by Degas to Durand-Ruel
and then bought by Faure with five other
pictures on 5 March 18742 (see "Degas and
Faure," p. 221). There is nothing in the Du-
rand-Ruel records, however, to support that
tempting hypothesis.
Although Sulking was dated 1873-75 by
Lemoisne, Theodore Reff, who has made
the most thorough study of the painting,
believes it to date to 1869-71. Three sketches
in a notebook used during this period show
details of the half door, the rack filled with
ledgers (fig. 79), and the table piled up with
papers (an X-radiograph of the canvas [fig. 80]
shows many changes in this area).3 Apart
from its provenance, the sketches are the only
documentation we have on this enigmatic
work; anything else — placing it, identifying
146
the figures, interpreting the subject — is
strictly conjectural.
Two people, a man at work and a woman
visiting, have been interrupted in their dis-
cussion, which we must imagine as heated
and strained — in any case, a discussion in no
way resembling the momentarily disturbed
scene of tender intimacy described in an
anonymous article about the painting in the
Revue encyclopedique in 1896. The setting is
either an office connected with horse racing
(suggested by the color engraving on the
wall) or, more likely, a small bank like the
one owned by the De Gas family on rue de
la Victoire, which the artist might have used
for his studies of the furniture. Reff recog-
nized the young woman as Emma Dobigny,
painted by Degas in 1869 (see cat. no. 86),
and the scowling man (though his features
are less visible) as the writer Duranty (see
cat. no. 198). Not that Degas was painting
their portraits here — he was rather using
them as models for this ambiguous genre
scene, just as he would later use Ellen An-
dree and Marcellin Desboutin in In a Cafe
(The Absinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172). Be-
hind them hangs an extremely careful En-
glish engraving, much simplified, Steeplechase
Cracks (1847), by J. F. Herring. (Degas bor-
rowed part of it in his False Start [fig. 69],
painting a reversed image of the horse on
the right.) The engraving undoubtedly has a
close, though as yet unexplained, relation-
ship to the scene before us. In any case, its
presence underscores the close connection
between this canvas and English painting,
which Degas knew well and appreciated —
he had studied the British section of the
1867 Exposition Universelle at length.
Fig. 79. Notebook study for Sulking, c. 1869-71. jVsX^A in.
(18.7 X 12 cm). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Dc327d,
Carnet 24, p. 37 (RefF 1985, Notebook 25)
Fig. 80. X-radiograph of Sulking (cat. no. 85)
H7
Among Victorian painters, and also among
certain Continental painters such as Tissot
and Stevens who were strongly influenced
by the Victorians, we find this interest in
bourgeois private life, meticulously depicted
and often disturbed by the intrusion of a
third party. We do not really know what
has happened or what is about to happen
between the couple (undoubtedly lovers or
husband and wife) — perhaps the woman
has just asked the "banker" for money. Tak-
ing a more saccharine view, Lemoisne saw
the two as father and daughter— so obvi-
ously at odds, but united in their common
desire to see the indiscreet visitor depart as
quickly as possible. Perhaps, as with Interior
(cat. no. 84), the painting is based on some
unidentified literary source. However, as
usual in his genre scenes, Degas plays mainly
on the ambiguity of the situation, stressing
the mysterious, complicated relations be-
tween men and women, and posing existen-
tial questions in an entirely prosaic manner.
Years later, when Bartholome and his wife
sat for Conversation (cat. no. 327), Degas de-
picted them in exactly the same poses as the
couple in Sulking, only placing them much
closer to each other. Yet everything has
changed: the lovers, interrupted in their confi-
dences, have become husband and wife, im-
patient for the end of the impromptu sitting;
the fine, controlled handling has become
broad and quick; the precise study of two
"expressive heads"4 has been replaced by
two vibrant, simplified portraits.
1. "La crise de la peinture franchise," VArt et les Ar-
tistes, XII, October 1910, p. 27.
2. Reff 1976, pp. 1 16-18.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 25 (BN, Carnet 24, pp. 36-
37, 39)- Contrary to Reff, the sketch of a woman's
head in the contemporaneous Notebook 22 (BN,
Carnet 8, p. 43) is not a study for Sulking.
4. At the time he painted Sulking, Degas wrote in a
notebook: "Make of expressive heads (academic
style) a study of modern feeling." Reff 1985, Note-
book 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 44).
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 27 December 1895 (deposit no. 8848);
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 28 April 1897, for
Fr 13,500 (stock no. 4 191) (before buying it, how-
ever, Durand-Ruel, Paris, had sold it to Durand-Ruel,
New York [stock no. N.Y.1646], for Mrs. H. O.
Havemeyer); bought by Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, 15 December 1896, for $4,500; her be-
quest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 19 1 5 New York, no. 25; 1930 New
York, no. 46, repr.; 1936, London, Thomas Agnew,
Exhibition of Pictures , Pastels and Drawings by E. De-
gas, no. 34; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 19, repr.; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 11; 1937 Paris, Palais National,
no. 299; 1948 Minneapolis, no number; 1948, Spring-
field Museum of Fine Arts, 7 October-7 November,
Fifteen Fine Paintings, no number, repr. ; 1949 New
York, no. 28, repr.; 195 1, Seattle Art Museum, 7
March-6 May; 1968 New York, no. 6, repr. ; 1977
New York, no. 10 of paintings; 1978 Richmond,
no. 6; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 38, repr.
selected references: Revue encyclopedique, 1896,
p. 481; G. Lecomte, "La crise de la peinture franchise,"
VArt et les Artistes, XII, October 19 10, repr. p. 27;
Burroughs 1932, p. 144, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-49],
I, p. 83, II, no. 335; Cabanne 1957, pp. 29, 97, no;
Ronald Pickvance, Burlington Magazine, CVL735, June
1964, p. 205; New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 71-
73; Reff 1976, pp. 116-20, 144, 162-64, fig- 83 (col-
or); Moffett 1979, p. 10, fig. 14 (color).
86.
Emma Dobigny
1869
011 on panel
12 X 10V2 in. (30. 5 X 26. 5 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 69
Private collection, Zurich
Lemoisne 198
Little is known about Emma Dobigny. Her
real name was Marie Emma Thuilleux; she
was born in Montmacq, Oise, in 185 1, and
died in Paris in 1925. When Degas knew
her, between 1865 and 1869 (at that time he
spelled her name "Daubigny," like the paint-
er), she lived on a small street in a poor area
of Montmartre, at 20 rue Tholoze,1 and
posed for painters; Corot {The Spring),
Henri Rouart, Puvis de Chavannes (Hope,
fig. 81), and possibly Tissot (Afternoon Tea2)
had already used her or would be using her
as a model. Degas painted her as a common
laundress (L216, Neue Pinakothek, Munich;
BR62, Musee d'Orsay, Paris) and as the
more bourgeois, but less comely, compan-
ion of a "banker" (see cat. no. 85). That she
was one of his favorite models is demon-
strated by a short note (now in a private
collection) that he wrote to her during this
period: "Little Dobigny, another session and
right away if possible." She is perhaps the
same model we see again, looking placid
and slightly plumper, in the beautiful Girl in
Red (L336, Chester Dale Collection, Na-
tional Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.),
which Lemoisne dates slightly later, 1873-
75. Unlike Theodore Reff, I do not see her
in the fat, common face of the woman at the
National Gallery in London (L355), nor in
the notebook sketch of a young girl with a
more drooping nose, slight squint, and less
finely chiseled jaw.3 The same year that De-
gas painted this small portrait, Puvis did a
pencil drawing of Emma Dobigny dated 1
August 1869; it was reproduced first in
L'Estampe Moderne in April 1896, and then
in Le Figaro Illustre in February 1899/ before
assuming the title Hope.5 Puvis 's head and
shoulders of the young woman, with her
hair loosened, obviously stylized to create
an allegorical figure rather than a portrait,
shows the same features found in each of
the other works— the firm round face, the
slightly upturned nose, the small full-lipped
mouth, and the long, delicate, even eyebrows
above a melancholy gaze. As for Degas, he
does not portray the professional model. In-
stead, he paints a pensive young woman,
choosing a formula he employed deliber-
ately in the late 1860s, particularly for people
of whom he was very fond (Altes, Rouart,
Valpincon6): a small profile portrait of the
head and shoulders, done with a light touch
and great detail, which lovingly captures
the features of the face and rapidly brushes
in the background.
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 21 (private collection, p. 34).
2. See Michael Wentworth, James Tissot, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1984, p. 66.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 43),
4. See entry by Jacques Foucart in Puvis de Chavannes
(exhibition catalogue), Paris: Grand Palais/ Ottawa:
National Gallery of Canada, 1976, no. 91, p. 113.
5. See Paul Proute, Dandre-Bardon catalogue, Paris,
1975, no. 107, repr.
6. Altes, L89, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York; Rouart, L293 , private collection; Val-
pincon, L99 (fig. 20).
provenance: Ludovic Lepic, Paris (Lepic sale, Drou-
ot, Paris, 30 March 1897, no. 51 [as "Buste de
femme"]); bought at that sale in half shares by Du-
rand-Ruel and Manzi (stock no. 4135), for Fr 700;
deposited with Mr. and Mrs. Erdwin Amsinck,
Hamburg, 16 November 1897, who bought it 24
November 1897, for Fr 3,000; their bequest to the
Hamburger Kunsthalle 192 1; exchanged, along with
A Vase of Flowers by Renoir, for Evening: The Artist's
Mother and Sister in the Garden by Hans Thoma, with
Karl Haberstock, Berlin dealer, 1939. Acquired on
the Munich market by present owner 1952.
■
Fig. 81. Puvis de Chavannes, Hope, 1869.
Published in L'Estampe Moderne, April 1896
148
EXHIBITIONS: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 10, pi. VIII;
I959» Paris, Petit Palais, March-May, De Gericault a
Matisse, no. 41; 1964, Lausanne, Palais de Beaulieu,
Cfhefs-d'oeuvre des collections suisses de Manet a Picasso,
no. 4, repr.; 1967, Paris, Orangerie, 2 May-2 Octo-
ber, Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections suisses de Manet a Picasso,
no. 4, repr.; 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 10, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 198;
Boggs 1962, p. 64; Minervino 1974, no. 254, pi. XIII
(color).
87.
Mme Theodore Gobillard,
nee Yves Morisot
1869
Oil on canvas
2i3/8X255/8 in. (54.3X65.1 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.45)
Lemoisne 213
In 1864, Tiburce Morisot was appointed to a
senior position with the French government
audit office and moved with his wife, his
three daughters Yves, Edma, and Berthe,
and his son Tiburce to a "very simple house"
on rue Franklin, "with doors on the ground
floor leading to a beautiful garden with large
shade trees."1
Painting was the family's main activity.
Tiburce had a studio built in the garden for
his daughters, and a whole circle of artists
(forming what today seems a rather eclectic
group) came to rue Franklin: Puvis de Cha-
vannes, Stevens, Fantin-Latour, and later
Manet. The Manets and the Morisots
quickly struck up a friendship, and it was
probably at Mme Auguste Manet's "Thurs-
day evenings" that the Morisots also made
the acquaintance of Degas who, despite ini-
tial reservations about Berthe, was not in-
different to the bohemian charm of this
good bourgeois family.
Shortly after meeting them, Degas began
a portrait of Yves, the eldest daughter (5
October 1838-8 June 1893). Yves had been
married since 1866 to Theodore Gobillard, a
former officer who had lost an arm fighting
in Mexico and had obtained a position as a
tax collector, first in Quimperle and then in
Mirande, where he was transferred in the
spring of 1869. Yves, following her hus-
band, stopped on the way in Paris for several
weeks, and Degas took the opportunity to
paint a portrait of the young woman. Thanks
to the family correspondence, which pro-
vides an incomparable record of the paint-
ing's progress, we can follow Degas's work
from the initial sketch to the final canvas.
First, a dry comment by Berthe Morisot
to her sister Edma Pontillon in a letter dated
22-23 May 1869 — "M. Degas has made a
sketch of Yves that I find mediocre"2 — is
expanded in more interesting detail by Mme
Morisot: "Do you know that M. Degas is
mad about Yves's face, and that he is doing
a sketch of her? He is going to transfer the
drawing that he is doing in his sketchbook
onto the canvas. A peculiar way of doing a
portrait!"3 A month later, on 26 June, Yves
herself wrote to her sister Berthe and, after
apologizing for having neglected her and
blaming Degas, who "took up all my time,"
added: "The drawing that M. Degas made
of me in the last two days is really very
pretty, both true to life and delicate, and it
is no wonder that he could not detach him-
self from his work. I doubt if he can transfer
it onto the canvas without spoiling it. He
announced to mother that he would come
back one of these days to draw a corner of
the garden/'4
Despite Yves's imminent departure for
Limoges and the incessant comings and go-
ings this occasioned, "Degas took up her
last moments" in Paris. "That original came
on Tuesday," noted the kindly Mme Mori-
sot. "This time he took a big sheet of paper
and set to work on the head in pastel; he
seemed to be doing a very pretty thing, and
drew with great skill."5
A few brief comments can be made con-
cerning this valuable exchange of letters.
The first drawing, mentioned by Mme Mo-
risot as having been done in a sketchbook,
has not survived; the ones we have today
are on sheets too large to come from a note-
book. The sketch mentioned by Yves Gobil-
lard on 26 June may be one of two drawings
recently acquired by the Metropolitan Mu-
seum in New York (cat. nos. 88, 89). The
pastel that Degas did just before Yves left
for Limoges, and which he submitted to the
Salon of 1870, is also in the Metropolitan
(cat. no. 90). The motive behind all this work
was Degas's infatuation with the strange
face of Yves Gobillard — the prominent fea-
tures, the square jaw and thin lips, the pointed
and slightly upturned nose, the deep creases
149
on either side of her mouth. There was noth-
ing beautiful about her face, and, unlike her
sister Berthe, she was not a "femme fatale,"
the epithet that circulated when Manet's
Balcony (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), in which
Berthe appears, was exhibited at the Salon
the same year. In the course of a little over a
month, Degas went to the house on rue
Franklin several times. The sittings were not
at all constrained; he dropped in when he
had a minute and when the Morisots could
receive him; he worked not in the sacred si-
lence of a studio, but in the everyday disor-
der of an inhabited and bustling house: "He
asked me to give him an hour or two dur-
ing the day yesterday," noted Mme Morisot
in late June. "He came to lunch and stayed
the whole day. He seemed to like what he
had done, and was cross to have to tear him-
self away from it. He really works with
ease, for all this took place amid the visits
and the farewells that never ceased during
those two days."6 A month before, Berthe
Morisot had already written with regard to
the first drawing: "He chattered all the time
he was doing it."7 Yves and her mother mar-
veled at his facility, the one finding his draw-
ing "really very pretty, both true to life and
delicate," and the other noting that the pas-
tel was "a very pretty thing" and that he
"drew with great skill."8 Only Berthe showed
some reticence, considering the first draw-
ing of Yves "indifferent." She also reported
Manet's unkind remarks about Degas, and
was quite hard on him herself: "I certainly
do not find his personality attractive; he has
wit, but nothing more."9 However, she re-
deemed herself a year later when she de-
scribed the pastel portrait of Yves exhibited
at the Salon as a "masterpiece."10 Finally, it
should be noted that a short time later Berthe
was to do a double portrait (fig. 82) of her
mother and her sister Edma Pontillon seated
on the same sofa and below the same mirror
as in Degas's canvas.11
The first drawing, which Mme Morisot
says was done in a sketchbook, was followed
by the beautiful pencil sketch (cat. no. 89)
acquired by the Metropolitan Museum from
a member of the family in 1985; it shows
Yves Gobillard in a pose very similar to that
in the canvas, with the exception of the face,
which is turned toward the viewer but later
would be shown in profile. Next came the
squared drawing (cat. no. 88), acquired by
the museum the previous year, in which the
Fig. 82. Berthe Morisot, The Artist's
Mother and Sister, c. 1869-70. Oil on
canvas, 39V4X 32V4 in. (101 X 81.8 cm).
National Gallery of Art, Washington
young woman found her final pose. Degas
was to supplement these two studies with a
detailed drawing of the interior of the apart-
ment (cat. no. 91), undoubtedly made after
Yves's departure — she has only been roughly
sketched in. Just as the initial conception of
this painting does not seem to have been
150
preserved, we are also missing one of the fi-
nal links, the study of "a corner of the gar-
den" that Degas wanted to do after Yves
had left. As for the pastel (cat. no. 90), which
we know Degas worked on for two days
running in late June,12 it appears to be a study
of "general tonality," to borrow a phrase
from Gustave Moreau; it explores the mo-
del's features in greater detail than the pre-
liminary drawings, causing her profile to
stand out against the barely decipherable
background of vertical lines and dense foli-
age necked with red.
The studies from life display a coherence
and sense of progression that would seem to
suggest quite a different painting from the
studio portrait, which, though it is unfin-
ished, must be considered the final work.
The increasing precision with which Degas
drew Yves's face, making of the pastel a
striking portrait, led, strangely enough, to a
canvas in which the model's pronounced
and characteristic features are indistinct,
leaving only the readily identifiable bone
structure of the face (Mary Cassatt compared
it, curiously, to a Vermeer13). Even the dress,
which the drawings show in such detail, in-
cluding buttons, lace, and ruffles, becomes
no more than a contrast between the opacity
and transparency of its fabrics. The Mori-
sots' sitting room, whose furnishings and
layout Degas indicated so precisely in the
Louvre drawing (cat. no. 91) — a room with
large curtained windows, separated from
the garden by an anteroom and a salon, on
the wall of which hangs a canvas — is now
cut off well below the ceiling and consists
only of a succession of planes that are diffi-
cult to distinguish, while the image in the
mirror, previously so clear, is now an inde-
cipherable arrangement of whites and browns.
Only the distant garden is still clearly repre-
sented, with the dense foliage of chestnut
trees and the lawn strewn with red petals.
To paint a portrait in full view of the Mo-
risot family, who lived for painting, was in-
evitably to invite comments and comparisons.
According to Berthe, the latest thing was to
place a figure in a landscape. Describing Ba-
zille's submission to the Salon of 1869, at
the same time that Degas was studying
Yves's profile, she wrote: "He has tried to
do what we have so often attempted — a fig-
ure in the outdoor light — and this time he
seems to have been successful."14 Shortly
after she announced: "I am going to do my
mother and Yves in the garden; you see I am
reduced to doing the same things over and
over again."15
Degas, a fierce enemy of the outdoors,
must have smiled at these unsuccessful ef-
forts; but with the portrait of Yves Gobil-
lard he gives, in a way, his response to the
problem. No doubt amused at challenging
B8
Berthe Morisot on her own territory, since
he did not have much sympathy for her at
the time and she was somewhat contemptu-
ous of him, he places his sitter, as Ingres
would have done, in a bourgeois sitting
room, but, by opening the successive doors
of the apartment, lets in a strictly defined
segment of the luxuriant spring garden. In
this harmony in brown, the garden is the
only note of color, its different greens ar-
ranged, behind the profile of Yves, like the
vivid backgrounds sometimes seen in Ren-
aissance portraits.
1. Morisot 1950, p. 13; Morisot 1957, p. 17
(translation revised).
2. Morisot 1950, p. 31; Morisot 1957, p. 35
(translation revised).
3. Ibid.
4. Morisot 1950, p. 32; Morisot 1957, p. 36.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. See note 2 above.
8. See note 4 above.
9. See note 2 above.
10. Morisot 1950, p. 39; Morisot 1957, p. 43.
11. Exhibited in the Salon of 1870.
12. See note 4 above.
13. WeitzenhofFer 1986, pp. 230-31.
14. Morisot 1950, p. 28; Morisot 1957, p. 32.
15. Morisot 1950, p. 29; Morisot 1957, p. 33.
provenance: Michel Manzi, Paris; bought from his
heirs, on the advice of Mary Cassatt, by Mrs. H. O.
Havemeyer, 5 December 191 5; her bequest to the
museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1876 Paris, no. 39; 1930 New York,
no. 52; 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. no; 1948 Minne-
apolis, no number; 1952, Art Gallery of Toronto, 20
September- 26 October, Berthe Morisot and Her Circle:
Paintings from the Rouart Collection, Paris, handwritten
note under no. 28 in a copy of the catalogue in the
Art Gallery of Ontario; 1977 New York, no. 9 of
paintings, repr.; 1978 New York, no. 8, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 57-
$8, II, no. 213; Morisot 1957, pp. 33, 35~3<5; Have-
meyer 1961, pp. 264-67; Boggs 1962, pp. 27, 61,
119, pi. 64; Burroughs 1963, repr. facing p. 169;
New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 65-66; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 249; Moffett 1979, nos. 8, 9, pi. 5
(color); Moffett 1985, nos. 62, 63, repr. (color);
WeitzenhofFer 1986, pp. 230-31, fig. 156.
88.
Study for Mme Theodore Gobillard
1869
Pencil on buff tracing paper mounted
on laid paper
i23/8 X i73/s in. (3 1 . 5 X 44 cm)
Signed in crayon lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(1984.76)
See cat. no. 87
provenance: Presumably given by the artist in 190 1
to Jeannie Gobillard, daughter of the sitter, or Paul
Valery, on the occasion of their marriage on 3 1 May
1900; Wildenstein and Co., New York, 1983; bought
by the museum 1984.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 88; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 109; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 78; 1955 Paris,
GBA, no. 33, repr.
selected references: Morisot 1957, pp. 33, 35-36;
Boggs 1962, p. 27; Burroughs 1963, fig. 3 p. 171;
Moffett 1979, p. 9, fig. 7; Jacob Bean, "Yves Gobil-
lard-Morisot," Notable Acquisitions 1983-1984, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984, p. 73,
repr.; Gary Tinterow, "Yves Gobillard-Morisot,"
Notable Acquisitions 1984-198$, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York, 1985, p. 30.
151
152
89-
Study for Mme Theodore Gobillard
1869
Pencil on pale buff wove paper
13 Vs X ijVs in. (33.3 X 44 cm)
Signed in crayon lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(1985.48)
See cat. no. 87
provenance: Presumably given by the artist in 190 1
to Jeannie Gobillard, daughter of the sitter, or Paul
Valery, on the occasion of their marriage on 3 1 May
1900; Mme Paul Rouart (nee Agathe Valery), their
daughter, Neuilly; bought by the museum and
John R. Gaines 1985.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 89; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 108; 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 34, repr.
SELECTED REFERENCES: MorisOt I957, pp. 33, 35—36;
Boggs 1962, p. 27; Burroughs 1963, fig. 2 p. 171;
Moffett 1979, p. 9, fig. 6; Gary Tinterow, "Yves
Gobillard-Morisot," Notable Acquisitions 1984-1985,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985,
p. 30, repr.
90.
Mme Theodore Gobillard, nee
Yves Morisot
1869
Pastel
i87/sX u7/8 in. (48 X 30 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975
(1976.201. 8)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 214
See cat. no. 87
provenance: Given by the artist to Berthe Morisot,
sister of the sitter; given by Berthe Morisot to her
niece Paule Gobillard, on the death of Yves Go-
billard, her mother, 1893; Mme Paul Valery (nee
Jeannie Gobillard), her sister, Paris, 1946; bought by
Joan Whitney Payson, New York; her bequest to the
museum 1975.
exhibitions: 1870, Paris, 1 May-20june, Salon,
no. 3320 (as "Portrait de Mme G . . . ," pastel);
1924 Paris, no. 90, repr.; 193 1 Paris, Orangerie,
no. no; i960 Paris, no. 10, repr.; 1977 New York,
no. 9 of works on paper, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 57-
58, II, no. 214; Morisot 1957, pp. 33, 35-36; Boggs
1962, pp. 27, 61, fig. 62; Burroughs 1963, fig. T
p. 170; Jacob Bean, "Drawings," Notable Acquisitions
I97S-I979, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, 1979, p. 57, repr.; Moffett 1979, pp. 7-9, pi. 6
(color); Moffett 1985, pp. 60-61, repr. p. 60.; Gary
Tinterow, "Yves Gobillard-Morisot," Notable Acqui-
sitions 1984-198$, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, 1985, p. 30.
91.
Interior of the Morisot Sitting
Room, study for Mme Theodore
Gobillard
1869
Pencil and black chalk heightened with white on
cream-colored paper
I9l/s X i23/4 in. (48.7 X 32.4 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF29881)
Exhibited in New York
See cat. no. 87
provenance: Atelier Degas; Henri Fevre, Paris; Mar-
cel Guerin, Paris (sale, Drouot, Paris, 11 December
1950, no. 79); bought at that sale by the Louvre.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 150.
The Landscapes of 1869
cat. nos. 92-93
The important exhibition of French Impres-
sionist landscapes held in Los Angeles, Chi-
cago, and Paris in 1984-85 did not include
any of Degas's landscapes,1 not because he
was not regarded as an Impressionist
(Manet was represented) but probably be-
cause the organizers considered his work as
a landscape painter very marginal, if they
considered it at all. It is true that only about
a hundred of the roughly fifteen hundred
paintings and pastels listed in Lemoisne' s
catalogue of Degas's work can be considered
pure landscape; it is also clear that Degas's
interest in landscape was confined to brief
periods — the late 1860s and the 1890s. Fur-
thermore, the pronouncements he liked to
make regarding "outdoor" painters could be
taken as a profound contempt for the genre:
"If I were the government, I would have a
squad of gendarmes to keep an eye on these
people painting landscapes from nature. Oh!
I do not wish anyone dead; I would, how-
ever, agree to spraying them with a little
bird shot, for starters!"2 This attitude must,
however, be taken with a grain of salt. We
can begin by admitting that nothing in De-
gas's training predisposed him to become a
landscape painter: neither his teachers, Bar-
rias and Lamothe, nor his mentor, Gustave
Moreau, nor the artists he admired so
much, Ingres and Delacroix, were landscape
painters. Of his circle, only the unpreten-
tious Gregoire Soutzo, about whom not
much is known, might be called a landscape
painter, and it is to him that we owe De-
gas's first comments on the subject and his
first landscape studies (see Chronology I,
18 January 1856). Degas adopted Soutzo's en-
thusiasms: for Corot, and especially for
Claude Lorrain, some thirty of whose etch-
ings Soutzo possessed when he died.3 During
his stay in Italy, Degas became very enthu-
siastic about Claude's landscapes. In Naples,
he noted the Landscape with the Nymph
Egeria — "the finest Claude Lorrain there is.
The sky is like silver and the shadows speak
to you."4 In Rome, at the Doria Pamphili
Gallery, he wrote: "Perhaps the finest I have
seen and the finest there are. "5 He also ad-
mired the etchings at the Corsini Gallery.6
Oddly enough, Claude's influence can be
seen more clearly in the pen-and-ink draw-
ings, often heightened with wash, that Degas
did shortly after his return to France7 than
in the pencil studies of the Roman or Nea-
politan countryside, which are very similar
to those Bonnat, Chapu, and Delaunay were
drawing then.
He painted few landscapes in the 1850s:
View of Naples Seen through a Window (L48,
private collection); View of Rome (L47 bis),
which was probably the view from his studio
in the Piazza San Isidoro and which shows
the manica lunga of the Quirinal palace; and
Horses in a Landscape (L50, Kunstmuseum
Bern), the attribution of which may be
contested.
On his return to France, Degas fell in love
with the Normandy countryside, which he
discovered during his first stay with the Val-
pinqons at Menil-Hubert in September and
October of 1861,8 and which he claimed
changed all the beliefs he had held up to
then. During a walk to Haras du Pin, he
made some detailed drawings9 of the "green
hills" and the "pastures, both large and
small, completely surrounded by hedges"10
that he would use in the background of
some racing scenes. But again, the sudden
enthusiasm, the references to English painters,
the recollections of Corot and Soutzo were
limited to a few studies in a notebook.
It may, therefore, come as a surprise to
see the sudden rash of landscapes in 1869 —
seven pastels bearing this date (L199-L205),
to which Lemoisne adds another thirty-
seven (L217-L253), proposing that they
were done at the same time. It is difficult to
believe that Degas made all of them dur-
ing his brief stay at Etretat and Villers-sur-
Mer the summer of 1869. He left Paris
toward the middle of July, after finishing his
portrait of Yves Gobillard (cat. no. 87), but
it is not certain when he returned. It is un-
likely, however, that he lingered in Nor-
mandy beyond September. Other visits to
the coast are plausible, but not, it should be
noted, in 186711 or 1868, 12 nor in 1870,
when the progress of military operations
153
him at Boulogne that same summer, took
an entirely different approach.
Degas avoided oils and concentrated on
the seashore. No doubt considering his con-
temporaries too "herbivorous," to use a
term of Baudelaire's, he composed, perhaps
on returning to the calm of his Paris studio,
his small landscapes reflecting, as he said
much later, not his "soul" but his "eyes."16
Perhaps he hoped to obey the injunctions of
Baudelaire, whom he was reading at the
time (in July 1869, Manet wrote to him,
"Please return the two volumes of Baudelaire
I lent you"17). The poet, in his Salon de
1859, wondered, before praising Boudin's
studies, "Why does imagination flee the stu-
dio of the landscape painter?" and decided
the answer must lie in these painters' overly
slavish and direct copying of nature "which
perfectly suits their lazy minds."18
With his remembered landscapes, Degas
gave his entirely original answer; once
(which he followed closely) almost certainly
kept him in Paris. It is also quite possible,
knowing the opinions he later repeatedly
expressed about painting outdoors, that he
did not do these landscapes from nature, but
in the studio. In a notebook he used at that
time,13 Degas did not sketch the places he
visited, such as Etretat or Villers-sur-Mer,
but noted the colors of the sea and sky at
sunset: "the sunset orangey pink, cold and
dull, neutral, the sea like a sardine's back
and lighter than the sky."14 So what Le-
moisne says about the making of the land-
scapes must be accurate: "As he looks at
them, Degas's keen eye also registers the
appearance of the countryside, the pale sea-
green shore fringed with foam, the curve of
a bank of golden sand, the outline of hills, a
velvety meadow, the color of the sky. Later,
back in the studio, the artist delights in re-
creating some of these places from memory,
attempting to reproduce the colors and out-
lines with his sticks of pastel."15 Thus it is
very difficult to identify the sites represented
in Degas's pictures, whether from the Nor-
mandy coast or from recollections of visits
to Saint- Valery-sur-Somme with his father
and his brothers and sisters. He is not con-
cerned with topographical accuracy or strict
climatic observation, but shows, recon-
structed from memory, bleak cliffs to which
low-roofed houses cling like barnacles to a
rock, beaches at low tide, the sea and sand
barely distinguishable, boats that appear to
be stranded and not a sign of human life (see
cat. no. 92), or a long wisp of smoke trailing
behind a steamer, four black points repre-
senting sailboats on a skyline that separates
the blue of the sea from the blue of the sky
(see cat. no. 93).
These are not ambitious compositions like
those painted in the same location at the
same time by Courbet, who spent the sum-
mer of 1869 at Etretat; nor are they studies
like the many pastels done by Boudin dur-
ing his years on the Normandy coast. Rather,
they are a homogeneous, self-contained se-
ries of works identical in technique, close in
size, and similar in subject matter. Degas,
who was already familiar with Pissarro's
landscapes, and who may well have seen the
seascapes done by Manet when he visited
again, he did not waver, but remained
steadfast throughout his long career, rein-
venting the morphology of the glimpsed
landscapes, pointing out topographical oddi-
ties, delighting in winding streams and in
trees with bizarre shapes, playing with the
green of the meadows and the brown of the
plowed soil, and always bringing imagina-
tion back to the studio of the landscape
painter.
1. 1984-85, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
28 June-16 September 1984/The Art Institute of
Chicago, 23 October 1984-6 January 1985 /Grand
Palais, Paris, 8 February-22 April 1985, A Day in
154
the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape.
2. Vollard 1924, pp. 58-59.
3 . See Catalogue d'estampes anciennes . . . formant la
collection defeu M. le prince Gregoire Soutzo, Paris,
17-18 March 1870, nos. 78-106.
4. Reff 1985, Notebook 4 (BN, Carnet 15, p. 18).
5. Reff 1985, Notebook 7 (Louvre, RF5634, p. iv).
6. Reff 1985, Notebook 10 (BN, Carnet 25, p. 50).
7. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1).
8. Letter from Marguerite and Rene De Gas to
Michel Musson, Paris to New Orleans, 13 Octo-
ber 1 86 1, Tulane University Library, New Or-
leans.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 162-
63, 165, 167-68, 171, 173, 175-76)-
10. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 161).
11. See Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8,
pp. 5, 221).
12. See letter from Manet to Fantin-Latour, Bou-
logne-sur-Mer to Paris, in Moreau-Nelaton
1926, pp. 102-03; unpublished letter from Manet
to Degas, Calais to Paris, 29 July 1868, private
collection.
13. Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, pp. 58-
59, H9)-
14. Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 58).
15. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 61.
16. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 278; Halevy 1964, p. 66.
17. Letter from Manet to Degas, [July 1869], private
collection, mentioned in Reff 1976, p. 150.
18. See Charles Baudelaire, Salon de 18 '59, in Oeuvres,
Paris: Pleiade, 1966, p. 108 1.
92.
Cliffs at the Edge of the Sea
1869
Pastel on buff wove paper
i23/4 X i8l/2 in. (32.4 X 46.9 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas /69
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF31199)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 199
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 19 19,
no. 58. b); bought at that sale by Nunes et Fiquet,
Paris, with no. 58. a, for Fr 4,000; Baronne Eva
Gebhard-Gourgaud, Paris; her gift to the Louvre 1965.
exhibitions: 1966, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre, May, Pastels et miniatures du XIXe siecle,
no. 46; 1969 Paris, no. 151; 1975, Paris, Musee Dela-
croix, June-December, Delacroix et les peintres de la
nature.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no, 199; Maurice Serullaz, "Cabinet des dessins: la
donation de la baronne Gourgaud," La Revue du
Louvre et des Musees de France, 16th year, 2, 1966, pp.
100-01, repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 297; Paris,
Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 77, repr.
93-
Seascape
1869
Pastel on buff wove paper
i23/s X 1 8V2 in. (3 1 . 4 X 46. 9 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF31202)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 226
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1919,
no. 47. a); bought at that sale by Nunes et Fkjuet,
Paris, with no. 47. b, for Fr 5,550; Baronne Eva
Gebhard-Gourgaud, Paris; her gift to the Louvre
1965.
exhibitions: 1966, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre, May, Pastels et miniatures du XIXe sikle,
no. 49; 1969 Paris, no. 154.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no.
226; Maurice Serullaz, "Cabinet des dessins: la dona-
tion de la baronne Gourgaud," La Revue du Louvre et
des Musees de France, 16th year, 2, 1966, pp. 99-111,
repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 306; Reff 1977, fig. 79
(color); Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985,
no. 80, repr.
94-
Mme Edmondo Morbilli,
nee Therese De Gas
1869
Pastel, with strips of paper added at top and
bottom
2oVs X i33/s in. (51 X 34 cm)
Private collection, New York
Lemoisne 255
Some time after painting the double portraits
in Washington and Boston (see cat. no. 63),
which show Therese with her husband Ed-
mondo Morbilli, Degas undertook to paint
his sister by herself as he had so often done
before her marriage. The occasion was a
visit by Therese to Paris, the setting her
father's drawing room at 4 rue de Mondovi,
and the moment just as she is preparing to
step out or just as she is coming in. But the
technique, the format, and the aim of this
portrait set it apart from Degas's previous
works in this genre.
Therese stands before us in a plain spring
or summer dress, with one elbow on the
mantelpiece in a pose that echoes that of
Ingres 's famous portrait of the Comtesse
d'Haussonville (fig. 83), but a Comtesse
d'Haussonville who is stern, distant, and
somewhat stiff. In all her portraits, Therese
retains the same air, one of incomprehen-
sion, but her face — more mature here, and
thinner — now has a certain severity, an un-
customary reserve. This not very likable
young woman no longer has much in com-
mon with the good little girl about whom
her brother Achille, writing from Gabon,
asked in i860, "And is Therese still embroi-
dering for all the children in the family?"1 —
the stay-at-home girl always busy with some
domestic chore.
She is surrounded by an array of modern
comforts — sofas and armchairs, cushion,
bell-pull — as well as works produced in the
previous century, such as the Rococo candle-
sticks or the pastels on the wall. The red
velvet of the chairs and around the top of
the mantelpiece, the frames that are almost
side by side, and the flower-patterned carpet
give this low room, which is scarcely en-
larged by the mirror, a confined atmosphere
that is very different from the more open in-
teriors of Degas's other portraits of her.2
As in his landscapes of the Normandy
coast (see "The Landscapes of 1869," p. 153)
and the study for the portrait of Mme The-
odore Gobillard (cat. no. 90), Degas used
pastel, which leads us to accept the date of
1869 generally proposed for this work. Not
only was pastel preferred for portraits in the
eighteenth century — by such artists as Per-
ronneau, whose painting of Mme Miron de
Porthioux hangs on the wall at the right —
but it could also bring out better than oil the
softness, the silkiness, and the plush of the
wools, cottons, and velvets. Apart from the
landscapes, this was the first time that Degas
employed pastel for the final version of a
work. He had used it earlier in sketches for
The Bellelli Family (fig. 36) and Semiramis
(fig. 45), no doubt because it allowed him to
analyze the balance of colors, and later in work-
ing on the portraits of Mme Camus at the
piano (L208-L212)3 and of Yves Gobillard-
Morisot (cat. no. 87), but with larger canvases
in mind.
This homage to the eighteenth century
and, through the objects surrounding The-
rese, to their father's taste for this period —
also the tastes of the Marcilles and the La
Cazes, whom Degas had visited with him
as a boy — does not lead Degas into pas-
tiche, into neo-La Tour or neo-Perronneau,
as it did many of his contemporaries. Taking
his inspiration once again from Ingres, he
gives his sister a new image, unlike that in
any other painting of the time, with har-
monies of red, pink, and gold, heralding the
subtleties of colors of the Nabis. This was to
be Degas's last portrait of his beloved
Therese, standing primly in her yellow
dress with white trim, holding that curious
hat which looks like the oval of a bearded
head, and somehow cut off from her brother
by the angles of the crimson velvet sofas.
155
1 . Unpublished letter from Achille De Gas to Hdgar,
7 July i860, private collection.
2. The posthumous inventory drawn up on 4 April
1874 describes the furnishings from the parlor on
rue de Mondovi: "two gilded bronze firedogs . . .
one gilded bronze clock with painting of children,
two gilded bronze candalabra, each with four
sockets, two gilded bronze candlesticks . . . two
double-branched plated candlesticks ... a ma-
hogany grand piano bearing the name Erard, a pi-
ano stool, and a music stand. . . . Two armchairs
with spiraled wood covered with gray fabric. . . .
Two velvet-covered rosewood love seats, two
comfortable armchairs, two small padded velvet
armchairs, two velvet-covered chairs with spiraled
wood ... six caned chairs and four painted
wooden chairs with embroidered covers. . . . One
rosewood piece with glass door, shelf, and mir-
ror. ... A rosewood games table. . . . Four em-
broidered muslin curtains and four silk damask
window curtains, in poor condition. ..."
3. L211 and II:i83, pastel studies of arms, are in the
E. G. Buhrle Collection, Zurich, as is the finished
painting, L207. The other pastels are in a private
collection.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris (Rene de Gas estate sale, Drouot, Par-
is, 10 November 1927, no. 41, repr.); bought at that
sale by D. David- Weill, Paris, for Fr 180,000.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 86; 1972,
Paris, Galerie Schmit, May-June, Les itnpressionnistes
et leurs precurseurs, no. 34, repr. (color); 1975, Paris,
Galerie Schmit, 15 May-2ijune, Degas, no. 13,
repr. (color); 1985-86, New York, Frick Collection,
19 November 1985-16 February 1986, Ingres and the
Comtesse d'Haussonville, no. 113, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 255; Minervino 1974, no. 252.
Fig* 83. Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The
Comtesse d'Haussonville, 1845. Oil on canvas,
5i7/8X361/4in.(i3i.8X92 cm). The Frick
Collection, New York
95.
At the Races in the Countryside
1869
Oil on canvas
i43/sX22in. (36.5 X 55.9 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 193 1 Purchase
Fund (26.790)
Lemoisne 281
In November 1872, three weeks after De-
gas's arrival in New Orleans, the fate of this
canvas was uppermost in his mind. "And
the [picture] of the family at the races, what
is happening to that?" he asked Tissot, who
was in exile in London. 1 The small canvas,
now in Boston, had been bought by Du-
rand-Ruel two months earlier, on 17 Sep-
tember 1872, and on 12 October had been
sent to London, where it was shown at the
Fifth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists
and was praised by the critic Sydney Col-
vin.2 The following spring, on 25 April
1873, Degas's wishes were answered when
his painting became part of the important
collection of the baritone Jean-Baptiste
Faure. A year later, the artist chose to show
it under the title "Aux courses en province"
at the first Impressionist exhibition, where it
went largely unnoticed apart from a review
by Ernest Chesneau, who praised it as "ex-
quisite in color, drawing, the felicity of the
poses, and overall finish. "3
Although its provenance is prestigious
and well documented, the painting's precise
date, the identity of the people portrayed,
and the location of the scene have remained
the subject of some debate. Wilenski felt the
elegant driver of the tilbury was Ludovic
Lepic,4 while Andre Marchand believed it
was Charles Jeantaud, "the painter's uncle
and friend."5 However, it is surely Degas's
old friend from his childhood days, Paul
Valpingon — as identified by his daughter
Hortense (later Mme Jacques Fourchy)6 and
by Marcel Guerin.7 The date 1870-73 pro-
posed by Lemoisne and constantly repeated
must be rejected for two reasons: first, the
canvas was already completed by 1872, since
that is when it was sold by Degas; second,
the child in the carriage, in the arms of his
nurse and under the attentive eye of the fa-
ther, mother, and family bulldog, can be
none other than the Valpinqons' only son,
Henri, born in Paris on n January 1869. 8
(Their daughter Hortense was born several
years earlier, in 1862; see cat. no. 10 1.) Ev-
erything fits perfectly: in the summer of
1869, Degas made a long trip to the coast of
Normandy and, as was his custom, he visit-
ed the Valpincpns at Menil-Hubert (see
"The Landscapes of 1869," p. 153). At the
Fig. 84. M. and Mme Paul Valpincon, dated 186 1.
Pencil, i35/sXio3/4 in. (34.4X25.6 cm). The
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York
Races in the Countryside is the recollection of
an outing at the races in Argentan, about
fifteen kilometers from Menil-Hubert — the
closest racecourse to the estate, and the only
one that could be reached by carriage and
with an infant without undue difficulty.
The Boston canvas is not the only one in
which Degas portrayed his beloved Valpin-
con family (see cat. no. 60). Shortly after
Paul's marriage, Degas made a drawing of
the young couple and dated it 186 1 (fig. 84).
At one time, he had contemplated doing a
more ambitious portrait of Mme Valpincon
in mourning, for which there is a vague
sketch in a notebook.9 Probably in the late
1860s, he did a painting of the handsome,
somewhat heavy face of his friend Paul
(L197). (In a notebook used between 1865
and 1868, Degas noted their respective
weights: 64.5 kilograms for himself and 94
for Valpincon.) The two children, Hortense
(see cat. no. 10 1) and Henri (L270, E. G.
Buhrle Collection, Zurich), were in turn to
become subjects in his paintings.
Some have suggested a Japanese influence
in the Boston canvas, but this view is hardly
convincing. Others are perhaps more cor-
rect in emphasizing the influence of English
painting, arguing that this part of Normandy
reminded Degas of England and its paint-
ers.10 Doubtless this is truer of the woods
and hillocks around Exmes than of the flat
and melancholy plain of Argentan, the
green expanse of which is scarcely broken
here by several low-lying houses and the
thin silhouettes of three trees. But the three
horses in the background running without
any spectators in sight suggest, it is true,
157
the colored English etchings that Degas par-
ticularly loved. The even distribution of
land and sky — a beautiful light sky, thick-
ened here and there by some clouds — and
the smooth, rich, and precise handling re-
mind us, once again, of Dutch painting in
its polish and care, its calm and delicacy. In
19 12, Lemoisne perceived in this canvas the
"slight confusion [of the painter] during this
period," which shows up in "small errors in
perspective, the horsemen being too large
for their horses or not in the proper depth,
background elements that . . .jut forward
instead of blending in and receding."11 To-
day, this hardly strikes us any more than
does the evident boldness of the composi-
tion, which Lemoisne judged as "a little too
choppy" and affected. 12 It is a delightful
piece of painting, with its blacks standing
out against the clear backgrounds, the dim-
pled legs of a six-month-old baby on a
white blanket in the radiant sun, the vivid
red of the pants and cap, and the blissfulness
of a family outing in the peaceful countryside.
1 . Letter from Degas to Tissot, New Orleans to
London, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 3, p. 17.
2. Pall Mall Gazette, 28 November 1872.
3. "A cote du Salon," Paris-Journal, 7 May 1874.
4. R. H. Wilenski, Modern French Painters, New
York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1940, p. 53.
5. 1955 Paris, Orangerie, no. 20.
6. Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 1.
7. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 80.
8. Archives, City of Paris, electoral lists.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 96).
10. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 161).
11. Lemoisne 19 12, p. 53.
12. Ibid., p. 54.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 17 September 1872 (as "La voiture sor-
tant du champ de courses," stock no. 19 10), for Fr
1,000; sent to Durand-Ruel, London, 12 October
1872, for Fr 1,000; bought through Charles Des-
champs by Jean-Baptiste Faure, 25 April 1873, for Fr
1,300; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 2 January 1893
(as "Voiture aux courses," stock no. 2566), for Fr
10,000; deposited with the Durand-Ruel family, Les
Balans, 29 March 191 8; bought by the museum, in
New York, 1926.
exhibitions: 1872, London, 168 New Bond Street,
Fifth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists, no. 113;
1873, London, 168 New Bond Street, Sixth Exhibi-
tion of the Society of French Artists, no. 79 (as "A Race-
course in Normandy"); 1874 Paris, no. 63 (as "Aux
courses en province"); 1899, Saint Petersburg, Exhi-
bition of paintings organized by Mir Iskousstua, no. 81;
1903-04, Vienna, Secession; 1905 London, no. 57,
repr.; 19 17, Kunsthaus Zurich, 5 October-14 No-
vember, Franzdsische Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhun-
derts, no. 88, repr.; 1922, Paris, Galerie Barbazanges,
17-3 1 November, Le sport dans Vart, p. 27; 1922, Paris,
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 27 May-10 July, Le decor
de la vie sous le second empire, no. 57; 1924 Paris, no. 40;
1929 Cambridge, Mass., no. 25, pi. XVII; 1933 Chi-
cago, no. 282, repr.; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 21, repr.;
1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 14, pi. X; 1937 Paris, Pa-
lais National, no. 301, pi. LXXXVI; 1938, Cam-
bridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, The Horse: Its
Significance in Art, no. 15; 1939, San Francisco, Golden
Gate International Exposition, Masterworks of Five
Centuries, no. 147, repr.; 1946-47, Toledo Museum
of Art, November-December/ Art Gallery of Toronto,
January-February, The Spirit of Modem France: An
Essay on Painting 1745-1946, no. 42; 1955 Paris, Or-
angerie, no. 13, repr. (color); 1986 Washington,
D.C., no. 4, repr. (color).
selected references: Ernest Chesneau, "A cote du
Salon," Paris-Journal, 7 May 1874; Lemoisne 19 12,
PP- 53—54, repr.; Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 1; R. H.
Wilenski, Modern French Painters, New York, 1940,
p. 53; Lettres Degas 1945, p. 80; Lemoisne [1946-
49], I, pp. 85, 102, repr. (detail) facing p. 70, II,
no. 281; Boggs 1962, pp. 37, 46, 92, 93 n. 66, pi. 72;
Minervino 1974, no. 203, plates XVI, XVII (color).
158
96.
Racehorses at Longchamp
1 871; reworked in 1874?
Oil on canvas
I33/sX i6V2in. (34. 1 X 41.8 cm)
Signed lower left: E. Degas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. S. A. Denio
Collection (03.1034)
Lemoisne 334
This was the first of Degas's paintings to
enter the collection of an American muse-
um. In 19 12, Paul- Andre Lemoisne repro-
duced it in the only full-scale monograph
devoted to the artist within his lifetime,
with the curious admission that he had in-
cluded it, sight unseen, on the advice of
Jules Guiffrey. Nevertheless, he described it
as a "warm and golden painting" — perhaps
Guiffrey's description — and dated it about
1878. 1 Subsequently, in a briefer commen-
tary, Lemoisne altered his view on the date,
concluding that even if the painting ap-
peared to belong to the late 1860s and the
abbreviated "E" in the signature was some-
thing Degas no longer used on his works in
the 1 870s, it was so accomplished that it dis-
tinctly belonged to the earlier 1870s, proba-
bly about 1873-75. 2
Regardless of pragmatic questions of dat-
ing, it is readily apparent, as Lemoisne noted,
that the painting represents a culminating
point in a series of works devoted to the
racetrack. This is a subject that Degas large-
ly neglected after his return from New Or-
leans in April 1873, and only in the 18 80s
did he resurrect it to any extent.3 Very
much unlike his earlier works of the 1860s,
Racehorses at Longchamp anticipates a type of
composition he was to refine at a much later
date, and its closest early equivalent, Race-
horses before the Stands (cat. no. 68), provides
an uneasy comparison. The Boston painting
is the most serene and poetic of Degas's ear-
lier evocations of the races. In those compo-
sitions, he was apt to stress the atmosphere
of nervousness around the track before a
race, or the repressed energy at the first sign
of a start. In Racehorses at Longchamp, horses
are being taken on their round at a leisurely
pace, at an unusual hour of the day — dusk.
Were it not for the bright colors worn by
the jockeys, the hint of fence rails, and the
bolting horse at the far left — the one sug-
gestion of animation in an otherwise even-
tenored cavalcade — this could be a pastoral
scene far removed from the world of the
racetrack.
159
Fig. 85. Three Studies of a Mounted Jockey (111:354.2),
c. 1866-68. Pencil, 7V2X ioVa in. (19X26 cm).
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Mass.
Fig. 86. Three Studies of a Jockey (L157), c. 1866-
68. Essence, io5/s X i6Vs in. (27X41 cm).
Location unknown
Fig. 87. Before the Race (L317), c. 1873. Oil on
canvas, ioV5*X i33/s in. (26 x 34 cm). National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The drawings used for the painting, all
dating from the 1860s, are of particular in-
terest, as they reveal the extent to which
Degas, in such instances, counted not on
new studies but on the intricate, sometimes
unrecognizable permutation of parts of ex-
tant studies used in other compositions. The
three principal horses at the right are based
on three matching studies, one of them
ruled for transfer, shown in a different order
on a sheet in the Fogg Art Museum (fig. 85).
However, none of the jockeys appearing
with the horses in the Fogg drawing were
used. Instead, Degas turned to a sheet of
three essence studies (fig. 86), adapting two
of the jockeys and using one of them twice.
The horse and jockey at the far left are based
on a drawing, also ruled for transfer (III: 114. 2),
that was in turn worked up from the remain-
ing jockey on the sheet of essence studies
and a riderless horse appearing in a different
drawing (IV:22i.d).
Two of the resulting combinations of
horses with jockeys, those shown at the far
left and at the center of the Boston painting,
appear in slightly different form — with one
of the combinations reversed — in Before the
Race (fig. 87), which Degas sold to Durand-
Ruel in April 1872. 4 The painting in Wash-
ington is half the size of the one in Boston,
and the figures are quite small and corre-
spondingly sketchy. It seems difficult to ac-
cept that the fairly elaborate preparation of
studies would have been carried out in an-
ticipation of Before the Race. The likelihood
is that the studies were done for the larger,
more finished figures in Racehorses at Long-
champ and that these were merely repeated
in the Washington painting. If this is the
case, the accepted chronology of the works
no longer stands and, perforce, the Boston
painting must date before 1872.
The lack of details of provenance prior to
1900 removes the possibility of dating the
work from external evidence. The concerns
expressed by Lemoisne still stand and, sty-
listically, it is the richly textured expanse of
grass that corresponds least to Degas's hand
at the end of the 1860s and in the first years
of the 1 8 70s. An examination of an X-radio-
graph of the canvas, as communicated by
Philip Conisbee, indicates in effect that the
artist reworked this section and made several
important changes, for example in the two
mounted jockeys painted out at the right
and at the left of center.
MP
1. Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 77-78.
2. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 334.
3. Between 1874 and 188 1, Degas exhibited only
four racetrack compositions. The following ap-
peared in the exhibition of 1874: no. 58, "The
Start of the Race, Essence Drawing" (unidenti-
fied); no. 59, "The False Start, Essence Drawing"
(fig. 69); and no. 63, At the Races in the Countryside
(cat. no. 95), In the 1879 exhibition, there appeared
under no. 63 a composition incorrectly identified
by Lemoisne as Racehorses before the Stands (cat.
no. 68); this work was subsequently recognized by
Ronald Pickvance as the strange Jockeys before the
Race (fig. 180), which he dates c. 1878-79 (see
1979 Edinburgh, no. 11). The group of horizontal
compositions with horses, dated by Lemoisne be-
tween 1877 and 1880 (L446, L502, L503, L596,
L597, L597 bis), represent a separate problem dis-
cussed under cat. no. 158.
4. Purchased from Degas by Durand-Ruel in April
1872 (stock no. 1332); sent to Brussels on 3 Sep-
tember 1872 (brought back on 21 December); sold
to Jean-Baptiste Faure on 7 May 1873 (see journal,
Durand-Ruel archives, Paris). It was engraved in
1873 by Laguillermie prior to its sale to Faure.
provenance: With Bernheim-Jeune, Paris; bought
by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 10 February 1900 (as "Che-
vaux de courses," stock no. 5689); deposited with
Cassirer, Berlin; returned to Durand-Ruel, Paris, 10
June 1900; deposited with M. Whitaker, Montreal,
19 December 1900; deposited with Durand-Ruel,
New York, 18 February 1901 (stock no. N. Y. 2494);
bought by Mrs. William H. Moore, New York, 27
March 1901; returned to Durand-Ruel, New York,
1 April 190 1 ; bought by the museum, with the aid of
the Sylvanius Adams Denio Fund, 1903 .
exhibitions: 191 1 Cambridge, Mass., no. 10; 1929
Cambridge, Mass., no. 32; 1935, Kansas City, Wil-
liam Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary At-
kins Museum of Fine Arts, 3 1 March-28 April, One
Hundred Years [of] French Painting, no. 21; 1937 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 12; 1938, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Mu-
seum, 2 July-25 September, Honderd Jaar Fransche
Kunst, no. 98, repr.; 1938, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg
Art Museum, 20 April-21 May, The Horse: Its Sig-
nificance in Art, no. 16, repr.; 1939, New York, M.
Knoedler and Co. , 9-28 January, Views of Paris, no.
28, repr.; 1947 Cleveland, no. 31, pi. XXIII; 1949
New York, no. 29, repr.; 1957, Fort Worth Art Cen-
ter, 7 January- 3 March, Horse and Rider, no. 103;
i960, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1
April-15 May, Sport and the Horse, no. 59; 1968 New
York, no. 5, repr.; 1973, Boston, Museum of Fine
Arts, 15 June-14 October, Impressionism: French and
American, no. 5; 1974 Boston, no. 11; 1977-78, Bos-
ton, Museum of Fine Arts, 8 November 1977-15
January 1978, The Second Greatest Show on Earth: The
Making of a Museum, no. 25; 1978 New York, no. 10,
repr. (color); 1978 Richmond, no. 8; 1979-80, Atlanta,
High Museum of Art, 21 April-17 June /Tokyo,
Seibu Museum of Art, 28 July-19 September/
Nagoya City Museum, 29 September-3 1 October/
Kyoto, National Museum of Modern Art, 10 No-
vember-23 December/Denver Art Museum, 13
February-20 April 1980, Corot to Braque: French
Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 35,
repr. (color); 1984, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 13
January-2 June, The Great Boston Collectors: Paintings
from the Museum of Fine Arts, no. 38, repr. (color).
selected references: Grappe 1911, pp. 20-21, repr.
p. 48; Lemoisne 1912, pp. 77-78, pi. XXXI (as 1878);
Lafond 19 18-19, II, p. 42; Lemoisne [1946-49], no.
334 (as c. 1873-75); Cabanne 1957, pp. 28, 48, no,
pi. 45 (detail); Minervino 1974, no. 384; Dunlop
1979, P- 120 (as c. 1874), pi. 107 p. 116 (as 1873-75);
McMullen 1984, p. 239; Alexandra R. Murphy, Eu-
ropean Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: An
Illustrated Summary Catalogue, Boston: Museum of
Fine Arts, 1985, p. 74, repr.; Lipton 1986, pp. 20,
23, 30, 62, fig. 12 pp. 21, 53; Sutton 1986, p. 146,
fig. 114 (color) p. 144.
160
97-
The Orchestra of the Opera
c. 1870
Oil on canvas
22V4 X 18% in. (56.5x46.2 cm)
Signed lower right on back of chair: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2417)
Lemoisne 186
The Orchestra of the Opera, which is now,
quite justly, one of Degas's most famous
paintings, was exhibited in all probability as
early as 187 1, and then disappeared from
sight. It remained hidden at the home of its
owner, Desire Dihau, on rue de Laval, and
then, after his death in 1909, at the home of
his sister Marie Dihau, who sold it to the
Musee du Luxembourg along with a por-
trait of herself (L263, Musee d'Orsay, Paris)
in return for a life annuity and life interest.
Until 1935, the canvas hung in her modest
apartment on rue Victor Masse, where the
"charming old spinster," who was a pianist,
lived "on a small income and the proceeds
from some music lessons she gave — often
free — to young girls from Montmartre who
were preparing to be singers in cafes." Marcel
Guerin, who is quoted here, reports that a
prior arrangement had been made after Marie
Dihau had sold another of her portraits
(L172, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York) to Durand-Ruel.
After the Russian Revolution, she soon
ran out of money, but did not want to
give up her cherished paintings. We there-
fore arrived at an arrangement by which,
in return for a life annuity of Fr 12,000
paid to her by me and my friend D. David-
Weill, head of the Conseil des Musees
Nationaux, the two paintings would be-
long to us after her death, "The Orchestra"
to him and the portrait to me. Then came
the first exhibition of Degas's work that
we organized in 1924 at Galerie Petit,
then run by Schoeller; the two paintings,
which were being exhibited for the first
time, caused a sensation; the Musee du
Louvre asked us to cede our contract with
Mile Dihau to them, which we did, and
the two paintings thus went to the Louvre.1
The Orchestra of the Opera, like the paint-
ings purchased from the Neapolitan branch
of the family or those kept by Rene de Gas,
is one of the works that, appearing a few
years after the atelier sales, enable us to ar-
rive at a better assessment of a period that
remains somewhat unclear, given our uncer-
tain knowledge of the chronology of the
1860s. The difficult composition of the work
led some writers to express judgments that
seem surprising to us today. Paul Jamot, one
of the first to write about this painting,
summed it up in this way: "Here Degas has
already given up his attempts to produce
great history paintings — the strength and
beauty of the draftsmanship make this
painting look like the work of a classicist,
whereas his curiosity about human beings
and the exactitude of the composition make
it seem like the work of the primitives."2
Jamot' s assessment has been restated in one
form or another until the present day — by
those who see in this canvas Degas's defini-
tive break with his past as a history painter,
by those who see it as his first attempt to
represent a ballet, and by those who ob-
serve that the stage, which in this work is
still narrowly confined to the upper part of
the painting, was to occupy more and more
space in Degas's subsequent canvases (see
cat. nos. 98, 103) before taking over com-
pletely to become the very subject of his
work, eliminating the orchestra pit, which
would appear only occasionally at the bot-
tom of the painting as an incidental border.
To clinch his argument, Jamot claimed that
Degas added the dancers only as an after-
thought— despite Marie Dihau's insistence
that she never saw the painting without
them.
In fact, we owe almost everything we
now know about the painting, including the
dating and the identification of the figures,
to Marie Dihau, who was interviewed by
Lemoisne, Jamot, and Guerin. Painted just
before the war of 1870 (there is no reason to
accept Lemoisne's date of 1868-69), it was
scarcely finished when Degas, who was still
considering some changes, entrusted it to
Desire Dihau for an exhibition at Lille, no
record of which has been discovered. It
earned Dihau the praise of the Degas fami-
ly: "It's thanks to you that he has finally
produced a finished work, a real paint-
ing!"3— a belated (and unwarranted) re-
joinder to Auguste De Gas's comment in
November 1861 that "our Raphael is still
working, but has not produced anything
that is really finished, and the years are
passing."4 We do not know whether Dihau
bought it or was given it.
In the stage box can be seen the head of
the composer Emmanuel Chabrier, who
knew Manet, Nina de Callias, and Tissot,
and who had "just been brought by Desire
Dihau to pose at Degas's." Seated in the or-
chestra at the extreme left is the cellist Louis-
Marie Pilet (18 1 5-1 877), 5 a musician who
joined the Opera in March 18 5 2. 6 Behind
Pilet is a figure identified by Jamot, from his
portrait in the Musee Bonnat in Bayonne, as
the painter Enrique Melida, Bonnat's brother-
in-law; a more plausible identification is
made by Lemoisne, who sees him as the
Spanish tenor Lorenzo Pagans (183 8- 1883).
The crown of curly white hair belongs to
Gard, "a stage director at the Opera," con-
cerning whom all records are silent. Next,
pensively playing the violin, is the painter
Alexandre Piot-Normand (1 830-1902), a
student of Picot's. Looking toward the audi-
ence is Souquet — according to Lemoisne a
composer, and according to Jamot a doctor;
he could be the little-known Louis Souquet
who composed a capriccio waltz for piano
in 1884. Turned toward the stage is someone
who has been identified variously as Dr.
Pillot, Pilot "a medical student," and Pilot
"an amateur musician"7 — possibly Adolphe
Jean Desire Pillot, born 12 November 1832
and admitted to the solfeggio class at the
Paris Conservatory on 21 October 1846. 8 In
front of him, in the very middle of the pic-
ture, is the bassoonist Desire Dihau (1833-
1909), who was with the Opera from 1862
to 31 December 18 89. 9 Then there is the
flutist Henry Altes (1 826-1 895), also por-
trayed alone by Degas (L176, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, New York), who
was with the Opera from 1 February 1848
to 1 September 1876. 10 Next come Zephirin-
Joseph Lancien (1831-1896), violinist at the
Opera and solo violinist from 1856 to 31
December 18 89; 11 Jean-Nicolas Joseph
Gout (183 1— 1895), violinist at the Opera
from 23 April 1850 to 31 December 1894;
and finally, the figure always referred to as
"Gouffe, double bass," but whose identifi-
cation poses several problems. The Con-
servatory records do mention an Albert
Achille Auguste Gouffe, born in Paris on 9
March 1836, but he was a cellist, and the
figure in Degas's picture is obviously more
than thirty-three or thirty-four years old.
The Goufle we are dealing with here is
probably his father, Achille Henri Victor
Gouffe, first double bass player at the
Opera, who, since he was thirty-one when
his son was born, would have been born
about 1 80 5. 12 It should be noted that a trac-
ing found in the Musee d'Orsay records,
which identifies the figures, states that
"Mile Parent probably posed for the dancers."
This is a somewhat eclectic orchestra;
musicians are certainly in the majority, but
some of the figures, such as Pagans and
Souquet, are not instrumentalists. It also
contains obscure friends of Degas's, such as
the mysterious Gard (affectionately referred
to by Degas as a "tyrant"13) and the painter
Piot-Normand. Both of them were regulars
at Auguste De Gas's Monday gatherings at
his home on rue de Mondovi; Degas may
have met them, as he met Dihau, at Mere
Lefebvre's restaurant on rue de la Tour
d'Auvergne.14
The evolution of The Orchestra of the Opera,
which is, above all, a portrait of Desire
Dihau, is not easy to trace. Marcel Guerin
161
Fig. 89. X-radiograph of The Orchestra of the
Opera (cat. no. 97)
claims that originally Degas wanted to do a
portrait of the bassoonist alone, and then
thought of placing him in the midst of an
orchestra. However, nothing in the existing
studies — incomplete though they are — sup-
ports this hypothesis. The only composi-
tional study that has been preserved is an oil
on canvas (fig. 88) that is quite different
from the Or say work: the dimensions are
comparable, but differently proportioned, so
that its width is Orsay's height; it does not
show the orchestra at an angle, but gives a
direct frontal view; the wooden railing
which separates the orchestra from the first
row of seats in the auditorium is omitted;
and a strictly horizontal stage is merely
hinted at in the upper portion of the canvas.
From the confused mass of the orchestra,
only the fairly detailed face of Dihau blow-
ing into his bassoon emerges, along with
the sketchier form of Gouffe's wide back.
The X-radiograph of the Orsay painting
(fig. 89) reveals Degas's indecision: it seems
that he had deliberately cut off the sides and
top of the canvas — the composition original-
ly had been larger — and thus altered the
framing of the scene. The edge of the stage,
which now cuts off the dancers' feet, was
considerably higher, and the railing around
the orchestra pit was inserted later. Some of
the dancers' legs were removed and others
added. Most noteworthy, however, are
three essential elements that seem to have
been added later, since they cannot be de-
tected or are just barely visible in the X-radio-
graph: the harp emerging at the left above
the melee of musicians, the box in which
Chabrier is sitting, and in particular the
double bass player Gouffe on his chair — in
the X-radiograph the full length of Dihau's
bassoon is shown. Two of the notebooks
contain pencil sketches in preparation for
these changes.15
The Orchestra of the Opera is a portrait of a
man practicing his art, surrounded — and
herein lies Degas's bold innovation — by mi-
nor characters whose features are equally in-
dividualized and who, though they are not
in the foreground, are apt to steal the lime-
light, as it were, from the person being por-
trayed. It is not a group portrait, like
Fantin-Latour's various homages, but a por-
trait of an individual within a group. In
order to highlight Dihau, Degas does not
hesitate to shake up the orchestra in the pit,
placing the bassoon in the front row, though
it is normally hidden behind a wall of alter-
nating cellos and double basses.16 It does
not matter, however, for what counts here
are the faces placed close together, one above
the other, and the vivid fragments that emerge
from the uniform black of the suits and
white of the shirts — an eye, a bald head, a
shining brow, a patch of curly hair, figures
severed by bows or obscured by the neck of
a cello, but attentive only to the music, play-
ing imperturbably, while above, in the magic
of the footlights, legs and tutus move.
1. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 18; Degas Letters 1947,
pp. 260-61 (translation revised).
2. Paul Jamot, "Deux tableaux de Degas acquis par
les Musees Nationaux," Le Figaro Artistique, 3
January 1924, pp. 2-4, repr.
3. Cited in Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 186.
4. Cited in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 41.
5. His name is constantly misspelled Pillet. Degas
was to paint him separately (L188, Musee
d'Orsay, Paris).
6. The information provided by Marie Dihau is
supplemented here by biographical details from
the Conservatory records (Archives Nationales,
Paris, AJ37) and by Constant Pierre, Le Conserva-
toire National de Musique et de Declamation, Paris:
Imprimerie Nationale, 1900.
7. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 186; 1924 Paris,
no. 30; Jamot 1924, p. 136.
8. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ37353(i).
9. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ37353(2).
10. Ibid.
11. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ37353(i).
12. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ37353(2).
13. Lettres Degas 1945, I, p. 20; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 2, p. 16.
14. Marcel Guerin, "Deux tableaux acquis par le Mu-
see du Luxembourg," Beaux- Arts, 15 January 1923,
pp. 3ii-i3;Jamot 1924, p. 136.
15. Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 22, p. 1)
for the box and the framing of the stage; Note-
book 25 (BN, Carnet 24, pp. 29, 33, 35) for the
harp and Gouffe's chair and double bass. There is
also a study, removed from the same notebook
and now in the Thaw collection, New York, of
Gouffe holding his double bass.
16. "Rapport sur TOpera par M. Gamier architecte,"
Gamier archives, Bibliotheque de l'Opera, Paris.
provenance: Desire Dihau, Paris, from 1870 or 187 1
to 1909; Marie Dihau, his sister, Paris, 1909-35;
bought in 1924, along with Degas's portrait of Marie
Dihau (RF2416), by the Musee du Luxembourg
from Marie Dihau, who retained life interest and re-
ceived a life annuity from the museum; entered the
museum 1935.
exhibitions : During the Commune of 187 1, accord-
ing to Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 186; (?)i87i, Paris,
Galerie Durand-Ruel; 1924 Paris, no. 30, repr. facing
p. 32; 1926, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 3 July-3
October, Exposition retrospective d'art jrancais, no. 40;
193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 44; 1932 London, no. 354
(502); 1932 Paris, Orangerie, no. 9; 1933 Paris, no. 77;
1936 Philadelphia, no. 12, repr.; 1937 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 9; 195 1, Albi, Musee Toulouse-Lautrec,
11 August-28 October, Toulouse-Lautrec, ses amis et
ses mattres, no. 234; 1969 Paris, no. 16; 197 1 Lenin-
grad, p. 25, repr.; 1971 Madrid, no. 33; 1974-75
Paris, no. 12, repr. (color); 1982, Paris, Musee
Hebert, 19 May-4 October, Musiciens du silence, no
number; 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 1, repr.
(color); 1986, New York, The Brooklyn Museum,
13 March-15 May /Dallas Museum of Art, 1 June-3
August, From Courbet to Cezanne: A New Nineteenth
Century, no. 66, repr. (color).
selected references: Marcel Guerin, "Deux ta-
bleaux de Degas acquis pour le Musee du Luxem-
bourg," Beaux-Arts, 15 January 1923, pp. 311-13;
Paul Jamot, "Deux tableaux de Degas acquis par les
Musees Nationaux," Le Figaro Artistique, 3 January
1924, pp. 2-4, repr.; Paul Jamot, "La peinture au
Musee du Louvre: ecole franchise, XIXe siecle,"
pt. 3, LTllustration, Paris, 1928, pp. 54-57; Gabriel
Astruc, Le pavilion des fantdmes: souvenirs, Paris: B.
Grasset, 1929, p. 224; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 186; Browse [1949], pp. 21, 22, 28, 335-36, pi. 4;
Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958, no. 68; Boggs
1962, pp. 28-30, 90 nn. 40-42, pi. 60; Pickvance
1963, p. 260; Browse 1967, p. 104, fig. 1; Minervino
1974, no. 286, pi. XII (color); Roger Delage,
Chabrier: iconographie musicale, Paris: Minkoff et
Lattes, 1982, p. 57, repr.; Reff 1985, pp. 76-79,
repr.; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III,
p. 195, repr.
162
98.
Orchestra Musicians
c. 1870-71; reworked c. 1874-76
Oil on canvas
27V8 X 19V4 in. (69 X 49 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Stadtische Galerie im Stadelschen Kunstinstitut,
Frankfurt (SG237)
Exhibited in Paris and Ottawa
Lemoisne 295
This work's early entry into a German mu-
seum in 191 3 and its publication the year be-
fore by Lemoisne, who commented on it in
ambiguous terms,1 earned it a reputation
during the first part of this century that has
now been somewhat eclipsed by The Or-
chestra of the Opera in the Musee d'Orsay
(cat. no. 97), with which it is frequently
compared. Although the similarities in for-
mat and execution might suggest that these
works are pendants, the differences between
them are numerous. If The Orchestra of the
Opera is a portrait — of Desire Dihau, among
others — Orchestra Musicians is what is usual-
ly called a genre scene, for the only conceiv-
able "portrait" here is the rapt profile of the
musician on the left; the rest of the musi-
cians are seen from behind, and the dancers
have the indistinct commonplace features of
most of the young ballerinas Degas would
later paint. The scene of the ballet, which in
the Orsay canvas is limited to the upper-
most band of the picture (showing only the
dancers' legs), here takes on as much impor-
tance as what is happening in the orchestra
pit, thus accentuating the contrast between
these two worlds that are so closely linked
and yet so oblivious of each other.
Lemoisne therefore saw this as a "transi-
tional work": in style, technique, and theme,
the lower register is connected to the past,
to the 1860s, while the upper register pre-
figures all the ballet scenes to come. Lemoisne
is both right and wrong. The complicated
history of this painting reveals that it was
bought from Degas by Durand-Ruel on 14
June 1873 — it was first painted at a date
close to that of The Orchestra of the Opera,
about 1870-71 — and then purchased less
than a year later, on 5 or 6 March 1874, by
the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure (see "Degas
and Faure," p. 221). Faure gave it back to
Degas together with five other pictures that
the artist was not satisfied with and wanted
to rework, in exchange for which Degas
was to give him "four large, very elaborate
pictures . . . Les danseuses roses, Uorchestre
de Robert le Diable, Grand champ de courses,
Les grands blanchisseuses."2
While Degas did not retouch Robert le Di-
able (see cat. no. 103), he made major changes
to Orchestra Musicians, adding — as is plainly
visible — a sizable piece of canvas so that he
could show the dancers in full length rather
than cut off at the waist. Thus, while it was
originally similar in size and composition to
The Orchestra of the Opera, it then departed
from it considerably. Yet we are not left
with some strange conjoining of two dis-
tinct works: rather, in this very disjunction
lies the essence of Degas's modernity.
In The Orchestra of the Opera, Degas
somewhat distorted the arrangement of the
musicians in order to highlight the valiant
Dihau; here, he returns to the traditional
distribution of players, joining bassoon
(doubtless Desire Dihau, from behind, in
the center), cello, and bass beside the first
row of spectators. As in Dancer Onstage with
a Bouquet (cat. no. 161), he chose that mo-
ment when the prima ballerina takes her
bows. The disorderly supporting cast relax
against the framework of the flats, and the
musicians, having put down their instru-
ments for a moment, are ready to begin
again, their eyes fixed on the score. Avoid-
ing the panoramic perspective of all theater
paintings from Pannini to Menzel, Degas
(seated, as it were, in the first row of the au-
dience) adopts a restricted point of view and
concentrates on the resulting oddities and
contrasts: differences in scale (three men cut
off above the waist, seven dancers full
length), in lighting (the individually lit mu-
sic stands, the diffuse footlights), and in
technique (precise and smooth for the musi-
cians, lighter, quicker, and more vibrant for
the dancers). Two worlds are juxtaposed
and set off from each other (tenuously
linked by the upward intrusion of the bows,
the bassoon, and the tops of the heads), as
in certain medieval paintings, with the mu-
sicians in black in gloomy Acheron and the
women moving like angels in an Eden of
painted backdrops, showing that Degas,
too, like his venerated master Ingres, had
more than one brush.
1. Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 41, 43.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, V, p. 32; Degas Letters 1947,
"Annotations," no. 10, p. 261.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris (as "Les musiciens," stock no. 3102),
14 June 1873, for Fr 1,200 (the painting had already
been sent to Durand-Ruel, London, 24 May 1873);
bought by Jean-Baptiste Faure, 5 March 1874, for
Fr 1,200 (according to Guerin, Faure returned it im-
mediately to Degas, who wanted to rework it1). With
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris; bought by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 11 October 1899, for Fr 37,500 (stock no. 5466);
acquired by Durand-Ruel, New York, 8 December
1899 (stock no. N. Y. 2285); returned to Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 15 February 1910, for Fr 20,000 (stock
no. 9236); bought by the museum 4 January 1913,
for Fr 125,000 (paid in three installments: Fr 20,000
in April 1913, Fr 70,000 in April 1914, Fr 35,000 in
April 1915).
1. Lettres Degas 1945, pp. 17-18.
exhibitions: 1900-01, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Insti-
tute, 1 November 1 900-1 January 1901, Fifth Annual
Exhibition, no, 58 (as "Musicians at the Orchestra");
1904, New York, The American Fine Arts Society,
15 November-11 December, Comparative Exhibition
of Native and Foreign Art, no. 34 (as "Musiciens a
Torchestre"); 1906, Art Association of Montreal,
12-28 February, A Selection from the Works of Some
French Impressionists, no. 3 (as "The Orchestra");
1907, Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, 31 October-
8 December, Exhibition of Paintings by the French Im-
pressionists, no. 23; 191 1, Berlin, Paul Cassirer, March,
XHI.Jahrgang, VIII. Ausstellung, no. 9; 193 1, Frank-
furt, Stadelsches Institut, 3 June-3 July, Von Abbild
zum Sinnbild: Meisterwerke modemer Malerei, no. 44;
1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 15, pi. VII; 195 1, Paris,
Musee de l'Orangerie, Impressionnistes et romantiques
fianqais dans les musees allemands, no. 24, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 41, 43,
pi. XIV; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 295; Pickvance
!9<>3, P- 258; E. Holzinger and H.-J. Ziemke, Sta-
delsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, Die Gemalde
des 19. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt, 1972, I, pp. 78-79, II,
pi. 270; Minervino 1974, no. 291, pi. XIV (color);
T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modem Life, New York:
Knopf, 1985, pp. 223-24.
99.
General Mellinet and Chief Rabbi
Astruc
1871
Oil on canvas
85/s X 63/s in. (22 X 16 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
City of Gerardmer
Lemoisne 288
This double portrait is an amusing record of
one of those chance encounters that occur in
wartime. The making of the picture brought
together a painter, a chief rabbi, and a gen-
eral who was a musician and a Freemason.
We know nothing of the circumstances that
united these three men, although the cata-
logue of the Degas exhibition held in Paris
in 1924, which is a usually reliable source,
says that Mellinet and Astruc had met in the
French field ambulance service during the
Franco-Prussian War, and had asked Degas
to paint them together.1 Gabriel Astruc, the
chief rabbi's son, reported that years later,
when he entered the Cafe La Rochefoucauld,
Degas stared at him with great interest be-
cause he "recognized the features of my fa-
ther, whose portrait he had painted during
the siege at Metz, together with General
Mellinet, their mutual friend."2 It is hard to
know how to reconcile these two versions.
Emile Mellinet (1798-1895) was the son
of a Belgian general of French descent who
had a brilliant career during the First Em-
pire.3 He became a brigadier in 1850, re-
ceived the Grand Cross of the Legion of
164
165
Honor in 1859, served as senior commander
of the National Guard of the Seine from
1863 to 1869, and became a senator in 1865.
He also succeeded Marshal Magnan as Mas-
ter of the Grand Masonic Lodge of France
(1865-70) and, according to Vapereau, was
known for having greatly improved the
quality of the regimental bands. At the time
of the Franco-Prussian War, he was responsible
for the depots of the Paris Imperial Guards
(17 August) and was appointed a member
of the committee on fortifications of Paris
(20 August).4
Elie-Aristide Astruc (1831-1905) descended
from a Jewish family from Avignon that had
Fig. 90. Pierre Petit, Chief Rabbi
Astruc. Photograph. Private collection
settled in Bordeaux in 1690. He was ap-
pointed an assistant rabbi in Paris in 1857. A
chaplain at several lycees,5 he gave the young
Isaac de Camondo religious instruction, and
soon became a leading figure in the Jewish
world, helping to lay the foundations of the
Alliance Israelite Universelle before being
appointed chief rabbi of Belgium in 1866. In
1870, as a member of the Belgian prisoner
assistance committee chaired by the Comte
de Merode, he was sent to Metz, at the very
moment of capitulation, 29 October 1870,
to bring back food supplies for the civilian
population. Therefore, he could not have
met Mellinet — who was trapped in Paris,
surrounded by German troops — until after
the siege of Paris had ended, on 28 January
1871.
In painting these two very different men,
undoubtedly linked only by a sense of social
responsibility, Degas again took up, in very
small format, a formula he was fond of,
that of the double portrait: here, against a
neutral background, the sad and abstracted
face of the old general, receding slightly,
and the more prominent face of the chief
rabbi of Belgium. Except for the simple
juxtaposition of their faces, nothing links
these men, momentarily brought together
by mere chance. Degas painted them rapid-
ly, and magnificently, stressing the ravages
of age in Mellinet's face, accentuating in
Astruc's (perhaps unconsciously) what he
thought were the traits of his race. Photo-
graphs of Astruc (see fig. 90) do not show
the thick, puffy features and drooping lower
Hp seen in the painting; nor was he remem-
bered by those who knew him as looking
like this. Rather, he is said to have had a
handsome, lively face and an intelligent
gaze. His grandniece, the sculptor Louise
Ochse, who knew Astruc in his last days,
wanted to reproduce his "large skull," his
"regular nose," and his "fine, well-balanced
frame."6
Gabriel Astruc, the sitter's enterprising
son (he helped found the Theatre des
Champs-Elysees), did not forgive the painter,
and undoubtedly the Dreyfus Affair had left
its traces: "Degas, whose phobia about Jews
had closed his eyes to the point of color blind-
ness, made a wreck of his splendid subject,
replacing his tiny mouth with thick, sensual
Hps, and changing his tender, loving regard
into a look of greed. This painting is not a
work of art — it is a pogrom."7
1. 1924 Paris, no. 35.
2. Gabriel Astruc, Le pavilion des fantomes: souvenirs,
Paris: B, Grasset 1929, p. 98.
3. See Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel, X,
Paris, 1873; Vapereau, Dictionnaire universel des con-
temporains, Paris, 1865.
4. Service records of Major-General Emile Mellinet,
Chateau de Vincennes, Land Forces Historical
Service, Major-Generals, second series, no. 133 1.
5. See Biographie nationale (Academie Royale de Bel-
gique), XXX, 1958, pp. 108-09; Astruc, op. cit.,
pp. 1-14.
6. Astruc, op. cit., p. 3.
7. Ibid., p. 98.
provenance: Charles Ephrussi, Paris; Theodore
Reinach, Paris; Mile Gabrielle Reinach, his daughter,
Paris; her bequest to the city of Gerardmer 1970.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 35; 1936, Paris, Galerie
Andre Seligmann, 9 June-i July, Portraits Jrancais de
1400 a 1900, no. 113; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 51;
1987-88 New York, no. 16, p. 102, fig. 7 p. 103.
selected references: Jamot 1924, p. 1 3 7, pi. 21 ; Ga-
briel Astruc, Le pavilion des fantomes: souvenirs, Paris:
B. Grasset, 1929, p. 98; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 288; Boggs 1962, pp. 34-35, 124, pi. 69; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 271.
100.
Jeantaud, Linet, and Laine
March 1871
Oil on canvas
i$XiSVsin. (38X46 cm)
Signed and dated upper left: Degas /mars 1871
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2825)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 287
The war of 1870 and the siege of Paris by
the Prussians led Degas to serve in the Na-
tional Guard, along with many other Pari-
sians. Assigned to the artillery, he met up
again with Henri Rouart, who had been one
of his schoolmates at Louis-le-Grand and
was to remain one of his closest friends. It
166
was also an opportunity for Degas to meet a
wide variety of people from all walks of life.
Francisque Sarcey, in his acute recollections
of the siege, gives an amusing account of the
rather odd assortment of men who defended
Paris: "Beside an old man with a white
beard stood a youth with nary a whisker;
farther off, a jolly round father, his enor-
mous belly trotting along on two little legs;
the honest faces of peaceful townsmen
alongside the martial figures of veterans;
many pairs of glasses that bore witness to
annoying nearsightedness; red noses identi-
fying the men who regularly frequented the
wine shops: it was the strangest medley of
faces that one could possibly imagine."1
At Bastion 12, where Rouart commanded
the battery, Degas came to know Jeantaud,
Linet, and Laine, whom he painted together
in March 1871, more than a month after
Paris capitulated (28 January 1871).2
Jean-Baptiste Jeantaud, known as Charles
Jeantaud (1 840-1 906), is shown sitting at the
left with his arms folded on the table. The
son of a Limoges saddler, Jeantaud was an
engineer who in 188 1 distinguished himself
by building the first electric automobile. On
1 February 1872, he married Berthe Marie
Bachoux; Degas painted two beautiful por-
traits of her a short time later (see cat.
no. 142). 3
The identification of Linet, at the center,
wearing a top hat, is more problematic. One
should not confuse him with Charles Linet,
a career officer who became a captain, first
class, on 28 August 1868. Charles Linet dis-
tinguished himself at Metz, where he escaped
during the siege (1 September-29 October
1870) to join the armies of the Rhine and the
Loire, and for this he was awarded the Le-
gion of Honor and, on 11 January 1871, the
rank of staff major.4 Nothing in the relaxed
pose of the young bourgeois whom Degas
painted here brings to mind the volunteer of
modest origins who served in the provinces
and apparently did not take part in defend-
ing Paris. Moreover, the artist had jotted
down the Paris address of a "P. Linet, 46
boulevard Magenta" in one of his note-
books5— in all likelihood that of the distin-
guished-looking man in this picture.
The third man is Edouard Laine (1841-
1888), depicted in the background reclining
in an armchair and reading his newspaper.
According to Anne Distel, Laine was a friend
of Rouart' s and Lepic's, and "the director of
a major brass foundry which specialized in
taps."6
Degas creates an elegant and relaxed im-
age of these three young men from the newly
emerging industrial and business bourgeoi-
sie. These "veterans" could be taken for a
group of stylish clubmen who, having fin-
100
167
ished their meal (there is still a cup on the
table), are stretching out and relaxing for a
moment, their bellies full, their thoughts
adrift. In this small painting, done over a
preparatory drawing executed with a brush,
Degas concentrates on the faces, neglecting
the details. He uses a palette he was fond of,
brown, black, and garnet, heightened by
the bright whites of the tablecloth, sleeve,
and collar, admirably capturing the leisurely,
nostalgic atmosphere of this reunion of
comrades.
1. Francisque Sarcey, Le siege de Paris, Paris: E. La-
chaud, [1871-72], pp. 101-02.
2. A copy of this canvas dated 1872 (not an original
replica, as thought by Felix Feneon and Theodore
Reff) was included in the exhibition Uart contempo-
rain dans les collections du Quercy, Musee Ingres,
Montauban, July-September 1966 (no. 24, repr.).
3 . See files on Charles Jeantaud, Archives, Fourth
Arrondissement, Paris; Archives Nationales, Par-
is, records of the Legion of Honor; Archives De-
partementales, Haute- Vienne, Limoges.
4. See files on Charles Linet, Archives Nationales,
Paris, records of the Legion of Honor.
5. Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 22, p. 104).
6. Renoir (exhibition catalogue), Paris: Reunion des
Musees Nationaux, 1985, no. 26 (English edition,
New York/ London, no. 27, p. 204).
provenance: Given by the artist to Charles Jeantaud,
one of the sitters; Mme Charles Jeantaud, his widow,
Paris, 1906-29; her bequest to the Louvre 1929.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 37; 193 1 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 53; 1933 Paris, no. 106; 1969 Paris, no. 20;
1973, Turin, Galleria civica d'arte moderna, March-
April, Combattimento per un immagine: fotografi e pittori,
no number; 1982-83, Prague, September-Novem-
ber/Berlin (G.D.R.), 10 December 1982-20 Febru-
ary 1983, De Courbeta Cezanne, no. 28, repr. (Czech
edition), no. 30, repr. (German edition).
selected references: Rene Huyghe, "Le portrait de
Jeantaud par Degas," Bulletin des Musees de France,
December 1929, no. 12; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 287; Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958, no. 74;
Boggs 1962, pp. 35, 120-21, pi. 70; Minervino 1974,
no. 270; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986,
III, p. 196, repr.
IOI.
Hortense Valpincon
1871
Oil on canvas with herringbone weave
297/s X 435/g in. (76 X no. 8 cm)
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The John R.
Van Derlip Fund (48.1)
Lemoisne 206
Hortense Valpincon was the first child and
only daughter of Degas's old schoolmate
Paul Valpincon and his wife, born Margue-
rite Claire Brinquant. Hortense was born in
Paris on 14 July 1862, a year and a half after
the marriage of her parents on 14 January
1861.1
Years later, after marrying Jacques Fourchy,
she recounted the circumstances surround-
ing the painting of this portrait to an inter-
viewer by the name of Barazzetti, who
wrote:
It was during the Commune and at Menil-
Hubert, the estate where his friends had
invited him so often, that Degas painted
the portrait. ... It was an impromptu ef-
fort and materials were scarce. Degas had
nothing at hand to serve as a canvas. He
was given a piece of ticking found in the
bottom of a wardrobe in the chateau. The
little girl, dressed in a black dress and
white apron, a shawl around her shoulders,
a most amusing hat on her head, leaned
on the end of a table covered with a cloth
embroidered by her mother, which appears
in another of Degas's canvases. . . . The
painter had told her to be good, but it was
with some difficulty that he succeeded in
drawing the firm, supple contour of her
cheek. He had been foolish enough to offer
his model an apple, cut into quarters. Of
course, a little girl cannot be asked to pose
for several hours with an apple in her hand.
What else could she do but eat it? So, as
she grimaced, with one cheek bulging,
and her mouth alternately straining and
relaxing, the painter's exasperation grew
into rage, then scoldings, and the work
came to an abrupt halt. At other times,
when the child had been well behaved
and Degas was happy with his work, the
session ended in laughter.2
In 1924, while Hortense was still living
and still the owner of this portrait, it was
shown at Galerie Georges Petit and listed in
the catalogue (no. 33) with the date 1869.
This would seem to invalidate Barazzetti's
report that it had been painted during the
Commune. Both dates are in fact possible:
in 1869, Degas spent the summer at Menil-
Hubert, where he painted At the Races in the
Countryside (cat. no. 95), but he also re-
turned there in May of 187 1. 3
Trying to guess the age of the girl in the
picture is no help, for she could as easily be
seven years old as nine. And there is no other
evidence in the portrait to assist us in choos-
ing between the two dates — except perhaps
the apple, since it is an end-of-summer fruit,
though apples can be preserved all year
round. If we accept the year 1869 for At the
Races in the Countryside, which is a very
different painting, in a fine, concise style,
then the portrait of Hortense is more likely
to have been painted in 1871.
Nonetheless, the composition is evocative
of the works done in the mid-i86os, such as
the double portrait of M. and Mme Edmondo
Morbilli (cat. no. 63) and in particular Woman
Leaning near a Vase of Flowers (cat. no. 60),
presumably the portrait of her mother. The
portrait of Hortense has a flat background of
wallpaper, and a table creating depth; there
is nothing of the more elaborate backgrounds
of some of Degas's portraits in interiors of the
late 1860s, with their complex spaces broken
up by mirrors, woodwork, and open doors.
As in the portrait presumed to be of Mme
Valpincon, the "accessory" — here the floral-
patterned tablecloth — assumes a place of im-
portance; according to Barazzetti's account
of Hortense's recollections, "it once caused
great consternation among lovers of sensi-
ble, well-balanced composition."4 That re-
mark is not quite fair: the sewing basket,
overflowing with an unfinished piece of em-
broidery and skeins of yarn, balances the
figure of the little girl leaning on the other
end of the table; the piece of apple she inno-
cently holds is at the very center of the can-
vas. The tones are warm and subdued, never
brilliant but discreet and polite in the manner
of the well-bred bourgeoisie, like the pretty,
sensible patterns designed by Mme Valpincon
for her embroidery. Among these objects,
which call to mind many months of quiet,
patient domesticity in this somewhat pro-
tected ambience — it could as easily be a Pa-
risian apartment, there is no hint of the
nearby countryside — the little Hortense, who
we presume is restless and tired of posing,
introduces an element of vivaciousness and
impertinence, crushing in her hand what is
left of her apple, waiting anxiously to go out
and play, holding her pretty face against the
background of the millefleur wallpaper for
just one more moment.
1. Marriage certificate of Jacques Fourchy and Hor-
tense Valpingon, 15 April 1885, Archives, Eighth
Arrondissement, Paris.
2. Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 3.
3 . Unpublished letter from Auguste De Gas to The-
rese Morbilli, 3 June 1871, private collection.
4. Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 3.
provenance: M. and Mme Paul Valpincon, Paris;
Mme Jacques Fourchy (nee Hortense Valpincon),
their daughter, Paris; with Wildenstein, Paris, then
168
IOI
New York, 1936-48; Chester Dale, New York;
bought by the museum with the aid of the John R.
Van Derlip Fund 1948.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 33, repr.; 1932 London,
no. 341 (473); 1936 Philadelphia, no. 15, repr.; 1945,
New York, Wildenstein, 1-28 March, The Child
through Four Centuries, no. 32; 1947 Cleveland, no. 17,
pi. XV; 1948 Minneapolis, no number; 1949 New
York, no. 17, repr.; 195 1, New York, Wildenstein, 8
November-15 December, Jubilee Loan Exhibition,
no. 47, repr.; 1953, Vancouver Art Gallery, French
Impressionists, no. 51, repr.; 1954 Detroit, no. 68,
repr.; 1955, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2oJanuary-
20 February, Great French Paintings: An Exhibition in
Memory of Chauncy McCormick, no. 14, repr.; 1955,
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Fortieth Anniversary
Exhibition of Forty Masterpieces, no. 14, repr.; 1955
Paris, Orangerie, no. 18, repr.; 1957, New York,
Knoedler Galleries, 14 January-2 February/Palm
Beach, The Society of the Four Arts, 15 February-10
March, Paintings and Sculpture from the Minneapolis In-
stitute of Arts, repr.; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 18, repr.;
i960 New York, no. 17, repr.; 1963, Cleveland Mu-
seum of Art, 2 October- 10 November, Style, Truth
and the Portrait, no. 91, repr.; 1969, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Degas (lent to the Na-
tional Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., August
1972-1974); 1974-75 Paris, no. 14, repr. (color);
1976, Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, 11
September-17 October/Kyoto, National Museum, 2
November- 5 December, Masterpieces of World Art
from American Museums.
selected references: Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 3; Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, pp. 56, 239, II, no. 206; "Institute
Acquires Degas' Portrait of Mile Hortense Valpincpn,"
Bulletin of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, XXXVII: 10,
6 March 1948, pp. 46-51; Boggs 1962, pp. 37, 41,
69, 132, pi. 75; European Paintings from the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, New York /Washington, D.C. /Lon-
don, 1971, pp. 229-31, repr.; Minervino 1974,
no. 253, pi. XI (color).
102.
Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste
De Gas
c. 1871-72
Oil on canvas
21^4 X i53/4 in. (54 X 40 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF3736)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 256
This portrait, which stayed in the De Gas
family, was one of those acquired by the
French National Museums between the
wars through the initiative of Marcel Gue-
rin, who published it shortly thereafter.1
The information he passed on still consti-
tutes all that is known about the work today.
His direct source was Paul Poujaud^ "one of
the men who knows most about the history
of French painting and music in the late
nineteenth century" (see cat. no. 334), a
lawyer and a friend of Debussy's (he was one
of the most ardent defenders of Pelleas),
Chausson, D'Indy, Duparc, and Messager,
and also of Carriere, Besnard, and Degas.
Poujaud admired Degas enormously. "He
fascinated me for fifty years," he admitted
to Guerin in 193 1. "I was constantly scruti-
nizing and trying to animate the features of
that handsome face preserved in old age,
that brow, that gaze, those sensual lips
through which breathed a chaste soul."2
Guerin's acquisition of Degas's portrait of
Pagans, like a later article he wrote on De-
gas's Interior (cat. no. 84), gave rise to a se-
ries of letters between him and Poujaud.
Guerin was able to retrace part of Pagans's
career in society primarily from the recollec-
tions of his parents, who had heard Pagans
sing in the drawing room of his grandmother,
169
JQ2
Mme Louis Breton, on boulevard Saint-
Michel, but he still needed the essential in-
formation obtained from Poujaud.
In a letter dated 15 January 1933, Poujaud
recounts the circumstances of his discovery
of the portrait. After having had lunch alone
with Degas, sometime about 1893, Degas
ushered Poujaud into his room.
[He] showed me the precious painting
hanging above the small iron bedstead.
"You knew Pagans? This is a portrait of
him and my father." Then he left me alone.
It was his way of showing me his work.
Through a sort of proud modesty, he did
not stay for the inspection. . . . After a
few minutes, he came back into the room
and, without either of us saying a word,
looked me in the eye. That was enough
for him. He was always grateful for my
silent admiration. I am sure that he did
not show me the Pagans as a souvenir of
his father, whom I did not know and
whom he had never mentioned, but as
one of his most prized finished works.
There can be no doubt about that. This
exceptional piece made a very strong im-
pression on me.3
On another occasion, Degas spoke to him
of the three paintings in his possession that
he preferred, and after mentioning a Manet
and a Delacroix, gave Poujaud to under-
stand that the third, which he would not
name, was his own portrait of Pagans. Later,
Poujaud, like Guerin, considered it essential
that this work, once known only to a few
close friends (Henri and Alexis Rouart, Bar-
tholomew be included in the French national
collection.
Regarding the exact date of the canvas,
Poujaud was hesitant in deciding between
1871 and 1872, but finally settled on 1872,
the date adopted by Guerin. Lemoisne, on
the basis of a photograph of Pagans (which
does not, in fact, tell us much), moved the
work back to about 1869. But it must have
been painted somewhat later, at the same
time as Degas's portraits of the musicians
Desire and Marie Dihau, Pilet, and Aires,
about 1871-72.
Strictly speaking, the painting is not a
double portrait, like the pictures of the
Morbillis (cat. no. 63) or of Degas and Va-
lernes (cat. no. 58); it is primarily a portrait
of Lorenzo Pagans, with Auguste De Gas in
the background, and is comparable in this
respect to The Orchestra of the Opera (cat.
no. 97). In the late 1860s, Degas had devoted
himself to portraits of painters; now, in the
early 1870s, he did many small portraits of
musicians in various situations — at home
(Pilet), at the Opera (Desire Dihau), in a
friend's drawing room (Pagans), playing an
instrument (Dihau, Pagans), striking a pose
(Marie Dihau), or composing (Pilet), but al-
ways together with those seemingly essen-
tial attributes, their musical instruments,
whose often eccentric shapes played a deci-
sive role in the composition of the canvases.
We know little about Lorenzo Pagans.
The artist files at the Archives Nationales
and at the Bibliotheque de 1* Opera contain
scant information about him, mentioning
only a conflict with the Opera management
in i860 when he revived the difficult role of
Idrene in Rossini's Semiramis.4 The Enciclo-
pedia universal ilustrada lists a Lorenzo Pagans
who was born at Celra, Gerona, in 1838 and
died in Paris in 1883. 5 This man was first an
organist, afterward a tenor, and then mainly
a singing teacher, who taught both budding
vocalists and young men from good fami-
lies, such as the chocolate maker Gaston
Merrier.6 The repertoire he performed in the
Parisian salons was very eclectic. Edmond
de Goncourt heard him one year singing
Rameau at the De Nittises and the next year
playing an Arabic melody.7 Edmond Guerin
(Marcel's father) remembered his Spanish ac-
cent in a love song by the little-known C. A.
Lis. Pagans was known primarily as a
"Spanish singer," devoting himself to the
popular melodies of his country, singing them
to his own guitar accompaniment and occa-
sionally composing ("La nina que a mi me
quiere" was one of his great successes).
Here Degas probably shows Pagans per-
forming a song from this repertoire (since
he is accompanying himself on the guitar) at
one of the musical evenings held by Auguste
De Gas on Mondays in his apartment at 4
rue de Mondovi, which were attended by
Dr. and Mme Camus, the Dihau brother and
sister, and the Manets — "Manet, who sat
cross-legged on the floor, beside the piano."
Guerin goes on to describe the scene: "M.
De Gas senior, who was a dedicated music
170
lover, drank in the music, sitting just as his
son depicted him. . . . When there was a
slight delay between pieces, M. De Gas sen-
ior would call the performers to order. 'My
children,' he would say, 'we are wasting
precious time.'"8
The room's furnishings, seen from a dif-
ferent angle in the portrait of Therese Mor-
billi (cat. no. 94), are recognizable from the
inventory made after Auguste De Gas's
death, which (unfortunately omitting the
paintings) mentions "a mahogany grand pi-
ano bearing the name Erard, a piano stool,
and a music stand, all appraised at four hun-
dred francs."9 It was in this familiar interior
that Degas for the first time painted his fa-
ther, who willingly plays a subordinate role,
attentive only to the music. It is puzzling
that there is not one portrait of this man by
himself — a father so interested in his son's
progress, encouraging him in his vocation
and unstintingly offering advice. Perhaps he
refused; perhaps Degas did not dare. After
his father's death, Degas was to repeat this
double image in a painting now in the Mu-
seum of Fine Arts in Boston (L257); later
still, when both his father and Pagans were
dead, he was to do a variation on the same
theme (see fig. 299).
In the Pagans portrait, Auguste' s innate
nobility and the features made gaunt with
age (recalling those of his father Hilaire —
the strong nose, hollow temples, and bald-
ing pate) contrast sharply with the more
commonplace physiognomy of the Spanish
singer. Even posthumously, they make a
strange pair. One day in 1871 or 1872, De-
gas must have been struck by the sight of
his father, worn and already withdrawn, old
and bent, approaching death, haloed by the
white pages of an open score — a fleeting im-
age which took root in his imagination. The
memory of what was certainly an evening
like many others became in time an icon
above his bed. And so this small painting
has a place of its own in his work, a senti-
mental place occupied by none of the other
canvases found in his studio.
By way of epilogue: Auguste De Gas died
in Naples on 23 February 1874 and was bur-
ied in the Degas mausoleum in the Poggio-
reale cemetery. Lorenzo Pagans died while
still young, in 1883. A few months after his
death, Edmond de Goncourt, who happened
to be passing by the Hotel Drouot on Easter
Monday, attended one of those pitiful sales
that were held on the sly "by lowly second-
hand dealers, in an atmosphere of impious
hooliganism"; on that occasion, "a tambou-
rine, some guitars, sketches of painters, and
baskets of underwear and flannel waistcoats
were being sold. A handwritten notice stuck
on the door said that it was a sale of the be-
longings of one Monsieur P . This Mon-
sieur P was poor Pagans, whose guitars
and tambourine had for so many years pro-
duced such brilliant and entrancing music."10
1 . Marcel Guerin, "Le portrait du chanteur Pagans
et de M. de Gas pere par Degas," Bulletin des
Musees de France, March 1933, pp. 34-35.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 250.
3. Lettres Degas 1945, pp. 252-54; excerpted in
Degas Letters 1947, pp. 233-34 (translation
revised).
4. Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13n62.
5. Madrid: Espasas-Calpe, 1958, XL, p. 1477.
6. Unpublished memoirs of Gaston Menier, private
collection.
7. Journal Goncourt 1956, II, p. 1274.
8. Guerin, op. cit.
9. See cat. no. 94, n. 3.
10. Journal Goncourt 1956, III, p. 331.
provenance: Atelier Degas; Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, 191 8-21; Mme Nepveu-Degas, his
daughter, Paris; bought by the Societe des Amis du
Louvre with the assistance of D. David- Weill 193 3 .
exhibitions: 1933 Paris, Orangerie, no. 76; 1937 Par-
is, Orangerie, no. 16, pi. II; 1939, Belgrade, Prince
Paul Museum, La peinture franqaise au XIXe siecle,
no. 39, repr.; 1946, Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs,
Les Goncourt et leur temps, no. 133; 1947, Paris, Or-
angerie, Cinquantenaire des "Amis du Louvre" 1897-1947,
no. 61, repr.; 1949, South America, exhibition of
French art; 1953, Paris, Orangerie, 6 May-7 June,
Donations de D. David-Weill aux musees fianqais,
no. 39; 1969 Paris, no. 17.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Lafond I918-I9, I, p. 1 1 5,
repr. ; Marcel Guerin, "Le portrait du chanteur Pa-
gans et de M. de Gas pere par Degas," Bulletin des
Musees de France, 3 March 1933, pp. 34-35; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 256; Degas Letters 1947, pp. 70
n. 2, 233-34; Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958,
no. 69; Boggs 1962, pp. 22, 27-28, 127, pi. 58; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 255; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Peintures, 1986, III, p. 197, repr.
103.
The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
1871
Oil on canvas
26 X 2i3/s in. (66 X 54.3 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas 1872
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.552)
Lemoisne 294
First exhibited in 1872, immediately after it
was completed, and then frequently after-
ward, The Ballet from "Robert le Diable" to-
gether with its later London version (cat.
no. 159), is among the pictures by Degas
that were known and discussed during his
lifetime. Despite the uncertainties of its his-
tory as recently revised by Anne Distel, we
have sufficient information to be able to re-
construct the precise circumstances of its
creation.1 Although it bears the date 1872, it
was certainly painted the year before, since
Durand-Ruel bought it from Degas in Janu-
ary 1872 before sending it to London for ex-
hibition on 6 April. (Contrary to Distel, I
do not believe that this work is the "Orches-
tra of the Opera" exhibited on rue Laffitte in
1 871 — although it is true that it sometimes
bore that title.) It was among the six pictures
that Durand-Ruel sold on 5 March 1874 to
Jean-Baptiste Faure and that the baritone, as
he had agreed with Degas, returned to the
painter, who wanted to retouch them (see
"Degas and Faure," p. 221).
Whereas Degas made major changes to
Orchestra Musicians (cat. no, 98), he did not
rework his first Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
but instead painted a second, larger version
for the singer before returning the first ver-
sion— in its January 1872 state — to Durand-
Ruel on 20 August 1885.
The first studies date from 1870 or 1871.
Meyerbeer's famous opera was staged twenty-
three times between March and July 1870,
and then (following the closing of the thea-
ter on rue Le Peletier from 12 September
1870 to 12 July 1871 because of the war and
the Commune) ten times between Septem-
ber and December 1871. The programs
could provide us with more accurate dating;
in a notebook that is full of sketches of mu-
sicians and spectators, Degas wrote above
the conductor, who is seated and raising his
baton, "head of Georges in silhouette."2
Unfortunately, since the management books
prior to 1877 are missing and the conduc-
tor's name was always omitted from the
posters, we cannot know exactly when the
Georges Hainl in question conducted Robert
le Diable.
Any one of the quick sketches done by
Degas at the Opera, which he so assiduously
attended (even if, contrary to what is always
said, he was not yet a subscriber), could
have served for the theater scenes that he
executed in the very early 1870s. Around
these cursory pencil drawings from life, De-
gas wrote many notes on colors and lighting
effects, such as "shadow cast by the score on
the rounded back of the music stand" and
"horsehair bow vividly lit by the lamps."3
While making the sketches of musicians and
spectators for The Ballet from "Robert le
Diable" — Degas sat in the first rows of the
orchestra — he reproduced the main lines of
the highly celebrated stage set of the nuns'
ballet as we see it in the final canvas.4
Degas was particularly fond of this fa-
mous scene from one of the best-known
works in the repertoire, a work that made
the fortune of the Opera de Paris in the
nineteenth century. First produced on 21
November 183 1, Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable
was staged continually throughout the cen-
tury, until its last performance (the 758th!)
171
on 28 August 1893. There were few periods
when it was not presented; at most, there
were intermittent hiatuses of one or two
years — for example, between 23 February
1868 and 7 March 1870. 5
Most fortuitously, we have in manuscript
form the setting for the work dated 21 De-
cember 1872, which is as Degas would have
seen it not long before.6 It gives a very pre-
cise description of Ciceri's set for the second
scene in the third act, a set that, from the time
it was created in 183 1, "produced an as-
tounding effect" and came to have a central
place in the history of nineteenth-century
theater design because, as Charles Sechan
has reported, it permitted the revival of
stage sets in the Romantic period. "The ruins
of a monastery under brilliant moonlight.
Backdrop of ruins among which tombs are
visible. ... A great arched entranceway
stage right, from which one can see a row
of columns extending to the back of the the-
ater, where another arched gate, much
lower, opens in the rear curtain. . . . Stage
left, near the stylobate facing the public, is
the tomb of Saint Rosalie. ... In the fore-
ground, stages right and left, are sloping
tombs on which the nuns have lain down;
on the one on stage left is the Mother Supe-
rior Helena."7
After Bertram's invocation, "Nuns who
take your rest . . . the "will-o'-the-wisps
appear and flutter about the tombs," bring-
ing to life the dead nuns, who with the first
bars of the andante sostenuto begin a proces-
sion. Soon the theater is fully lit and the nuns
launch into an unrestrained bacchanal — this
is the moment that Degas has chosen — when
they recognize each other and "profess their
satisfaction at seeing one another again."
Helena, the mother superior (from 1865 to
1879 almost always performed by Mile
Fonta), "invites them to seize the moment
and deliver themselves up to pleasure."
On four separate sheets, Degas did some
quick, extraordinarily lively essence draw-
ings of the reprobate nuns who in the course
of the strange ballet timidly — with broken,
awkward movements and uncertain poses —
and then frenetically regain their taste for
life (cat. nos. 104, 105, and 111:363.1,
111:363.2, all Victoria and Albert Museum,
London). Forty years after it was first staged,
this endlessly repeated scene had lost none
of its fascination. Theophile Gautier (who,
it is true, was of the Romantic generation)
still described it admiringly in 1870: "Shad-
ows rise and take shape dimly in the gloom;
one hears faint rustlings, like the beating of
moths' wings; indistinct forms stir in the
depths of darkness, stand out against each
pillar, ascend from each stone slab like wisps
of smoke. A beam of livid light, produced
by an electric wire, penetrates the arches,
103
searching, outlining in the bluish obscurity
female forms that move under their white
shrouds with a deathly sensuality."8
Degas's annotations to the quick sketches
of the set show that he was above all im-
pressed by the lighting effects, the obscurity
of the apparitions, and the singularity of the
colors: "the moonlight barely touches the
columns of the receding arches," "black
vault, indistinct beams," "the pommel of
the footlights is reflected by the lamps" —
the "four church lamps" suspended from
the vault of the gallery — and "luminous
mist around receding arches."9 The strange-
ness of the scene, which remained un-
equaled forty years after it was created, the
chiaroscuro effects (which Degas was so
fond of), the unclassical aspect of this ballet
of ectoplasmic forms, and the contrast it
generated — the musicians and spectators in
the darkness, the bizarre cohabitation of these
two juxtaposed worlds — could not but in-
trigue and seduce the painter. For a true op-
era lover, of course, nothing could have
been more hackneyed. It was fashionable at
the time to treat Meyerbeer with condescen-
sion. When performances resumed in 1870,
an event which Degas's close friend Ludovic
Halevy termed a "disaster," Gounod, en-
couraged by the author of Les petites Cardi-
nal, made fun of the antiquated music:
"Three quarters of the score of Robert isn't
worth a damn . . . ten years from now the
work will have disappeared from the Opera's
repertoire."10 The obvious indifference of
the man looking through his binoculars at
the boxes in the grand circle (traditionally
identified as the collector Albert Hecht
[1842-18 89] — he seems older than his thirty
years, but a later photograph published by
Anne Distel suggests that this identification
is not without basis11) and the equally obvi-
172
ous indifference of the other spectators,
among them perhaps Ludovic Lepic, another
opera fan, indicate that there was not much
left in this repeatedly observed scene to titil-
late the subscriber any longer — not even
any pretty dancers to ogle, encased as they
were in their shapeless habits.
But it was just this that pleased Degas,
and that he shows in this canvas: the whole
opera world, the faded charm of a music
known almost by heart and of a production
that was trotted out year after year, the lack
of interest on the part of the spectators, and
those nuns who still continued to thrash about,
exhibiting, before this audience of impassive
men, their suddenly revived desires.
Between 1885 and 1892 (seven years for
which we have specific information on the
performances he attended), Degas viewed
Robert le Diable six more times — proof of his
touching fondness for a virtually defunct
part of the repertoire — repeatedly watching
this scene that had once been the epitome of
Romanticism but was now no more than a
well-worn museum piece, still enjoying the
slender dancers he knew, all transformed
into delinquent nuns swaying their hips
over the heads of dour opera subscribers
while Desire Dihau puffed imperturbably
into his bassoon.
1. Anne Distel, "Albert Hecht, collectionneur
(1842-1889)," Bulletin de la Societe de VHistoire de
VArt Francais, 1981, pp. 267-79.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 22, p. 7).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. (pp. 13, 15-17).
5. See Robert le Diable (exhibition catalogue edited
by Martine Kahane), Paris: Theatre National de
1' Opera, 1985.
6. Archives, Bibliotheque de I'Opera, Paris,
B.397(4).
7. Charles Sechan, Souvenirs d'un homme de theatre,
183 1-1855, Paris: Calmann Levy, 1893, pp. 8-10.
8. Journal Officiel, 15 March 1870.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 22, p. 20).
10. Ludovic Halevy, Carnets, Paris: Calmann-Levy,
1935, II, p. 74-
11. Distel, op. cit. X-radiography reveals that he was
added to the canvas at a later stage.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, January 1872, for Fr 1,500 (stock
no. 978); bought by Jean-Baptiste Faure, 5 or 6 March
1874, for Fr 1,500 (according to Guerin, Faure re-
turned it immediately to Degas1); bought from the
artist by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 20 August 1885, for
Fr 800 (stock no. 732); bought by Rouart, 10 No-
vember 1885, for Fr 3,000, and resold 31 December
1885, for Fr 3,000; the work, which does not appear
to have left Durand-Ruel, was deposited with Rob-
ertson for sale 24 December 1885 and returned 11
January 1886; bought by Jean-Baptiste Faure (as
"Robert le Diable"), 14 February 1887, for Fr 2,500;
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 31 March 1894, for
Fr 10,000 (as "Le ballet de Guillaume Tell," stock
no. 2981); bought by Durand-Ruel, New York, 4
October 1894, for Fr 10,000 (as "Robert le Diable,"
stock no. N.Y. 1205); bought by H. O. Havemeyer,
14 February 1898, for $4,000; Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, New York, 1907-29; her bequest to the mu-
seum 1929.
1. Lettres Degas 1945, pp. 31-32; Degas Letters
1947, P- 261 ■
exhibitions: 1872, London, Fourth Exhibition of the
Society of French Artists, no. 95, asking price 100 gui-
neas; 1886 New York, no. 17; 1897-98, Pittsburgh,
Carnegie Institute, 4 November 1897-1 January 1898,
Second Annual Exhibition, no. 65; 1930 New York,
no. 50; 193 5 Boston, no. 12; 1944, New York, Wilden-
stein, 13 April-13 May, Five Centuries of Ballet IS7S-
1944, no. 238; 1947, Huntington, N.Y., Neckshow
Art Museum, June, European Influence on American
Painting of the 19th Century, no. 28; 1948, Columbus
Gallery of Fine Arts, 1 April-2 May, The Springtime
of Impressionism, no. 8; 1949 New York, no. 23, repr.;
1949-50, Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, 8 Decem-
ber 1949-24 January 1950, Four Centuries of European
Painting, no. 26; 1950, Art Gallery of Toronto, 21
April-20 May, Fifty Paintings by Old Masters, no. 9;
1951-52 Bern, no. 17; 1952 Amsterdam, no. 11;
1955, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
24 October-13 November, The Comedie Francaise and
the Theater in France, p. 6; 1958- 59, Pittsburgh, Car-
negie Institute, 4 December 1958-8 February 1959,
Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings from Previous Inter-
nationals, no. 7; 1963, Little Rock, Arkansas Arts
Center, 16 May-26 October, Five Centuries of European
Painting, p. 46; 1975, Sydney, Art Gallery of New
South Wales, 10 April-11 May /Melbourne, National
Gallery of Victoria, 28 May-22 June /New York,
The Museum of Modern Art, 4 August-i Septem-
ber, Modem Masters, Manet to Matisse, no. 25, repr.
p. 39; 1977 New York, no. 12 of paintings; 1984-85
Washington, D.C., no. 2, repr.
selected references: Iakov Tugendkhol'd, Edgar
Degas, Moscow: Z. I. Grzhebin, 1922, repr. p. 44;
Alexandre 1929, p. 484, repr. p. 478; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 107, repr. p. 106; Burroughs 1932, p. 144;
Mongan 1938, p. 296; Huth 1946, p. 239 n. 22; Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, p. 68, II, no. 294; Browse
[1949], pp. 22, 28, 52, 61, 66, 337, pi. 8; Boggs
1958, p. 244; Havemeyer 196 1, p. 263; Mayne 1966,
pp. 148-56, fig. 2; New York, Metropolitan, 1967,
pp. 3, 66-68; Moffett 1979, pp. 7, 9, 10, III, fig. 15
(color); 1985, Paris, Theatre National de I'Opera, 20
June-20 September, Robert le Diable, pp. 65-66;
Reff 1985, I, pp. 7 n. 2, 9, 21.
104.
Nuns Dancing, study for
The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
1871
Essence on buff laid paper, laid down
iiV^sX i77/g in. (28.3 X 45.4 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
(E.3688-1919)
Vente 111:364.1
See cat. no. 103
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 364.1);
bought at that sale by Knoedler, Paris, with no. 364.2,
for Fr 1,000; bought by the museum 1919.
exhibitions: 1984 Tubingen, no. 85, repr.
selected references: Mayne 1966, p. 155, fig. 4.
173
105.
io6.
Nuns Dancing, study for
The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
1871
Essence on buff laid paper, laid down
11 X i73A in. (28 X 45 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
(E.3687-1919)
Vente III: 3 64. 2
See cat. no. 103
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 364.2);
bought at that sale by Knoedler, Paris, with no. 364.1,
for Fr 1,000; bought by the museum 1919.
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 64, repr.; 1969
Nottingham, no. 15; 1984 Tubingen, no. 84, repr.
selected references: Browse [1949], pp. 336-37,
pi. 6; Mayne 1966, p. 155, fig. 6.
Dance Class
1871
Oil on panel
73/4 X io5/s in. (19.7 X 27 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.184)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 297
The history of this painting has been traced
by Ronald Pickvance in an article that deals
with the dating of the first dance pictures in
masterly fashion.1 Durand-Ruel bought it
from Degas together with The Ballet from
"Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 103) in January
1872. After going to Premsel's for a short
while, the picture was sold (as we know
from an entry in Durand-Ruel's journal for
6 February 1872) to the painter Edouard
Brandon (1831-1897; not to be confused
with his father), whom Degas had known
ever since his stay in Rome and whose por-
trait he painted (L360). It was therefore this
work, catalogued as "no. 55, 'Dance Class,'
belonging to M. Brandon," and not the pic-
ture in the Musee d'Orsay, as Lemoisne
claims, that appeared in the first Impres-
sionist exhibition, in 1874. There it drew the
praises of Philippe Burty2 and of the lesser-
known Marc de Montifaud, who praised "a
fine, profound study featuring something
never to be found in certain genre painters
who would blush at putting undraped fig-
ures in a small canvas: the study of women
in their opulent nudity, with their elegant or
slender curves."3 Predating Dance Class at
the Opera (cat. no. 107) by several months,
Dance Class was the first of many pictures
by Degas on the recurring theme of dancers
exercising.
Nothing is known of the circumstances
that led Degas to turn his attention to this
subject. His depictions of ballet perform-
ances of the early 1870s probably sparked
174
his interest in the very special world of the
Opera, which was so faithfully frequented
by some of his friends — Lepic, the Hechts,
Halevy. In May 1870, Halevy had published
"Madame Cardinal," the first in a series of
short stories relating the humorous mis-
adventures of two young dancers from the
Opera, Pauline and Virginie Cardinal, and
their comical parents. November 1871,
when in all likelihood Degas was working
on his small canvas, saw the appearance of
"Monsieur Cardinal," which opens with a
brief description of the entry on stage of the
corps de ballet for an evening's performance.
Clearly, Degas was not illustrating Ha-
levy's stories, though he would do so later
(see "Degas, Halevy, and the Cardinals,"
p. 280); however, as yet unacquainted with
backstage activities, he certainly profited by
the writer's advice. It must be remembered
that in 1 87 1 Degas was not permitted to go
backstage at the Opera on rue Le Peletier;
that was a privilege he obtained only about
fifteen years later, at the Palais Gamier.
While during the day he could doubtless
visit the premises he later painted, it is al-
most certain that he was not present at any
of the scenes depicted; a few years later, he
was still writing to Albert Hecht to request
"a pass for the day of the dance examination,"
adding, "I have done so many of these
dance examinations without having seen
them that I am a little ashamed of it."4
At the center of the picture, we see prob-
ably Josephine Gaujelin (that is how Degas
spelled her name, though the 1870 money
orders for paying dancers mention a Josephine
Gozelin5). The dancers came to Degas's stu-
dio to pose (we know this from the painting
that his friend Valernes did in 1872, which
he annotated "Study just begun of a dancer
from the Opera in the studio of her friend
Degas, rue de Laval"), and Degas did many
drawings of them that he would later use
for more than one picture.
In one of the old rooms of the Opera on
rue Le Peletier, with its dirty walls and big
doors of dark wood, the dancers, having
"cracked their joints" at the barre, move in
front of an Empire-style cheval glass, where
they will begin their exercises in the middle
of the floor: "jetes, balances, pirouettes, gar-
gouillades, entrechats, fouettes, ronds de
jambes, assemblies, pointes, parcours, pe-
tits temps. . . ."6 In the center, en pointe ar-
riere, Josephine Gaujelin awaits the sign
from the ballet master — here he has the fea-
tures of a metteur en scene named Gard who
appeared in The Orchestra of the Opera (cat.
no. 97) and about whom we know nothing —
who has taken up his pocket violin. The
supporting dancers wait, resting against the
barre, leaning with their elbows on the piano
(for which we have several sketches7) or
chatting among themselves. Over the entire
scene there falls a soft, golden light that
some have found "rather muted";8 it shines
here and there (on the polished watering
can, a sheet of the score, the heel of a pink
shoe), whitens the thin cleft between the
double doors, and is reflected in a large
mirror. The smooth, even finish, lustrous
without being thick, and the precise brush-
strokes are reminiscent of Flemish or Dutch
paintings, as are the small size, the uniform,
quiet lighting, and the peacefulness of this
interior scene. Across the small surface of
the panel, there is nothing that is niggardly,
nothing that is overpolished; rather, there is
an amplitude, an entire world that invites
examination of its fullness and its great
empty spaces, of its arms, shoulders, ears
pierced with pearl, of the somber bulk of
the piano and the ballet master who is en-
sconced in it, of the lightness of the white
tutus and the little pink feet, and of the bare
floor with the strange interplay of a water-
ing can, a top hat, and a pocket-violin case.
1. Pickvance 1963, pp. 256-59, 265-66.
2. La Republique Francaise, 25 April 1874.
3. L' Artiste, May 1874, p. 309.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, XXXIV, p. 63; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 43, p. 66.
5. Archives, Bibliotheque de l'Opera, Paris.
6. Un vieil abonne [An old subscriber], Ces
demoiselles de l'Opera, Paris: Tresse et Stock, 1876,
p. 28.
7. Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 22,
pp. 22- 24).
8. Ernest Chesneau, Paris-Journal, 7 May 1874.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, January 1872 (as "Foyer de la danse,"
stock no. 943); acquired by Premsel, 16 January
1872, with a painting by Henry Levy and one by He-
reau in exchange for two paintings by Zamacois,
two by Richet, and Fr 1,500 in cash; acquired by
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 30 January 1872 (stock no. 979),
for Fr 1,000 plus Fr 6,000 in cash, in exchange for a
painting by Corot; acquired by Edouard Brandon, 6
February 1872, for Fr 1,200, in exchange for a paint-
ing by Puvis de Chavannes (Fr 400), a painting by
Brandon (to be delivered, Fr 300), and Fr 500 in
cash; Edouard Brandon, Paris. Durand-Ruel, Paris
and London, 1876; Captain Henry Hill, Brighton,
from 1875 or 1876 (Hill sale, Christie's, Brighton, 25
May 1889, no. 26 [as "A Pas de Deux," 7V2 x 10
in.]); bought by Wallis (French Gallery, London), for
in guineas, 1889; with Michel Manzi, Paris, until
1915; bought from his heirs through Mary Cassatt
by Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York, April 1917;
her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions : 1874 Paris, no. 55 (as "Classe de danse,
appartient a M. Brandon"); 1876 London, no. 2 (as
"The Practising Room"); (?)i928, New York, Du-
rand-Ruel, French Masterpieces of the XlXth Century,
no. 6 (as "La legon de foyer," anonymous loan,
probably this painting); 1930 New York, no. 48;
1974-75 Paris, no. 15, repr. (color); 1975, Leningrad,
Hermitage, 15 May-20 July/ Moscow, Pushkin Fine
Art Museum, 28 August-2 November, 100 Paintings
from the Metropolitan Museum, no. 66; 1977 New
York, no. 11 of paintings.
selected references: Philippe Burty, "Exposition de
la Societe Anonyme des Artistes," La Republique
Francaise, 25 April 1874 (reprinted in Venturi 1939,
II, p. 289); M. de Montifaud, "Exposition du boule-
vard des Capucines," L' Artiste, XIX, 1874, p. 309;
Art Journal, XXXVIII, 1876, p. 211; The Atheneum,
1876, p. 571; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 111, repr.; Bur-
roughs 1932, p. 144; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 69,
II, no. 297; Browse [i949]» PP- 53~54» 60, 341,
pi. 17, pi. II (color); Havemeyer 1961, pp. 265-66;
Pickvance 1963, pp. 256-59, 265-66; New York,
Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 69-71, repr.; Minervino 1974,
no. 296; Moffett 1979, p. 11, pi. 17 (color); 1984-85
Washington, D.C., pp. 26-28, 43, 45; Moffett 1985,
pp. 66-67, repr. (color) p. 250; Weitzenhoffer 1986,
p. 231, fig. 157 (color).
107.
Dance Class at the Opera
1872
Oil on canvas
i25/s X i8Va in. (32 X 46 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1977)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 298
"This is without question the completed
work that can give the best idea of the art-
ist's talents in that period." So wrote Le-
moisne in 1 9 12, before the great atelier sales,
when knowledge of Degas 's work was still
quite fragmentary.1 Gustave Coquiot, a little
later, in an eccentric book criticized the very
finish of the canvas, its completeness: "All
these dancers, in this vast bare room, form
what would make an excellent photograph,
and nothing more. The picture is accurate,
and frozen; it is well balanced, but a skilled
photographer could easily have recorded the
same scene."2
Even today this masterpiece, so famous
and so often reproduced (from as early as
1873, when an etching of it by Martinez ap-
peared in Durand-Ruel's publication of
prints3), has a reputation for accessibility
that does it harm. It is somehow a quintes-
sential work of Degas "the painter of danc-
ers." The most knowledgeable authorities
give it very little attention, consigning it to
the delectation of the "general public," de-
scribing it as "traditional,"4 "carefully de-
picted,"5 and "conservative,"6 and usually
omitting to point out the modernity of this
little scene in the context of French painting
of the 1 8 70s.
No doubt encouraged by the success of
his first Dance Class (cat. no. 106), which
had immediately found a buyer, Degas re-
turned to the theme in 1872, but on a slightly
larger scale, and giving it an even more
175
"Parisian" look by situating it in an actual re-
hearsal room of the Opera on rue Le Peletier
and introducing the well-known figure of
Louis Merante. It was probably this canvas
that Rene De Gas, arriving from New Or-
leans, saw in his brother's studio and men-
tioned in a letter of 17 July 1872: "Right
now he is painting small pictures, which are
what tire his eyes the most. He is doing a
dance rehearsal that is charming. . . .I'll
have a large photograph taken of it."7 A
month later, on 10 August, Durand-Ruel
purchased it; he shipped it to London on 29
October, and there it was sold to Louis
Huth on 7 December.
Worried about the fate of the picture, De-
gas wrote from New Orleans in November
to ask Tissot, then in exile in London:
"What impression did my dance picture
make on you, on you and the others? —
Were you able to help in selling it?"8 The
canvas was noticed by the London critic
Sydney Colvin, who wrote an enthusiastic
article on this masterpiece in the Pall Mall
Gazette of 28 November 1872: "It is impos-
sible to exaggerate the subtlety of exact per-
ception, and the felicitous touch in expressing
it, which reveal themselves in his little pic-
ture of ballet-girls training beneath the eye
of the ballet-master."
For the two dancers in the foreground
(the X-radiograph shows that Degas changed
the positions of nearly all the ballerinas), this
exhibition includes two beautiful essence
studies on pink paper done in the studio (see
cat. nos. 108, 109). The study for the stand-
ing dancer (cat. no. 108), annotated by Degas
"93 [or 96] rue du Bac/d'Hugues," shows the
lovely profile of Mile Hugues,9 who was at
the Opera before moving on to the Bouffes-
Parisiens. Preparing to do a reverse ara-
besque, she awaits, like Josephine Gaujelin
in The Dance Class (cat. no. 106), the sign
from the ballet master Merante, here cou-
pled with a pocket-violin player. Louis Me-
rante (1828-18 87) had begun his career as a
dancer, appearing regularly on the stage of
the Opera from 1863. Named first ballet
master in 1870, he held the post for seven-
teen years and, as Ivor Guest tells us, car-
ried out his duties "with an amiable authority,
leaving the more arduous task of maintaining
discipline to his stage manager, Edouard
Pluque."10
As in the Dance Class, though in a differ-
ent setting, Degas reproduces the moment
when, having completed their exercises at
the barre, the dancers are about to move to
the center of the room. In both works, the
poses are comparable, the moment is that
instant when everything is temporarily
frozen, just before movement begins, and
the light is soft, even, and golden. But there
is more solemnity here, not only because of
the impressive nature of the place, with its
marble-surfaced columns, the frieze running
along the edge of the ceiling, and the deep
recess of the mirror, but also because of the
Olympian presence of Merante himself, ac-
companied by his pocket-violin player.
While the texture is the same, the color-
ing differs appreciably: the faded gold of the
capitals, the frieze, and the frame of the
mirror that appears through the open door;
the uneven ochre of the wall; the grayish
white of the tutus and of Merante's outfit
(there is hardly any bright white apart from
the piece of linen on the chair); the scattered
176
black of a jacket, a cravat, ribbons, sashes,
and the notice board; and the more sono-
rous vermilion patches supporting that gilded
white page, the bow displayed on a dancer
seen from behind, the thin line of the barre
running along the wall, the fan, and finally
the signature, delicately entered with the
brush. Such subtlety, harmony, and discre-
tion have reminded viewers of Watteau,
Lancret, Pater — and, of course, Vermeer.
When, much later, speaking of a "dressing
table scene by Fantin" on exhibit at the
Ecole des Beaux- Arts, Degas remarked to
Paul Poujaud, "In our beginnings, Fantin,
Whistler, and I, we were all on the same
road, the road from Holland,"11 he must
have been thinking of these small canvases,
among others. As Mary Cassatt tells us, he
could not help recalling them with regret,
yearning as he surely did for the blessed
time when his poor tired eyes were still ca-
pable of such detailed work. 12
1. Lemoisne 1912, p. 48.
2. Coquiot 1924, p. 169.
3. See Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, fig. 8.
4. Fosca 1954* P- 47-
5. Terrasse 1974, p. 24.
6. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 28.
7. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 71.
8. Letter from Degas to Tissot, 19 November 1872,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters
1947, no. 3, p. 17.
9. Further proof that this is Miss Hughes may be
found in an 1893 photograph of her by Reutlinger
in the Bibliotheque de l'Opera, Paris.
10. Ivor Guest, Le ballet de VOpera de Paris, Paris:
Theatre National de l'Opera, 1976, pp. 136-37.
11. Lettres Degas 1945, p. 256; Degas Letters 1947,
p. 236.
12. Havemeyer 196 1, p. 265.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 10 August 1872, for Fr 2,500 (as "La le-
cpn de danse," stock no. 1824); sent to Durand-Ruel,
London, 29 October 1872, for Fr 2,500; bought by
Louis Huth, 7 December 1872, for £168, to 1888. 1
Henri Vever, Paris; with Michel Manzi, Paris;
bought by Comte Isaac de Camondo, January 1894,
for Fr 5,ooo;2 his bequest to the Louvre 191 1; exhib-
ited 19 14.
1. Pickvance 1963, p. 257.
2. The provenance "From Manzi the Dance Class,
from Vever" is given in Isaac Camondo's note-
book recording purchases, p. 227.
exhibitions: 1872, London, 168 New Bond Street,
Fifth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists, hors cat-
alogue; 1888, Glasgow, Glasgow International Exhibi-
tion, no. 836 (as "Le maitre de ballet"); 1955 Paris,
GBA, no. 48, repr.; 1957 Paris, no. 83, repr.; 1969
Paris, no. 22.
selected references: Galerie Durand-Ruel, Recueil
d'estampes, 12th issue, Paris /London /Brussels, 1873,
pi. 103, engraved by Martinez (as "Foyer de la danse
a l'Opera"); Lemoisne 19 12, p. 47; Paris, Louvre,
Camondo, 1914, no. 160; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 298; Browse [1949], pp. 53, 340, pi. 16; Pick-
vance 1963, pp. 256-58; Minervino 1974, no. 292,
pi. XXIV (color); Ivor Guest, Le ballet de l'Opera de
Paris, Paris: Theatre National de l'Opera, 1976,
pp. 130-31, 136-37, repr.; 1984-85 Washington,
D.C., pp. 26-27, repr.; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Peintures, 1986, III, p. 193, repr.; Sutton 1986,
p. 166, repr.
108.
Dancer Standing, study for
Dance Class at the Opera
1872
Essence and pencil on pink paper
io5/s x 8J/4 in. (27. 1 x 21 cm)
Inscribed lower right: 93 [or 96] rue du Bac/
d'Hugues
Vente stamp lower right
Collection of Thomas Gibson, London
Lemoisne 300
See cat. no. 107
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 231. 1);
bought at that sale by Rene de Gas, the artist's brother,
with no. 231.2, for Fr 12,900 (Rene de Gas estate
sale, Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 23. a,
repr.); bought at that sale by Rodier, with no. 23. b,
for Fr 45,000; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris; Wilden-
stein Galleries, New York; bought by John Nicholas
Brown, Providence, 1928; deposited with Joslyn Art
Museum, Omaha, 1941-46; heirs of John Nicholas
Brown, Providence, to 1986. Bought by Thomas
Gibson 1987.
exhibitions: 1929 Cambridge, Mass., no. 21; 1931,
Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, no. 21
of drawings; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 73, repr.; 1958-
59 Rotterdam, no. 165; 1962, Cambridge, Mass.,
Fogg Art Museum, 11 June-28 July, Forty Master
Drawings from the Collection of John Nicholas Brown,
no. 7; 1974 Boston, no. 77; 198 1 San Jose, no. 60;
1984 Tubingen, no. 80, pi. 80 (color).
selected references: Vingt dessins [1897], pi. XI
(color); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 300; Browse
[1949], p. 53, pi. 14; Pickvance 1963, p. 258 n. 24;
Minervino 1974, no. 294.
177
109.
Dancer Seated, study for
Dance Class at the Opera
1872
Essence and pencil on pink paper
10V4 X 8lA in. (27. 3 x 21 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor
Thaw, New York
Lemoisne 299
See cat. no. 107
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 231.2);
bought at that sale by Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, Paris, with no, 231. 1, for Fr 12,900; Rene
de Gas, Paris, 19 18-21 (Rene de Gas estate sale,
Drouot, Paris, 10 November 1927, no. 23. b, repr.);
bought at that sale by Rodier, with no. 23. a, for
Fr 45,000; Galerie Georges Petit, Paris; Wildenstein
Galleries, New York; bought by John Nicholas
Brown, Providence, 1928; deposited with Joslyn Art
Museum, Omaha, 1941-46; heirs of John Nicholas
Brown, Providence, to 1986; bought by David Tu-
nick, New York; bought by Mr. and Mrs. Eugene
Victor Thaw, New York, 1986.
exhibitions: 1929 Cambridge, Mass. , no. 22; 193 1 ,
Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, no. 22
of drawings; 1936 Philadelphia, no, 74, repr.; 1958-
59 Rotterdam, no. 164; 1962, Cambridge, Mass.,
Fogg Art Museum, 11 June-28 July, Forty Master
Drawings front the Collection of John Nicholas Brown,
no. 8; 1974 Boston, no. 76; 198 1 San Jose, no. 59,
repr.; 1984 Tubingen, no. 83, repr. (color) p. 21.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 299; Browse [1949], PP- 53* 34°> pi- 15', Pick-
vance 1963, p. 258 n. 24; Minervino 1974, no. 295.
no.
Violinist and Young Woman
Holding Sheet Music
c. 1872
Oil on canvas
i8l/4 X 22 in. (46.4 X 55.9 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Detroit Institute of Arts. Bequest of
Robert H. Tannahill (70. 167)
Lemoisne 274
The fact that we cannot today attach any
names to these two people and are unable to
give this canvas more than a descriptive title
should not deter us from viewing it primar-
ily as a portrait of two musicians, to be con-
sidered with the portraits of the Dihaus, Pilet,
Altes, and Pagans, which Degas painted
very early in the 1870s (see cat. nos. 97, 102).
However, its incompleteness, the poses of
the figures, the light background (which is
only sketched in and was probably added
later), and the unusual combination of
blacks, grays, and reds make it a very different
work from those just mentioned. The pic-
ture shows a break during a rehearsal — not
a musical evening, as some have claimed,
for it is daylight and the musicians are not
dressed in evening wear. A violinist, his in-
strument on his knees (some ten years earlier,
Degas had tried to learn the violin1), and a
young female pianist or singer with an open
score in her hands, caught as if surprised in
their conversation, look toward the viewer.
The violinist, slightly in the background,
wears an artist's jacket of a beautiful red; he
is sunk in a low armchair, which only ac-
centuates his plumpness — it may be one of
the garnet-red velvet chairs that furnished
the drawing room of rue de Mondovi (see
cat. no. 94). The elegant young woman
wears a gray dress with a black belt and ruf-
fles, jet earrings, and hair ornaments, per-
haps indicating that she is in half mourning.
Fig. 91. Edouard Manet, The Music Lesson, 1870.
Oil on canvas, 55V& X 68Vs in. (140 X 173 cm).
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
178
It is about 1872, and the two musicians are
rehearsing for an upcoming soiree.
Jean Sutherland Boggs was the first to
point out the connection between this small
canvas and Manet's The Music Lesson, ex-
hibited at the Salon of 1870 (fig. 91), which
shows Zacharie Astruc accompanying a
placid, smiling songstress on the guitar.2
But the related subject matter should not
lead us to overlook the great differences be-
tween the two canvases — in size, in intention
(Manet was thinking ahead to the Salon),
and in balance of color (Manet's canvas is
dark, painted with the magnificent "prune
juice" that Degas was to miss so much
when his friend subsequently stopped using
it, while Degas's canvas is light). In Manet's
painting, there is something deliberately
conventional that Degas sought to avoid,
roughly outlining his figures in black, play-
ing with the brilliant white of the score in
the middle of the picture, and painting the
background in the changeable hue of some
Italian walls, against which the woman's
beautiful face stands out in three-quarter
profile, her red lips, black eyebrows, and
dark, glittering jewels calling to mind an ear-
lier work (L163, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), but
also reminding us of portraits by Clouet and
Corot.
1 . Unpublished letter from Rene De Gas to Michel
Musson, Paris to New Orleans, 17 January 1861,
Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
2. Boggs 1962, p. 33.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 49,
repr.); bought at that sale by Seligmann, Bernheim-
Jeune, Durand-Ruel, and Vollard, Paris, for Fr 37,100
(Seligmann sale, American Art Association, New
York, 27 January 1921); bought at that sale by J. H.
Whittemore, Naugatuck, for $7,000; Durand-Ruel,
New York, 4 May 1936 (stock no. N.Y. 5301);
bought by Robert H. Tannahill, Detroit, 1 1 January
1936, for $30,000; his bequest to the museum 1970.
exhibitions: 1934 New York, no. 10; 1974-75, De-
troit Institute of Arts, 6 November 1974-5 January
1975, Works by Degas in the Detroit Institute of Arts,
no. 8, repr. p. 32.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 274;
Boggs 1962, p. 33, pi. 75; The Detroit Institute of Arts
Illustrated Handbook (by Frederick J. Cummings and
Charles H. Elam), Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1971, p. 157, repr. (color) p. 20; Minervino
1974, no. 275; Theodore RefF, "Works by Degas in
the Detroit Institute of Arts," Bulletin of the Detroit
Institute of Arts, LIII:i, 1974, pi. 8 p. 32; 100 Master-
pieces from the Detroit Institute of Arts (by Julia P.
Hinshaw), New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1985,
p. 118, repr. (color) p. 119.
no
III.
Children on a Doorstep
(New Orleans)
1872
Oil on canvas
235/s X 29V2 in. (60 X 75 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Ordrupgaardsamlingen, Copenhagen (31)
Lemoisne 309
When it was presented at the second Im-
pressionist exhibition, in 1876, this work —
listed as no. 40, "Courtyard of a House
(New Orleans, sketch)*' — went unnoticed
amid the reaction to Portraits in an Office
(New Orleans) (cat. no. 115) and a picture of
a laundress whose "black arms" (in silhou-
ette) severely shocked the critics (see cat.
no. 122). The fact that the painting, along
with some of the other works Degas exhib-
ited, was unfinished contributed greatly to
the notion, still with us, that Degas was an
artist who was perpetually unsatisfied, inca-
pable of completing things, and, in the final
analysis, a draftsman more than a painter.
Degas began this work three weeks after he
arrived in New Orleans. In a letter to Tissot
dated 19 November 1872, after complaining
about being so far away and receiving so lit-
tle mail, he wrote: "Nothing is as difficult as
doing family portraits. To make a cousin sit
for you who is feeding an imp of two months
is quite hard work. To persuade young chil-
dren to pose on the steps is twice as tiring.
It is the art of giving pleasure and one must
look the part."1
Degas did not portray a "courtyard," as
the 1876 title suggests, but rather the small
garden that separated the house of his Mus-
son relatives from the road. John Rewald
thought that the picture depicted the planta-
tion on the outskirts of New Orleans belong-
ing to the Millaudons, family friends of the
MussonsV However, James Byrnes, a former
director of the Delgado Museum in New
Orleans, recognized the house of Degas's
uncle Michel Musson on the Esplanade and
180
in the background the house of their friends
the Oliviers at 122 1 (now 2306) North Tonti
Street.3 In a letter to Paul- Andre Lemoisne,
Rene's daughter Odile De Gas Musson
wrote that the house was situated in the
French quarter and surrounded by a large
garden. She described it as a three-story
house with several reception areas; the rooms
of the Mussons and of their daughter Desiree
and the room used by Degas were on the
ground floor, the rooms of Mathilde Musson
Bell and of Estelle Musson De Gas (each
with her respective family) were on the
second, and on the third was a large attic
where the children could play when it rained.4
However, an anonymous watercolor of i860
gives a perspective view that shows a two-
story loggia supported by columns at the
front of the house;5 nothing of this appears
in Degas's picture, where the entrance
opens directly, after a few steps, not onto
Odile De Gas's "large garden," but onto a lit-
de garden enclosed by a low railing, different
from the railing in the perspective drawing.
The identification of the children presents
as many problems. Odile De Gas Musson,
in the letter to Lemoisne, identifies Carrie
Bell (a daughter of Mathilde Musson Bell)
as the child standing with a hoop in her
hand and wearing a "sunbonnet, a shade
that was worn at that time as protection
from the sun" (Degas did a small oil study
for this figure, L311); Joe Balfour (Estelle
Musson De Gas's eldest daughter by her
first marriage; see cat. no. 112) as the seated
child in three-quarter profile wearing a
white dress with a black belt; Odile De Gas
herself as the blond child turned toward the
painter; and Pierre De Gas, her older broth-
er, first-born of Estelle and Rene De Gas, as
the boy facing her. On the extreme left is
the mammy in charge of these youngsters.
The identifications are probably correct for
Pierre and Odile, born in 1870 and 1871 re-
spectively, but harder to accept for Joe Bal-
four, who was born in 1862 and therefore
ten years old at the time, and yet appears in
this painting (and even more so in Degas's
preliminary sketch, L3 10) to be a little girl
of four or five. Only the identity of the
hunting dog in the background is certain:
his name, "Vasco de Gama," was apparently
given to him by Degas.6
Apart from Portraits in an Office and Cot-
ton Merchants in New Orleans (cat. nos. 115,
116), this is the only typically New Orleans
canvas painted by Degas, the only one where a
litde — a very litde — of the Louisiana country-
side appears; but his weary eyes were unable
to stand the bright light there,7 and so he
placed himself in the entrance, sheltered
from the sun, and showed nothing through
the door except a few paltry elements of lo-
cal color. The notations in his letters —
"villas with columns in different styles,
painted white, in gardens of magnolias, or-
ange trees, banana trees, Negroes in old
clothes like the junk from La Belle Jardiniere
or from Marseilles, rosy white children in
black arms"8 — would lead us to suppose
that there were more detailed studies and to
expect a more exotic version of the faraway
America than is shown here. But when we
consider how little effort Degas made to ac-
climatize himself to Louisiana, how fitfully
he worked on all the projects he had vowed
to carry out, and how quickly he dropped
them to dwell instead on his cherished Pari-
sian themes, we must appreciate the unusu-
alness of this work.
In what he himself listed as a "sketch" in
the 1876 Impressionist exhibition (though
we do not really know if it was an unfinished
canvas or a detailed study for a larger work),
Degas achieved one of his most surprising
compositions. By a skillful organization of
partitions and openings, he played with rig-
orous frontality (the Olivier house, which ap-
pears in the frame of the door) and oblique
perspective (the angled wall, whose solid
spaces and voids, like those in Portraits in an
Office, give the whole scene its rhythm).
The colors are once again muted, in a limited
range of browns, whites, beiges, pinks, and
pale greens, without the violent contrasts
and radiance that, according to his letters,
he liked so much in Louisiana. The fa' presto
of the sketch emphasizes the constant shifting
of the children, who could not (as Degas al-
ready knew from his first attempt to do a
portrait of young Joe in Bourg-en-Bresse in
January 1864) "sit still for five minutes."9
Children on a Doorstep recaptures an old
ambition Degas had as a portraitist, already
expressed in the late 1850s, namely, "to do a
portrait of a family outdoors" — to which he
added, "but one must be a painter, a fine
painter."10 In that respect, the Ordrupgaard
canvas is unique, a delightful example of a
childhood scene in which the restless group,
for an instant well behaved, is packed into a
corner of the picture and yet still draws our
eyes — and the eyes of the painter, who is
exasperated but moved.
1. Letter from Degas to Tissot, 19 November 1872,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 3, p. 19 (translation revised).
2. Rewald 1946 GBA, pp. 1 18-19.
3. 1965 New Orleans, pp. 37-38.
4. Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
5. City of New Orleans Notarial Archives; published
in Sutton 1986, p. 103, fig. 85.
6. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 77.
7. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 26; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 5, p. 25.
8. Letter from Degas to Tissot, 19 November 1872,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 3, p. 18.
9. Unpublished letter from Desiree Musson, 5 Jan-
uary 1864, Tulane University Library, New Or-
leans.
10. Reffi985, Notebook 13 (BN, Carnet 16, p. 50).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no. 45 [as
"Enfants assis sur le perron d'une maison de cam-
pagne"]); bought at that sale by Jos Hessel, for Fr
17,600. Wilhelm Hansen, Copenhagen; bequeathed
by his widow in 195 1 to the state toward the estab-
lishment of the Ordrupgaardsamlingen, which
opened in 1953.
exhibitions: 1876 Paris, no. 40 (as "Cour d'une maison
[Nouvelle-Orleans, esquisse]"); 1920, Copenhagen/
Stockholm/ Oslo, Foreningen for Fransk Kunst, 23 Jan-
uary-19 April, Edgar Degas, no. 5; 1948 Copenhagen,
no. 124; 198 1, Paris, Musee Marmottan, October-
November, Gauguin et les chefs-d'oeuvre de VOrdrup-
gaard, no. 10, repr.
selected references: K. Madsen, Malrisamlingen Or-
drupgaard, Wilhelm Hansens Samling, Copenhagen,
1908, no. 72; Leo Swane, "Degas: billederne pa Or-
drupgaard," Kunstmuseets Aarskrift, VI, Copenhagen,
19 19, p. 67, repr.; Hoppe 1922, p. 27 (Wilhelm Hansen
collection); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 309; Rewald
1946 GBA, pp. 1 18-19, fig- I(5; 1965 New Orleans,
PP- 37-38, fig. 7 (detail); H. Rostrup, Catalogue of the
Works of Art in the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen,
1966, p. 11, no. 32; Minervino 1974, no. 346, pi. XIX
(color); A. Stabell, Katalog over Ordrupgaardsamlingen,
Copenhagen, 1982, no. 31.
112.
Woman with a Vase of Flowers
1872
Oil on canvas
255/8 X i33/8 in. (65 X 34 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: Degas/ 1872
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1983)
Lemoisne 305
The few doubts expressed by Lemoisne in
19 12 about whether this work had been
painted in New Orleans were soon re-
solved, and it is generally accepted today
that Woman with a Vase of Flowers, which
bears the date 1872, was painted there by
Degas soon after his arrival at the end of
October of that year. An X-radiograph
shows that shortly afterward, Degas made
minor changes to the canvas, elaborating the
bouquet, erasing what was perhaps an orna-
ment in the chignon of the young woman's
hair, and reinscribing the date and signature.
The sitter's identity, on the other hand,
has been the subject of more disagreement.
At an early stage, she was identified as Es-
telle Musson, the nearly blind wife (and
first cousin) of Rene De Gas, the artist's
brother;1 John Rewald, in a long article pro-
viding important details on the American
181
family, suggested Mme Challaire, a friend
of Estelle's.2 There is, however, no support-
ing evidence for Rewald's claim in any pub-
lished photographs, and, in view of Degas's
"boredom" with portrait painting (which is
how he had characterized the subject ever
since his stay in Italy), it is hard to understand
why he would have persisted — for this same
sitter appears in Young Woman Arranging a
Bouquet (L306, Isaac Delgado Museum,
New Orleans) — in painting someone who
was not a member of his family and whom
he had never met before his arrival in Amer-
ica. There is also the testimony of Lemoisne
(more reliable than that of Gaston Musson,
son of Rene and Estelle, who identified Mme
Challaire) to the effect that Rene himself
recognized the sitter here as his first wife.3
This identification can, nevertheless, be
challenged. It is difficult to see the same
person in this woman with a vase and in the
woman in a white muslin dress sitting on a
sofa (L313, Chester Dale Collection, Na-
tional Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
whom Boggs, Rewald, and Byrnes, setting
aside Lemoisne's uncertainties (he calls her
Mrs. William Bell), have correctly identified
as Mme Rene De Gas, nee Estelle Musson.
Estelle's soft gaze, darkened with blindness,
is unlike the sterner, more willful look of
the woman in this painting; the latter's fea-
tures are angular and determined, without
that slightly flaccid softness characteristic of
the young blind woman. One last point:
Degas dated Woman with a Vase of Flowers
1872, at which time Estelle was pregnant
with her fourth child, Jeanne, born 20 De-
cember 1872, to whom the painter was god-
father. However, the young woman in this
picture does not appear to be pregnant. We
are therefore obliged to search elsewhere —
though in the family itself, since Degas men-
tions only portraits of close relations. It is
very possible that the sitter here is the same
as the one who was to pose for The Invalid
(cat. no. 114), and who has been clearly iden-
tified as Estelle's older sister Desiree Musson
(1838-1902), If we compare the present
painting with the fine drawing that Degas
did of Estelle during his stay in Bourg-en-
Bresse in January 1865 (fig. 22), where she
appears together with her sister and mother,
we find the same features, the rather heavy
jaw and long nose — though here she is thin-
ner and inevitably older. Degas was then
thinking of marriage and family: "I am
thirsting for order. I do not even regard a
good woman as the enemy of this new method
of existence," he wrote to Henri Rouart.4 So
perhaps he was not indifferent to the fate of
this woman who was already an "old maid" —
she was thirty-four years old — and it may
have crossed his mind to follow in his broth-
er's footsteps and marry a cousin.
From the time of his arrival in New Or-
leans, Degas began painting more "by pop-
ular demand" than from his own inclination.
Nothing, of course, would have been more
natural than that the large American family
should have wanted to see what the cousin
from Paris could do. And so, on 11 Novem-
ber 1872, two weeks after his arrival, he
wrote to Desire Dihau: "All day long I am
among these dear folk, painting and draw-
ing, making portraits of the family."5 In a
letter to Frolich on 27 November, he was al-
ready exasperated: "True, I am working lit-
tle, but what I am doing is difficult. Family
portraits must be done to suit the taste of the
family, in impossible lighting, with many
interruptions, and with models who are
very affectionate but a little too bold — they
take you much less seriously because you
are their nephew or cousin."6 And when he
wrote to his close friend Rouart on 5 Decem-
ber, already preparing for the trip back, he was
totally disenchanted: "A few family portraits
will be the sum total of my efforts."7
As we look at this Woman with a Vase of
Flowers, it is hard to believe that it could
have been a chore: as early as 19 12, Le-
moisne, who saw it as "one of the artist's
finest portraits," praised "the powerful, de-
tailed character of the head, lit somewhat
harshly by the light from a window, creat-
ing strong shadows on one whole side of
the face, whose calm and pensive expression
is curiously opposed to the rather rough
manner of its treatment."8
As in Woman Leaning near a Vase of Flowers
(cat. no. 60), Degas gives importance to an
accessory — the exotic flower surrounded by
wide drooping leaves in a multicolored vase —
pushing his sitter farther back and partly con-
cealing her with the back of a chair. Yet, as
in the other picture too, such artifice serves
only to better accentuate the face, with its
faraway gaze — though here the face is par-
tially in shadow, and hasn't that slightly
sardonic expression. The brush work is at
once full and precise, the technique smooth,
and the coloring sober yet brightened by an
intense sidelong light that brings out the
emerald of the leaves, the greens of the two
walls, and the shadow that is cast. The light
resonates quietly against the gold of the
jewels set on the table and caresses the crum-
pled gloves and the soft golden beige dress
of the young woman. The sitter adopts the
pose that the painter has given her (perhaps
she was somewhat taken aback by it, since it
was so little in keeping with the concepts of
painting and portraiture in America) and
turns into the light that somewhat unpre-
possessing face, a face whose "saving touch
of ugliness" her cousin from Paris doubtless
appreciated.9
1. 1924 Paris, no. 39.
2. Rewald 1946 GBA, pp. 11 5-16.
3. Reported in Boggs 1962, p. 93 n. 82.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 27; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 5, p. 26.
5. Lettres Degas 1945, I, p. 19; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 2, p. 15.
6. Lettres Degas 1945, II, p. 23; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 4, p. 22 (translation revised).
7. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 26; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 5, p. 25.
8. Lemoisne 1912, p. 46.
9. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 28; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 5, p. 27 (translation revised).
provenance: Michel Manzi, Paris; bought by Comte
Isaac de Camondo, 18 June 1894, for Fr 16,000 (as
"La femme aux fleurs"); his bequest to the Louvre
191 1 ; exhibited 19 14.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 39; 193 1 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 55; 1954, London, Tate Gallery, 24 April-
7 June, Manet and His Circle, no. 54, repr.; 1969 Paris,
no. 21, pi. 3; 1976-77, Paris, Grand Palais, 17 Sep-
tember 1976-3 January 1977, L'Amerique vue par
VEurope, no. 342, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 45-46,
pi. XV; Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, no. 159; Re-
wald 1946 GBA, pp. 1 1 5-16, fig. 17; Lemoisne [1946-
49], II, no. 305; Boggs 1962, pp. 41, 126, pi. 76;
1965 New Orleans, pp. 24, 37, figs. 4, 17; Minervino
1974, no. 341, pi. XVIII (color); Paris, Louvre and
Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III, p. 194, repr.
Woman with a Bandage
1872-73
Oil on canvas
i25/s X 9^2 in. (32 X 24 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Detroit Institute of Arts. Bequest of
Robert H. Tannahill (70.168)
Lemoisne 275
This small canvas appeared under the title
"At the Oculist's" in an anonymous sale at
the Hotel Drouot on 10 June 1891. It may
have belonged to the unfortunate Dupuis, a
knowledgeable collector who bought several
major works by Monet, Gauguin, Pissarro,
and Degas from Theo van Gogh between
1887 and 1890 and committed suicide in De-
cember 1890 because of financial problems.1
Most of the paintings he owned were bought
by the dealer Salvador Meyer; a few ended
up in the rather mixed sale of June 1891,
which included works from various sources.
There are no clues today allowing us to
trace the history of Woman with a Bandage
before 1891. In 1898, when the canvas (then
part of the Laurent collection) was once
again sold at auction, it had the same title it
bears today, "La femme au bandeau." The
sale catalogue, though it does not include a
reproduction, describes the painting as a
182
183
"delightful morceau de peinture by the mas-
ter," saying that it depicts not a "Cleo" (re-
ferring jokingly to the famous bandages of
Cleo de Merode), but rather a "woman of
the people wearing a grayish blouse."2
The woman remains unidentified, but the
intimacy of the tiny portrait indicates that
she was in all likelihood a close relative. It is
tempting to see in her Estelle Musson, the
wife of the artist's brother Rene De Gas. Es-
telle began losing her sight in 1866; in 1868,
she became blind in her left eye, but retained
some vision in her right eye until 1875. 3
This identification is all the more plausible
in that the date 1872-73 (when Degas visit-
ed New Orleans) seems more likely than
1870-72, suggested by Lemoisne.
Arms crossed, seated in an unspecified
setting (though surely it is a home, because
the only objects shown are a cup and the
glass that abuts curiously against her pro-
file), the woman looks at some unknown
object to the right. Degas uses a light, soft
range of colors, in which whites and grays
predominate. He observes his subject with
amusement and tenderness — playing with
the thick bandage that together with the
bonnet forms such an odd assemblage — and
is obviously moved by the affliction from
which he too would suffer throughout his
life.
1. Rewald 1973 GBA; Rewald 1986, "Theo van
Gogh as Art Dealer."
2. Vente Collection de M. X. . . [Laurent], Paris:
Drouot, 8 December 1898, no. 3.
3 . Unpublished letter from her daughter Odile De
Gas Musson to Paul-Andre Lemoisne, Tulane
University Library, New Orleans.
provenance: (?) Dupuis collection; sale, Drouot,
Paris, 10 June 1891, no. 16 (as "Chez l'oculiste");
bought at that sale by Hubert du Puy, Louviers, for
Ft 250. Laurent collection, Paris (M. X . . . [Laurent]
sale, Paris, 8 December 1898, no. 3 [as "La femme
au bandeau"]); bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, for Fr 2,010 (stock no. 4873); bought by Ray-
mond Koechlin, Paris, 4 May 1899, for Fr 4,000.
Denys Cochin, Paris (sale, March 19 19, no. 9, repr.);
Mme Jacques Cochin, Paris; Robert H. Tannahill,
Detroit, 1949; his bequest to the museum 1970.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 55; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 17, repr.; 1974-75, Detroit Institute of Arts, 6
November I974~5 January 1975, Works by Degas in
the Detroit Institute of Arts, no. 7, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 275; Minervino 1974, no. 274; Theodore Reff,
"Works by Degas in the Detroit Institute of Arts,"
Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, LIILi, 1974,
pi. 7, pp. 31-32.
114.
The Invalid
1872-73
Oil on canvas
255/s X 1SV2 in. (65 X 47 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
Private collection, New York
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 3 16
Traditionally viewed as a portrait of Degas's
cousin Desiree Musson painted in New Or-
leans in 1872 or 1873, this picture was given
the title "The Invalid" when Degas sold it
to Durand-Ruel on 31 January 1887. The
catalogue for the 1924 Degas exhibition at
Galerie Georges Petit gives this curt but ac-
curate description of a scene, which at first
glance is difficult to make out: "Seated at
the foot of her bed, which forms, on the
left, a light background, wearing a night-
gown and a dark dressing gown; on her
head a scarf, one end falling across her
chest."1
It is, in many respects, the most unex-
pected of the New Orleans portraits. It is
not a portrait in an interior, like Woman with
a Vase of Flowers (cat. no. 112), The Nurse
(L3 14, private collection, Federal Republic
of Germany), or Mme Rene De Gas (L313,
Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C.); rather, it is the
description, on an imposing scale, of a solid
and monumental figure against an indistin-
guishable background. We find neither the
smooth, precise execution nor the scope of
Portraits in an Office (cat. no. 115), but rather
broad, rapid strokes in a reduced harmony
of "superb whites"2 and browns discreetly
highlighted by a few touches of pink. Every-
thing here speaks of illness: the languorous
body draped in nightgown and neglige, the
drooping of the heavy head on the bent arm,
the pale and blotchy flesh tones, and the
massive presence of Desiree Musson in a
canvas that she occupies almost entirely,
conveying the stifling sense of a sickroom.
1. 1924 Paris, no. 38.
2. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 316, p. 160.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris (as "La malade" in stock book, "Conva-
lescente" in journal), 31 January 1887, for Fr 800
(stock no. 919); bought by Henry Lerolle, Paris, 15
February 1888, for Fr 2,000; Mme Henry Lerolle,
Paris; Captain Edward Molyneux, Paris; M. Knoed-
ler and Co. , New York; bought by the present owner
2 January 1958.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 38; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 54; 1936, London, New Burlington Gal-
leries, 1-3 1 October, Exhibition of Masters of French
igth Century Painting, no. 61; 1965 New Orleans,
pi. VIII; 1978 New York, no. 9, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 316;
Boggs 1962, p. 126; Minervino 1974, no. 353.
115.
Portraits in an Office (New Orleans)
1873
Oil on canvas
283/4 X 36V4 in. (73 X 92 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas /Nile
Orleans/ 1873
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Pau (878.1.2)
Lemoisne 320
Portraits in an Office, more commonly — and
unfortunately — known as "The Cotton
Market at New Orleans," was the first pic-
ture by Degas to enter a public collection.
The circumstances are well known: the
work was exhibited in 1878 at the Societe
Bearnaise des Amis des Arts, at Pau, where
it was priced at Fr 5,000. Thanks to the ini-
tiative of Alphonse Cherfils, a friend of
Degas's who was originally from Pau, it
was acquired for the Pau museum by its cu-
rator, Charles Lecoeur (and not by Paul La-
fond, as is sometimes said).1 Degas, who
had been trying to sell the canvas for several
years (as we know from his letters to Charles
Deschamps, the agent for Durand-Ruel2),
was in the end satisfied with the modest price
of Fr 2,000 and even happier that it had been
purchased by a museum. In an unpublished
letter to Lecoeur on 31 March 1878, he could
not hide his pleasure: "I must offer my
warmest thanks for the honor you have done
me. I must also admit that it is the first time
that a museum has so honored me and that
this official recognition comes as a surprise
and is terribly nattering." After announcing
he would visit the following summer, he
continued: "I do not know if the picture has
been varnished. If not, I recommend myself
to you for the task." He ended by announc-
ing: "I have just written to the mayor, M. de
Montpezat, [thanking him] for the money
order he is sending me."3
Two years before it was acquired by the
museum, the canvas was hung at the second
Impressionist exhibition, where it received a
lukewarm reception. The only unqualified
praise came from Armand Silvestre: "an ex-
ceedingly witty painting that one could
spend days contemplating."4 Some critics,
while regretting that Degas "felt he had to
make concessions elsewhere to the school of
patches of color,"5 praised the "wonderful
realism"6 of a picture that would "not dis-
appoint those who like painting that is accu-
rate and frankly modern, who think that the
expression of ordinary life and fineness of
execution should count for something."7
The majority opinion was that Portraits in an
Office was a departure not only from the
other works exhibited, but also from the
rest of Degas 's work. Amazement was ex-
pressed at the presence of this picture "in such
company" — it was "the most reasonable of
all," and revealed, in spite of itself, the un-
deniable gift of a "defrocked draftsman."8
However, Albert Wolff, in an infamous
diatribe in Le Figaro (3 April 1876), said ex-
actly the opposite: "You can try to reason
with M. Degas; you can try to persuade
him that in art there are such things as
drawing, color, execution, and will power,
but he will laugh in your face and call you a
reactionary." Curiously — and uncharacteris-
tically— Zola assumed the role of the implaca-
ble foe of the Impressionists. He wrote of
Degas: "This painter is very taken with
modernity, life indoors, and everyday life.
What is annoying, though, is the way he
185
spoils everything as soon as he adds the final
touches. His best pictures are sketches. In
finishing a work, his drawing turns into
something blurred and lamentable; he paints
pictures like Portraits in an Office (New Orleans),
halfway between a seascape and a plate from
an illustrated journal. His artistic insights
are excellent, but I am afraid that his brush
will never be creative."9 Perhaps he was an-
noyed, without admitting it, by the very
thing that pleased Louis Enault: "It lacks
warmth; it is bourgeois; but it is seen in a
way that is accurate and correct, and fur-
thermore it is properly drawn."10 (One can
imagine what Degas would have made of
"compliments" such as these.)
In one form or another, these comments on
what is today, quite justly, one of Degas's
most famous paintings, have continued —
whether applauding "a masterpiece of fine
observation and classic handling,"11 or de-
tecting "a triviality, to be blunt about it, a
snapshot,"12 or praising "that superior and
conscious naivete which leads straight to true
mimicry,"13 or denouncing "the boredom"
and "arbitrariness" of this "sad chore."14
A letter from Degas to Tissot of 18 Feb-
ruary 1873 explains why Degas, after hav-
ing been in New Orleans for three months,
undertook this picture:
After having wasted time in the family
trying to do portraits in the worst condi-
tions of day that I have ever found or
imagined, I have attached myself to a fair-
ly vigorous picture which is destined for
Agnew and which he should place in
Manchester: for if a spinner ever wished
to find his painter, he really ought to hit
on me. Interieur d'un bureau d'acheteurs de
coton a la Nile Orleans, Cotton buyers office.
In it there are about fifteen individuals
more or less occupied with a table covered
with the precious material, and two men,
one half leaning and the other half sitting
on it, the buyer and the broker, are dis-
cussing a pattern. A raw picture if there
ever was one, and I think from a better
hand than many another. (Canvas about
40 it seems to me.)15
After announcing to Tissot that he was
preparing a second version of the same sub-
ject (cat. no. 116), he continued:
If Agnew takes both from me all the bet-
ter. I do not, however, wish to give up
the Paris plan. ... In the fortnight that I
intend spending here, I shall finish the
said picture. But it will not be possible for
it to leave with me. A canvas scarcely dry,
shut up for a long time, away from light
and air, you know very well that that
would change it to chrome yellow no. 3.
So I shall not be able to bring it to Lon-
don myself or to have it sent there before
about April. Retain the good will of these
gentlemen for me until then. In Manches-
ter there is a wealthy spinner, de Cotterel,
who has a famous picture gallery. A fel-
low like that would suit me and would suit
Agnew even better. But let's be cautious
how we talk about it and not count our
chickens too soon.16
Degas did in fact leave New Orleans two
weeks later, since he was back in Paris in
late March, and the recently finished canvas
had to undergo the vicissitudes of transport
about which he had worried. However,
there is no evidence that the planned negoti-
ations with Agnew ever took place, and the
work had a very different fate from the one
originally envisaged for it.
Degas evidently had extended his stay in
New Orleans specifically to complete this
picture — in a letter to Henri Rouart dated 5
December 1872, he had announced that he
was returning to Paris in January. We do not
know how the idea for this ambitious com-
position came to him. There are few sketches,
although the catalogue for the Georges Viau
sale (Drouot, Paris, 24 February 1943) lists
under no. 9 a pencil drawing, "Study for
the 'New Orleans Cotton Buyers' Office/"
However, there are several references in De-
gas's correspondence to the omnipresence of
cotton in New Orleans, and this obviously
captured his imagination: "One does nothing
here, it lies in the climate, nothing but cot-
ton, one lives for cotton and from cotton."17
The individuals portrayed have been iden-
tified by John Rewald in an indispensable ar-
ticle on the Louisiana branch of the family.
In the foreground, feeling a sample, is Mi-
chel Musson, Degas's maternal uncle; be-
hind him, his two sons-in-law, Rene, the
painter's brother, reading the local Daily
Times-Picayune, and (in profile) William
Bell, seated on the edge of the table; to the
left, standing with his legs crossed and lean-
ing against a counter, Achille De Gas, the
painter's other brother; to the right, his nose
in a thick register, the cashier, John Livau-
dais; and perched on a stool behind Rene
and wearing a beige coat, James Prestidge,
Michel Musson's partner.18
Degas here returns, though in a different
mode, to a formula he had first used three
years earlier in his Orchestra of the Opera (cat.
no. 97), that of the group portrait — here
with Michel Musson and there with Desire
Dihau in the foreground — casting each of
the other figures in a "typical" or "familiar"
attitude.19 However, as he himself remarked:
"It is not good to do Parisian art and Louisi-
ana art indiscriminately; it is liable to turn it
into Le Monde Illustre"20 He thus endeav-
ored, without giving way to facile exoticism,
186
i87
to produce an "American" work, to trans-
late the intense activity of "this crowd of
cotton brokers and cotton dealers"21 within
a framework typical of New World business
establishments, that of Michel Musson's
offices at 63 Carondolet.22
In this prosperous and tranquil vision of
America, what dominates is the intense con-
trast between the black of the suits and the
white of the shirts, the papers, and especial-
ly the cotton, all against the soft background
of the pale green walls, the ceiling, and the
pinkish woodwork. The floor is of a more
intense shade, and the few lively touches of
the admirable still life on the right (papers in
the basket, letters and registers on the table)
break up the predominance of blacks and
whites in the central section. The composi-
tion has nothing of the arbitrary, snapshot
quality denounced by some — "The snap-
shot is photography and nothing more,"
Degas had said shortly before.23 The artist
has given the picture something close to a
bird's-eye view (the floor has the steep slope
of a stage), and by means of an oblique per-
spective has managed to expand the rather
cramped quarters to include fourteen people
at various activities without overly crowding
them. Degas thus produced an effectively
clean and clear image of the family business,
bustling but orderly, reinforced by the
smooth and glossy paint surface and the pre-
cise touch with its Dutch flavor. Along for
the visit to their uncle's office, Achille and
Rene, completely inactive amid their hard-
working American friends, add a hint of Pa-
risian nonchalance and dandyism.
1. The telegram from Degas to Lecoeur, Paris to
Pau, 19 March 1878 (Musee des Beaux- Arts,
Pau), reads: "I accept offer. Ask Cherfils to send
news of himself. Many thanks."
2. Letters of 1 and 16 June 1876, Durand-Ruel ar-
chives, Paris.
3. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Pau. The letter to the
mayor is preserved in the Archives Departemen-
tales of Pau, on paper with the letterhead "Cler-
mont et Cie" (the furriery of his friend Hermann
de Clermont), along with the money order en-
dorsed by Degas. The letter ends by thanking the
mayor for "his kind involvement in this matter."
4. Armand Silvestre, L'Opinion, 2 April 1876.
5. Marius Chaumelin, La Gazette, 8 April 1876.
6. Le National, 7 April 1876.
7. Chaumelin, op. cit.
8. Arthur Baigneres, L'Echo Universel, 13 April
1876.
9. Le Messager de VEurope, June 1876.
10. Le Constitutionnel, 10 April 1876.
11. Jamot 19 1 8.
12. Huyghe 1974, p. 86.
13. Leonce Benedite, Histoire des beaux-arts, 1800-
1900, Paris, 1900, p. 276.
14. Cabanne 1957, p. 34.
15. Letter from Degas to Tissot, New Orleans to
London, 18 February 1873, Bibliotheque Natio-
nale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947, no. 6, p. 29.
16. Ibid.
17. Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 26; Degas Letters
1947, no. 5, pp. 24-25.
18. Rewald 1946 GBA, no. 2, pp. 1 16-18.
19. Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 46).
20. Letter from Degas to Frolich, 27 November 1872,
Lettres Degas 1945, II, p. 23; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 4, p. 22.
21. Letter from Degas to Tissot, 19 November 1872,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters
1947, no. 3, p. 18.
22. Guerin incorrectly suggests that the office de-
picted is that of De Gas Brothers, which was at
3l/2 Carondolet (Lettres Degas 1945, I, p. 18 n. 1;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 2, p. 15 n, 2).
23. Lettres Degas 1945, II, p. 23; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 4, p. 22 (translation revised).
provenance: Bought from the artist in 1878 (priced
at Fr 5,000), on the occasion of the exhibition organ-
ized by the Societe Bearnaise des Amis des Arts at
Pau, by the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Pau, thanks to
the Noulibos bequest, for Fr 2,000.
exhibitions: 1876 Paris, no. 36 (as "Portraits dans un
bureau [Nouvelle Orleans]"); 1878, Pau, Societe Be-
arnaise des Amis des Arts, 15 January, no. 87; 1900,
Paris, Centennale de Vartfiancais, no. 209, repr.; 1924
Paris, no. 43, repr. facing p. 34; 1932 London, no. 343
(400); 1936 Philadelphia, no. 20, repr.; 1937 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 18; 1937 Paris, Palais National, no. 302;
1939-40 Buenos Aires, no. 10; 1941, Los Angeles
County Museum, June-July, The Painting of France
since the French Revolution, no. 36; 1947-48, Brussels,
Palais des Beaux-Arts, November 1947-January 1948,
De David a Cezanne, no. 124, repr.; 1951-52 Bern,
no. 20, repr.; 1964-65 Munich, no. 80, repr.; 1974-
75 Paris, no. 16, repr. (color); 1984-85 Paris, no. 2
p. 104, fig. 30 (color) p. 31; 1986 Washington, D.C.,
no. 22, repr. (color) and cover.
selected references: Alexandre Pothey, "Chron-
iques," La Presse, 31 March 1876; [Philippe Burty],
La Republique Frangaise, 1 April 1876; A. de L. [Al-
fred de Lostalot], "L'exposition de la rue Le Peletier,"
La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosite, 1 April 1876,
pp. 119-20; Armand Silvestre, "Exposition de la rue
Le Peletier," L'Opinion Nationale, 2 April 1876;
Charles Bigot, "Causerie artistique: Imposition des
intransigeants," La Revue Politique et Litteraire, 8
April 1876, p. 351; Marius Chaumelin, La Gazette
des Etrangers, 8 April 1876; Louis Enault, "L'exposi-
tion des intransigeants dans la Galerie de Durand-
Ruelle," Le Constitutionnel, 10 April 1876; G. d'Olby,
"Salon de 1876," Le Pays, 10 April 1876; Arthur
Baigneres, "Exposition de peinture par un groupe
d'artistes, rue Le Peletier," L'Echo Universel, 13 April
1876; Philippe Burty, The Academy, London, 15
April 1876; Pierre Dax, "Chronique," V Artiste, 1
May 1876; Emile Zola, "Deux expositions d'art en
mai," Le Messager de VEurope, Saint Petersburg, June
1876 (reprinted in Le bon combat: de Courbet aux im-
pressionnistes, Paris, 1974); Charles Le Coeur, Musee
de la ville de Pau, notice et catalogue, Paris, 1891, no. 41;
Leonce Benedite, Histoire des beaux-arts 1800-1900,
Paris, 1900, pp. 276-77; Lemoisne 1912, pp. 49-50,
repr.; Jamot 1918, pp. 124, 127, 132-33, repr.; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 320; Rewald 1946 GBA,
no. 2, pp. 1 16-18; Degas Letters 1947, pp. 29-30;
Albert Krebs, "Degas a la Nouvelle-Orleans," Rap-
ports France- Etats-Unis, 64, July 1952, pp. 63-72; Ca-
banne 1957, pp. 33, no, pi. 47; Raimondi 1958,
pp. 262-65, pi. 21; Boggs 1962, pp. 38-40, 93 n. 76,
pi. 80; 1965 New Orleans, pp. 22, 88-89, fig- 12
p. 24; Rewald 1973, pp. 372, 396 n. 40; Huyghe
1974, pp. 85-86, pi. VII (color); Minervino 1974,
no. 356, plates XXVIII, XXIX (color); Ph. Comte,
Ville de Pau, Beaux-Arts: catalogue raisonne des pein-
tures, Pau, 1978, n.p.
Il6.
Cotton Merchants in New Orleans
1873
Oil on canvas
235/s X 283/4 in. (60 X 73 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gift of
Herbert N. Straus
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 321
Considered by some to be a sketch for the
Pau canvas (cat. no. 115), Cotton Merchants
in New Orleans — to give it the title under
which it was sold at the first atelier sale —
must be the unfinished picture Degas men-
tioned in his letter to Tissot of 18 February
1873, in which he announced that he had
settled down to Portraits in an Office. Degas
wrote: "I am preparing another [painting,]
less complicated and more spontaneous,
better art, where the people are all in sum-
mer dress, white walls, a sea of cotton on
the tables."1 Degas's words would suggest
that this painting was the "artistic" version
of the same subject, the other being more
commercial, more easily understood, and,
turning Degas's own words around, "more
complicated" and "less spontaneous," since
it was intended for sale (to Agnew, the En-
glish dealer). As the Fogg canvas was never
completed, it is impossible to make a signifi-
cant comparison with the Pau canvas. How-
ever, we can see that in subject matter and
intention they are different. On the some-
what smaller canvas, Degas shows only
three people, all busy with the cotton sam-
ples spread out on the table; these samples
become the main element of the picture,
evoking the omnipresence of cotton in New
Orleans. Although the setting (the office of
Michel Musson) is the same, there is very
little that would enable us to identify the
room, except the seascape on the wall. The
very disposition of the space, seen from
above, cramped and somewhat flattened, is
difficult to understand. One wall abuts di-
rectly into the right corner of the display ta-
ble, cutting a merchant in half. The back
wall, opening onto a glimpse of blue sky,
compresses the central figure (wearing a
boater), who emerges in silhouette, flat-
tened between the white background and
the table. The angle of the table is the only
element that gives any depth to the scene.
Theodore Reff quite correctly identified a
strong Japanese influence in this work, partic-
ularly from Ukiyo-e prints,2 though Degas
certainly did not have any such prints in
front of him when he painted this canvas in
America. Its originality comes primarily
188
from the desire, clearly stated in his letters,
to create "Louisiana art" in the paintings he
did there, and not a banal Parisian variation
on an exotic theme. The syncopated com-
position gives this work its special rhythm —
it is lively, light, and modern (Matisse comes
to mind). Degas plays with the dazzling
whiteness of the cotton, which he tempers
with the brown of the woodwork and of the
men's suits; only the seascape — with its blue
sky, green sea, and gold frame — adds a touch
of color to this painting in which white and
brown predominate. The artist, who com-
plained that he was unable to paint anything
on the river because of his weak eyes and
the harsh glare of the sun, here re-creates, in
a billowing sea of cotton, the intense light of
Louisiana.
1. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 6, pp. 29-30.
2. Theodore Reff, "Degas, Lautrec and Japanese
Art," Japonisme in Art, Tokyo, 1980, p. 196.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 3);
bought at that sale by Rosenberg, for Fr 17, 500. Her-
bert N. Straus, New York; his gift to the museum.
exhibitions: 1929 Cambridge, Mass., no. 31, pi. XXI;
1947 Cleveland, no. 18, pi. XVI; 1949 New York,
no. 26, repr.; 1953-54 New Orleans, no. 74, repr.
(color, detail); 1965 New Orleans, pp. 88-89,
pi. XXIV p. 84, fig. 14 p- 25.
selected references: Rewald 1946 GBA, pp. 116,
119, fig. 14; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 321; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 6, pp. 29-30; Minervino 1974,
no. 358.
117.
The Song Rehearsal
1872-73
Oil on canvas
3i7/8X255/sin. (81X65 cm)
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection, Washington, D.C. (H18.2)
Lemoisne 331
Dated c. 1873 by Lemoisne — Jamot, years
earlier, had dated it 1865 — this painting has
been convincingly linked to Degas's stay in
Louisiana by James Byrnes, who saw it as
possibly depicting Estelle and Mathilde (or
Desiree) Musson and Rene De Gas. 1 The
handling (with its smooth and fluid paint),
the composition (a perspective view, from a
slightly raised angle, of the corner of the
room, showing a long diagonal wall and
steeply sloping floor), and the light palette
(white, pale yellow, salmon) all clearly link
the painting to Portraits in an Office (cat.
no. 115). Byrnes also mentions three addi-
tional clues: the tropical plant at the left,
whose thick, wide leaves are reminiscent of
those in Woman with a Vase of Flowers (cat.
no. 112); the dress of the singer at the right,
described in the 1924 Paris exhibition as "a
Matinee' of yellow muslin with black polka
dots, trimmed with white flounces,"2 like
the dresses worn by Estelle De Gas in the
Washington portrait (L313, Chester Dale
Collection, National Gallery of Art) and by
Mathilde Bell in the Ordrupgaard pastel
(L318); and the piano, which could be the
one Rene De Gas mentions in a letter to Es-
telle from Paris on 26 June 1872 telling her
he is thinking of replacing the large Chick-
ering with a small PleyeP (although this is
hardly proof, since virtually all bourgeois
families had a grand piano at the time).
Placing this scene in New Orleans would
mean ruling out the possibility that the
young woman holding the score is Margue-
rite De Gas Fevre, the painter's younger sis-
ter, an accomplished musician endowed
with a "superb voice," according to both
Jeanne Fevre, her daughter, and more nota-
bly Louise Breguet-Halevy, in her unpub-
lished memoirs.4 The 193 1 Paris catalogue
went so far as to present the intriguing hy-
pothesis that The Song Rehearsal is a double
portrait of Marguerite, revealing "as do other
experiments by the painter depicting several
images of the same person in a single picture
or sketch, seen from different viewpoints,
the artist's wish to capture his subject com-
pletely, to convey the fullness of her form, a
tendency that was to lead him to sculpture."5
However, the two fine preparatory draw-
ings on large sheets of paper (cat. nos. 118,
119), which describe each singer, indicate
that two different women posed for the
painter. Both drawings are accompanied by
small sketches showing (for the woman on
the right) two very quick, barely legible
views of the room and (for the woman on
the left) a perspective view indicating that at
first Degas placed the visible corner of the
room at the right. Although the two wom-
en cannot be identified, it should be noted
that the face of the singer on the left (whom
Degas envisioned at one point as also hold-
ing a score) is not the same in the drawing,
where it is long and thin, as in the canvas,
where it is rounder and younger, quite like
the face of the musician in the Detroit paint-
ing (cat. no. no). Degas probably brought
these two drawings back from New Orleans
and painted — or finished painting — the pic-
ture in Paris, using another model. This
would also account for the quick sketch of
the piano and the chair on the right in a note-
book that Degas did not use in Louisiana.6
The Song Rehearsal was not a new subject
for Degas. Accustomed since childhood to
musical evenings — in his own home, and
somewhat later at the Breguets — in which
singing played an important role, he could
not avoid being affected by this theme,
which was one of the favorite subjects of
painters of bourgeois family life throughout
the century. As early as his stay in Italy, he
had planned to paint a musical evening.7
Somewhat later (although before 1871, since
Auber died in that year), he drew a scene in
189
India ink strangely resembling The Song Re-
hearsal on a score of Auber' s Fra Diavolo.
The drawing, whose present location we do
not know, was described as a "most curious
piece" in the catalogue of the sale of auto-
graphs in which it appeared in 1954. 8 Ac-
cording to the catalogue, "these sketches
seem to have been done by Degas as he lis-
tened to a performance of Fra Diavolo in a
drawing room. They depict a woman sing-
ing, and next to her, a second woman, lis-
tening. Beside the two, there is a rough
sketch, probably of Auber at the piano.
Above these sketches, Degas wrote the fol-
lowing dedication: 'Enough of Pierre/ come
and see Auber. I hope to see you soon. Your
friend, Degas/"
For most of Degas's contemporaries, this
subject was an opportunity to paint a rap-
turous singer in the confined and generally
nocturnal atmosphere of a bourgeois draw-
ing room, such as the singer in Stevens's
Song of Passion, now at the Musee du Second
Empire, Chateau de Compiegne. Degas,
however, paints a daytime scene that is both
intimate and theatrical, in the clear light of a
southern house. The two singers are sur-
rounded by the enormous room with its
bare walls (the admirable salmon wall topped
by a dark frieze with lightly sketched mo-
tifs) and by the sofas and armchairs in their
white dust covers, forming a rectangle
(which Degas later opened up by changing
the chaise longue in the foreground into an
armchair) and marking off the scene on a
dark, stagelike floor. In their passionate and
dramatic duet, they affect the exaggerated,
stereotypical gestures of operatic divas.
1. 1965 New Orleans, pp. 79-80, 82.
2. 1924 Paris, no. 24.
3. Tulane University Library, New Orleans.
4. Fevre 1949, p. 56; Louise Breguet-Halevy
memoirs, private collection.
5. 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, pp. 40-41.
6. RefF 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 133).
7. Reff 1985, Notebook 7 (Louvre, RF5634, p. 26).
8. Drouot, Paris, 23 November 1954, no. 25 bis.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 106
[as "Deux jeunes femmes en toilette de ville repetant
un duo"]); bought at that sale by Walter Gay, for
Fr 100,000. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, Wash-
ington, D.C.; their bequest to the Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library 1940.
exhibitions: (?) 19 18 Paris, no. 11 (as "Repetition de
musique"); 1924 Paris, no. 24, repr. (as "La repeti-
tion de chant*'); 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 31, pi. Ill
(as "Double portrait de Mme Fevre, dit *La repeti-
tion de chant*"); 1934 New York, no. 4; 1936 Phila-
delphia, no. 22, repr.; 1937, Washington, D.C.,
Phillips Memorial Gallery, 15-30 April, Paintings and
Sculpture Owned in Washington, no. 275; 1947 Cleve-
land, no. 19, pi. XVIII; 1959, Washington, D.C.,
National Gallery of Art, 25 April-24 May, Master-
pieces of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Painting,
no. 21; 1962 Baltimore, no. 39, repr.; 1987 Manches-
ter, no. 38, repr. (color) p. 58.
selected references: Jamot 1924, p. 69; Alexandre
1935, p. 153; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 331; 1965
New Orleans, p. 79, fig. 42 p. 82; Minervino 1974,
no. 361.
Il8.
Woman Singing, study for
The Song Rehearsal
1872-73
Pencil on buff wove paper
19 x i23/8 in. (48. 3 x 3 1 . 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF5606)
Exhibited in Paris
Vente 111:404. 1
See cat. no. 1 17
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 404.1);
bought at that sale by Marcel Bing with Young Woman
Standing (cat. no. 119), for Fr 13,100; his bequest to
the Louvre 1922.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 98; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 112; 1935, Paris, Orangerie, August-Octo-
ber, Portraits et figures de femmes, no. 37, repr.; 1936
Venice, no. 23; 1969 Paris, no. 164.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 20; 1987
Manchester, fig. 56, p. 44.
190
119.
Young Woman Standing, study
for The Song Rehearsal
1872-73
Pencil on buff wove paper
19% x 12V4 in. (49 X 3 1 . 2 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF5607)
Exhibited in Paris
Vente 111:404.2
See cat. no. 117
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 404.2);
bought at that sale by Marcel Bing with Woman Sing-
ing (cat. no. 118), for Fr 13,100; his bequest to the
Louvre 1922.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 99; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 112; 1935, Paris, Orangerie, August-Octo-
ber, Portraits et figures de femmes, no. 36, repr.; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 75; 1955-56 Chicago, no. 153;
1969 Paris, no. 165; 1987 Manchester, no. 39, repr.
p. 45.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 21; Ja-
mot 1924, p. 69, pi. 13; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, repr.
facing p. 82; Maurice Serullaz, Dessins du Louvre:
ecole jiranqaise, Paris: Flammarion, 1968, no. 92.
120.
The Pedicure
1873
Essence on paper mounted on canvas
24Xi8l/sin. (61X46 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 1873
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1986)
Lemoisne 323
The purchase of this painting on 21 January
1899 by Comte Isaac de Camondo resulted
in a brief quarrel between Paul Durand-Ruel
and H. O. Havemeyer, who had believed it
was reserved for him. A few years earlier,
Mary Cassatt, who counseled the American
collector on his acquisitions, had described
The Pedicure as "a remarkably fine work of
the artist."1 Indeed, the great difference be-
tween the Fr 5,000 which Degas received
for the work in July 1892 and the Fr 60,000
Camondo paid for it less than seven years
later is a reflection not only of the relative
scarcity of works by Degas on the market,
but also of the exceptional quality of this
painting.
Julius Meier-Graefe, who is not at his best
when discussing Degas, likens it to the work
of Adolf Menzel — which is, to say the least,
surprising — and thus to the work of a col-
orist.2 Paul Jamot, after emphasizing the
"paradox" and the "tour de force" of the
"foreshortening of the leg resting on the
chair," more rightly praises the study of the
subject's apparel and the effects of light and
backlighting, in which one feels "that blessed
concentration of the primitives who felt the
joy of creating for the first time an image
resembling objects and living creatures."3
It is quite likely that Degas painted The
191
Pedicure during his last three months in New
Orleans, since it is dated 1873. According to
Lemoisne, who relied on the accounts of the
family in Louisiana, the young girl in the
picture is the ten-year-old Joe Balfour,
daughter of Estelle Musson (later Mme Rene
De Gas) and Lazare David Balfour, who
was killed in October 1862 in the Civil War
battle at Corinth, Mississippi. Although the
subject matter is American, there is no evi-
dence that the work was actually executed
in the United States. In his correspondence,
Degas mentions painting only family por-
traits (see cat. no. 112) and the two versions
of the "Cotton Market" (see cat. nos. 115,
116) while in New Orleans; it is very proba-
ble that The Pedicure, like The Song Rehearsal
(cat. no. 117), which is also more a genre
scene than a portrait, was among the accu-
mulated projects he described in a letter to
the Danish painter Frolich on 27 November
1872, saying they would "take me ten life-
times to complete"4 and which were finished
in the calm of his Paris studio.
As he had for Racehorses before the Stands
(cat. no. 68), Degas mounted paper on can-
vas and used essence over previously brushed-
in outlines; this technique produced soft,
matte tones and was superior to oil in subtly
translating the effects of shadow and light.
X-radiography of the painting shows that
he added a few more touches at a later stage,
draping the piece of clothing over the sofa,
further tilting the chiropodist's head, hiding
the previously visible collar of his shirt, and
extending the top of the dresser and altering
the objects on it. The painter's "tour de
force," to use Lemoisne's term, lies not only
in the foreshortening of young Joe's body,
but in the treatment of the white fabrics, in
the interplay of transparency and opacity, of
shadows and glancing light, and in the solid
yet changing green background, enlivened
on the left by a mirror and by two children's
drawings or maps hung on the wall, oddly
evocative of landscapes to come. Wrapped
as if in a shroud, eyes closed, attended by
the watchful chiropodist leaning over her,
the child is like a saint in a medieval or Ren-
aissance work, whose death is being
mourned by a faithful disciple. The use of
essence reinforces this connection with clas-
sical painting. But the shroud is only a pro-
tective sheet, the instruments of the Passion
only the tub and file, and the Lamentation,
now secularized, becomes the "portrait of
two sheets, one used as a dressing gown."5
1. Letter from H. O. Havemeyer to Paul Durand-
Ruel, 24 January 1899, cited in WeitzenhofFer
1986, p. 134.
2. Meier-Graefe 1924, p. 44.
3. Jamot 1914, p. 456.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, II, p. 23; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 4, p. 21.
5. Lemoisne 1912, p. 51.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 25 July 1892, for Fr 5,000 (stock no. 2451);
bought by J. Burke, London, 26 August 1892, for
Fr 9,000; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 27 December
1898, for Fr 27,000 (stock no. 4922); bought by Comte
Isaac de Camondo, 11 January 1899, for Fr 60,000;
his bequest to the Louvre 191 1; exhibited 19 14.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 41; 1969 Paris, no. 23.
selected references: Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 101;
Geffroy 1908, p. 17, repr.; Max Liebermann, Degas,
Berlin: Cassirer, 19 12, pp. 17, 23, repr.; Lemoisne
1912, p. 52, pi. XVIII; Jamot 1914, p. 36; Paris,
Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, no. 161; Lafond 19 18-19,
I, p. 147, repr.; Jamot 1924, p. 91, pi. 31; Meier-
Graefe 1924, p. 44; Rewald 1946, pp. 109, 110, 124;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 323; Boggs 1962, p. 108;
1965 New Orleans, pp. 78, 81, fig. 39; Minervino
1974, no. 359; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures,
1986, III, p. 194, repr.; Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 133—
35, pl- 92.
121.
Rider in a Red Coat
1873
Essence heightened with white on pink paper
vjV% X io7/s in. (43 . 6 X 27. 6 cm)
Signed and dated upper right: De Gas/ 73
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF 12276)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Brame and RefF 66
192
The dating of this drawing poses a problem.
Inscribed in pencil with the year "73," the
drawing served as a study for The Meet
(fig. 92), a somber painting in which a group
of riders dressed in red jackets and white
trousers is silhouetted against an autumnal
landscape bathed in golden light. The paint-
ing, which seems to be related to several
outdoor scenes done by Degas in the mid-
1860s (see, for example, Horseback Riding,
Li 17), has been unanimously dated as before
1870, in keeping either with Lemoisne's
proposal of 1864-68 or with the tighter
time frame of c. 1866-68 proposed by RefF.
It is difficult to reconcile a preliminary
drawing from 1873 with a finished canvas
that is thought to have been painted six or
seven years earlier. The obvious solution is
to maintain, as Theodore Reff has done,
that the drawing is inscribed with an incor-
rect date and that it too must have been done
about 1866-68. However, this seems im-
plausible for several reasons. Both the date
and the signature (the painting bears an
identical signature) appear to be authentic,
notwithstanding the surprising use of the
particle ("De Gas"), which the artist seems
to have abandoned after Scene of War in the
Middle Ages (1865; cat. no. 45). The draw-
ing was bequeathed in 192 1 to the Musee du
Luxembourg by Mme Andre, who had
owned it at the time she drew up her will
on 6 August 19 13. It was therefore not on
the art market, and thus there is no reason
to suspect that someone wanting to legiti-
mize the work added the signature and date.
Finally, The Meet does not depict a French
scene but an English one. In France, mem-
bers of hunting parties certainly wore riding
coats like the ones seen here. But on their
heads they wore velvet riding caps; the use
of top hats was reserved for guests. In En-
gland, on the other hand, a riding cap was
worn only by the whipper-in, whereas the
hunters wore the top hats. One may there-
fore hypothesize as follows: Degas traveled
to England in the fall of 1873, and returned
to France with both the drawing and the
painting, for which he had made some very
rough sketches.1 He was undoubtedly
thinking of the English market — a matter he
had already discussed with Manet as early as
1868 — and the "aristocratic" signature was
just another commercial stratagem.
The study is remarkable for the fullness
of its confident, rapid strokes, for the way
in which Degas plays with the color of the
paper (exposing it in the pink of the skull
amid the sparse gray tufts of hair), and for
its tonal harmony (the scarlet of the jackets,
the yellow of the boot tops, and the thin
sliver of the shirt collar against the uniform
salmon pink). It is a work that could, if
there were not a precise date, be related only
to the drawings on colored paper that Degas
produced in great numbers at the beginning
of the 1870s (see cat. nos. 136, 138). Thus,
the painting that followed, despite certain
archaisms, must also now be accepted as
1873.
1 . See especially the sale at Christie's, London, 1 De-
cember 198 1, no. 308, repr. (color).
provenance: Bequest of Mme Eugene Frederic An-
dre (nee Alquie), to the Musee du Luxembourg
1921.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 42; 1952-53 Washing-
ton, D.C., no. 155, repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 162; 1979
Bayonne, no. 23, repr.; 1984 Tubingen, no. 64, repr.
(color).
selected references: Rouart 1945, P- lV> Rosenberg
1959, pp. 114, 219; Brame and Reff 1984, no. 66.
121
r.
1
1
I
1
Fig. 92. The Meet (L119), c. 1873. Oil on canvas, 27V2X
35 in. (70 X 89 cm). Private collection
193
II
1873-1
Michael Pantazzi
Scientific Realism: 1 873 -i 8 8 1
DOUGLAS W. DRUICK
PETER ZEGERS
For their help in preparing this essay, the authors are
indebted to Charles Hupe, Claude Lupien, Anne
Maheux, and Maija Vilcins of the National Gallery
of Canada; Valerie Foradas, Suzanne Folds McCul-
lagh, and Martha Tedeschi of the Art Institute of
Chicago; and Catrine Louis, Paris.
1. Letters to Tissot of 18 February 1873 and Febru-
ary-March 1874, Degas Letters 1947, nos. 6, 12.
See also Lettres Degas 1945, II, III; Degas Letters
1947, nos. 3, 5, 7-
2. Edmond Duranty, "La science vulgarisee," Revue
de Paris, December 1864, pp. 160-64.
3. The authors thank Charles S. MofFett of the Na-
tional Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for
generously providing copies of the reviews of the
Impressionist exhibitions. References to these
will be footnoted only when either the author or
the date is not clearly indicated. Otherwise read-
ers are referred to the list of reviews published in
1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 490-96.
4. "Le Salon a la lumiere electrique," he Monde Il~
lustre, 5 July 1879, p. 7; Henry Vivarez, "Chro-
nique scientifique: la lumiere electrique et Tart,"
La Vie Modeme, 27 December 1879, pp. 605-06.
The letters Degas wrote from New Orleans in 1872-73 reveal him in crisis, intensely
reviewing both his personal and professional life. During his stay in New Orleans he
resolved to pursue his career more aggressively, with the aim of making "the Naturalist
movement . . . worthy of the great schools." Degas echoed this ambition in a letter of
1874 urging Tissot's participation in the first group exhibition, which he justified by
arguing the need for a "distinct . . . salon of Realists."1 His interchangeable use of the
terms "Realist" and "Naturalist" was typical of the period. The latter term was coined
in the early 1860s to distinguish the new generation of painters spawned by Realism;
Naturalism denoted the same rigorous truth to external reality, but now updated and
brought into "equilibrium" with science. The need to balance art with science was the
major tenet of the art criticism of Degas 's close friend the writer Edmond Duranty (see
"The Portrait of Edmond Duranty," p. 309). An early advocate of Realism, Duranty had
long been urging artists to keep abreast of science and to allow its findings to alter their
view of reality; only by thus embracing change, Duranty believed, could artists secure a
position in a future whose shape would inevitably be determined by science.2
Degas 's proclaimed ambition to advance the cause of Realism through his art and
through the group exhibitions was sincere, and from the time of his return from New
Orleans until 188 1, it was carried out with a truly remarkable consistency. This can be
fully appreciated only if we recognize what contemporary reviewers read in Degas's ar-
tistic activity: its every aspect — presentation, materials, composition, and subject — was
infused with the scientific bias he shared with Duranty.
Degas had long held strong views about the conditions under which art should be
viewed; as early as 1870, he had petitioned the Salon jury to integrate works in different
mediums and to allow more space for their installation. In the group exhibitions that he
helped to organize beginning in 1874, he implemented ideas that revealed a keen sensi-
tivity to the effects of presentation on critical appraisal. In these innovations, as the lan-
guage of the reviews testifies, critics discerned the ambitions of scientific realism.
In 1876, Emile Blavet defended the group's desertion of the traditional route to rec-
ognition, the Salon, in favor of a separate exhibition space, for as he saw, "the move-
ment they have initiated requires great freedom for experimentation and a laboratory of
its own."3 Critics had already recognized that these "laboratory" conditions affected their
assessment of the pictorial experiment. In 1874, they noted that the intimately scaled
rooms and spacious hanging facilitated the viewer's ability to appreciate the works dis-
played. Two years later, the experiment was carried further by the grouping together of
all the works by each artist, allowing the public, as Alexandre Pothey wrote, "to move
from details to the whole, and so arrive at an opinion with full knowledge of the case."
The decisive role lighting played in this process was signaled in 1874 by Degas's friend
Philippe Burty. He explained the evening viewing hours by stating that the artist and
his friends "have invited the public and critics to judge, again from eight to ten p.m. un-
der gaslight, what they had already viewed in daylight." Gaslight, however, cast a red-
dish glow that, as many critics realized, acted to deaden color. The new electric lamp
invented by Jablochkoff in 1877, and introduced into the Salon two years later, was wel-
comed for casting a "truer" light on pictures.4 Anxious to harness new technology in
197
the service of art, Degas contacted Jablochkoff and Co. while organizing the fourth group
exhibition, although it is unclear whether electric light was finally used in the 1879 in-
stallation. Similarly uncertain is whether Degas' s employment of Belloir as "tapissier-
decorateur" resulted in the use of the variety of wall colors that Burty, reviewing the
1880 exhibition, would justify as complementary to the varied effects of the pictures.5
Pissarro's work hung in a room painted lilac with a border of canary yellow — possibly
the same shade of yellow Degas adopted in 188 1 as the background for his work at the
sixth group exhibition.6 These unorthodox colors announced a new way of viewing art;
they proclaimed an emphatic modernity as consonant with the pictures as their frames.
Having, with Pissarro, used white frames for his entries at the 1877 exhibition,
Degas introduced frames of different colors and profiles to the group show of 1879.
Monet later explained that Degas did this "to make the frame assist and complete the
picture" by enhancing its color. Degas attached such importance to this that he stipu-
lated to Monet and others that his pictures had to be kept in their original frames; occa-
sionally, when he discovered a work of his reframed in a conventional gilded molding,
he repossessed it in a rage.7 But in 1879, the critic Henry Havard echoed others when he
likened Degas's "combinations of multicolored frames" to inconclusive "laboratory ex-
periments" in novelty; he advised Degas and his "gang of researchers" to adopt the
more responsible behavior of "physicians and chemists who generally wait until they've
made a discovery before communicating their research to the public." Havard's choice
of metaphor was apparently not inspired by Chevreul's earlier experiments with the
modifying effect of frame colors on pictures; rather, it was provoked by Duranty 's re-
view proclaiming the successful outcome of Monet's and Pissarro's "color research" fol-
lowing years of "laborious experiments similar to a chemist's." Havard's intolerance of
Degas's experiments was fostered by his negative attitude toward "Impressionism," the
term that since 1874 had become synonymous with Monet's style and perceived aim to
render "not the landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape."8 At issue was
the question of "truth," for which science was now widely regarded as the measure and
to which the Impressionist painters were seen as falsely laying claim.
Degas realized that the banner under which his work was shown, like the frames,
affected its reading. The Impressionist label impeded critical appreciation of his Realist
ambitions. Although the emphasis on drawing, the greater degree of finish, and the ur-
ban subject matter distinguished Degas's work from Monet's, the critics tended either
to assess it in terms of Impressionist issues or, dissociating Degas altogether from Im-
pressionism's "revolutionary techniques," to view him as the "honest" bourgeois pos-
ing as a radical.9 In 1876, Degas was thus among the group of disgruntled exhibitors on
whose behalf Edouard Beliard chastised the influential critic Alfred de Lostalot for la-
beling them "Impressionists" when their pursuit of truth could best be understood by
the terms "Realism" or "Naturalism." Largely influenced by Degas, Duranty 's La nou-
velle peinture was an even more ambitious attempt to clarify the essential nature of the
new painting as a Realism of precise observation based on the "solid foundations" of
science. The critic conceded that the new painting included both "colorists" (Monet and
the Impressionists) and "draftsmen" (Degas), but he clearly believed that the latter were
better able to achieve Realist goals.10 However, these attempts to expunge the term
"Impressionist" so failed that in 1877 it was emblazoned on the sign over the entrance
to the third group exhibition. Displeased, Degas proposed at first to put on the poster
for the fourth exhibition "Groupe d' Artistes Independants, Realistes, et Impression-
nistes," thereby acknowledging the differences within the group. Although "Artistes
Independants" was the label ultimately adopted for the 1879 poster, many critics — including
Duranty — now allowed such distinctions.11
Within the group, Degas fostered Realist-Impressionist factionalism through the
new rules and members he introduced. As Caillebotte bitterly observed early in 188 1,
Degas's strategies served to advance "the great cause of Realism" and his own reputation
while alienating such key Impressionists as Renoir, Sisley, and Monet. Consequently, at
the sixth group exhibition, Degas and his followers were the principal contributors and
the reviewers at last focused their attention on the issue of Realism.12
5. Lettres Degas 1945, XVII; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 26; Ronald Pickvance in 1986 Washington,
D.C., p. 250.
6. Gustave Goetschy, 188 1 review.
7. Entry in the diary of Theodore Robinson, 30 Oc-
tober 1892, Frick Library, New York. The authors
thank Charles F. Stuckey of the Art Institute of
Chicago and Michael Swicklik of the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for bringing
this reference to their attention.
8. Jules Castagnary, 1874 review.
9. See the 1874 reviews of Castagnary, Emile Car-
don, Ernest Chesneau, and Ariste (Jules Claretie).
10. Beliard's letter published in Le Bien Public, 9 April
1876; Edmond Duranty, La nouvelle peinture, re-
printed in 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 38-47
11. For 1877, see the reviews of Robert Ballu, Jules
Claretie, and Louis Leroy. For 1879, see those of
Duranty, Henry Havard, Armand Silvestre, and
Georges Lafenestre, and see also Pickvance in
1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 2506°.
12. Letter from Gustave Caillebotte to Camille Pis-
sarro, 24 January 188 1, in Marie Berhaut, Caille-
botte: sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris: La Bibliotheque
des Arts, 1978, pp. 25-26; Fronia E. Wissmann
in 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 337-52.
13. See Druick and Zegers in 1984-85 Boston, pp.
xlix-1.
14. Edmond Duranty, "L'outillage dans l'art," L' Ar-
tiste, 1 July 1870, p. 11. Duranty also presented
this thesis in "Le Salon de 1874," Le Musee Uni-
versel, 1874, IV, pp. 193-210, and in La nouvelle
peinture.
15. For further details and sources, see Druick and
Zegers in 1984-85 Boston, pp. xxix-li, lii,
nn. 5, 6.
198
Fig. 94. Page of a notebook used by Degas in
Paris in 1878-79, bearing the name and address
of Bellet d' Arros. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
Dc327d, Carnet 23, p. 9 (Reff 1985, Notebook
3i)
Fig. 95. Anonymous, The New Electric Pencil of
MM. Bellet and Hallez d* Arros. Wood engraving.
Advertisement in La Nature, 12 April 1879, p. 189
The Realist bias linking Degas's efforts to present as well as to create his work in a
thoroughly modern way is indicated by the page in a notebook of 1879 in which he
sketched cross sections of frame moldings with color notes and also recorded an address
on rue Montmartre with the note "Bellet d' Arros /crayon voltaique" (fig. 94). Bellet
d'Arros was an inventor whose "crayon voltaique" — an "electric pencil" permitting
"the reproduction of a drawing in a more or less unlimited number of copies" — was re-
ported two days after the opening of the 1879 exhibition in La Nature, a leading popular
scientific weekly that Degas read (fig. 95). Related to his plans to launch an illustrated
journal, Degas's interest in this new invention was informed by Duranty's theory that
technical inventiveness is critical to pictorial invention.13
First advanced in 1870, Duranty's thesis was simple: historically, great moments in
art had come on the heels of the invention of new mediums — for example, oil paint in
the fifteenth century. Once the new medium passed into widespread use, true invention
yielded to concern for technical perfection and, ultimately, to sterility. To create a new
and vital art, Duranty contended, an artist needed materials as free from tradition as his
ideas. "Today," he wrote somewhat optimistically in 1870, "we are possibly on the road
to change in the look of art, but those who feel themselves drawn in this direction at
the same time feel themselves shackled by its tools. They would like to have other col-
ors, they would like instruments other than the broad and fine brush. They are experi-
menting with the knife and would try out the spoon if it seemed promising."14 By 1876,
Degas had, in Duranty's opinion, emerged as the primary inventor of "the new paint-
ing," wherein "everything is new or wants to be free." As Degas's notebooks and pro-
duction attest, over the next five years he continued to explore new techniques and to
revive old ones with a passion that proclaimed his Realist ambition.
Degas's fascination with technical invention is perhaps most clearly seen in his
printmaking. Here he sought expressive freedom by pursuing unconventional approaches
to traditional mediums and by making use of technological discoveries that involved
both the direct and the photomechanical transfer of designs to create printing matrices.
By July of 1876, when he told the critic Jules Claretie that he had discovered a "new
printmaking technique," Degas's pursuit of new technical resources was at a fever
pitch. "The man's crazes are out of this world," wrote fellow printmaker Marcellin
Desboutin to a mutual friend. "He is now in the metallurgic phase of reproducing his
drawings with a roller and is running all over Paris . . . trying to find the legion of spe-
cialists who will realize his obsession! ... He talks only of metallurgists, lead casters,
lithographers, planishers!" Degas's "discovery" was likely monotype, examples of which
he showed at the 1877 group exhibition (see cat. nos. 160, 163, 174, 190). Claretie's re-
view of that exhibition and Degas's notebooks of the period together indicate that he
sought advice from the printing industry out of a desire to have his monotypes — and
possibly etchings — serve as book illustrations for Ludovic Halevy's Madame et Monsieur
Cardinal (see "Degas, Halevy, and the Cardinals, "p. 280) and other contemporary Real-
ist literature. This necessitated his finding a means to transfer images printed from low-
yield matrices onto new printing matrices capable of producing large editions. The techni-
cal recipes and printers' names (Geymet, Gillot, and Lefman) recorded by Degas in his
notebooks were associated with the latest inventions for making relief plates with pre-
cisely this function.15
Degas realized no book illustration projects. Also abandoned was his idea of 1879
to launch an illustrated journal to have been called Le Jour et la Nuit. The etchings he
had made for Le Jour et la Nuit — some of which he included in the fifth group exhibi-
tion of 1880 — indicate the problem. The artist's thoughts of financial gain were dis-
placed by his consuming fascination with invention and process. The notebooks and the
letters to Bracquemond and Pissarro document the obsession evident in such prints as
Leaving the Bath, which Degas developed through twenty-two evolutionary states (fig. 96;
see cat. nos. 192-194). The catalogue description Degas gave in 1880 to his etchings —
"experiments and states of plates" ("essais et etats de planches") — reflects his wish to
present them as an artistic exposition paralleling the latest scientific findings published
in La Nature. The series of states evokes both Muybridge's recent photographic analysis
199
Fig. 96. Composite photograph of twenty-two successive states of Leaving the Bath (RS42), c. 1879-80. Drypoint and aquatint. See cat. nos. 192-194
of movement and the spirit of Darwin's evolutionary theory. Similarly, his use of the
"crayon de charbon" (the carbon rod used in electric arc lamps) for drypoint attests to
the fascination with new tools that he shared with Duranty. Although Degas appreciated
the range of grays he could realize by scraping the printing plate with this unconven-
tional instrument, more compelling, it seems, is the fact that in using the tool commonly
known as the "crayon voltaique" he pioneered a form of "electric pencil" just as modern
as Bellet d'Arros's invention of the same name.16
While recent scholarship has focused on Degas 's printmaking as the prime example
of his interest in technical exploration and the revitalization of traditional mediums, to
his contemporaries it was his more widely exhibited work in pastel, gouache, and dis-
200
16. See 1984-85 Boston, nos. 32, 42, 43, 51. While
Cassatt, Pissarro, and RafFaelli likewise showed
"etats" of their prints destined for Le Jour et la
Nuit, only Degas included the description "es-
sai."
17. Jules Claretie, "Medallions et profiles: J. de Nit-
tis," L'art et les artistes jranqais, Paris: Charpentier,
1876, pp. 415-16.
18. Burty, 1879 review; see Lettres Degas 1945, XI,
XXXII (1879, misdated 1882); Degas Letters
1947, nos. 19, 41.
19. Duranty, "L'ou tillage dans l'art," p. 7.
20. See, for example, the entry for "Pastel" in Pierre
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siecle,
XII, Paris, 1874, p. 376,
21. Jules Claretie, "Un peintre de la vie parisienne,"
La vie a Paris, Paris: Victor Havard, 188 1, p. 218.
22. Letter from Degas to Caillebotte, c. 1878, in
Berhaut, no. 7.
23. Letter from Degas to Charles W. Deschamps, 15
May 1876, in Reff 1968, p. 90, and Jeanniot 1933,
p. 167. On Manet, see Bertall, "L'exposition de
M. Manet," Paris-Journal, 30 April 1876. We
thank Charles F. Stuckey of the Art Institute of
Chicago for this reference.
temper that loudly signaled this particular Realist bent. Degas's explorations in both
areas were, in fact, interconnected. From the very first, Degas used the pale, second
impression of his monotypes as a literal base on which to build new works with the
opaque color mediums. The impact of this activity on his painting was such that by 1877
Burty, in reviewing the third group exhibition, could observe that Degas had essentially
abandoned oil for distemper ("peinture a la colle") and pastel. This was true for more
than two-thirds of the work in color that Degas produced between 1876 and 188 1.
Degas' s sudden shift to the opaque mediums may have been stimulated by the ex-
hibition and sale in 1875 of Emile Gavet's large collection of pastel by Millet, as well as
the attention being paid to the recent work in pastels by Degas's friend Giuseppe De
Nittis. Claretie observed that De Nittis was attracted to pastel because it permitted him
to work quickly and because he dreamed of bringing "his modern sensibility" to a me-
dium strongly associated with the eighteenth century.17 Degas was even more suscepti-
ble to such attractions. Since they are either dry or quick-drying, pastel, gouache, and
distemper allowed Degas to work more spontaneously than oil; and since they are
opaque, they insured that he could readily and effectively make, and mask, changes to
his compositions. They at once became the artist's means to quickly realize small-scale
works that could be marketed less expensively than paintings and so yield the ready in-
come his financial reversal had made necessary.
By 1879 collectors were, wrote Burty, fighting over the works that Degas came to
refer to as his "articles."18 Yet their attraction was not solely commercial. From the per-
spective of Duranty's theory of material invention, pastel, gouache, and distemper were
mediums of considerable creative potential to which their traditionally perceived limita-
tions provided the key. Distemper, for Duranty and others, was the "antique" medium
that preceded — and was displaced by — the discovery of oil paint.19 Its current use was
largely inartistic, confined to the theater, where it continued to be used (as it had been
for centuries) for the painting of stage sets. Pastel had enjoyed a brief revival in the
1 8 30s and 1840s, but interest had waned by i860. Considered inferior to oil in the hier-
archy of mediums, pastel continued to be regarded as a medium for second-class talents,
its "modern" application limited to portraiture, landscape, and still life. This was partly
the result of the accepted view of pastel as inherently ephemeral — the prejudice reflected
in Diderot's often quoted riposte to Maurice Quentin de La Tour: "Remember, pastelist,
you are only powdery dust and to dust you will return."20
In these traditional assumptions Degas discovered new expressive potential for de-
picting the contemporary world of the Opera and the cafe-concert. The fragility that
continually led writers to discuss pastel in metaphors of fleeting beauty — the "powder
of a butterfly's wings"21 — nourished Degas's bittersweet vision of the onstage meta-
morphosis of homely young dancers into illusions of beauty as perfect and short-lived
as the butterflies to which he was fond of likening them. Similarly, in using distemper,
Degas played upon its associations with the Active reality of stage flats to underscore the
brilliant superficiality of the theatrical world. Often combining both mediums (fig. 97),
the artist subtly evoked the inextricable mix of brashness and pathos he saw in the lives
and work of female entertainers. His interest in the metaphorical associations of differ-
ent mediums led him to use the "colored powder that one buys from marchands d'apprets
pourfleurs" to make the gouache he employed in painting fans.22 There was both appro-
priateness and irony in painting these objects associated with fashionable women in the
very pigments used for the artificial flowers that adorned their dresses and head wear.
Degas's readiness to depict the transient pleasures of fashionable life in mediums
considered equally ephemeral may be a reflection of the revised view of the relative sta-
bility of oil paint. By the mid-i870s, there was alarming new evidence that the tradi-
tional confidence in the longevity of oil was misplaced. The concern Degas expressed in
May 1876 about the yellowing of his paintings during drying and as a result of varnishing
reflects the more widespread malaise. Just weeks earlier it had been reported that Manet's
famous Olympia had significantly darkened and that many of the artist's more recent
pictures had already become "heavy, opaque, and green."23 Concern for posterity
prompted scientific tests on the adverse effects of light on the pigments used by manu-
201
facturers and the role played by varnish in these changes. At the root of the problem, as
Degas and others realized, was the painter's loss of the technical knowledge of his craft;
while their forebears had supervised the preparation of their mediums, Degas and his
contemporaries surrendered this responsibility to an industry more interested in imme-
diate profit than in the manufacture of lasting materials.24
Less complicated in structure than oil paint, pastel could, it now appeared, be used
with greater certainty. As Claretie observed in 1881, time had proven Diderot wrong:
"La Tour and his powdery dust have outlived most of the great ambitious painters
whose works — faded and cracked — have nothing of that exquisite freshness of the La
Tours in the Musee de Saint-Quentin," which Degas loved to visit.25 Similar claims of
stability were advanced for gouache and distemper. Although gouache could be pur-
chased ready-made in tubes, Degas occasionally preferred to make his own. Distemper
demanded some expertise in mixing the powdered pigment with a heated solution of
water and glue. In this activity, as well as in his attempt to use the still more durable
and complex technique of tempera, Degas expressed a respect for traditional craft and a
desire to master its secrets. A similar interest in reviving ancient techniques that prom-
ised unalterable color inspired the contemporary experiments in wax painting by Degas 's
acquaintances Jean-Charles Cazin and Gustave Moreau.26
More important to Degas than scientific sanction was the fact that in the absence of
a vital tradition the opaque mediums naturally invited freedom of invention. He quickly
learned to exploit the inherent flexibility of paper supports, adding and subtracting
strips of paper as his ideas evolved (see fig. 97) and thus freeing himself of the need to
conceive his compositions in standard formats. Similarly, he took full advantage of the
different ways of handling pastel, sometimes drawing with the sticks, at other times
creating tonal areas with a stump or with his fingers; often he worked with pastel and
water, either wetting the stick or working the powdery pigment with brush and water
to create fluid passages of color that he could blend with the better-adhering mediums of
gouache and distemper. Degas's activity quickly fostered renewed interest in pastel. Re-
viewing the 1877 Salon, Louis Gonse conceded that the future of pastel lay beyond the
doors of officialdom. Degas's efforts "to revive the medium by rejuvenating it" had
produced pastels "not unworthy of the great tradition of La Tour and Chardin." But
while their brilliance persuaded Gonse that Degas's association with the Impressionists
was a masquerade, their physical construction alerted Arthur Baigneres and others to
the fact that Degas was indeed an "intransigent Impressionist" since he perversely
sought to "avoid using customary techniques."27 Indeed, Degas's wish to draw attention
to his experimentation was evident at the 1879 exhibition, where his unusually detailed
catalogue descriptions underscored the technical innovations evident in his entries.
Elaborating on Baigneres's objections, Havard described Degas's "unexpected combi-
nations" of mediums as the product of a mind so obsessed with the "chemistry" of in-
vention that it confused technical means with pictorial realization. Havard's dismissal of
Degas's entries — like the frames housing them — as inconclusive "experiments" was a
judgment Degas could have avoided if, in the words of Georges Lafenestre, he would
only cease calling attention to his "new techniques." Clearly, as Duranty recognized,
the impact of such richly textured matte surfaces could, like those of unvarnished oils,
be "shocking" to conservative "French notions of decorum and polish."28 However,
Realist critics defended the perceived connection between Degas's "ragout nouveau"
and his modernity. In his review of 1880, Huysmans had special praise for Degas's ability
to realize "new artistic pungency" from "new artistic techniques." These constituted a
new "vocabulary," a new "instrument," which Degas, like the Goncourt brothers, had
been forced to invent in order to fulfill the Realist goal "to render visible . . . the exte-
rior of the human animal, in the milieu in which it moves, in order to clearly indicate
the mechanism of its passions."
As Huysmans noted, Degas's affinities with the literature of the Goncourts and Zola
sprang from a similar Realist "feeling for nature." Edmond de Goncourt himself had
described Degas, following a visit to his studio in 1874, as "the one who has best been
able, in transcribing modern life, to capture its soul." This was the goal Realist-Naturalist
24. See the contemporary articles in La Chronique des
Arts et de la Curiosite in 1884 and 1889 as well as
Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists, Se-
caucus: Chartwell Books, 1982.
25. Claretie, "Un peintre de la vie parisienne," p. 218;
Havemeyer 1961, p. 265.
26. "Procedes nouveaux: couleurs a Feau inaltera-
bles," Les Beaux- Arts Illustres, 25 February 1878,
pp. 324-46. See Cazin's entries at the Salons of
1879, 1880, and 188 1 and Moreau's at that of
1876.
27. Louis Gonse, "Les aquarelles, dessins et gravures
au Salon de 1877," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, 1 Au-
gust 1877, p. 162; Arthur Baigneres, "Le Salon
de 1879," Gazette des Beaux- Arts , 1 August 1879,
p. 156.
28. 1879 reviews of Havard and Lafenestre; Edmond
Duranty, "Eaux-fortes de M. Joseph Israels,"
Gazette des Beaux- Arts, 1 April 1879, p. 397.
29. Journal Goncourt 1956, II, p. 968; J. A. Anderson,
"Critique d'art," La Revue Moderne et Naturaliste,
1879, pp. 17-21, and in the same periodical, Harry
Alix, "L'art en 1880," 1880, pp. 271-75.
202
Fig. 97. Dancers in the Wings (L585), c. 1878. Pastel and distemper, 26V4X i85/s in. (66,7X47.3 cm).
Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena. The white lines indicate the separate pieces of paper
from which Degas built his composition.
writers prescribed for painting; the artist must disavow the superficial "dull realism" of
the photograph and infuse his observations with ideas. Degas' s composition, drawing,
and subject matter convinced both champions and opponents of Realism that — even
more than the Impressionists — his "bias toward modernism" firmly placed him among
Realism's "school of thinkers."29
Degas acknowledged that the Goncourt brothers' novel Manette Salomon (1867) had
influenced the "new perception" he brought to his art in the 1870s. Indeed, there are
parallels between the Goncourts' writings and Degas' s pictorial emphasis on the subjec-
tive quality of vision. When contemporary critics remarked on the arbitrariness con-
veyed by Degas 's odd viewpoints, cropped forms, and tilting floors, they indicated
203
Fig. 98. Mile La La at the Cirque Fernando (L522), 1879. Oil on canvas, 46 x 30V2 in.
(116. 8 X 77.5 cm). The National Gallery, London
Fig. 99. Saturday Night at the Victoria Theater. Wood engraving.
The Graphic, 26 October 1872, p. 288
their recognition of Realist ideology. Some, like Baigneres in 1876, saw in Degas's
compositional devices the espousal of Impressionism's "passive" vision, the wish to
adopt the camera's mechanistic mode of transmitting visual information "innocent" of
intellectual organization. Indeed, Degas's compositions — like the Impressionists' brush-
work — conveyed a message of spontaneity that belied thoughtful preparation. His trun-
cation of forms and exaggerated perspectives (see fig. 98) evoked the fragmentation and
distortions occasionally found both in contemporary photographs and in the reportorial
glimpses of modern life recorded in the burgeoning French and English illustrated press;
of these, The Graphic, which Degas had read while in New Orleans, was a prime exam-
ple (see fig. 99). But while the Impressionists' rhetoric of spontaneity was widely accepted
at face value — and their work criticized for lacking intelligence and objectivity30 — Degas's
intention was better understood. Even Baigneres suspected that Degas's compositional
methods were part of a strategy "to appear not to compose, " and Armand Silvestre,
Georges Riviere, and others signaled the "constant research" and the "process of syn-
thesis" that informed Degas's seemingly casual view of contemporary life. The painter's
notebooks confirm his desire to convey the appearance of immediacy through careful
204
Degas Letters 1947, no. 7; Richard SchifF, "Re-
view Article," Burlington Magazine, December
1984, pp. 681-90.
Reviews of Baigneres 1876, Riviere 1877, and
Silvestre 1879 (24 April, La Vie Moderne); Reff
1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, pp. 196,
210); Stephane Mallarme, "The Impressionists
and Edouard Manet" (1876), in 1986 Washing-
ton, D.C., pp. 31-33.
Edmond Duranty, "Daumier," Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, May and June 1878, pp. 432, 440,
532, 538; Silvestre 1879 review.
Revue Liberate, 25 July 1867, pp. 499-523.
Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 44);
Lettres Degas 1945, II, III; Degas Letters 1947,
nos. 4, 5.
See Duranty, "Le Salon de 1874," p. 194.
study while resisting the temptation to "draw or paint immediately." Mallarme explained
the compositional devices as reflecting the new "science" of painting that "pushed" tra-
ditional practices to their "utmost limits"; Degas had thus freed himself from the "hack-
neyed view of his subject" to create the "strange new beauty" to which critics responded
according to their attitude toward Realism.31 Jean de la Leude, for example, accused
Degas in 1879 of cropping figures with a "murdering brush" that proved him guilty,
like Zola, of the ugly dissection of reality. The following year, by contrast, Huysmans
extolled Degas's daring in Mile La La at the Cirque Fernando (fig. 98) to "make the ceil-
ing of the Cirque Fernando incline completely to one side" and thus "convey the exact
sensation of the eye that follows her."
Readiness to recognize a quasi-scientific truth in Degas's work came still more
readily for his treatment of the human figure. From 1876 onward, critics seeking to
praise the truth of Degas's keen analysis and telling synthesis of the human physiogno-
my frequently invoked comparison with Daumier, now recognized as the preeminent
French "historian of our customs, of our appearance, and our race." But Degas's "re-
search in pictorial shorthand"32 was regarded as more pitiless than Daumier's, since his
study of physiognomy was conducted in the harsh light of new scientific findings.
The need to transform the imprecise, traditional wisdom of Lavater and others into
a "regulated science" had been the subject of Duranty's 1867 essay "Sur la physiono-
mie."33 In it he had outlined ways to refine the "grammar [of] modern observation" based
on the analysis of the subject's physical, social, and racial characteristics. Not long after,
Degas noted a similar ambition to "make of expressive heads (academic style) a study of
modern feeling — it is Lavater, but a more relativistic Lavater, so to speak, with symbols
of today rather than the past." This ambition was infused with the spirit of scientific in-
vestigation. Accordingly, Degas was convinced that only prolonged study would allow
meaningful insight into the "customs of a people" and, true to the tenets of Realism,
believed that "one can make art only of that to which one is accustomed." While visiting
New Orleans he resisted painting his new surroundings, resolving instead to further
study the Parisian world with which he was familiar.34 The encyclopedic knowledge of
the work and speech of laundresses and dancers with which Degas impressed Edmond
de Goncourt in 1874 reflects his exhaustive observation of his subject, of "the special
traits his profession prints on him," as advocated by Duranty. Degas's ability to mimic
his subjects' movements attests as well to his application of the idea advanced in "Sur la
physionomie" that through imitative behavior one is able to apprehend another per-
son's underlying feelings.
Huysmans asserted in his review of 1880 that Degas observed the dancers so keenly
that a "physiologist could make a meticulous study of each of their individual constitu-
tions." Not only diehard Realists recognized the ideological bias. Three years earlier
Bergerat, reviewing the third group exhibition, had discerned an ambition that was
"above all ethnographic," that presumed the artist's role was to document contempo-
rary "customs and society" for the future. Degas's physiognomic investigations indeed
reflected the current related interests — shared by such friends as Comte Ludovic Lepic —
in evolutionary theory and the scientific reconstruction of man's history. Lepic, the experi-
mental printmaker who introduced Degas to monotype, was also an ardent amateur of
French prehistory who, by 1874, had created several "reconstructions" of prehistoric
man and animals for the recently founded ethnographic Musee de Saint-Germain.35
Darwin's Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872, translated into French in
1874) provided further support for the theory of evolution both by demonstrating anal-
ogies between animal and human expressions that argued a common origin and by ex-
plaining otherwise unaccountable human reactions as vestiges of earlier stages of man's
evolution (see fig. 100). One of Degas's notebook sketches of cafe-concert singers made
in 1877 (fig. 10 1 ) — a time when he was particularly close to Lepic — reflects the revived
interest in the physiognomic practice of "making use of animals to explain man" that
had found new scientific sanction in evolutionary theory. The head at the upper right
has the suggestion of a simian ancestry — the singer's open mouth is as likely to emit a
primal scream as to utter the raucous lyrics of a vulgar song. The other figures recall
205
Fig. ioa Illustration for a review of Charles Fig. 101. Page of a notebook used by Degas in 1877. Private collection, p. 11
Darwin, The Expression of Emotions in Man and (Reff 1985, Notebook 28)
Animals. Engraving. La Nature, 4 July 1874, P- 75
rodents, in their skulls and features as well as in their hands held like the forepaws of
animals standing on their hindquarters. All in all, their features show them to be neither
very evolved nor very noble specimens of humanity; contemporary scientific studies of
deformed and purportedly less evolved human types (see fig. 102) would have supported
the traditional physiognomic reading of weakness, sensuality, and low intelligence in
the recessive chin, prominent nose and mouth, and low forehead found in the two ro-
dentlike figures, and of brutishness in the strong jaw of the other figure.
These were the general facial characteristics that Degas often used in the latter half
of the 1870s in his depictions of prostitutes, cafe-concert singers, and, increasingly, danc-
ers. He apparently saw in these subjects a sisterhood of types, reflecting the current the-
sis that physiognomic similarities exist among people involved in the same kind of
work and raising the topical question of whether professions mold physiognomy or
simply attract similar types. Huysmans recognized in Degas 's various depictions of
dancers an extended study of the "metamorphosis" of women in the work environment:
through grueling practice the awkward young girls — "giraffes who could not bend, ele-
phants whose hinges refused to fold" — were "broken in," finally to emerge as visions
of grace pirouetting before the stage lights; in the end, too old to dance, they would be-
come "dressing room attendants, palm readers, or walkers-on."36 Degas actually evoked
more graceful metaphors in depicting this evolution. A selection of pastels done in the
late 1 8 70s (fig. 103) suggests that he saw in the dancer's nightly activity the poignancy
of the butterfly's life cycle: in the protective atmosphere of her dressing room the dancer
sheds her drab street clothes and takes on a brilliant exterior (L497); awkwardly she
emerges from her cocoon, barely stirring with new life (L644; see cat. no. 228); making
last-minute adjustments, she prepares to take wing (L585); after a brief moment of glory
(L572; see cat. no. 229), the curtain falls and the cycle ends abruptly (L575).
In their reviews of 1877, Paul Mantz, Georges Riviere, and others noted that in his
presentation of these seeming "fragments" of modern life, Degas combined a "literary"
with a "philosophic" talent to actually reveal "the essence of things." However, several
reviewers also read in Degas' s depictions of women a caricatural impetus that, under a
veneer of "gentle" satire, was driven by cynicism and a "cruel" irony. Defenders like
Armand Silvestre explained this in 1879 by picturing Degas as the quintessence of a
modernity to which he "resigns himself . . . with a lighthearted philosophy and for
Portrait de l'Azteque eiiiibe a Lads \l)*apres uoe phuto^tapiae.J
Fig. 102. Portrait of the "Aztec" exhibited at the
Paris Hippodrome in 1855. Wood engraving, af-
ter a photograph. Illustration for an article in La
Nature, 2 January 1875, p. 65
36. 1880 review.
37. Review of 1 May 1879 by Silvestre; Theodore
Massiac, "Causerie dramatique: les comediens
parisiens," La Revue Moderne et Naturaliste, 1880,
pp. 276-82; Larousse, XVII, pt. 3, p. 1363.
206
Fig. 103. Pastels, late 1870s. Left to right, top to bottom: L497, private collection; L644 (cat. no. 228); L585, Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena;
L572 (cat. no. 229); L575, private collection
which he tries, by means of art, to console us." A similar "spirit that while apparently
detached, bantering, and lighthearted belies well-concealed passions" was seen to char-
acterize the theatrical pieces, novels, and short stories of Degas's close friend Ludovic
Halevy. Both men shared the same parisianisme, that apparently nonchalant "way of see-
ing things as a Parisian sees them."37 However, by 1880 critics showed signs of tiring of
Degas's use of dance subjects as its principal form of expression. Even his friend Phi-
lippe Burty was warning that Degas's "ironic spirit will diminish him, if he persists
with his dance classes at the Opera."
Degas's entries at the sixth group exhibition can be seen as a response to this grow-
ing criticism. Abandoning his customary "young dancers," Degas presented instead a
vision of "la vie modeme" at once less amusing, more aggressively Naturalist, and more
207
provocative than any of his entries to date. The works that riveted critical attention in-
cluded two pastels sharing the title Criminal Physiognomy (fig. 104) and the wax sculp-
ture The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (fig. 105; see cat. no. 227). His delay in putting
the latter on view proved strategic since it forced critics to concentrate on the criminal
physiognomies that set the stage for the sculpture's later — and much anticipated — arrival.
The criminal physiognomies were immediately recognized as portraits of Emile
Abadie and two members of his murderous gang, whose exploits, apprehension, and
subsequent trials had been sensationalized in the French press since early 1879. 38 Initial
reports of three particularly brutal murders — including that of a widow whose news-
stand was close to Degas's apartment — had been followed by the arrest of Abadie and
Pierre Gille and their confession to one of the crimes. The public's initial shock at find-
ing the authors of vicious, premeditated murder to be mere teenagers — Abadie was
nineteen, and Gille seventeen — swelled to indignation with the disclosure that Abadie's
"gang" abided by regulatory "statutes" — a cold-blooded code of crime written in a
style described in the press as "genre L'Assommoir. " This reference to Zola's novel was
disconcertingly apt. Abadie and Gille had, it was revealed, hatched their plots in the
wings of the Ambigu Theater while working as walkers-on in the dramatization of
UAssommoir, which had premiered on 19 January 1879 (with Halevy39 — and possibly
Degas — in the audience). Abadie, Gille, and the other gang members thus presented
the public with a sobering, real-life parallel to Zola's study of vice spawned by the in-
teraction of hereditary traits and environment.
Study of the criminal mind was topical, and consequently the trial that began in
August attracted "men of science" as well as the simply curious. That month La Nature
presented the latest scientific findings suggesting that Darwin's theory gave new mean-
ing to Duranty's description of criminals as the "savages of the civilized world." Inves-
tigation had shown that large heads, low foreheads, and prominent jaws characterized
equally the skulls of prehistoric man and most contemporary murderers; by inference,
the latter could be considered "living anachronisms," less evolved beings born with fe-
rocious instincts appropriate to life in man's distant past. Abadie fit this image of the
"born" murderer: his dark complexion, large head, low forehead, powerful jaw, high
cheekbones, and full lips presented the "bestial, repellent physiognomy." However, the
fair-complexioned Gille, with his almost girlish bearing, was disconcertingly innocent-
looking; properly dressed, he would appear the elegant "dandy." Thus, he seemed to
exemplify a kind of criminality that was not inborn but rather the result of illness or
other external forces.40
The death sentence they both received created a split in public opinion: the "hu-
manitarian press" called for mercy, citing extreme youth and bad upbringing as extenu-
ating circumstances; conservative critics believed the murderers were constitutionally
unregenerate and so deplored the presidential pardon granted in November. Scarcely
had the debate died down when eighteen-year-old Michel Knobloch stepped forward
to confess to having carried out another of the murders of early 1879 with Abadie, and
implicated both Gille and a young soldier, Paul Kirail. In August 1880, when Abadie,
Kirail, and Knobloch were put on trial and Gille was called to give testimony, Degas
was among the crowd of spectators that filled the courtroom; he made notebook sketches
of the defendants41 and witnessed firsthand Abadie's scandalous behavior. Protected
now by French law from the death sentence, the unrepentant Abadie brought to the
courtroom the same cynical contempt for authority that he had dared to display in
memoirs that, along with those of Knobloch, appeared excerpted in the newspapers the
day the proceedings began. Their stories were of a youth spent in the company of
"hooligans" who frequented public balls and cafes-concerts like the one on cours de
Vincennes, where Abadie had first met Knobloch. Though Knobloch repented, blam-
ing the influence of "bad company," he was condemned to death (his sentence was later
commuted); Abadie was returned to prison to serve out his original sentence; and Kirail
began a life of forced labor.
The Abadie affair was controversial. Conservatives called for stricter measures to
protect society from criminals; more socially conscious criminologists posed the trou-
38. Details of the affair have been culled from articles
in Paris-Journal, Le Monde Illustre, L'Univers Illus-
tre, Le Journal Illustre, and Le Voleur Illustre.
39. "Les carnets de Ludovic Halevy" (edited by Daniel
Halevy), Revue des Deux Mondes, 37, 15 February
1937, p. 821.
40. Duranty, "Sur la physionomie," p. 499; Jacques
Bertillon, "Fous ou criminels?" La Nature, 23
August 1879, pp. 186-87. Descriptions of Abadie
and Gille from Paris-Journal, 31 August 1879, and
Le Voleur, 5 September 1879.
41. Reff 1985, Notebook 33 (private collection, New
York, pp. 5V-6, 7, iov-11, 15V, 16).
42. Reviews by Auguste Dalligny, Gustave Geffroy,
and Gustave Goetschy.
43 . Reviews by Comtesse Louise, Charles Ephrussi,
and Paul Mantz.
44. Duranty, "Le Salon de 1874," p. 210; Huysmans,
188 1 review.
208
Fig. 104. Criminal Physiognomy, 1880. Pastels bearing the same title. Left: L638, 25V4X igVs in. (64 X
76 cm). Right: L639, i87/sX243/4 in. (48 X63 cm). Location unknown. Exhibited at the sixth Impres-
sionist exhibition, 1881
bling question of how to stem "the early corruption of children thrown upon the dan-
gerous streets of Paris." Degas's portraits allude to these tensions, while maintaining an
appearance of detachment. He presents the criminals in strict profile, thus providing the
maximum physiognomical information. Yet by introducing the tilted high hat into
Abadie's portrait (fig. 104, L638), Degas suggests not only the gang leader's pride but
the sometimes comic aspect of the court proceedings as well. Similarly, while the crit-
ics, struck by the "terrifying realism" of Degas's portrayals, commended the "singu-
lar physiologic soundness" with which he captured the "stains of vice" etched on "these
animalistic foreheads and jaws," only the portraits of Abadie and the "sneaky" Kirail
(fig. 104, L639, left) in fact conform strictly to the atavistic criminal stereotype.42 And
though some identified the third figure (fig. 104, L639, right) as Knobloch, his more
regular features, blond coloring, and slighdy feminine mien suggest — as Gustave Goetschy
asserted — that Degas in fact depicted the innocent-looking Gille, emphasizing his dis-
tinction from the others coloristically. In so doing, Degas introduced the controversy
into his portrait of modern crime; for if the others came to murder naturally, Gille' s
criminality laid greater responsibility on the doorstep of society.
Degas's portraits, like the trial, stripped away the attractive veneer of the popular
theater and the cafe-concert to reveal their more sinister underside as a breeding ground
for vice. The portraits thus underlined similar tensions in The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer, which appeared halfway through the exhibition's run. Few reviewers shared
Nina de Villard's discovery of the promise of beauty in the girl's features or her opti-
mism regarding the eventual grace to emerge from the "cruel" discipline of her profes-
sion. Rather, the majority instantly recognized in the little dancer a kind of sister to
Abadie, "a little Nana" who also inhabited the world of L'Assommoir. In her features,
they read clearly "printed" signs of a "stock of evil instincts and vicious tendencies,"
a congenital predisposition to bestiality. Burdened by this heredity, her moral destiny
seemed inevitable given her environment. Paul Mantz predicted that the "despicable
promises" of vice in her face would soon flourish "on the espaliers of the theater."43
Ironically, the very profession that would discipline and give physical grace to this yet
unformed creature would also nourish all that was least disciplined and most unattrac-
tive in her. She thus embodied ambiguous potential, a physical and moral tension of which
she seemed touchingly unaware in the innocence of her youth.
In his portraits of the criminals Degas subtly underscored the suggestion of uneasi-
ness with modern life through his use of pastel: he portrayed contemporary "fleurs du
mal" with the medium Quentin de La Tour had employed to depict the flower of the
Ancien Regime. Degas's choice of medium for the dancer had even greater metaphoric
resonance. Sculpture was, in the eyes of Duranty, Huysmans, and other Realist critics,
the art form most inhibited by traditional materials.44 Working with unorthodox sub-
stances— wax, clothing, and hair — Degas achieved an illusionism that was at once
209
Fig. 105. The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (RXX), 1879-81. Wax, cotton skirt,
satin hair ribbon, hair now covered with wax, height 37V2 in. (95.2 cm).
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
frighteningly real and resolutely modern. While Huysmans's review linked Degas's
technical innovations to an earlier tradition of religious sculpture, others detected a
more immediate source of inspiration. From the insults heaped on The Little Fourteen-
Year-Old Dancer, it is clear that the critics linked Degas's sculpture to the wax manne-
quins used in ethnographic displays such as those in the enormous and highly publicized
ethnographic exhibition that had opened at the Palais de l'lndustrie in February 1878.
Incorporated in ambitious reconstructions such as the popular "ancient Peruvian habita-
tion," these mannequins in native costume had drawn Duranty's criticism for being
mere dolls, unconvincing in their gestures and untrue to national type.45 Acknowledged,
by contrast, as a serious "work of science," the Dancer too appeared to be a kind of eth-
nographic model. But as a "specimen" of French culture, the Dancer was clearly offen-
sive. The point of Erie de Mont's complaint that she took after a "monkey, an Aztec"
45-
46.
47-
Edmond Duranty, "Exposition des missions sci-
entifiques," La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosite,
23 February 1878, pp. 58-59.
Review of 19 April 188 1.
"Les carnets de Ludovic Halevy" (edited by Daniel
Halevy), Revue des Deux Mondes, 43, 15 January
1938, p. 398 (entry for 1 January 1882).
210
was elucidated in Henry Trianon's advice that in future Degas apply Darwinian evolu-
tionary theory to aesthetic selection, choosing the best and most beautiful over the ugliest
and least evolved. It was insulting to see the Dancer as a reflection of modern life. Tria-
non noted that she belonged in a museum of zoology, anthropology, or physiology
rather than in an art gallery. De Mont wanted to see her pickled in ajar of alcohol, and
the Comtesse Louise suggested that she be moved to the Musee Dupuytren, where ex-
amples of human pathology were exhibited.
Together The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer and the studies of Criminal Physiognomy
presented a rather bleak picture of contemporary French society. The perceptive young
Gustave Geffroy regarded them as the work of a "philosopher" captivated by the ten-
sions between the "deceptive exterior and the underside of Parisian life."46 Even the less
sympathetic Mantz conceded that they embodied an "instructive ugliness" that could be
regarded as the "intellectual result" of Realism in the hands of a "moralist."
The 1 88 1 group exhibition constituted the high- water mark of Degas's Realism. At
the year's end his friend Halevy would finish a new novel, Uabbe Constantin, that devi-
ated from his previous work in its undiluted optimism and that marked, he wrote, a
"movement in the direction of duty and decency." Degas was indignant at this shift,
"disgusted" by "so much virtue"; the painter would condemn him, Halevy confided to
his journal, to forever create "things like Madame Cardinal, dry little things, satiric, ir-
reverent, ironic, without heart or feeling."47 Degas was not to change course so abruptly,
nor would he ever follow his friend's lead. Nevertheless, over the course of the coming
years he too gradually withdrew from the Realist world of the "famille Cardinal."
Turning his attention away from the keen observation of Parisian life, Degas would seek
to realize a vision which, though superficially related in subject to his work of the
1 8 70s, was more intensely personal and introspective.
211
Chronology II: 1 873-1881
1873
Dated works (after Degas 's return from New Orleans): Dancer
Adjusting Her Slipper (L325, essence, perhaps inscribed later); Dancer
(III:i56.i, pencil, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, certainly in-
scribed later) .
by 9 April
Degas receives a payment of Fr 1,000 from Durand-Ruel. His uncle
Eugene Musson writes from Paris to New Orleans: "Edgar has come
back to us, enchanted by his voyage. . . . He is, as you say, a lik-
able boy and one who will become a very great painter if God pre-
serves his sight and puts a bit more lead in his head." In a letter to
Tissot, Degas writes that he has abandoned his proposed participa-
tion at the Salon and that he is planning a visit to London.
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 81; letter
to Tissot, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947, no. 7, p. 34.
Auguste De Gas sells his Italian assets to his brothers Henri and
Achille in Naples, but retains his firm in Paris.
Boggs 1963, p. 274.
2$ April- j May
Ernest Hoschede, a collector, buys The False Start (fig. 69) from
Durand-Ruel (stock no. 1121). The baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure
acquires At the Races in the Countryside (cat. no. 95) and two racing
scenes through Charles W. Deschamps, the manager of Durand-
Ruel's gallery in London (stock nos. 19 10, 1332, 2673). Encouraged
by these sales, Deschamps exhibits three other works by Degas at
Durand-Ruel' s London branch.
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris; exhibition catalogue cited in Flint
1984, p. 358.
14 June
Durand-Ruel buys from Degas Orchestra Musicians (cat. no. 98) and
Woman Ironing (cat. no. 122) for a total of Fr 3,200 (stock nos. 3102,
3132). These are his last purchases from the artist during this period.
Owing to an economic recession, Durand-Ruel is forced to aban-
don his support of the Impressionist group. As a result, Degas
turns to Deschamps as his principal dealer for the two years to follow.
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris (brouillard lists as 6 June).
28-29 October
During the night, the old Opera on rue Le Peletier is destroyed by
fire.
Degas meets Jean-Baptiste Faure, who commissions The Dance
Class (cat. no. 130).
November
Auguste De Gas leaves for Naples, but is taken ill along the way.
Degas joins him in Turin. In early December he writes to Faure
from Turin: "Here I am in Turin, where an ill wind has brought
me. My father was en route to Naples when he fell ill here. . . .
I'm the one who had to leave immediately to look after him, and
now I find myself tied down for some time to come, far from my
painting, and my life, in the middle of Piedmont. I was anxious to
finish your painting and to make your 'bagatelle.' [Arthur] Stevens
was waiting for his two pictures. I wrote to him yesterday and I am
writing to you today, hoping you will both forgive me." He returns
to Paris by 8 December.
Lettres Degas 1945, V, pp. 31-33; Degas Letters 1947, no. 10, pp. 36-37
(translation revised) .
16 December
Degas buys Pissarro's "Terrains laboures pres d'Osny" from Durand-
Ruel.
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
27 December
With Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Morisot, Cezanne, and others, Degas
forms the Societe Anonyme Cooperative a Capital Variable des Ar-
tistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. (the Societe Anonyme des
Artistes), devoted to free, nonjuried exhibitions, the sale of the works
exhibited, and the publication of an art journal.
1874
Dated work: Dancers Resting (fig. 122).
12 February
Degas is visited at 77 rue Blanche by Edmond de Goncourt, who
notes the next day in his journal: "Yesterday I spent my afternoon
in the atelier of a strange painter named Degas. After many at-
tempts, experiments, and thrusts in every direction, he has fallen in
love with modern subjects and has set his heart on laundry girls and
danseuses. I cannot find his choice bad. . . . This Degas is an origi-
nal fellow, sickly, neurotic, and afflicted with eye trouble to the
point of being afraid of going blind, but for those very reasons he is
an excessively sensitive person who reacts strongly to the true char-
acter of things. Of all the men I have seen engaged in depicting
modern life, he is the one who has most successfully rendered the
inner nature of that life. One wonders, however, whether he will
ever produce something really complete. I doubt it. He seems to
have a very restless mind."
Journal Goncourt 1956, II, pp. 967-68 (translation McMullen 1984,
pp. 241-42).
16 February
Faure buys Racehorses before the Stands (cat. no. 68) from Durand-
Ruel (stock no. 507/2052). Dissatisfied with six of his pictures owned
by Durand-Ruel, Degas asks Faure to purchase them on his behalf,
a transaction that takes place on 5 or 6 March. In exchange, Degas
agrees to paint a number of works for Faure, who additionally
commissions a few more.
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris; Lettres Degas 1945, V, pp. 31-32
n. 1; Degas Letters 1947, "Annotations," no. 10, p. 261.
23 February
Death of Auguste De Gas in Naples. He leaves as his estate the firm
in Paris, which subsists on credit.
Rewald 1946 GBA, p. 121; Raimondi 1958, pp. 116, 263.
March
Degas recruits participants for the first exhibition of the Societe
Anonyme des Artistes. In a letter to Tissot, he writes: "I am getting
really worked up and am running the thing with energy and, I
think, a certain success. . . . The Realist movement no longer
needs to fight with the others. It already is, it exists, it must show
itself as something distinct, there must be a salon of Realists. " Bracque-
mond (recruited by the critic Philippe Burty), Rouart, De Nittis,
and Levert agree to join the group; Legros and Tissot refuse.
Letter to Tissot, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947, no. 12,
PP- 38-39-
4 April
The partition of the movable effects of Auguste De Gas takes place
at 10:00 a.m. at 4 rue de Mondovi. The property is divided equally
among his five children. Present are the artist, his brother Achille,
and their brother-in-law Henri Fevre. Therese Morbilli, in Naples,
and Rene De Gas, in New Orleans, are represented by a notary.
The total value of the inventoried effects amounts to Fr 4,918, less
than the price paid by Faure for The Dance Class (cat. no. 130).
Notarized inventory, private collection, Paris.
15 April
Opening of the Premiere exposition of the Societe Anonyme des Ar-
tistes, at 35 boulevard des Capucines. Fewer than two hundred visi-
tors are present at the opening. Degas exhibits ten works, of which
212
1874-1875
only three are for sale; the other seven are loans from Faure, Bran-
don, Mulbacher, and Rouart.
1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 93, 106.
April-June
Degas 's work receives hostile reviews from Louis Leroy and Emile
Cardon, but other critics, such as Philippe Burty (a friend), Ernest
d'Hervilly, Armand Silvestre, and Jules- Antoine Castagnary, are
laudatory. Jules Claretie writes in Ulndependance Beige: "The most
remarkable of these painters is M. Degas." This marks the begin-
ning of a trend that will place the artist in an awkward position as
regards his associates.
[Philippe Burty], La Republique Francaise, 16 and 25 April 1874; E. d'H.
[Ernest d'Hervilly], Le Rappel, 17 April 1874; Armand Silvestre, L'Opinion
Nationale, 22 April 1874; [Jules- Antoine] Castagnary, Le Siede, 29 April
1874; Ariste [Jules Claretie], L'Independance Beige, 13 June 1874; see 1986
Washington, D.C., p. 490.
1$ May
The exhibition, plagued by bad press, poor attendance, and lack of
sales, closes amid general disappointment. The Societe Anonyme
des Artistes is dissolved.
summer
Ballet Scene (L425, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London) is exhib-
ited by Deschamps in London.
Pickvance 1963, p. 263; Flint 1984, p. 359.
1875
Dated works: Jules Perrot (cat. no. 133); Woman on a Sofa (cat. no. 140).
28 February
Death of the artist's uncle Achille Degas. Degas travels to Naples
for the funeral.
Raimondi 1958, p. 116.
Fig. 106. Marcellin Desboutin, Degas Reading, engraved at
Giuseppe De Nittis's 24 February 1875. Drypoint, 53/4 X 35/s in.
(14.4X9 cm). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
March
Achille Degas's will (dated 5 April) is probated in Naples. His
brother Henri and their niece Lucie are left the movable property.
Edgar and his brother Achille inherit the immovables, including a
share of the Palazzo Degas and of the villa at San Rocco di Capodi-
monte, but the property cannot be divided or liquidated until the
majority of Lucie Degas and until debts and annual life pensions are
paid. (The estate will finally be settled only in 1909.)
Boggs 1963, p. 275; will of Achille Degas, Archivio Notarile, Naples, L.
Cortelli, notary, 1875, fol. 26; see cat. no. 145.
23 March
The painter Marco De Gregorio writes from Naples to Telemaco
Signorini in Florence: "These last days I was visited by De Gas.
... He will visit you when passing through Florence toward the
end of the month. He is extremely enthusiastic about the Realist ex-
hibition scheduled this year in Paris and has invited us to participate
in the one planned for next year. ... He appeared to me as an im-
mensely perceptive and serious man; in the midst of all this, the fact
that he is rich must help him considerably."
Pietro Dini, Diego Martelli, Florence: II Torchio, 1978, p. 150.
13 April
In a letter to De Nittis, then in London, the artist Marcellin Des-
boutin writes: "What is Degas up to? Nobody, not even his brother,
has any news of him. Some say he is still in Naples, others claim he
is at the festivities in Venice, your wife imagines he may be in Lon-
don. ... In any case, he has not gone through Florence yet. He
had a letter addressed to my daughter there, but the day before yes-
terday I heard from Marie and she had not seen him at all!" Follow-
ing his stay in Florence, Degas in fact stops in Pisa and Genoa.
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, pp. 353—54; Reff 1985, Notebook 26 (BN, Car-
net 7, PP- 73, 79)-
Fig. 107. MlleMalo (Mile Mallot? ) (L444), c. 1875. Pastel, 205/sX
i53/4 in. (52.2 X 41. 1 cm). The Barber Institute of Fine Arts,
The University of Birmingham
213
1875-1876
7july
Degas writes to Therese Morbilli about conflicts in the Degas family
in Naples and tells her that he is planning a holiday in Touraine.
Unpublished letter, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
3 August
Informs Tissot of his plan to visit London briefly.
Letter, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters 1947, no. 15, p. 42.
19 August
Achille De Gas is attacked in front of the Bourse in Paris by Victor-
Georges Legrand, the husband of Achille's former mistress, Therese
Mallot. Achille fires a revolver twice, slightly wounding Legrand.
On 24 September he is sentenced to six months in prison. On 20
November the sentence is commuted to one month in prison and
payment of a fine of Fr 50.
Trial records, Archives, City of Paris; Le Temps, 26 September 1876.
autumn
The Rehearsal before the Ballet (L362, private collection) is shown at
Deschamps 's gallery in London.
Pickvance 1963, p. 265.
10 December
The question of Auguste De Gas's estate and his firm's large debts
becomes pressing. The artist's uncle Henri Musson writes from
Paris to New Orleans requesting that Rene De Gas repay the loan
he received from the firm in 1872.
Rewald 1946 GBA, p. 121.
end of 187$
Members of the dissolved Societe Anonyme des Artistes plan a sec-
ond exhibition to be held in the spring of 1876.
1876
30 March
Opening of the 2e Exposition de peinture, at Galerie Durand-Ruel, 1 1
rue Le Peletier. The exhibition catalogue lists twenty-two works by
Degas, nearly all for sale. The Absinthe Drinker (cat. no. 172), listed
as "Dans un cafe" and apparently not exhibited, is sent to London
where Deschamps sells it to Henry Hill, a collector from Brighton.
Evidently prompted by the need to sell as many works as possible,
Degas also shows with his paintings photographs of works not in
the exhibition.
Ronald Pickvance, " 'L'absinthe' in England," Apollo, LXXVIL15, May
1963, pp. 395-96; Georges Riviere, V Esprit Modeme, 13 April 1876.
April
The press is generally divided about Degas's selection, with Arthur
Baigneres calling him "the pontiff, I think, of the sect of intransi-
gent Impressionists." There are, nevertheless, good reviews from
Silvestre, Huysmans, Alexandre Pothey, Pierre Dax, and others.
Alexandre Pothey, La Presse, 31 March 1876; Armand Silvestre, L'Opinion
Nationale, 2 April 1876; Arthur Baigneres, L'Echo Universel, 13 April 1876;
Pierre Dax, L' Artiste, 1 May 1876; Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gazette des Ama-
teurs, 1876; see 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 490-91.
In London, Deschamps exhibits four dance pictures (see cat. nos. 106,
124, 128, 129), all of which are bought by Hill. Again Deschamps
also shows photographs of other works by Degas.
Pickvance 1963, p. 265 n. 82.
20 April
Degas moves from 77 rue Blanche. Desboutin writes to Mme De
Nittis: "The very day before he would have been tossed out on the
street, he managed (a truly lucky man) to find a more marvelous
apartment and studio than anyone could have dreamed up for him,
had they made a pattern based on the shape of his brain and the na-
ture of his habits. There is a glass roof, as in a photographer's stu-
dio, perched above a small two-storey house. The view from up
there would astound anybody, from the tight-laced bourgeois to
the Intransigents, the dancers or laundresses. . . . All this on my
doorstep, between rue de Laval and place Pigalle, at 4 rue Frochot."
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, pp. 357-58.
IS May
Degas informs Deschamps that he is sending him Dancers Preparing
for the Ballet (fig. 109), advising great caution in the handling and
varnishing of his recently completed works and requesting with
desperate urgency Fr 7,000 owed to him.
Reff 1968, p. 90.
1 June
After receiving Fr 2,500, Degas thanks Deschamps, offers him Por-
traits in an Office (New Orleans) (cat. no. 115) and other works for
sale, and tells him that the De Gas firm in Paris is to be liquidated.
"You will be receiving my Cotton and a few small items that you
must be sure to sell for me. ... It will be necessary not only to
proceed with our liquidation but also to earn enough money to get
through the summer. ... I have been quite shaken by the poor
weather, but I hope that more moderate temperatures will soon ar-
rive and that my sight will stabilize somewhat. What anguish I am
experiencing again for my life and for my beloved art, which I will
lose should the illness take the slightest turn for the worse. A hell-
ish adventure! ... I will soon be traveling to London with a small
case of works."
Unpublished letter, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Fig. 108. Marcellin Desboutin, Edgar Degas, also called
Degas in a Hat, 1876. Drypoint, 83Ax 53/4 in. (22.8 X 14.5 cm).
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
214
1876-1877
Fig. 109. Dancers Preparing for the Ballet (L512), 1875-76. Oil on canvas,
30 X 233/s in. (73.5 X 59.5 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago
June
Visits Naples with his brother Achille in a last attempt to raise
funds from creditors. From Naples he appeals to Deschamps on
16 June for the money still owed to him. "Oh, the time one must
spend on things other than one's livelihood, taking humiliating
steps, attending interminable discussions that one cannot even un-
derstand, in order to defend one's name in matters of bankruptcy! I
am now in Naples with my brother Achille to obtain our Neapoli-
tan creditors' signature on a settlement that has been dragging on
for six months. . . . Have ready, my dear Deschamps, the 4,500
francs that you still owe to me. Insure that I may have them without
fail no later than a week after my return to Paris. . . . And my
Cotton? Do your best to set a price for me, even if lower than the one
I mentioned before. I need money, and I can't fuss over this any
more. And time presses more than ever." Degas returns to Paris at the
end of the month.
Unpublished letter, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
4j»iy
The critic Jules Claretie writes to Mme De Nittis: "It so happens I
met Degas yesterday, just back from Naples and going to the Gare
de l'Est to wait for his brother, who is returning from some place
or other. He told me about a new technique for engraving he had
discovered! I told him what I thought of these useless little out-
bursts of vanity. I am going to write to Rossano."
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, p. 339.
Degas is evidently very active producing monotypes and prints.
Letter from Desboutin to Mme De Nittis, in Pittaluga and Piceni 1963,
p- 359; see "The First Monotypes," p. 257.
28 August
After a visit to Paris, Rene De Gas leaves for New Orleans, his debt
still unpaid. On 3 1 August, Achille De Gas notifies Michel Musson
in New Orleans that the bank has finally been closed and that
Rene's failure to repay the loan has forced him, Edgar, and Mar-
guerite to live on a bare subsistence in order to honor the bank's
debts.
Rewald 1946 GBA, p. 122.
30 September
The poet Stephane Mallarme includes a flattering account of Degas
in his article "The Impressionists and Edouard Manet," published
in London.
Stephane Mallarme, "The Impressionists and Edouard Manet" (translated
by George T. Robinson), Art Monthly Review and Photographic Portfolio, 1:9,
30 September 1876, pp. 117-22.
1877
January
After two unsuccessful attempts, Degas has a work accepted at the
annual Salon of the Societe Bearnaise des Amis des Arts at Pau. He
produces an etching for the catalogue (RS24).
Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 24, p. 68.
Judgment is rendered in favor of the Banque d'Anvers, committing
Degas and Henri Fevre to pay a total of Fr 40,000 in monthly in-
stallments.
Rewald 1946 GBA, pp. 122-23.
Fig. no. Woman Standing in the Street (J216), 1876-77. Monotype,
plate 63/sX45/8 in. (16 X n. 8 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du
Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF30020)
215
1877-1878
March
Degas writes to Faure reiterating his intention to finish his commis-
sions as soon as he is relieved of his unending financial troubles.
Plans for a third group exhibition are at an advanced state.
Lettres Degas 1945, XII, p. 40; Degas Letters 1947, no. 20, pp. 45-46.
4 April
Opening of the Exposition de peinture, at 6 rue Le Peletier. Degas
exhibits three groups of monotypes and some twenty-three paint-
ings and pastels that include cafe-concert scenes, In a Cafe (The Ab-
sinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172; not listed in the 1877 catalogue), and
Mme Gaujelin (fig. 25), prominently displayed on an easel.
Frederic Chevalier, L* Artiste, 1 May 1877, pp. 329-33; Claretie 1877; see
1986 Washington, D.C., p. 492.
April
Although Georges Lafenestre and Charles Maillard publish unfav-
orable reviews, several critics praise the cafe-concert scenes and
Claretie compares Degas's monotypes to Goya's. Claretie writes to
De Nittis: "I saw the Impressionist exhibition. Degas shone. The
rest is mad, truly mad and ugly." While Degas's realism is admired
by many, Paul Mantz calls him "a cruel painter," but adds percep-
tively: "It is not exactly clear why M. Edgar Degas includes himself
among the Impressionists. He has a distinct personality and stands
apart in this group of would-be innovators." The same observation
is also made, spitefully, by Charles-Albert d'Arnoux [Bertall]: "He
has reserved a small chapel for himself, setting up his own separate
altar, with its enthusiasts and its faithful. . . . Surely before long,
like the high priest Manet, he will move on to opportunism and the
Salon."
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, p. 344, letter of 11 April; Paul Mantz, Le Temps,
22 April 1877; Bertall, Paris-Journal, 9 April 1877; see 1986 Washington,
D.C., pp. 491-92.
21 May
In a letter to Mme De Nittis, Degas complains about his eyesight
and about the behavior of Deschamps, from whom he has requested
the return of Portraits in an Office (New Orleans) (cat. no. 115); he
mentions the possibility of a two-day visit to London. He also gives
her news of the Impressionist exhibition: "Our exhibition on rue Le
Peletier went quite well. We covered our costs and made about sixty
francs in twenty-five days. I had a small room all to myself, full of
my wares. I sold only one, unfortunately. I am negotiating to sell
that old oil portrait of a woman with a cashmere shawl on her knees
[i.e., Mme Gaujelin, fig. 25]." In a somewhat uncharacteristic aside —
Mme De Nittis not being among his closest friends — he tells her:
"Living alone, without a family, is really too hard. I never would
have suspected it would cause me so much suffering. Here I am
now, getting old, in poor health, and almost penniless. I've really
made a mess of my life on this earth."
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, pp. 368-69.
August
Toward the end of the month, Degas visits the Valpincpns at Menil-
Hubert.
1 September
From Menil-Hubert, he writes to Ludovic Halevy volunteering to
help him with his comedy La Cigale, which features a fictitious "in-
tentionist" painter (based partly on Degas) and his model, a laun-
dress. La Cigale opens on 6 October at the Varietes.
Lettres Degas 1945, XIII bis, pp. 41-42; Degas Letters 1947, no. 22,
pp. 46-47.
September
Having returned from Menil-Hubert, Degas plans a trip to Fon-
tainebleau with the painter Louis-Alphonse Maureau. Plans are can-
celled, however, when Maureau has a severe attack of arthritis. At
the same time, Degas's lease on his apartment on rue Frochot is due
to expire. He writes to Halevy: "I am scouring the neighborhood.
Fig. in. Study for Mile La La at the Cirque Fernando (IV:255.a),
dated 1879. Black chalk and pastel, 18V2 X 12V2 in. (47 X 31.8 cm).
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The University of Birmingham
Where will Sabine and I lay our heads? I can't find anything de-
cent." And, again: "I am looking in vain for a lodging for October."
(Sabine Neyt was Degas's housekeeper.)
Unpublished letters to Ludovic Halevy, Bibliotheque de l'lnstitut, Paris.
16 September
Accompanied by Claretie, he visits the Neapolitan painter Federico
Rossano. Following the visit, Claretie observes in a letter to De
Nittis, "Degas seems to me to have calmed down."
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, p. 347, letter of 21 September.
October
By the end of the month Degas has rented an apartment at 50 rue
Lepic.
1878
January
The Societe Bearnaise des Amis des Arts at Pau exhibits Portraits in
an Office (New Orleans) (cat. no. 115).
February
Louisine Elder, the friend of Mary Cassatt who would later marry
Henry Osborne Havemeyer and with him become a generous col-
lector of the work of Degas, lends Ballet Rehearsal (fig. 130) to the
216
1878-1879
Eleventh Annual Exhibition of the American Water-color Society in New
York; it is the first work by Degas to be exhibited in North America.
March
Probably through the intercession of Degas's friend Alphonse
Cherfils, the Musee de Pau acquires Portraits in an Office (New Or-
leans), the artist's first work to enter a public collection. On 19
March, in a telegram to the curator of the museum, Charles Lecoeur,
Degas accepts the offer of a payment of Fr 2,000.
Unpublished telegram to Lecoeur, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Pau. See cat.
no. 115.
13 April
Rene De Gas deserts his family in New Orleans; he will later settle
in New York. Rene's action results in a breach between him and
Edgar that will take years to heal. The artist's unforgiving attitude
offends his brother-in-law Edmondo Morbilli.
Rewald 1946 GBA, pp. 124-25; Boggs 1963, p. 276.
IS October
Dr. Etienne Jules Marey (1830-1904), professor of natural history at
the University of Paris, publishes "Moteurs animes: experiences de
physiologie graphique" in La Nature. On 4 December, Gaston Tissan-
dier presents a discussion of Muybridge's photographs ("Les allures
du cheval") in the same publication. An entry in Degas's notebook
from this period mentions La Nature.
Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 81).
December
Degas dates a study of a dancer (11:230. 1, private collection, Paris).
1879
January
Degas attends performances at the Cirque Fernando, where he
makes several studies for Mile La La (fig. 98).
Dated drawings: L525, 19 January (J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville);
L524, 21 January; L523, 24 January (Tate Gallery, London); IV:255.a,
25 January (fig. 111).
March
Degas is active preparing the fourth group exhibition. His note-
book contains ground plans of the rooms, projects for a poster, and
lists of prospective artists.
Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, pp. 33, 54, 64, 65 [plans], 39, 56,
58, 59 [poster], 92, 93 [artists]).
Adolf Menzel's Supper at the Ball (fig. 112), painted the previous
year, is exhibited in Paris by Goupil et Cie. Both Degas and Du-
ranty are very enthusiastic about it, but their admiration is not
shared by Pissarro and Mary Cassatt. Degas makes a sketch and an
oil copy from memory (fig. 113), while Duranty prepares a major
article on Menzel, his last published work.
Reff 1977, pp. 26-27; Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 47); Let-
tres Pissarro 1980, no. 188, pp. 249-50; Edmond Duranty, "Adolphe
Menzel," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXL3, March 1880, pp. 201-17, XXIL2,
August 1880, pp. 105-24.
3 March
Degas dates a portrait of Duranty (L518, private collection, Wash-
ington, D.C.).
3 April
Degas dates a portrait of Diego Martelli (fig. 147).
10 April
Opening of the 4me Exposition de peinture, at 28 avenue de 1' Opera.
Degas exhibits a group of twenty paintings and pastels as well as
five fans.
April-June
The chorus of praise for his work is led by Alfred de Lostalot, who
writes: "The honors fall, as always, to M. Degas . . . one of the
few artists of our time whose works will endure." Conservative
critics, however, are still perturbed by his unorthodox technique.
Henry Havard notes perceptively: "His brain seems to be a furnace
in which seethes a whole new kind of painting, as yet unborn."
Disappointed by Degas's loyalty to the Impressionists, Bertall per-
sists in baiting him: "We are inclined to think that M. Degas is
feigning insanity. Isn't his independence leading him to sacrifice
everything for love or friendship? In any case, M. Degas is making
a name for himself that is heard everywhere. Perhaps one day,
when he has become an opportunist, he will aim at chairing some
group at the Institute."
Henry Havard, Le Siecle, 27 April 1879; Bertall, L' Artiste, 1 June 1879,
p. 398; see 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 492-93.
Fig. 112. Adolf Menzel, Supper at the Ball, also called Ball at the Prussian
Court, 1878. Oil on canvas, 28 X 36 in. (71 X90 cm). Nationalgalerie,
Berlin
Fig. 113. Supper at the Ball, after Adolf Menzel (L190), 1879. Oil on panel,
18 X 26V& in. (45.5 X 66.5 cm). Musee d'Art Modeme, Strasbourg
217
1879-1880
Fig. 114. Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (RS51), 1879-80.
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint, ninth state, 10V2 X g5/a in. (26. 7 X
24.5 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris
(RF4046D)
22-24 April
Two young men, Emile Abadie, a baker, and Pierre Gille, a florist,
are arrested along with three accomplices for the murder of a woman
in Montreuil. Under the headline "Moralite du theatre naturaliste,"
VEvenement sarcastically points out that the two had acted as extras
in UAssommoir by Zola. The trial takes place in August 1879. Aba-
die and Gille are sentenced to death, but the sentence is commuted.
After the conclusion of the trial, another accomplice, Michel Knob-
loch, confesses to having participated with Abadie and Paul Kirail
in a different murder, and the case is reopened.
Records of the Cour d'Appel de Paris, Archives de Paris, D.2V889; Pierre
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siecle, Paris, n.d., XVII (2nd
supp.), pp. 4-5, tinder "Abadie, Gilles [sic], Knobloch, Kirail"; Emile Zola,
Correspondance (general editor, B. H. Bakker), III, Montreal: Presses de
1'Universite de Montreal /Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Re-
cherche Scientifique, 1982, p. 318.
May
The second edition of Le cqffret de santal by Charles Cros, with a
poem — "Six tercets" — dedicated to Degas, is published.
11 May
In a letter to Felix Bracquemond, Degas mentions visits to printers
and discussions about the publication of Le Jour et la Nuit, a journal
that was to have been devoted to the graphic production of mem-
bers of the Societe Anonyme des Artistes.
Lettres Degas 1945, XVIII, pp. 45-46; Degas Letters 1947, no. 27, pp. 50-51.
20 June
Henri Degas, the artist's last surviving uncle, dies in Naples. His
share of the Neapolitan estate is inherited by Lucie Degas.
Raimondi 1958, p. 117.
1880
Dated works: The Violinist (BR99, pastel, private collection,
Zurich); Fan: The Cafe-concert Singer (cat. no. 211).
24 January
Le Gaulois announces the first issue of Le Jour et la Nuit, due to ap-
pear on 1 February, with prints by Degas, Mary Cassatt, Caille-
botte, Pissarro, Jean-Louis Forain, Bracquemond, Jean-Francois
Raffaelli, and Rouart: "Initially, Le Jour et la Nuit will not appear at
set intervals. Its price will vary between five and twenty francs, de-
pending on the number of works that it contains. . . . The profits
or losses will be divided among or sustained by the publication's
contributors." However, Le Jour et la Nuit is not published.
Tout-Paris [pseud.], "La journee parisienne: impressions d'un impression-
niste," Le Gaulois, 24 January 1880; Charles F. Stuckey, "Recent Degas
Publications," Burlington Magazine, CXXVII:988, July 1985, p. 466.
March
Degas and Caillebotte argue over the poster for the fifth group ex-
hibition. Degas asks that it not list the names of the participating
artists. In a letter to Bracquemond, he writes: "I had to give in to
him and let them appear. When will we stop playing at being
stars?"
Lettres Degas 1945, XXIV, pp. 51-52; Degas Letters 1947, no. 33, p. 55
(translation revised).
I April
Opening of the $me Exposition de peinture, at 10 rue des Pyramides.
The catalogue lists for Degas eight paintings and pastels, two groups
of drawings, a group of prints, and a sculpture, The Little Fourteen-
Year-Old Dancer (see figs. 158-160), but his section of the exhibition
is incomplete at the time of the opening. Some of the missing
Fig. 115. Jean-Louis Forain, On the Lookout for a
Star (Portrait of Degas), c. 1880. Pencil, 6^/4X4 in.
(17.2 X 10.2 cm). Collection of Mme Chagnaud-
Forain, Paris
218
i88o-i88i
works are installed later, but The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer and
Young Spartans (cat. no. 40) are not shown at all.
April
Generally favorable reviews are led by Huysmans's admirable long
notice (later reprinted in L'art modeme) and by Silvestre's perfunctory
declaration: "As in previous years, Degas remains the incontestable
and uncontested master. . . . Everything is so interesting that it is
hard to praise it again without repeating oneself."
Huysmans 1883, pp. 85-123; Armand Silvestre, La Vie Modeme, 24 April
1880, p. 262; see 1986 Washington, D.C., p. 494.
9 April
The writer Edmond Duranty dies. Degas and the writer Emile
Zola are named executors of his will. Degas adds Duranty's por-
trait to the exhibition and through the remaining part of the year
attempts to organize a sale to raise funds for Pauline Bourgeois,
Duranty's companion.
Lettres Degas 1945, XXIX, XXX, pp. 57-59; Degas Letters 1947, nos. 38,
39, pp. 61-62, "Annotations," no. 38, pp. 262-63; Crouzet 1964, p. 402;
unpublished letter to Guillemet, 6 January [188 1], Durand-Ruel archives,
Paris; see "The Portrait of Edmond Duranty," p. 309.
In a letter, Mary Cassatt's mother blames Degas for the fact that Le
Jour et la Nuit was never published.
Mathews 1984, pp. 150-51.
August
The second Abadie trial takes place. Degas attends a session, making
sketches of the murderers.
Reff 1985, Notebook 33 (private collection, pp. 5v- 7, iov-ii, 15V-16).
See fig. 104.
September
A projected holiday at Croissy is delayed by work and by the re-
fusal of his housekeeper, Sabine Neyt, to accompany him. In a let-
ter to Halevy, he complains of having to constantly paint ballet
scenes "for . . . that is the only thing people want from your un-
fortunate friend."
Unpublished letters to Ludovic Halevy, Bibliotheque de l'lnstitut, Paris.
winter
Degas seeks additional art dealers to sell his work. On 23 December,
Pissarro writes to Theodore Duret: "Degas has besieged [Adrien]
Beugniet."
Lettres Pissarro 1980, no. 83, pp. 140-41.
27 December
For the first time in over six years, Durand-Ruel buys a work from
Degas, a pastel of jockeys (stock no. 648). Two more pastels, "Loge de
danseuse" (fig. 116) and "Dans les coulisses: chanteuse guettant son
entree" (L715, private collection, Paris), are purchased by him in
the months that follow (stock nos. 766, 800).
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
1881
January
In the absence of Zola, who is busy with dress rehearsals for Nana,
Degas organizes the Duranty sale. He solicits works from artists
and contributes three works himself: a version of Duranty's portrait
(L518, private collection, Washington, D.C.); Woman with Field
Glasses (fig. 131); and a drawing of a dancer adjusting her slipper
(Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Lewyt collection, New York, reproduced
in Les Beaux- Arts Illustres, III: 10, 1879, p. 84). Zola writes the pref-
ace to the catalogue. The sale takes place on 28-29 January, hut the
results are disappointing. Degas buys one of Duranty's drawings by
Menzel, Head of a Worker, Lit Jrom Below (reproduced in Edmond
Duranty, "Adolphe Menzel," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXII:2, August
1880, p. 107).
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Fig. 116. Dancer in Her Dressing Room (L561), c. 1879. Pastel,
345/sX i47/8 in. (87.9 X 37.7 cm). Cincinnati Art Museum
219
i88i
24 January
Degas and Caillebotte disagree on the nature of the exhibitions to be
held by the Independants and the contributors recruited by Degas.
Caillebotte writes a long letter to Pissarro criticizing Degas and ad-
vocating exhibitions restricted to the Impressionist group. He also
notes: "Degas introduced disunity into our midst. Unfortunately
for him, he has a bad character. He spends his time holding forth at
the [Cafe de la] Nouvelle-Athenes or in society, when he would be
much better occupied in doing more painting. No one denies that
he is a hundred times right in what he says and that he talks about
painting with infinite wit and good sense. (And isn't that the most
evident part of his reputation?) But it remains true that the real ar-
gument of a painter is his painting and that if he were a thousand
times more right in speaking, he would nevertheless be still more
in the right in working. Today he says he needs to earn a living,
but he will not grant the same need to Renoir and Monet. But be-
fore his financial losses, was he anything other than what he is to-
day? Ask anyone who knew him, yourself first of all. No, this man
has gone sour. He does not have the high rank his talent entitles
him to, and he holds it against the entire world although he will
never admit as much." As usual, Pissarro remains loyal to Degas;
Caillebotte withdraws from the exhibition.
Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte: sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris: La Bibliotheque des
Arts, 1978, no. 22, pp. 245-46.
2 April
Opening of the 6me Exposition de peinture, at 35 boulevard des Capu-
cines. Degas 's section of the exhibition contains four portraits, two
of the three drawings entitled Criminal Physiognomy (fig. 104) based
on the Abadie trial, and a Laundress. At the opening, there is again
the empty case intended to contain The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer ; the sculpture finally makes its appearance in the exhibition
by 16 April (see figs. 158-160).
April
Many reviews are published before The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer is exhibited,and a number of critics are disconcerted by the
paucity of works by Degas. The arrival of the sculpture unleashes a
controversy in which only Huysmans, Claretie, Nina de Villard,
and — unexpectedly — Paul de Charry recognize it as a masterpiece.
Mantz renews his old charges of cruelty, and Albert Wolff delivers
his most scathing attack to date: "He is the standard-bearer of the
Independants. He is the leader; he is fawned upon at the Cafe de la
Nouvelle-Athenes. And thus, to the end of his career, he will reign
over a little circle; later, in a better life, he will hover . . . forever,
like some sort of Father Eternal, God of failures."
Huysmans 1883, pp. 225-57; Jules Claretie, Le Temps, 5 April 1881 (re-
printed with slight changes in La Vie a Paris: 1881, Paris: Victor Havard,
1881, pp. 148-51); Villard 1881; Paul de Charry, Le Pays, 22 April 1881;
Paul Mantz, Le Temps, 23 April 1881; Albeit Wolff, Le Figaro, 10 April
1 881; see also 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 494-95; extracts of some of the
reviews are included in Millard 1976, pp. 119-26.
220
Degas and Faure
cat. nos. 68, 95, 98, 103, 122, 130, 158,
159, 256
Degas formed his first serious contact with
the art market in 1872, prior to his depar-
ture for New Orleans, when between Janu-
ary and September Paul Durand-Ruel bought
eight paintings from him.1 Durand-Ruel's
considerable interest in Degas had actually
led him to buy works by the artist from other
sources as well, yet despite his efforts to sell
the paintings in Paris, London, and Brussels,
he succeeded in 1872 in disposing of only
two works.2 Degas's understandable disap-
pointment was expressed in a letter to James
Tissot in which he wrote: "I want to bring
several pictures to London. . . . Durand-
Ruel takes everything I do, but scarcely sells
anything. Manet, always confident, says
that he is saving us as a choice bit."3
In his own (occasionally inaccurate) mem-
oirs, Durand-Ruel remarked about that pe-
riod: "Degas . . . began to deliver a series
of pastels and pictures to me which did not
excite much interest at the time and that,
over a number of years, I had a great deal of
difficulty in selling, in spite of their very
low price. Faure, whom I knew for a long
time and with whom I was in contact dur-
ing our stay in London, where we lived in
neighboring houses on Brompton Crescent,
bought some of these pictures from me —
which I subsequently bought back.'*4
Jean-Baptiste Faure (1830-1914), a famous
baritone, had established a reputation as a
collector of works by Delacroix, Corot, and
the Barbizon school. In a surprising reversal
of taste, and with Durand-Ruel's help, he
began buying on a considerable scale in 1873
paintings by Manet and the Impressionists,
eventually assembling a vast collection of
their work. His much-delayed return to the
Opera de Paris occurred while Degas was in
the United States. And Degas' s own return
to Paris coincided with Faure's first pur-
chases of his work, an important moment
that marked the beginning of a difficult rela-
tionship in which Degas apparently behaved
with less than customary rectitude. From
that moment, and for a period that extended
over several years, Faure became his most
persistent patron and the bane of his exis-
tence, eventually owning eleven of Degas's
paintings, the largest collection in France.5
The vexing question of the transactions
between Degas and Faure has been dealt with
briefly by Marcel Guerin, who consulted the
Faure archives before they were destroyed in
the Second World War, and more recently
by Anthea Callen in an extensive unpublished
dissertation on Faure as a collector.6 Accord-
ing to Guerin:
The famous singer Faure was introduced
to Degas by his friend Manet in about
1872. At that time he commissioned Degas
to paint a picture of an examination or
dance class at the Opera (today in the
Payne collection in New York), a first and
very different version of the painting in
the Camondo collection at the Louvre. . . .
Degas delivered it to Faure in 1874 at the
price of Fr 5,000— a high one for those days.
At the same time, Degas told Faure that
he did not want to leave certain of his pic-
tures at Durand-Ruel's for sale, as he was
unhappy with them. Accordingly, Faure
bought these pictures from Durand-Ruel
for Fr 8,000 on 5 March 1874. They were:
L'orchestre, Le banquier (possibly the por-
trait of Ruelle, the cashier employed by
M. De Gas, senior, now part of the Ray-
mond Koechlin bequest to the Louvre),
Chevaux au pre, Sortie du pesage, Les musi-
ciens, La blanchisseuse. Faure returned the
six pictures to Degas and paid an additional
Fr 1,500 in exchange for four large, very
elaborate pictures, to be painted by Degas:
Les danseuses roses, Uorchestre de Robert le
Diable, Grand champ de courses, Les grandes
blanchisseuses.
The first two canvases were delivered
by Degas in 1876. (Robert le Diable is today
in the South Kensington Museum.) . . .
When the other two were still not delivered
by the beginning of 1887, Faure lost patience
and filed a suit against Degas. As a result
Degas had to deliver the pictures.7
Insofar as Guerin's statements can be sup-
plemented or corrected with evidence pro-
vided by Degas's correspondence or by the
Durand-Ruel archives, the sequence of events
appears to have been as follows.
On 25 April 1873, Faure purchased from
Charles Deschamps, the manager of the Lon-
don branch of Durand-Ruel, At the Races in
the Countryside (cat. no. 95), with payments
going to the London branch.8 Two weeks la-
ter, on 7 May 1873, Faure bought two more
racetrack scenes: Before the Race (fig. 87), 9
and "The Racecourse," no longer identifi-
able.10 As for the first purchase, Durand-
Ruel records indicate that the sale was made
through Charles Deschamps, and the nature
of the payments suggests the purchases were
made in London, before Faure's return to
Paris. Whether through Manet, Stevens, or,
more probably, Deschamps or Durand-Ruel,
the artist and Faure probably met not in
1872 but after April 1873, an^ at some point
during 1873 Faure certainly commissioned
from Degas the first of two ballet scenes he
later owned. In December 1873, delayed by
his father's sudden illness in Italy, the artist
apologized to Faure from Turin for not hav-
ing finished the picture and a "bagatelle" —
possibly a fan.11 As Guerin has noted, the
painting — The Dance Class (cat. no. 130) —
was to be finished, not without difficulty,
sometime later.12
On 15 or 16 February 1874, Faure bought
from Durand-Ruel in Paris a fourth and fi-
nal racetrack scene by Degas, Racehorses be-
fore the Stands (cat. no. 68), and it is proba-
bly around that time that the artist proposed
to Faure the somewhat unusual strategy
noted by Guerin: Faure was to redeem from
Durand-Ruel six works that Degas wanted
to repossess in exchange for new, larger
compositions to be painted by the artist. All
things considered, it would have been a haz-
ardous scheme even for a less dilatory painter
than Degas. This notwithstanding, on 5 or
6 March 1874, Faure paid Durand-Ruel
Fr 8,800, nearly equivalent to the price paid
by the dealer for the six works, and the art-
ist recovered his paintings.13 One of the pic-
tures, recorded by Guerin as "Le banquier"
but listed without a title in the Durand-Ruel
archives, has been identified by Lemoisne as
Sulking (cat. no. 85), 14 and it can be ascer-
tained that the remaining five were Orchestra
Musicians (cat. no. 98), the first version of The
Ballet from "Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 103),
Woman Ironing (cat. no. 122), Horses in the
Field (L289), and very probably Leaving the
Paddock (L107, Isabella Stewart Gardner Mu-
seum, Boston).15
The new compositions that Degas agreed
to paint as substitutes entangled him in a
protracted commitment that proved difficult
to fulfill. In October 1874, when Faure
threatened to leave the Opera because of a
proposed increase in admission prices for
the performances of Adelina Patti, Degas
expressed concern over the status of his ar-
rangements with the singer in a letter to
Deschamps, concluding: "Alas, that doesn't
bode very well for the business of the paint-
ings."16 A subsequent letter to Deschamps
written in early December 1874 establishes,
however, that at least The Dance Class (cat.
no. 130) was completed and delivered, but
that Faure was becoming impatient about
the remaining paintings.17
The account of the new paintings — five in
number according to records in the Durand-
Ruel archives, rather than four as listed by
Guerin — is clouded by the absence of evidence
about the date of delivery. Fortunately, the
works are identifiable. In roughly chronolog-
ical order, they are: Dancers (fig. 181), the sec-
ond version of The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
(cat. no. 159), The Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys
(cat. no. 157), Woman Ironing (cat. no. 256),
and Women Ironing (fig. 232). 18 Of these,
only Dancers is never mentioned by name in
Degas's correspondence.
Degas's commitment to Faure could not
have occurred at a worse moment. The
221
death of his father in February 1874, that of
his uncle Achille in February 1875, and the
great debts accumulated by his brother Rene
precipitated the fall of the De Gas bank and
placed the artist in the thankless position of
having to paint for the art market at a mo-
ment when Paul Durand-Ruel, plagued by his
own financial misfortunes, could no longer
be of help. On the other hand, eager to es-
tablish a reputation, Degas wanted to sup-
ply Deschamps, his remaining dealer, with
pictures for exhibition and sale in London,
where prospects appeared more auspicious
than in Paris. Degas's letters to Deschamps
and to Faure brood relentlessly over this
conflict, in which evidently the artist's im-
mediate needs took precedence over Faure's
commissions. Faure was frequently away,
giving Degas a false sense of security that
alternated with attacks of panic at the idea of
the singer's return. From a letter to Tissot,
written probably in 1874, it is clear that the
artist intended to deliver the pictures to
Faure, who at the time was in London, but
had not succeeded in doing so: "My posi-
tion in London is in no way assured. Faure
will soon be back. His pictures have pro-
gressed very little so I should feel rather
embarrassed in front of him. Therefore I
hardly dare to idle around away from here. I
was counting on having something ready for
him when I went to London which I should
have shown at Deschamps for glory (!). . . .
They are not ready."19
As months, even years, passed, the tone
of Degas's letters to Faure became increas-
ingly apologetic about the paintings, ex-
plaining the causes for the delay. In a letter
of 1876, written in connection with yet an-
other of Faure's returns and his failure to de-
liver The Ballet from "Robert le Diable" (cat.
no. 159) and The Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys
(cat. no. 157), Degas wrote: "I have had to
earn my wretched living in order to devote
a little time to you; in spite of my anxiety
about your return, it was necessary to do
some small pastels. Please accept my apolo-
gies, if you still can."20 And a year later, in a
letter evidently written on 14 March 1877 in
answer to an appeal from Faure, he replied:
I received your letter with great sadness. I
prefer writing to seeing you.
Your pictures would have been finished
a long time ago if I were not forced every
day to do something to earn money.
You cannot imagine the burdens of all
kinds which overwhelm me.
Tomorrow is the 15th. I am going to
make a small payment and shall have a
short respite until the end of the month.
I shall devote this fortnight almost en-
tirely to you. Please be good enough to
wait until then.21
From the absence of references to The Ballet
from "Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 159) in the
correspondence exchanged after 1876, it may
be concluded that it was delivered during
that year, and the same most probably applies
to Dancers (fig. 181). Nevertheless, there
still remained The Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys,
Woman Ironing (cat. no. 256), and Women
Ironing (fig. 232), as emerges from the cor-
respondence of 1876 and 1877. During that
period, Degas appears to have also exchanged
works with Faure, as indicated by a letter
from Pissarro uncovered by Theodore Reff.22
It is surprising that there is no trace of further
contact between Degas and Faure from 1877
to 1886, though one cannot imagine that
Faure would not have continued to press the
artist into finishing the paintings. In 1881,
however, Faure, who was constantly buying
and selling pictures, decided to dispose of
three works by Degas — Before the Race (fig. 87),
The Ballet from "Robert le Diable, " and Dancers
(fig. 181), the latter two of which Degas had
painted for him only a few years earlier.23
Degas's own reaction to the sale is unknown,
but one wonders if it had an effect on the
delivery of the remaining paintings. In any
event, by April 1882, when his financial stand-
ing had improved, Degas's apparent indif-
ference to the question of his debt to Faure
surprised friends such as Eugene Manet (see
Chronology III, April 1882).
In 1887, the tone of the artist's letters had
not changed. Answering yet another appeal
from Faure on 2 January of that year, Degas
still explained:
It is getting more and more embarrassing
for me to be in your debt. And if I do not
discharge my debt it is because it is diffi-
cult for me to do so. This summer I set to
work again on your pictures, particularly
the one of the horses, and I had hoped to
finish it quickly. But a certain M[onsieur]
B. saw fit to leave me saddled with hav-
ing to produce a drawing and a picture
that he had ordered from me. In full sum-
mer this dead loss of Fr 3,000 overwhelmed
me. It was necessary to put aside every-
thing of M. Faure's in order to make others
that would enable me to live. I can only
work for you in my spare moments, and
they are rare.
The days are short; soon they will grow
longer, and if I earn a little money I will
be able to take up your work. I could go
into longer explanations. The ones I give
you are the simplest and the most irrefutable.
I beg you therefore to have a little more
patience, as I must, to finish things which
of necessity eat into my already limited
time, without recompense, but which love
and respect for my art will not let me ne-
glect.24
According to Guerin, at this point Faure
sued Degas for nondelivery of the paint-
ings. However, no papers connected with a
court case have been uncovered, suggesting
that the litigation was settled out of court.
Degas certainly delivered the works, for
they appear later in Faure's collection. It is
curious that, as events were about to develop,
Faure, perhaps regretting his sale of the sec-
ond version of Robert le Diable (cat, no. 159),
purchased the first version (cat. no. 103)
from Durand-Ruel on 14 February 1887. 25
The final chapter in the story of Degas's
connection with Faure unfolded in the early
1 890s, when the collector disposed of all his
works by Degas. On 2 January 1893, Faure
sold to Durand-Ruel, with vastly increased
valuations, five of the seven works he still
owned: Racehorses before the Stands (cat. no. 68),
At the Races in the Countryside (cat. no. 95),
The Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys (cat. no. 157),
Woman Ironing (cat. no. 256), and Women Iron-
ing (fig. 23 2). 26 Then, one year later, on 31
March 1894, he gave up the early version of The
Ballet from "Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 103).27
Last, in mid-February 1898, came the sale of
his one remaining work by Degas, The Dance
Class (cat. no. 130), the earliest of his com-
missions.28 When in 1902 Faure published
the Notice sur la collection J.-B. Faure with a
description of his remarkable holdings, Degas
was the only major modern painter to be
conspicuously absent from the catalogue.
1. In order of purchase, they were as follows: Janu-
ary, Dance Class (stock no. 943 /979, "Le foyer
de la danse," cat. no. 106) and The Ballet from
"Robert le Diable" (stock no. 978, "L'orchestre de
l'Opera," cat. no. 103); April, Before the Race
(stock no. 1332, fig. 87) and Horses in the Field
(stock no. 1350, "Chevaux dans un pre,*' L289);
June, "Mare with Colt" (stock no. 1724, uniden-
tified); August, Dance Class at the Opera (stock
no. 1824, "La le^on de danse," cat. no. 107); and
September, At the Races in the Countryside (stock
no. 1910 "La voiture," cat. no. 95) and Racehorses
before the Stands (stock no. 2052, "Avant la
course," cat. no. 68). The price paid for Dance
Class (cat. no. 106) is not recorded, but it was
valued at Fr 1,000 when exchanged with Premsel
and eventually sold to Brandon for Fr 1,200. The
remaining seven pictures were sold by Degas for
a total of Fr 8, 100, with Dance Class at the Opera
(cat. no. 107), the highest-priced work, at Fr 2,500.
2. From the dealer Reitlinger, The False Start (stock
no. 1 128, "Courses au Bois de Boulogne," fig. 69)
in February 1872, and "Le banquier" (stock no.
1 1 56, possibly cat. no. 85) in March; from the
collector Ferdinand Bischoffsheim, Leaving the
Paddock (stock no. 1367, presumably L107, Isa-
bella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston). The
only pictures sold by Durand-Ruel in 1872 were
Dance Class (cat. no. 106), bought by Brandon,
and Dance Class at the Opera (cat. no. 107),
bought in December 1872 by Louis Huth.
3. Degas, Paris, to James Tissot, London, undated,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Marguerite Kay's
English translation, dated "1873?" was published
in Degas Letters 1947, no. 8, p. 35 (translation
revised). From the evidence of the text, the date
should be summer 1872, when the first version
222
of The Ballet from "Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 103)
was sent by Durand-Ruel to London for exhibi-
tion.
4. "Memoires de Paul Durand-Ruel," in Venturi
1939, II, p. 194.
5. According to Anthea Callen, Faure owned a total
of sixteen works by Degas (actually he owned
only eleven); see Anthea Callen, "Faure and Ma-
net," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXXXIIL1262,
March 1974, pp. I74~75 n. 5.
6. See Guerin's annotation in Lettres Degas 1945,
pp. 31-32 n. 1; Degas Letters 1947, no. 10, "An-
notations," p. 261; Callen 1971, passim and nos.
190-205; and Anthea Callen, "Faure and Manet,"
in Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXXXHL1262, March
1974, pp. 157-78.
7. Lettres Degas 1945, V, pp. 31-32 n. 1; Degas
Letters 1947, "Annotations," no. 10, p. 261
(translation revised).
8. See Durand-Ruel journal (stock no. 1910, "La
voiture"). Listed in Callen 197 1 as no. 191, with
the same identification.
9. Before the Race is recorded in the Durand-Ruel
journal and stock book in 1872 and 1873, with-
out a title, as stock no. 1332, and still retains the
number inscribed on the back. When sold by
Faure to Durand-Ruel in 188 1 as "Jockeys," it
was listed under deposit no. 3059 and stock no.
870 in the firm's brouillard (ledger) and appears
also in the journal, without a title, and the stock
book. It is catalogued in Callen 197 1 under the
latter incarnation as no. 201 A "Jockeys," with
the tentative proposal that it is the painting in the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
10. The unidentified "Racecourse" was given by
Durand-Ruel the stock no. 2673 when it was
brought from Brussels, as an exchange, on 15
March 1873. It appears listed with this number in
the journal, the stock book, and the brouillard but
was not catalogued by Anthea Callen.
1 1 . Degas, Turin, to Faure, undated, but assigned by
Guerin to December 1873 in Lettres Degas 1945,
V, pp. 31-32; Degas Letters 1947, no. 10,
pp. 36-37. Excerpts of the letter are cited in
Chronology II, November 1873.
12. For this question, see "The Dance Class," p. 234.
13. The date is unclear. In the Durand-Ruel journal it
appears as 5 March, while in the brouillard it is
given as 6 March. The evidence that Faure did
not keep the paintings is to be derived from the
fact that Degas owned the works after 1874 and
sold three of them a second time to Durand-
Ruel: see cat. nos. 103, 85, 122. Horses in the Field
(L289) was given by Degas to Tissot, who sold it
to Durand-Ruel on 11 or 12 March 1890 (stock
no. 2654); Orchestra Musicians (cat. no. 98), at one
point owned by Bernheim-Jeune, was bought by
Durand-Ruel on 11 October 1899 (recorded in
the New York stock book, no. 2285); Leaving the
Paddock (L107) was in the artist's studio at the
time of his death.
14. See Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 83, and Reff 1976,
p. 118. Listed in Callen 1971, no. 193, with the
same identification. However, Henri Loyrette
points out that proof is lacking to make such an
identification (see cat. no. 85).
15. Two of the works, Leaving the Paddock and Horses
in the Field, appear with the same identification,
or tentative identification, in Callen 1971, nos. 200 A
and 203 A. Reasons for the identification of The
Ballet from "Robert le Diable" and Orchestra
Musicians (Callen 1971, nos. 204A and 205 A, un-
identified) are given in the provenances of cat.
nos. 103 and 98; the same applies to Woman Ironing
(cat. no. 122), tentatively identified in Callen
1971, no. 202A, as Woman Ironing (cat. no. 258).
Karen Haas at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Mu-
seum, Boston, generously agreed to unframe
Leaving the Paddock and indicated that no stock
number was inscribed on the back or on the
frame.
16. Unpublished letter from Degas, Paris, to Charles
Deschamps, London, 23 October 1874, Institut
Neerlandais, Paris. The year can be inferred from
the text of the letter.
17. Unpublished letter from Degas, Paris, to Charles
Deschamps, London, dated only "Monday" but
datable to December 1874 (a typescript of the let-
ter was kindly provided to the author by John
Rewald). For a discussion on the issue of dating
the letter, see "The Dance Class," p. 234.
18. Identifiable from the record of the subsequent
sale by Faure to Durand-Ruel listed in the firm's
brouillard, journal, and stock book. Anthea Callen
has identified four of the five works in Callen
197 1, under nos. 195-98. Although she listed
Dancers (fig. 181) as no. 199A, she did not pro-
pose an identification for it.
19. Degas, Paris, to James Tissot, London, dated only
"Monday"; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Degas
Letters 1947, no. 14, pp. 41-42. On the evidence
of the text, the letter must date from 1874.
20. Degas to Faure, postmarked (or dated by Guerin?)
1876, in Lettres Degas 1945, XI, p. 39; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 19, p. 45 (translation revised).
21. Degas to Faure, postmarked March 1876, in Lettres
Degas 1945, XII, p. 40; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 20, pp. 45-46.
22. Letter from Camille Pissarro to Degas, dated
1876 by Janine Bailly-Herzberg, concerning a
painting by Pissarro which Degas exchanged
with Faure. See Lettres Pissarro 1980, no. 45,
p. 101 n. 1.
23. Recorded in Durand-Ruel's brouillard, stock
book, and journal as sold to the dealer on 28 Feb-
ruary 1881 (stock nos. 869, 870, 871).
24. Degas to Faure, 2 January 1887, in Lettres Degas
1945, XCVII, pp. 123-24; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 107, pp. 121-22 (translation revised).
25. Sale to Faure recorded in the Durand-Ruel jour-
nal, 14 February 1887 (stock no. 2981), mis-
takenly titled "Le concert, Le ballet de Guillaume
Tell."
26. Recorded in the Durand-Ruel journal and stock
book as sold to the dealer on 2 January 1893
(stock nos. 2564-2568). Degas's reaction to the
sale is recorded in a letter to Henri Fevre: "After
having owned my paintings for a long time peo-
ple are beginning to sell them at a substantial
profit. That doesn't put five francs in my
pocket." See Fevre 1949, p. 97.
27. Sale recorded in the Durand-Ruel journal and
stock book, 31 March 1894 (stock no. 2981).
28. Sale recorded in the Durand-Ruel stock book, 19
February 1898, as "Le foyer de la danse" (stock
no. 4562).
122.
Woman honing
1873
Oil on canvas
2i3/sX i5V2in. (54.3X39.4 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.46)
Lemoisne 3 56
During a visit to Degas's studio on 13 Feb-
ruary 1874, Edmond de Goncourt admired
several paintings of laundresses and ironers.
He was later, in his published diary, to attri-
bute the modernism of these works to the
popularity of Manette Salomon, the novel he
wrote in collaboration with his brother and
which appeared in 1867. 1 The reverse was
to occur with Emile Zola, who included de-
scriptions of an ironers' shop in his novel
L'Assommoir, first serialized in 1876 and sub-
sequently published in 1877. According to
Jules Claretie, writing in 1877, Degas, "like
M. Zola, studied laundresses — and so thor-
oughly that the author of L'Assommoir said
to him, 'In my writing I have quite simply
described, in more than one place, some of
your paintings.' And there, in a manner of
speaking, was someone also working from
nature."2
Even given the relatively confused chro-
nology of the early paintings of ironers by
Degas, it can be said with certainty that the
New York Woman Ironing is one painting
that Edmond de Goncourt could not have
seen. Although the style gives no indication
of a date shortly before or after the artist's
voyage to New Orleans, it can be ascer-
tained that the painting existed by 6 June
1873, when Degas sold it to Durand-Ruel
for the rather large sum of Fr 2, 000. 3 It is
possible that this picture was the "Parisian
Laundress" exhibited in Durand-Ruel's gal-
lery in London in the winter of 1873-74,
and it is known that in March 1874 it formed
part of the group of six works Degas repos-
sessed from Durand-Ruel with the help of
Jean-Baptiste Faure. There is evidence that
the white area around the arms was re-
worked, perhaps indicating that the artist's
reason for reclaiming the painting may have
been a slight dissatisfaction with his execu-
tion of it. Whatever the reasons for its re-
turn, it is almost certain that in 1876 Degas
included it among the five ironers and
laundresses that he contributed to the sec-
ond Impressionist exhibition.
Despite the painting's modest dimen-
sions, its subject is conveyed with an au-
thority that defies size and with a restraint
that rejects all concessions to sentimentality.
It is the most economical as well as the no-
223
Hi
blest of Degas's early depictions of ironers,
with a slightly tragic cast mitigated only by
the wonderful effects of light. A charcoal
study for the figure (fig. 117), squared for
transfer, represents the ironer in the same
size as she appears in Woman Ironing (which
also retains matching traces of squaring).
An unpublished pencil study in a French
private collection, showing the composition
almost exactly as it appears in the painting,
gives every impression of being a composi-
tional study for it. The drawing even in-
cludes corrections for cropping the design at
the right and at the bottom that correspond
to the solution eventually adopted in the
painting.
1. See Journal Goncourt 1956, p. 968 n. 1, where it is
established that the reference to Manette Salomon,
lacking in the original diary, first appeared in the
version of the journal published in 1891.
2. Jules Claretie, "Le mouvement parisien — L'ex-
position des impressionnistes," L'ltutependance Beige,
15 April 1877, p. 1. Theodore Reff, who did not
subscribe to the idea of a direct influence of either
Degas or Zola on each other, nevertheless published
a particularly thorough analysis of Degas's ironers
(Reflf 1976, p. 168), citing a paragraph from Zola
that could well pass for a description of the painting
in the Metropolitan Museum in New ^Ybrk.
3. Durand-Ruel journal (stock no. 3132); the stock
number is stamped on the stretcher.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 14 (or 6) June 1873, for Fr 2,000 (stock
no. 3132, stamped on the stretcher); transferred to
Durand-Ruel, London, winter 1873; returned to
Durand-Ruel, Paris; bought back on behalf of the
artist by Jean-Baptiste Faure, Paris, 5 or 6 March
1874, for Fr 2, 000; resold by the artist to Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 29 February 1892, for Fr 2,500 (stock
no. 2039, inscribed on a label on the back); deposited
with Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 3 November 1893; re-
turned to Durand-Ruel, Paris, 13 February 1894;
sold to Durand-Ruel, New York, 4 October 1894
(stock no. 1204, inscribed on a label on the back);
bought by H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 18 De-
cember 1894, for Fr 2,500; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, 1907-29; her bequest to the museum
1929.
Fig. 117. Woman Ironing (111:269), c. 1873.
Charcoal, i63Ax 12 in. (42.5 X 30.5 cm).
Private collection
exhibitions : (?) 1876 Paris, no. 49 (as "Blanchisseuse
silhouette"); 1876, London, 168 New Bond Street,
opened 3 November, Seventh Exhibition of the Society
of French Artists, no. 80 (as "The Parisian Laun-
dress"); 1915 New York, no. 26 (as 1880); 1930 New
York, no. 56; 1944, Richmond, Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts, 16 January-13 February, Masterpieces of
Nineteenth Century French Painting, no. 22; 1977 New
York, no. 14 of paintings, repr.; 1979 Edinburgh, no.
70, repr. (as before 1872); 1986 Washington, D.C.,
no. 26, repr. (color).
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 112, repr.;
Burroughs 1932, p. 142, repr.; Mongan 1938, p. 301;
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 87, II, no. 356 (as c. 1874);
New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 77-78, repr.;
224
Minervino 1974, no. 368; Erich Steingraber, "La re-
passeuse: Zur friihesten Version des Themas von Ed-
gar Degas," Pantheon, XXXII, January-March 1974,
pp. 51-53 n. 17, fig. 3; RefFi976, pp. 166-68, 321 n.
68, fig. 118; Roberts 1976, fig. 30 p. 35 (as c. 1872 in
text, but 1874 in caption); Moffett 1979, p. 10, fig. 16
(color); The Realist Tradition: French Painting and
Drawing 1830-1900 (exhibition catalogue by Gabriel
P. Weisberg), Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art,
1980, p. 69; Keyser 198 1, p. 40; 1984 Tubingen, under
no. 88; Moffett 1985, pp. 72, 250, repr. (color) p. 73
(as c. 1874); Lipton 1986, pp. 117-18, 135, 140, 143,
fig. 68; Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 98, pi. 49.
The Rehearsal of the Ballet
on the Stage
cat. nos. 123-127
When Degas scholars became aware of the
existence of three very similar versions of the
same composition representing an onstage
ballet rehearsal, they began to try to place
the works in logical sequence. There has
never been any question that the largest of
these, the Musee d'Orsay version — Ballet
Rehearsal on Stage (cat. no. 123) — uncharac-
teristically painted in grisaille, is a work that
Degas showed in the 1874 Impressionist ex-
hibition and must therefore date from some-
time before April of that year. However, there
has always been less certainty about the date
of the two somewhat smaller versions now
in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Both works in the Metropolitan are on pa-
per, and, as Ronald Pickvance has revealed,
each is executed on top of a highly unusual
ink drawing, one more finished than the
other. The pictures were completed in differ-
ent mediums: The Rehearsal of the Ballet on
the Stage (cat. no. 124) was painted in es-
sence— that is, oil paint diluted with turpen-
tine— while The Rehearsal on the Stage (cat.
no. 125) was finished in pastel and, possibly,
some gouache.1 So far there has been agree-
ment on one point only: the pastel composi-
tion, more freely handled, has been consid-
ered by all to be the last work in the series.
Lemoisne, sensitive to the stylistic differ-
ences between the essence and pastel ver-
sions, dated the essence painting c, 1876,
tentatively recognizing it as a rehearsal sub-
ject exhibited by Degas in 1877, and placed
the pastel somewhat later, c. 1878-79. 2 Lillian
Browse decided on a shorter sequence of
events, dating the essence painting c. 1874-
75, closer to the Orsay version, and identify-
ing the pastel as the work exhibited in 1877,
hence dating it c. 18 76-77. 3
This speculative chronology was revised
with most interesting results in 1963, when
Pickvance published a seminal article on the
dating of Degas's earliest dance subjects.4
With reference to the three rehearsal pic-
tures, he pointed out that George Moore
had stated as early as 189 1 that the New
York essence version, then owned by Walter
Sickert, was painted on top of a drawing
that had been the rejected model for a pro-
posed engraving to be published in the Illus-
trated London News. Pickvance connected the
two New York compositions with Degas's
known attempts in 1873 to establish a repu-
tation in England, concluding that the more
precise drawing underlying the essence
painting was actually the model that Degas
submitted for publication, while the freer
ink drawing under the pastel was the copy
he retained. Because the Orsay painting ex-
hibits pentimenti showing several suppressed
figures and, in Pickvance's opinion, a com-
position originally closer to the ink drawing
under the essence Rehearsal, he reversed the
accepted sequence of the pictures. He placed
the essence painting first, in 1873, as the
drawing initially conceived for the Illustrated
London News; he believed the Orsay version
came next, painted before April 1874 and
with the benefit of a group of preparatory
drawings executed specially for it; and he
considered the last work of the three to be
the pastel, executed on top of the presumed
copy of the ink drawing and dated by him
"no later than 1874."
The uncommon precision of the ink draw-
ing under the essence version unquestionably
suggests some relationship with the notion of
a print.5 The scenery and the figures are care-
fully outlined, and values are indicated in
closely hatched lines. The detail is consider-
able: when the surface is examined under infra-
red light, even the nails on the ballet master's
fingers are visible. The ink drawing under
the pastel is quite different. It consists large-
ly of outlines, ruled for the architecture, and
in the rendering of some of the dancers, no-
tably the two at the right, it is quite freely,
even hesitantly, drawn. Only a few attempts
at shading were made, as in the figure of the
dance master and the dancers at the left. The
quality and the character of this drawing in-
dicate that it was not a copy, as Pickvance
suggests, but, on the contrary, an earlier at-
tempt at the composition that was taken up
again and further elaborated in the more fin-
ished ink drawing under the essence painting.
If the ink drawings under the New \brk
compositions are rightly considered to be
unique experiments in the artist's work,
rather less has been said about the equally
unusual character of the Orsay painting. It
is the only known grisaille in Degas's entire
work, and no aesthetic reasons have been
advanced for his choice. Painters, by tradition,
used grisaille for models that were destined
for engraving, the absence of color allowing
the engraver to focus on tonal values. As this
tradition survived intact until the nineteenth
century, it can only be concluded that the
painting was supposed to perform this func-
tion; indeed, its exceptional nature can be
explained only in these terms.
The numerous drawings connected with
the three works, some twenty sheets rang-
ing from sketches to fully realized essence or
charcoal studies, deserve attention not least
because they testify to the elaborate genesis
of the composition. Many of these studies
represent variations on the figures. The
dancer farthest to the right, for instance, ap-
pears in two pencil drawings, once on a
sheet with several other dancers (III:40i) and
a second time in conjunction with the dancer
en pointe eventually placed next to her
(IV:276.c). The dancer with both her arms
raised behind her head was studied facing in
one direction in pencil (IV:276.a) and facing
in another in the magnificent essence draw-
ing in this exhibition (cat. no. 127). There
also appear to have been attempts at group-
ing the figures, implied by a sheet (IV: 267)
that shows on the recto an early experiment
with an arrangement of the two dancers at
the far left (one holding her arms behind her
back, the other with her arm raised against
the stage flat). On the verso of the same
sheet, there is an alternative idea for the
dancers at the center of the composition,
one seated and the other tying her slipper.
As Pickvance has noted, a second, distinc-
tive group of studies in charcoal highlighted
with chalk represent six of the principal fig-
ures in the composition, carefully observed
again under the same light as in the Orsay
painting. Each drawing contains smaller or
greater departures from the pencil, charcoal,
or essence prototype, but in two instances
the departures are significant and affect the
sequence of the works. The dancer with her
arms raised behind her head changed direc-
tion one more time and was finally positioned
facing to her right (11:331). The original pose
of the dancer en pointe, second from the right,
was also changed. In an earlier charcoal draw-
ing (III:ii5. 1 ), her right hand touched her left
shoulder; in the revised study (1: 114), the arm
was lowered to the position finally adopted in
all three versions of the composition. The
particular attention paid to light and the fact
that this group of studies repeated the earlier
group led Pickvance to conclude that they
were executed sometime after the earlier draw-
ings and specifically for the Orsay grisaille.
Events seem to have evolved somewhat dif-
ferently, however.
The ink drawing under the New York
pastel, which Pickvance assumed to be a
copy, has one telling peculiarity: the dancer
en pointe, second from the right, was origi-
225
nally drawn with her right arm raised, as in
the charcoal drawing (III: 115. i) noted above,
but was corrected in ink to follow the more
elaborate drawing with the arm lowered (1: 114)
The ink composition under the essence paint-
ing shows the figure in the corrected pose,
without a hint of alteration. Moreover, both
ink compositions show a profile emerging
from behind a stage flat near the dancer with
both arms raised behind her head; this pro-
file appears in only one of the presumed later
drawings (IV:244). From the evidence, it is
tempting to suggest a different sequence.
Various studies in pencil, charcoal, and es-
sence were drawn for the figures. A first ink
composition was begun, the one under the
pastel, to map out the composition and try
its effect as an engraving. The elaborate, sec-
ond series of charcoal-and-chalk drawings
either existed at this stage or were prepared
around this time. A second, more elaborate
ink drawing followed, that under the essence
painting, intended to simulate more fully the
effect of the engraving. The composition
was then painted in grisaille as the model for
the engraving but was altered in the process.
Various figures such as the ballet master and
the seated man at the far right were eventu-
ally painted out, and the group of dancers to
the left was slightly changed.
The questions that affect the chronology
are really twofold and concern both the ink
drawings and the finished works that covered
them, two stages that did not occur simulta-
neously. The more finished ink drawing
may well have been submitted by Degas to
the Illustrated London News, not necessarily
to be engraved but as an example of how the
engraving would look, and it would be in-
teresting to know if this occurred during one
of his supposed but undocumented trips to
London in 1873-74. By April 1874, how-
ever, the finished grisaille painting already
belonged to Gustave Mulbacher, which sug-
gests that his permission for an engraving
would have had to be sought. The attempt
to publish, then, must have been made be-
fore this date. More problematic is the date
at which the two ink drawings were painted
over. The essence version, The Rehearsal of
the Ballet on the Stage (cat. no. 124), is first
documented in 1876, when it was exhibited
and sold in London. The pastel, The Rehearsal
on the Stage (cat. no. 125), belonged to Ernest
226
May, who apparently did not purchase works
by Degas before 1878. A list of pictures Degas
intended to show in a proposed exhibition
on the theme of the dance, most probably in
1875, includes under no. 1 a "Repetition sur
la scene" (Rehearsal on the Stage) and under
no. 2 the curious note "id[em] en renverse."6
This indicates that at least one of the rehearsal
pictures, probably the essence version, ex-
isted by that date but gives no clue as to what
the reversed version could have been.
The stylistic differences noted by Pick-
vance and others among the three versions
suggest, indeed, that the pastel followed the
essence painting. If so, one is tempted to re-
order the sequence and place the grisaille
first, in 1873-74, the essence painting soon
afterward, perhaps in 1874, and the pastel
after that. Whether in fact the pastel can also
be dated 1874 remains to be seen.
1. Pickvance 1963, p. 260.
2. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, nos. 340, 400, 498.
3. Browse [1949], nos. 28, 30, 31.
4. See Pickvance 1963, pp. 259-63, for a discussion
of the entire question.
5. The author has benefited greatly from examina-
tion reports on the two works in the Metropolitan
Museum prepared at the National Gallery of Can-
ada by Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers, Degas
Pastel Project.
6. See Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p.
203), where it is stated that the exhibition was
planned for 1874. For arguments concerning the
more likely date of 1875, see cat. no. 139.
123.
Ballet Rehearsal on Stage
1874
Oil on canvas
255/s X 3 iVb in. (65 X 81 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1978)
Lemoisne 340
Although it was exhibited in France only
once — in 1874 — before finally entering the
collections of the Louvre in 19 11 as part of
the Camondo gift, this small painting was
instrumental in establishing Degas 's reputa-
tion as a supreme draftsman. Giuseppe De
Nittis, who saw it at rue LafFitte when the
first Impressionist exhibition was being
hung, wrote some six weeks later to his friend
Enrico Cecioni: "Since I am reviewing the
works in my mind in order to describe
them to you, I remember a drawing that
must have been a dance rehearsal on the
stage, illuminated from below, and I assure
you that it is extremely beautiful. The mus-
lin dresses are so diaphanous and the move-
ments so true that only seeing it could give
you an idea; describing it is impossible."1
The opinion that the work was a drawing
rather than a painting was shared by the
critics. Philippe Burty called it in his review
of the exhibition "a most remarkable draw-
ing in bistre," and Ernest Chesneau noted:
"There is nothing more interesting than this
picturesque depiction of the play of light
and shadow caused by the glow of stage
footlights. M. Degas renders the scene with
a charming and delightful attention to de-
tail. He draws in a correct and precise man-
ner, with the sole objective of scrupulous
fidelity to the subject. , . . His color, in
general, is a little muted."2
As the notion that Degas was not truly a
colorist and that his genius was principally
that of a draftsman originated in the mid-
1870s, one wonders how much this work
may have fostered it. As noted earlier, the
monochrome treatment of the composition,
the only such instance in the artist's work, is
of course due to his intention to use the
work as a model for an engraver.3
The thin layer of paint, made even more
transparent by time, reveals changes to the
composition. The group of dancers to the
left was clearly altered, and the legs of cer-
tain dancers originally reached farther down
into the foreground. To the right of the
dancer with her arms raised behind her neck
was a ballet master, seen from behind, in
the act of rehearsing the pas de deux of the
two dancers at the far right. At stage right,
next to the seated figure, was another man
slumped in his chair, his crossed legs stretched
out in front of him. And the dancer in the
center foreground, whose raised right arm
has been slightly reduced in size, is seated
on a bench that changed its position as the
artist reworked the painting.
1. Letter from Giuseppe De Nittis, Paris, to Enrico
Cecioni, 10 June 1874, published in II Giornale Ar-
tistico, 11:4, 1 July 1874, pp. 25-26 (reprinted in
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, pp. 302-04).
2. [Philippe Burty], "Exposition de la Societe Ano-
nyme des Artistes," La Republique Fran$aise, 25
April 1874, p. 4. Ernest Chesneau, "A cote du Sa-
lon, II, Le plein air: Exposition du Boulevard des
Capucines," Paris-Journal, 7 May 1874, p. 2.
3. See "The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage,"
p. 225.
provenance: Bought (from the artist?) by Gustave
Mulbacher, Paris, by April 1874; bought by Comte
Isaac de Camondo, Paris, 24 May 1893, for Fr 21,000;
his bequest to the Louvre, Paris, 1908; entered the
Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1874 Paris, no. 60 (as "Repetition de
ballet sur la scene"), lent by M. Mulbacher; 1907-08
Manchester, no. 172 (as 1874); 1924 Paris, no.
47; 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 56, repr.; 1969 Paris, no.
24; 1982, Prague, National Gallery, September-
November, Od Courbeta k Cezannovi, no. 29; 1982-
83, Berlin (G.D.R.), Nationalgalerie, 10 December-
20 February, Von Courbet bis Cezanne: Franzdsische
Malerei, 1848-1886, no. 31, repr.; 1985, Peking, Palace
of Fine Arts, 9-29 September/ Shanghai, Museum of
Fine Arts, 1 5 October-3 November, La peinture jran-
$aise 1870-1920, no. 13, repr.; 1986 Washington,
D.C., no. 25, repr. (color).
selected references: Leon de Lora [Louis de Four-
caud], "Exposition libre des peintres," Le Gaulois, 18
April 1874, p. 3; C. de Make [Villiers de 1'Isle-
Adam], "Exposition de la Societe Anonyme des Ar-
tistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs et Lithographes,"
Paris a VEau~Fortet 59, 19 April 1874, p. 13; [Philippe
Burty], "Exposition de la Societe Anonyme des Ar-
tistes," La Republique Fran$aise, 25 April 1874, p. 4;
Ernest Chesneau, "A cote du Salon, II, Le plein air:
Exposition du Boulevard des Capucines," Paris-Journal,
7 May 1874, p. 2; Giuseppe De Nittis, "Corrispon-
denze: Londra," II Giornale Artistico, IL4, 1 July 1874,
p. 26; Alexandre 1908, repr. p. 29; Lemoisne 19 12,
PP- 57-58, pi- XXI (as 1874); Paris, Louvre, Ca-
mondo, 1914, pi. 32;Jamot 1914, pp. 454-55, repr.;
Jamot 1918, p. 158, repr. p. 159; Lafond 1918-19, I,
p. 45, repr.; Meier-Graefe 1923, p. 59; Rouart 1945,
pp. 13, 70 n. 23; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 340;
Browse [1949], no. 28 (as 1873-74); Pickvance 1963,
pp. 257, 263, fig. 20 (as 1874); Minervino 1974, no.
470, pi. XXVI (color); Reff 1985, pp. 7 n. 2, 9, 21,
Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 203); Paris, Louvre
and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III, p. 193 (as 1874).
124.
The Rehearsal of the Ballet
on the Stage
1874?
Essence with traces of watercolor and pastel over
pen-and-ink drawing on paper, mounted on
canvas
2i3/8 X 283/4 in. (54. 3 X 73 cm)
Signed upper left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection. Gift of Horace
Havemeyer, 1929 (29.160.26)
Lemoisne 400
This work is technically the more curious of
the two versions of the composition in New
York and the more difficult one to decipher.
Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers have ob-
served that the ink underdrawing was first
covered with either watercolor or diluted
gouache, and was then built up with more
opaque layers of essence and, finally, oil
paint. They have concluded that in certain
areas, particularly visible in the hair of the
ballet master and that of the seated dancer in
the foreground, the design was reworked in
detail in ink on top of the colored layer. 1
The ink underdrawing can be seen under in-
frared light, except for the area at the far left
where the oil paint covers the paper thor-
oughly. This is unfortunate because the left
part of the picture, showing two additional
figures, is the very area in which the com-
position differs from the New York pastel
227
(cat. no. 125) and the Orsay grisaille (cat.
no. 123). From the evidence, it is impossible
to tell whether the dancer at the far left and
a head appearing to her left were added in
oil or formed part of the original design. It
should be pointed out that a variation on the
group at the far left occurs in the upper left
section of Orchestra Musicians (cat. no. 98),
which appears to have been repainted after
March 1874.
Drawings are known for almost every
figure in the picture and formed part of a
large group of pencil or essence studies.2
The second dancer from the right, however,
is based on a charcoal-and-chalk study
(I:ii4), and the dancer in position in the
center background was adapted from a
pencil-and-crayon study (1:328) in the Fogg
Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass., that served
also for a number of other compositions,
notably The Dance Class (cat. no. 129). 3 The
two double basses protruding in the fore-
ground were not part of the original design
but appear in two notebook sketches most
closely connected with the Orsay grisaille.4
The cool tones of the painting are quite
unlike those of the pastel version (cat.
no. 125) and are particularly effective in sug-
gesting the artificial effects of light on the
stage.
1 . These conclusions appear in an examination report
prepared by Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers, Degas
Pastel Project, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
2. See "The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage,"
p. 225.
3 . In addition to these two drawings, the identifiable
studies are as follows: ballet master (III: 113); seat-
ed man at far left, said to have been posed for by
James Tissot (III: 164. 1); first dancer from the right
(III:40i and IV:276.c); fourth dancer from the
right, in the background (IV:276.c); seated dancer
at the center (presumably III: 132.2); dancer with
arms raised (cat. no. 127); dancer adjusting her
slipper (III: 163. 2); profile emerging from behind
stage flat (11:244); dancer with one arm raised
(11:345); dancer at the far left (III:40i).
4. See Reff 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 22, pp.
26, 27). Theodore Reff, who dated the notebook
1868-73, has connected the drawings specifically
to the essence painting (cat. no. 124) in New
York. One of the drawings, however, represents
the architecture as it appears only in the Orsay
grisaille (cat. no. 123). For the possibility of the
two New York rehearsal compositions* having
been cut down, see cat. no. 125.
provenance: Sent by the artist to Charles W. Des-
champs, 168 New Bond Street, London, before
April 1876; sold to Captain Henry Hill, Brighton
(Hill sale, Christie's, London, 25 May 1889, no. 29
[as "A Rehearsal"], for 66 guineas); bought by Wal-
ter Sickert, London; given to his second wife, Ellen
Cobden-Sickert, London; left in the care of her sis-
ter, Mrs. T. Fisher-Unwin, London, by summer
1898; deposited by Mrs. Cobden-Sickert with
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 4 January 1902 (deposit
no. 10185, on the back, two Durand-Ruel labels:
"Degas no. 10185/La repetition de ballet/moass" and
"Repetition par Degas let tableau appartient a/Mrs.
Cobden Sickert au soin de M. Fisher Unwin/ 11 Pa-
ternoster Bldgs/Londres"); returned to her in care of
Boussod, Valadon et Cie, Paris, 25 January 1902;
bought by Boussod, Valadon et Cie, 3 1 January 1902
(stock no. 27473, inscribed on the brace "B.V.C.
27473"), for Ft 75»373i [according to Walter Sickert's
annotations in his copy of Jamot 1924, p. 84, now in
the Institut Neerlandais, Paris, exchanged by him
with Durand-Ruel for "Woman at the Window"
(L385) and £800; according to the Durand-Ruel stock
book, Walter Sickert bought "Woman at the Window"
for Fr 10,000 on 18 February 1902]; sold by Boussod,
Valadon et Cie to H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 7
February 1902, for Fr 82,845; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, 1907-29; Horace Havemeyer, her son,
New York, 1929; his gift to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1876 London, no. 130 (as "The Re-
hearsal"); (?)i877 Paris, no. 61, as "Repetition de
ballet"; 1891-92, London, New English Art Club,
Winter, Seventh Exhibition, no. 39 (as "Repetition"),
lent by Mrs. Walter Sickert; 1898 London, no. 116,
repr. (as "Dancers"), lent by Mrs. Unwin; 1900, Paris,
Exposition Internationale Universelle, Grand Palais,
Exposition centennale de Vart jrancais, no. 210 (as "La
repetition"), lent by Mrs. Cobden-Sickert; 19 15
New Yorfe, no. 19 (as "Dancing Rehearsal") or
no. 24 (as "The Rehearsal"), probably lent by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer; 1930 New York, no. 58; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 22, pi. XIII; 1947 Cleveland,
no. 23; 1949 New York, no. 36; 1950-51 Philadelphia,
no. 73, repr.; 1953, Kansas City, William Rockhill
Nelson Gallery, 11-31 December, Twentieth Anniver-
sary Exhibition: 19th and 20th Century French Paintings;
1958 Los Angeles, no. 26, repr.; 1977 New York,
no. 13.
selected references: Alice Meynell, "Pictures from
the Hill Collection," Magazine of Art, V, 1882, p. 82;
Moore 1890, repr. p. 420; D.S.M. [Dugald Stuart
MacColl], "Impressionism and the New English Art
Club," The Spectator, LXVIL5, December 1891, p.
809; George Moore, "The New English Art Club,"
The Speaker, IV: 5, December 1891, pp. 676-78; R.
Jope-Slate, "Current Art: The New English Art
Club," Magazine of Art, XV, 1892, p. 123; Frederick
Wedmore, "Manet, Degas, and Renoir: Impressionist
Figure-Painters," Brush and Pencil, XV:5, May 1905,
repr. p. 260; Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 26 (as 1874);
Jamot 1924, pp. 125 n. 6, 142-43, pi. 36 (as c. 1874);
Havemeyer 193 1, p. 123, repr. p. 122; Louise Bur-
roughs, "Notes," The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Bulletin, Wis, January 1946, repr, facing p. 144, repr.
(color, detail) cover; Huth 1946, p. 239 n. 22; Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, pp. 91-92, II, no. 400 (as c.
1876); Browse [1949], PP- 55» <>7» no. 30 (as c. 1874-
75); Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 239; Cooper 1954, pp.
61-62; Cabanne 1957, pp. 108, 1 12-13, 130, pi. 66
(as 1875, exhibited in 1877); Havemeyer 196 1, pp.
259-60; Pickvance 1963, pp. 259-63, fig. 21 (as
1873); New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 73-76,
repr.; Reff 1976, pp. 284-85, 337 n. 36, fig. 200 (de-
tail) (as c. 1873); Moffett 1979, p. 12, fig. 20; Moffett
1985, pp. 71, 250, repr. (color) pp. 71-72 (as 1873);
Reff 1985, pp. 7 n. 2, 9 n. 7, 21 n. 6, Notebook 22
(BN, Carnet 8, p. 203), Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet
22, pp. 26, 27).
229
125.
The Rehearsal on the Stage
1874?
Pastel over brush-and-ink drawing on thin, cream-
colored wove paper, laid on bristol board,
mounted on canvas
21 X 28V2 in. (53.3 X 72.3 cm)
Signed upper left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.39)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 498
Of the same size and of related design to the
essence painting (cat. no. 124), this pastel
was prepared with the help of the same
studies but two. The second dancer from
the right, en pointe, whose arm was slightly
changed, follows a different version of the
prototype appearing in a charcoal-and-chalk
drawing (111:338.1); and the dancer with
both arms raised behind her head was
adapted from a pencil sketch (IV:276.a).
The sheet of paper on which the pastel
was executed was fixed on a support, as
was the essence version. In this instance, the
support was fabric and the sheet was affixed
with paper tape glued around the perimeter.
However, part of the paper tape has peeled
off, revealing that the drawing was trimmed
by the artist, something that may have in-
teresting implications in respect to the dif-
ference in design between the ink drawings
and the grisaille painting at Orsay (cat.
no. 123). Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers
have pointed out that after the drawing was
worked up in pastel, a number of details
were redrawn in ink — notably the arm of
the seated dancer in the foreground and
some of the outlines of the faces.1 This type
of reworking, shared with the essence ver-
sion, appears to be unique in Degas's work.
The Rehearsal on the Stage may be the
work that was seen and admired by Paul
Gauguin in Degas's studio in late summer
1879. According to a letter Gauguin wrote
to Camille Pissarro on 26 September 1879,
he returned to the studio to buy it but found
it had been sold to the financier Ernest May.2
As May bought this pastel about that time,
it was possibly the work in question.3 In
any event, Gauguin admired Degas's com-
position enough to include elements from it
as the decoration of a box he carved in
1884.4
1 . These conclusions are contained in an examination
report prepared by Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers,
Degas Pastel Project, National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa.
2. For Gauguin's letter, see Lettres Gauguin 1984, I,
p. 16.
3. See Merete Bodelsen, "Gauguin, the Collector,"
Burlington Magazine, CXII:8io, September 1970,
p. 590 n. 9. Bodelsen notes that May owned sev-
eral pastels by Degas.
4. For Gauguin's sculpture, see Christopher Gray,
Sculpture and Ceramics of Paul Gauguin, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1963, p. 121, no. 8. Theo-
dore Reff has pointed out that Gauguin might
well have seen the Orsay grisaille version, which
in his opinion is closer to the carving; see Reff
1976, pp. 267, 336 nn. 103, 104.
provenance: Ernest May collection, Paris (May sale,
Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 4 June 1890, no. 75 [as
"Repetition d'un ballet sur la scene"], bought in);
Georges May, his son, Paris; bought by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 25 January 1899, for Fr 47,000 (stock no.
4990, as "Repetition d'un ballet sur la scene, pastel,
c. 1878-79"); transferred to Durand-Ruel, New
York, January 1899 (stock no. 2 117, on the back, a
Durand-Ruel label: "Degas no. 2116/La le^on au
foyer," actually the label for Dance School [L399,
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vt.], also bought
from May, Paris, and recorded by Durand-Ruel,
New York, as stock no. N.Y. 2 116, the same day as
The Rehearsal on the Stage [stock no. N.Y. 2117]; the
labels were inadvertently interchanged); bought by
H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 17 February 1899, for
Fr 48,197; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 1907-
29; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: (?)i879 Paris, hors catalogue (according
to Pickvance in 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 264-65
n. 87); 1915 New York, no. 38 (as "The Ballet Re-
hearsal," 1875); 1930 New York, no. 143; 1949 New
York, no. 36, repr. p. 8 (as 1876); 1952-53, New
York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 7 November
1952-7 September 1953, Art Treasures of the Metropol-
itan, no. 147; 1977 New York, no. 18 of works on
paper (as 1873-74), repr.
selected references: (?) Silvestre 1879, p. 38; Moore
1907-08, repr. p. 141; Geffroy 1908, p. 20, repr. p. 18
(as 1874); Lafond 19 18-19, II, p. 26; Jamot 1924,
pp. 142-43 (where confused with cat. no. 124, as c.
1874); Alexandre 1929, p. 483, repr. p. 479; Bur-
roughs 1932, p. 144; Louise Burroughs, "Notes,"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, IV: 5, January
1946, note facing p. 144; Huth 1946, p. 239 n. 22;
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 91-92, II, no. 498 (as c.
1878-79); Browse [1949], no. 31 (as c. 1876-77);
Cabanne 1957, p. 108; Havemeyer 1961, pp. 259-60;
Pickvance 1963, p. 263 (as no later than 1874); New
York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 76-77, repr.; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 469; Reff 1976, p. 274, fig. 185 (de-
tail) (as 1872-74); Reff 1977, [38ff], fig. 70 (color);
Moffett 1979, p. 12, fig. 19 (color); Moffett 1985, p. 71
(as 1873-74); 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 264-65
n. 87; Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 133-34, pi- 93 (as
c. 1872).
126.
Seated Dancer in Profile
1873
Essence drawing on blue paper
9 X 11V2 in. (23 x 29.2 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF16723)
Exhibited in New York
Vente 111:132.3
For the central, seated figure in the three ver-
sions of The Rehearsal, Degas appears to
have considered two different poses: one of a
dancer scratching her back and the other of a
dancer with her hand on her neck. There are
essence studies of the model in both poses,
but only the latter — the present drawing-
was used.1 As the drawing focused exclu-
sively on the upper part of her body, Degas
carried out additional, more detailed charcoal
studies, heightened with white. In these,
the dancer is observed under very specific
conditions of light, illuminated from below,
as if on stage. One of them (11:333) shows
the figure seated, full-length, but with her
back more erect and her head less dramatically
tilted backward. A second study (fig. 118)
represents only the dress, in considerable
detail, and includes the dancer's feet, which
do not appear in the other two drawings.
From a compositional sketch (IV:267), it
would appear that at an early stage Degas in-
tended to use the figure as part of a group that
included a dancer adjusting her shoe. The
scheme was evidently discarded, with the two
dancers ultimately separated. As with most of
the preparatory studies conceived for the proj-
ect, Degas varied his use of prototypes for
the different versions of the composition. The
essence study, in combination with the study
of the skirt, was followed in the dancer ap-
pearing in the two versions in the Metropoli-
Fig. 118. Dancer in a Tutu (111:83.2), 1873. Char-
coal heightened with white, 95/s X i23/4 in.
(24.4 X 32.4 cm). Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF16725)
230
127.
Dancer with Arms behind
Her Head
1873
Essence on commercially prepared green paper
24Y4 X i73/4 in. (54 X 45 cm) (sight)
Private collection
Lemoisne 402
Degas observed his models' arms with an
interest bordering on obsession, and few, if
any, painters took greater delight in the
emotion expressed by the movement or the
outline of an arm. Degas was also interested
in the expressive possibilities of the open
mouth, a motif that enters his work early —
for instance, in the drawing after a Roman
model (cat. no. 8) — and persists in different
guises as the yawn of a laundress or the
singing of a cafe artist. Coupled with a strained
movement of the arms, the effect of the open
mouth can be ambiguous, as evocative of
pain as it is of boredom.
The pose of the head, arms, and torso of
this dancer, although observed from a model,
tan Museum (cat. nos. 124, 125). For the
dancer in the Orsay grisaille version (cat.
no. 123), the full-length charcoal drawing
(11^333) was chosen instead.
Among the most powerfully evocative
studies of a dancer at rest, the Louvre drawing
also marks the first appearance of a pose that
Degas examined again and again in the con-
text of his later compositions of bathers. A
woman in a related pose appears in the
foreground of Supper at the Ball (fig. 112) by
Adolf Menzel, painted in 1878, of which
Degas was to make a copy in 1879 (fig. 113).
From the evidence, it is impossible to deter-
mine whether Menzel knew one of the three
versions of The Rehearsal or whether the
similarity of the poses is a coincidence.2
1 . For the alternative study with the dancer scratching
her back, see HI: 132. 2.
2. See Harald Keller, "Degas-Studien," Stadel-Jahrbuch,
new series, 7, 1979, pp. 287-88.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no.
132.3, in the same lot with nos. 132. 1 and 132.2, for
Ft 5, 500); Gaston Migeon, Paris; gift to the Louvre
from the Societe des Amis du Louvre 193 1 .
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 107; 1969 Paris, no. 184;
1984 Tubingen, no. 93, repr. (color).
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, II, repr. before
p. 37; Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 23 (reprint edition 1973,
pi. 40); Rouart 1945, p. 71 n. 28; Lemoisne [1946-49],
II, under no. 400; Browse [1949], no. 28a, repr.; Pick-
vance 1963, p. 260 n. 53; Serullaz 1979, repr. (color)
p. 6.
231
is in fact derived from one of the two cruci-
fied thieves in Mantegna's Crucifixion in the
Louvre, a detail that attracted Degas enough
to copy it twice.1 His fascination with Man-
tegna is well known, and this is one of the
rare examples when an old master is quoted
so freely. Two other sheets show dancers in
the same pose. One (IV:276.a), with two
pencil studies of the torso of the same dancer,
was used for the pastel version of The Re-
hearsal on the Stage (cat. no. 125); the other,
a more finished sheet (11:331), was part of a
group of six drawings executed for the Orsay
version of the same painting (cat. no. 123).
The drawing in this exhibition was used only
for the oil in the Metropolitan Museum
(cat. no. 124).
Degas adapted the pose for a nude in a
monotype of a woman in her bathtub
(J175).
1. See IV:99.c (Zurich, private collection) and a
drawing in a Milan private collection (reproduced
in 1984-85 Rome, under no. 6). See also cat.
no. 27.
provenance: Bought from the artist in 1878 by Henry
Lerolle (inscribed on verso: "Ce dessin a ete achete/
par Henri Lerolle a Degas lui-meme [en meme
temps] que 'les femmes se coifFant' en 1878/Ceci
s'est passe dans l'atelier de Degas/moi presente/
Madeleine Lerolle"); Madeleine Lerolle, his widow,
Paris, from 1929; Hector Brame, Paris; Franz Koe-
nigs, Haarlem. Private collection.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 82; 1938,
Amsterdam, Paul Cassirer, Fransche Meesters uit de
XIXe eeuw, no. 49, repr.; 1946, Amsterdam, Stede-
lijk Museum, February-March, Teekeningen van
Fransche Meesters 1800-1900, no. 72; 1952 Amster-
dam, no. 30; 1964, Paris, Institut Neerlandais, 4 May-
14 June/ Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25 June- 16
August, he dessin fiancais de Claude a Cezanne dans les
collections hollandaises (catalogue by Carlos van Has-
selt), no, 186, repr.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, II, repr. after
p. 36; Riviere 1922-23, II, no. 69, repr. (reprint edi-
tion 1973, pi. 42); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 402,
repr.; Jean Leymarie, Les dessins de Degas, Paris: Fer-
nand Hazan, 1948, no. 11, repr.; Claude Roger-Marx,
Degas, danseuses, Paris: Fernand Hazan, 1956, no. 8,
repr. cover.
128.
The Dance Class
1873
Oil on canvas
19 X 245/g in. (48.3 X 62. 5 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D,C.
William A. Clark Collection, 1926 (26.74)
Lemoisne 398
There are two quite different versions of this
composition. One of them, The Rehearsal
(fig. 119), in the Burrell Collection, Glas-
gow, was seen in Degas's studio in February
1874 by Edmond de Goncourt, as noted by
Keith Roberts.1 The other, the Corcoran
Gallery painting exhibited here, was once
considered a later work. However, Ronald
Pickvance has demonstrated that it was
painted after Degas's return from New Or-
leans in 1873, and before the Glasgow paint-
ing.2 Thus it can be included among the
two or three other major ballet subjects that
Degas undertook in 1873.
The work is remarkable on several counts,
not least in the ambitious attempt to group a
very large number of figures, actually the
largest to appear in any of Degas's composi-
tions. The scene takes place in an unusual
space, possibly the dance foyer of the old
Opera on rue Le Peletier, with a dimly lit
chamber in the foreground opening at the side
onto a more brightly illuminated rehearsal
room. The left foreground is occupied by a
spiral staircase, allowing for Degas's most bi-
zarre design to date, composed exclusively of
truncated figures. As in the few earlier ballet
scenes, the emphasis is not on performance
but on a moment of respite in the midst of a
rehearsal. There is actually more movement
here than in any of Degas's previous dance
compositions. The air of informality touched
off by the sequence of legs descending the
staircase is maintained throughout much of
the work, either in the poses of the dancers or
in the introduction of charming subordinate
elements — a red fan dropped on the floor or
two pairs of pink slippers left on a bench.
Whatever emotion is induced by the moody
vibrations of light is held in check by the in-
tegration of the odd comic note — the dancer
in the center, bending quite gracelessly, or the
young woman in a red shawl biting her
thumb in a gesture prefiguring that of an older
and more cynical character in Women on the
Terrace of a Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174).
Although numerous drawings doubtless
served in the preparation of this work, sur-
prisingly few can be traced.3 Most of the
identifiable studies were executed in essence,
indicating — as Pickvance has pointed out — a
date in the early 1870s, though they may have
included more elaborate repetitions of one or
two figures, studied in greater detail in char-
coal and chalk.4 The first dancer in the re-
hearsal room to the rear, with both her arms
behind her back, appears on the extreme left
in the Orsay Ballet Rehearsal on Stage (cat.
no. 123), as does the bench, suggesting a cer-
tain proximity of the two works.
A slight ambiguity in the provenance of
the work was raised by Paul Durand-Ruel's
statement in his memoirs that he sold a
"Repetition de danse," presumably this
painting, to Walter Sickert and that
"Senator Clark paid, already many years
ago now, 80,000 francs. It's worth double
that at least. I paid Degas 1,500 francs for
it and sold it to Sickert for 2,ooo."5 There
appears to be no record of such a transac-
tion in the Durand-Ruel archives, and one
can only imagine that there was some con-
fusion with The Rehearsal on the Stage (cat.
no. 125), which was indeed owned by Sick-
ert but not purchased from Durand-Ruel.
1. Keith Roberts, 'The Date of Degas's The Re-
hearsal' in Glasgow," Burlington Magazine,
CV:723, June 1963, pp. 280-81.
2. Pickvance 1963, p. 259.
3. The known drawings are as follows: bending
dancer at the center (BR59); first dancer at the left
(fig. 138); dancer with both arms raised just left of
center (possibly III: 145. 1, but just as likely 11:3 12);
dancer in the far room with both arms behind her
back (HI:i32.i, or possibly 11:327). The second
dancer from the right and the dancer at the center
adjusting her shoulder strap appear on a sheet
(111:212) that was cut into three pieces sometime
after 19 19; see 1984 Tubingen, nos. 96, 99, and
227, where the fragments are dated c. 1874.
4. As indicated in note 3 , one of the dancers with her
arms raised seems based on the charcoal drawing
rather than the essence prototype. Pickvance, how-
ever, believes the charcoal drawing to date from a
later period; see Pickvance 1963, p. 259 n. 34.
5. Venturi 1939, II, p. 195.
provenance: Sent by the artist to Charles W. Des-
champs, London, by April 1876; bought by Captain
Henry Hill, Brighton (Hill sale, Christie's, London, 25
May 1889, no. 28 [as "A Rehearsal"], for 60 guineas);
bought by Montaignac for Michel Manzi, Paris;
bought by Eugene W. Glaenzer and Co., New York;
bought by Senator William A. Clark, Washington,
D.C., 1903; his bequest to the museum 1926.
exhibitions: 1876 London, no. 131 (as "The Practising
Room at the Opera House"); (?) 1877 Paris, no. 38;
1959, New York, Wildenstein and Co., 28 January-7
March, Masterpieces of The Corcoran Gallery of Art,
p. 29; 1962, Seatde, Century 21 Exposition, 21 April-
4 September, Masterpieces of Art, no. 42, repr.; 1978
New York, no. 15, repr. (color); 1983-85, Washing-
ton, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1 October
1983-8 January 1984/ Columbus, Ga., Columbus Mu-
seum of Arts and Sciences, 27 January- 18 March/
Evanston, Northwestern University, Mary and Leigh
Block Gallery, 18 May- 15 July /Houston, The Museum
of Fine Arts, 10 August-7 October/ Tampa Museum,
28 October 1984-13 January 1985 /Omaha, Joslyn Art
Museum, 9 February-3 1 March/ Akron Art Museum,
20 April-16 June, La Vie Modeme: Nineteenth-Century
Art from The Corcoran Gallery, no. 41 (catalogue entry
by Marilyn E Romines), repr. (color) frontispiece;
1986 Washington, D.C., no. 45, repr. (color).
232
233
selected references: The Echo, 22 April 1876, cited in
Pickvance 1963, p. 259 n. 36; Illustrated Handbook of
TheW.A. Clark Collection, Washington, D.C.: The
Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1932, p. 32; Mongan 1938,
p. 301; Venturi 1939, II, p. 195 (wrongly as a picture
sold by Durand-Ruel to Walter Sickert); Rewald 1946,
p. 233 (as c. 1873); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 398 (as
c. 1876); Browse [1949], no. 45 (as c. 1879-80); Coop-
er 1954, p. 61 nn. 4, 6 (wrongly as a picture owned by
Walter Sickert); Pickvance 1963, pp. 259-65 (as 1873);
Keith Roberts, "The Date of Degas's 'The Rehearsal'
in Glasgow," Burlington Magazine, CV:723, June 1963,
pp. 280-81; William Wells, "Degas* Staircase," Scottish
Art Review, LX:3, 1964, pp. 14-17, repr. p. 15; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 490; 1984 Tubingen, under no. 96;
1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 43-44, fig. 2.1 p. 44.
The Dance Class
cat. nos. 129-138
The series of six important compositions
that Degas painted for Jean-Baptiste Faure
began with a dance subject commissioned
by Faure shortly after he met the artist in
1873. Although there has never been any
doubt about the identification of the paint-
ing eventually delivered to Faure as The
Dance Class (cat. no. 130), now in the Met-
ropolitan Museum, there has been confusion
about its date and its connection to the
closely related and apparently earlier work
(cat. no. 129) in the Musee d'Orsay. Pub-
lished documentary evidence, chiefly a letter
to Faure dating from December 1873, and
the perplexing inclusion of seemingly the
same painting belonging to Faure in the Im-
pressionist exhibitions of both 1874 and 1876
have proved less than conclusive in settling
the question. The only dated study directly
connected with the paintings, an essence
sketch of the ballet master Jules Perrot dated
1875 (cat. no. 133), emerged over the years
as a perceptible obstacle to a logical chronol-
ogy and to the dating of the Orsay painting
before 1875. However, the publication of an
X-radiograph of the Paris canvas in 1965 con-
firmed that it had been substantially altered,
and George Shackelford demonstrated that
the painting originally had several other prin-
cipal figures, including a differently posed
ballet master.1
Degas's correspondence suggests, in fact,
that the sequence of events was somewhat
different from what was previously thought.
In the latter part of 1873, Degas began paint-
ing the Orsay canvas as the picture commis-
sioned by Faure.2 The work was probably
finished, or almost finished, by 15 April 1874
in the form it had before he overpainted it,
hence its inclusion in the catalogue of the
first Impressionist exhibition. The painting
was not shown, however. Degas may have
begun to alter it immediately, and perhaps
had an idea about how he would change the
composition. Sometime before November
1874, he had Jules Perrot pose for a drawing
(fig. 121) to serve as the figure of a new bal-
let master. By November 1874, when mat-
ters became pressing, instead of continuing
with complicated alterations to the Orsay
painting Degas made the second version. In
an unpublished, undated letter to Charles
Deschamps, probably written shortly after
8 November 1874, Degas confirmed that he
had delivered his picture to Faure: "The point
was to release myself from Faure at any cost,
as I told you, and only with the big work.
The rest remains to be done — which he is
already angry about. I really don't know
how to do anything quickly, and I can still
only do it with a prod in my back. I wish
you were here every week to push me, then
everything would go better."3 It is likely that
the first version was temporarily abandoned
and taken up again only in 1875, when Degas
made the dated essence drawing of Perrot
specifically as a study for the picture. The
Orsay Dance Class was finished by the spring
of 1876, when it was exhibited in London at
Deschamps's gallery, as pointed out by Ronald
Pickvance.4 It is ironic that, at the same time,
Degas exhibited Faure's version of the com-
position in Paris.
1. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 45-58.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, V, p. 31 n. 1; Degas Letters
1947, no. 10, p. 36 n. 2, and "Annotations,"
p. 261.
3. Transcript of an undated letter from Degas to
Charles W. Deschamps, kindly communicated to
the author by John Rewald. The letter mentions
various matters concerning Auguste Renoir and
Arsene-Hippolyte Rivey, which links it closely to
an unpublished letter from Degas to Deschamps
dated 8 November 1874 that deals with the same
questions; Institut Neerlandais, Fondation Custo-
dia, Paris, inv. no. 1971-A.304.
4. Pickvance 1963, p. 259 nn. 37, 38.
129.
The Dance Class
Begun 1873, completed 1875-76
Oil on canvas
33^2 X 29V2 in. (85 X 75 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1976)
Lemoisne 341
Begun in 1873 but finished almost certainly
only in 1875 or early 1876, this work is
Degas's first attempt to paint a large canvas
representing a group of dancers. The diffi-
culties he encountered in orchestrating the
figures have been analyzed by George
Shackelford, who has shown how the artist
altered the composition. At first, a younger
dance master conducted the class, turning
his back to the viewer, as in the drawing in
the Art Institute of Chicago (cat. no. 131),
and in the foreground, left of center, there
was a dancer adjusting her shoe based on a
drawing in the Metropolitan Museum (cat.
no. 135). From X-radiographs, it may be
concluded that Degas altered the dancer in
the foreground twice before finally deciding
on a figure loosely derived from the Louvre
drawing (cat. no. 137). It is unclear at what
stage the alterations occurred. A painted
sketch dated 1874 (fig. 122) is certainly con-
nected with the nearest group of dancers as
it originally appeared in the painting, and
the present figure of the ballet master is based
largely on the essence sketch of Jules Perrot
dated 1875 (cat. no. 133), but revised in
light of an earlier study in the Fitzwilliam
Museum (fig. 12 1).1
The handling of paint — light in applica-
tion and almost translucent — is so confident
as to make the efforts required to produce
the work almost unnoticeable. Conceived in
harmoniously subdued tones, the scene is
ruled by a pale, uneven light which unex-
pectedly emphasizes a detail or dissolves
outline and form. Alive with small, episodic
incidents, the narrative suggests the end of a
session and the exhaustion and relaxation
that accompany the easing of tension. Al-
most none of the dancers pay attention to
the old master — and none is more indiffer-
ent than the two towering above the others
at the opposite ends of the room. In the
background, the dancer adjusting her choker
with an exasperated gesture becomes the
echo of the one in the foreground scratching
her back.
When Lillian Browse identified the figure
of the ballet master as Jules Perrot she con-
cluded that the scene in both the New York
and the Paris versions was a reasonably ac-
curate record of a dance class witnessed by
Degas. Shackelford, who drew attention to
234
235
the improbability of a connection between
Perrot and the Opera in the 1870s, proposed
instead the interesting hypothesis that in its
final form The Dance Class is a genre por-
trait that may have been painted as a tribute
to Perrot.2
1. Most of the drawings connected with the compo-
sition have been identified by Lemoisne and Shack-
elford. Lemoisne, however, has also associated a
number of unrelated drawings. As far as can be
ascertained, the related drawings are as follows:
1:328 (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.) and
11:332 (Detroit Institute of Arts), which served also
for Ballet Rehearsal on Stage (cat. no. 123);
III: 1 12. 3, all three dancers appearing on the sheet;
III:ii5.i, rather than 111:342. 1 as proposed by Le-
moisne, for the dancer touching her ear; IV: 13 8. a;
111:8 1. 4, perhaps in association with III: 166. 1, for
the dancer adjusting her shoulder strap; cat. no. 133
with fig. 121 for Perrot; and, more remotely, cat.
nos. 136-138.
2. See "The Dance Class," p. 234.
provenance: Sent by the artist in spring 1876 to
Charles W. Deschamps, London; bought by Captain
Henry Hill, Brighton, before September 1876 (Hill
sale, Christie's, London, 25 May 1889, no. 27 [as
"Maitre de ballet"], for 54 guineas [Fr 1,417]);
bought by Goupil-Boussod et Valadon, Paris (stock
no. 19884); bought by Michel Manzi, Paris, 3 June
1889, for Fr 4,000; bought by Comte Isaac de Ca-
mondo, Paris, April 1894, for Fr 70,000 (as "La lecon
de danse"); his bequest to the Louvre, Paris, 1908;
entered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1876 London, no. 127 (as "Preliminary
Steps"); 1876, Brighton, Royal Pavilion Gallery,
opened 7 September, Third Annual Winter Exhibition
of Modern Pictures, no. 167 (as "Preliminary Steps"),
lent by Captain Henry Hill; 1904, Paris, Musee Na-
tional du Luxembourg, Exposition temporaire de quel-
ques chefs-d'oeuvre de maitres contemporains, pretes par
des amateurs, no. 17, lent by Comte Isaac de Camon-
do; 1924 Paris, no. 46; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 21;
1948, Venice, XXIV Biennale di Venezia, 29 May-
30 September, Gli impressionisti (catalogue by Rodol-
fo PaUucchini), no. 64, repr.; 1953-54 New Orleans,
no. 75; 1955, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni,
February-March /Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, Mostra
de capolavori della pittura fiancese delVottocento, no. 32,
repr.; 1964-65 Munich, no. 81; 1969 Paris, no. 25;
1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 10, repr. (color) (as
c. 1875).
selected references: The Echo, 22 April 1876, The
Brighton Gazette, 16 September 1876, cited in Pick-
vance 1963, p. 259 nn. 35, 36; "Art-notes from the
Provinces," Art Journal, XXVIII, 1876, p. 371; Alice
Meynell, "Pictures from the Hill Collection," Mag-
azine of Art, V, 1882, p. 82; Hourticq 19 12, p. 102,
repr. p. 101; Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 59-60, fig. xxii (as
1874); Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914; Jamot 1924,
p. 102, pi. 35 (as 1874); Riviere 1935, repr. p. 117 (as
1872); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 341; Browse
[1949], no. 23 (as 1873-74); Pickvance 1963, pp. 259
nn. 37, 38, 265 n. 82, 266 (suggesting a date after
April 1874); Reff 1968, p. 90 n. 43; Minervino 1974,
no. 479; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986,
III, p. 193 (as c. 1871-74); Sutton 1986, pp. 119-20,
126, 168, fig. 143 (color) p. 167; Weitzenhoffer 1986,
pp. 130-31, pi. 87 (identifying the work with one
offered by Durand-Ruel to H. O. Havemeyer in 1899).
130-
The Dance Class
1874
Oil on canvas
33X313/4 in. (83.8X79.4 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, 1986
Lemoisne 397
It can reasonably be assumed that this work
was painted largely in the autumn of 1874,
when pressure on Degas from Jean-Baptiste
Faure to deliver his commissioned works
became increasingly difficult to ignore. In a
way, the style of the painting alone reveals it
as the earlier of the two versions of The
Dance Class: the contrasts are bolder, the ef-
fects of light are more brilliant, and — most
of all — there is a concern with the specific
that brings the painting quite close to De-
gas's earliest ballet scenes and to Portraits in
an Office (New Orleans) (cat. no. 115). In this
respect, Mary Cassatt's repeated statements
that in this work Degas surpassed Vermeer
are not far removed from the voices that
found Portraits in an Office infused with a
seventeenth-century Dutch sensibility.1
The composition of the painting is more
eccentric than either the original or the re-
vised design of the related Orsay version (cat.
no. 129), particularly in the extraordinary
arrangement of the group in the foreground
and the oppressive perspective, subverted
by the sharply raised platform in the back-
ground. The center of the composition is
psychologically, as well as technically, occu-
pied by a dancer performing an arabesque
for the ballet master at the far right. The
figures behind her are more conspicuous
than their counterparts in the Orsay version
and include a number of dancers not appear-
ing in the latter, notably a dancer leaning
against the wall at a peculiar angle. The
grouping of dancers to the left, clustered
around an almost invisible piano, represents
one of Degas' s most dramatic and strange
feats of composition. Two of the figures are
like shadows of each other, two additional
ones are virtually faceless, and another, a
seated dancer, seems to float in mid-air.
Degas's claim to the dealer Charles Des-
champs that he painted the work "d'un
trait" (without a break)2 is to an extent mis-
leading, as pentimenti and X-radiography
confirm changes to the composition. The
principal dancer in the foreground, like the
one behind her, originally looked straight
down, and Degas changed the position of
her legs twice before he settled on the final
pose; the second dancer from the left was
added after the group had already been
painted; the dancer in arabesque was origi-
nally farther to the left, largely covering the
figure immediately next to her; and the mir-
ror extended farther into the background. A
number of studies can be related to the com-
position, but fewer than might be expected.3
The poster on the wall, a tribute to Faure, is
for Rossini's opera Guillaume Tell, one of the
singer's great successes.
1 . "Col. Payne's Degas is more beautiful than any
Vermeer I ever saw," cited in Weitzenhoffer 1986,
p. 126. In 191 5, in a letter to Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer in connection with attempts to organize an
exhibition, Mary Cassatt wrote: "My one piece of
advice is that you get the Colonel to lend his De-
gas, if you could get someone to lend a Vermeer
for the Old Masters, it would show Degas* supe-
riority."; Mary Cassatt, Grasse, 20 January 191 5,
to Louisine Havemeyer, Archives, The Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art, New York.
2. Reff 1968, pp. 89-90.
3. III:i57.2 (fig. 121) for Perrot; IV:i38.a in associa-
tion with III: 166. 1 for the dancer adjusting her
shoulder strap.
provenance: Delivered by the artist to Jean-Baptiste
Faure, Paris, autumn 1875; sold to Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 19 February 1898, for Fr 10,000 (stock no. 4562,
as "Le foyer de la danse"); transferred to Durand-Ruel,
New York, 16 March 1898 (stock no. 1977); bought
by Colonel Oliver H. Payne, New York, 4 April
1898; Harry Payne Bingham, his nephew, New York,
from 1917; Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, his widow,
from 1955; her bequest to the museum 1986.
exhibitions: 1876 Paris, no. 37 (as "Examen de
danse"), lent by Faure; 19 15 New York, no. 33;
192 1, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
3 May-15 September, Loan Exhibition of Impressionist
and Post-Impressionist Paintings, no. 27; 1968, New
York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Summer,
New York Collects, no. 50; 1974-75 Paris, no. 17,
repr. (color).
selected references: Grappe 191 1, repr. cover and
p. 21; Lemoisne 1912, p. 60 (as 1875); Meier-Graefe
1923, p. 56, pi. XVI (as 1872-73); Lemoisne [1946-
49], I, pp. 92, 99, 102, II, no. 397 (as c. 1876); Degas
Letters 1947, "Annotations," no. 10, p. 261 (as 1874);
John Rewald, "The Realism of Degas," Magazine of
Art, XXXIX: 1, January 1946, repr. p. 13; Browse
[1949], no. 23 (as c. 1874-76); Cabanne 1957, p. 98;
Havemeyer 196 1, pp. 263-64; Browse 1967, pp. 107-
09, fig. 5; Minervino 1974, no. 488; 1984-85 Wash-
ington, D.C., pp. 52-53, fig. 2.8 (as c. 1876);
Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 126-27, I3°» fig- 79 (color)
(as c. 1874).
236
237
151
I3i.
Dance Master II
1873
Graphite and charcoal on faded, pale pink wove
paper, squared in charcoal for transfer
16V6X u3/4 in. (41 X29.8 cm) (irregular)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp lower right
and on verso. Inscribed in blue pencil lower
right: 2284
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Robert
Sonnenschein II (1951.110a)
Vente IV:2o6.a
This and a cognate drawing (cat. no. 132)
were recognized by George Shackelford as
studies for the figure of the dance master
originally appearing in the Paris version of
The Dance Class (cat. no. 129). 1 The fact
that this drawing is squared for transfer
identifies it as the principal study used for
the figure, but the degree of finish alone
would indicate as much. As a virtuoso per-
formance, it equals the heights of Degas's
idol, Ingres, with the exception that it is not
ruled by a preconceived notion of ideal
form. On the contrary: few of the artist's
drawings reveal more eloquently his extraor-
dinary gift for extracting from a model the
telling detail that would bring a work to life
and give it an almost uncanny authenticity.
1. See "The Dance Class, "p. 234.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 1918, no. 206. a,
in the same lot with no. 2o6.b [cat. no. 132], for
Fr 300). Robert Sonnenschein II, New Freedom, In-
diana; his gift to the museum 195 1.
exhibitions : 1967 Saint Louis, no. 65, repr. (as
c. 1872); 1984 Chicago, no. 24, repr. (color) (as 1874);
1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 49-50, no. 11, repr.
p. 49 (as c. 1874).
selected references: Harold Joachim and Sandra
Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the
Nineteenth Century, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chi-
cago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1979, II,
no. 2F12.
132.
Dance Master I
1873
Watercolor and gouache with pen and black ink
and touches of brown oil paint, over graphite
and charcoal, on buff laid paper, laid down
I73/4X io3/s in. (45 X 26.2 cm) (irregular)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso,
lower right
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Robert
Sonnenschein II (1951.110b)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 367 bis
Although more informal in conception
than the related drawing (cat. no. 131), this
study is technically more complex, with the
underlying pencil outline covered with a
brush drawing, layers of watercolor and
gouache, and even touches of oil paint. The
order in which the two drawings were exe-
cuted is unclear and is unlikely ever to be
238
determined. Suzanne Folds McCullagh has
proposed that the brush-and-ink study pre-
ceded the more finished pencil drawing.1
George Shackelford, however, has reversed
the order and considers the brush study to
be second in the sequence, as a notation for
the dance master's costume.2 It is curious
that in both drawings the artist had to revise
the length of the legs.
In an earlier discussion of the two draw-
ings, Jean Sutherland Boggs tentatively sug-
gested that the model may have been Louis
Merante, the ballet master of the Opera de
Paris, commonly believed to be represented
in Dance Class at the Opera (cat. no. 107). 3
She noted that this study "runs close to broad
caricature, but a caricature in which pathos
rather than malice is combined with comedy."
1. 1984 Chicago, p. 59.
2. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 49-50.
3. 1967 Saint Louis, p. 106.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 19 19, lot 206. b,
in the same lot with no. 206. a [cat. no. 131], for
Fr 300). Robert Sonnenschein II, New Freedom, In-
diana; his gift to the museum 195 1 .
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 66, repr. (as
c. 1872); 1984 Chicago, no. 23, repr. (color) (as 1874);
1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 49-50, no. 12, repr.
p. 49 (as c. 1874).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 367
bis; Browse [1949], no. 40a, repr.; Boggs 1962, p. 127;
Minervino 1974, no. 483; Reff 1976, p. 282, fig. 196
(as 1875-77); Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller
Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nine-
teenth Century, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago/
London: University of Chicago Press, 1979, II,
no. 2G1.
133.
Jules Perrot
1875
Essence on tan paper
19 x n7/8 in. (48.1 x 30.3 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 1875
Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Henry P.
Mcllhenny Collection in memory of
Frances P. Mcllhenny (1986-26-15)
Lemoisne 364
The mistaken identification of this essence
sketch as a portrait of the ballet master Er-
nest Pluque was rectified by Lillian Browse,
who discovered that the figure represented
Jules Perrot (1810-1892).1 From 1830, when
he made his debut as a classical dancer, until
i860, when he ostensibly retired, Perrot was
perhaps the leading male dancer-choreogra-
pher of the Romantic era. As the partner of
Marie Taglioni, he was the chief attraction
of the Opera de Paris until 1834, when dis-
agreements with the management led him
to tour Europe with Carlotta Grisi. Except
for a brief, unofficial return to the Opera in
1 84 1 to arrange Grisi's numbers in Giselle,
and visits in 1847 and 1848, he performed in
his own ballets abroad. Between 1842 and
1848, he was dancer-choreographer and ballet
master at the London opera, and afterward
he danced in Saint Petersburg, where he be-
came ballet master in 185 1. When he returned
to Paris in 1861, the hoped-for reconciliation
with the Opera failed to take place.2
Nothing is known of the connection be-
tween Degas and Perrot beyond the nota-
tion of Perrot's Paris address, in 1879, in one
of the artist's notebooks.3 Degas certainly
painted a portrait of Perrot, dated c. 1875-
79 by Jean Sutherland Boggs, for which two
related studies exist.4 Ronald Pickvance has
surmised that the two men may have met as
133
early as 1873, after Degas's return from New
Orleans, but George Shackelford has pro-
posed 1874 as a likelier probability.5 Ivor
Guest and Richard Thomson have recently
shown that for Glasgow's The Rehearsal
(fig. 119), known to have been finished by
February 1874, the artist used an earlier pho-
tograph of Perrot (fig. 120), which may
suggest that Perrot did not pose for Degas
until later.6
A closely related charcoal drawing (fig. 121)
in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,
England, shows Perrot from the same angle
as in the essence study but with his arms and
cane in a somewhat different position and
his body defined by decidedly sinuous con-
tours. The drawing is ruled for transfer and
is inscribed with notes on color and light,
indicating that Perrot wore the same red
Russian shirt with his flannel suit as in the
239
Fig. 120. C. Bergamasco, Jules Perrot,
c. i860. Photograph. Private collection
Philadelphia sketch.7 There is no doubt that
the Fitzwilliam drawing served as a model
for the figure of Perrot in New York's The
Dance Class (cat. no. 130) and must there-
fore date from 1874. As the essence study is
dated by the artist 1875, its relationship to
the Fitzwilliam drawing and to the Orsay
version of The Dance Class (cat. no. 129), for-
merly assumed to date from 1874, has been
considered problematic. Browse concluded
that the essence study was copied from the
painting, and both Lemoisne and Shackel-
ford have contemplated the possibility that
Degas misdated it.
Theophile Gautier, who collaborated with
Perrot on Giselle and admired him enormous-
ly, described him in his youth as large-chested
and with unusually handsome, slender legs.
At sixty-four, Perrot evidently retained tre-
mendous presence and great elegance in the
movements of his hands, but he was an
aging man. By comparison with the Fitz-
william drawing, the essence study presents
a slightly idealized view of Perrot, with
many of the precisely observed imperfec-
tions deleted. However, so many details are
common to both works that it is exceedingly
unlikely they were executed independently
of each other at some distance in time. Con-
sequently, either both were drawn during
the same session in 1874 and the essence
study was wrongly dated sometime after
the event or, indeed, the essence study was
executed in 1875, not from life but after the
Fitzwilliam drawing — as suggested by Denys
Sutton.8 Given that the two works are al-
Fig. 121. The Dancer Jules Perrot (111:157.2), 1874.
Charcoal and black chalk heightened with white,
19 X 12 in. (48.4 X 30. 5 cm). Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, England
most the same size and that the notations on
the Fitzwilliam drawing correspond to the
colors in the essence study, it is highly prob-
able that in 1875, when he reworked the Or-
say canvas, Degas repeated the figure as a
model to be used in the painting. That this
was the case appears confirmed by the simi-
larities shared exclusively by the painting
and the essence study.
In a notebook dated 1877 but possibly be-
gun slightly earlier, there are two pencil
sketches that Degas made of Perrot in pro-
file: facing right, as in the monotype The
Ballet Master (cat. no. 150), and facing left,
as in this work. From the evidence of the
date of the notebook, they appear to have
been drawn from memory, probably specifi-
cally for the monotype.9
1. Browse [1949], p. 54 and no. 24.
2. For biographical information on Perrot, see Guest
1984, and Dance Index, IV: 12, December 1945, a
number devoted to studies on Perrot.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 210).
Reffhas dated the notebook 1867-74, though the
notation of Perrot's address suggests it was in use
until several years later. For Perrot's move in 1879
from his apartment on rue des Martyrs to 52 bou-
levard Magenta, see Guest 1984, pp. 337-38.
4. The related works are L367 bis (cat. no. 132) and
111:157.3. See Boggs 1962, pp. 56-57, 127-28,
pl. 92.
5. See Pickvance in 1979 Edinburgh, no. 16, and
Shackelford in 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 52.
6. See Thomson in 1986 Manchester, p. 53. It is
Guest, however, who first recognized that Perrot
figured in the composition; see Guest 1984, p. 336.
7. The inscription may be rendered as "red reflection
of the shirt on the neck, blue flannel trousers, rosy
tints on the head."
8. Sutton 1986, p. 168.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p. 41).
See also cat. no. 175.
provenance: Eugene W. Glaenzer and Co., New
York; bought by Boussod, Valadon et Cie, Paris,
with profits to be shared with Glaenzer, for Fr 3,600,
8 December 1909 (as "Le maitre de ballet [M. Me-
rante]"); bought the same day by J. Mancini, Paris,
for Ft 4,000. Maurice Exsteens, Paris, by 1912. Petit-
didier collection, Paris. Fernand Ochse, Paris, by
1924. Paul Brame, Paris; Cesar de Hauke, New
York; Henry P. Mcllhenny, Philadelphia; his bequest
to the museum 1986.
exhibitions: 19 14, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for
Kunst, 15 May-30 June, Fransk Malerkunst, no. 703;
1924 Paris, no. 54; 1933 Northampton, no. 22; 1934,
Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, French Draw-
ings and Prints of the Nineteenth Century, no. 20; 1935,
Buffalo, Albright Knox Gallery, January, Master Draw-
ings, no. 117, repr.; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 78, repr.;
1936, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, French
Artists of the 18th and 19th Century; 1938, Boston, Mu-
seum of Modern Art, The Arts of the Ballet; 1947
Cleveland, no. 67, pl. LIII; 1947, Philadelphia Mu-
seum of Art, Masterpieces of Philadelphia Private Col-
lections, no. 123; 1949, Philadelphia Museum of Art,
"The Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection" (no catalogue);
1958, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Class
of 1933 Exhibition; 1962, San Francisco, California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, 15 June-3 1 July, Henry
P. Mcllhenny Collection, Paintings, Drawings and Sculp-
ture, no. 17, repr.; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 73, repr.
(shown in Philadelphia only); 1984, Atlanta, High
Museum of Art, 25 March-30 September, The Henry
P. Mcllhenny Collection: Nineteenth Century French and
English Masterpieces, no. 19, repr. (color); 1984-85
Washington, D.C., no. 13, repr. (color).
selected REFERENCES: Lemoisne 19 12, p. 60 (as Er-
nest Pluque); Riviere 1922-23, pl. xxvi (reprint edi-
tion 1973, pl. B); Mongan 1938, p. 295; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 364; Browse [1949], no. 24 (as Jules
Perrot); Boggs 1962, pp. 56-57, 127, pl. 93; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 481; 1979 Edinburgh, under no. 16.
134.
Dancer in Profile Turned
to the Right
c. 1873-74
Charcoal* and pastel, squared, on pale pink laid
paper, now faded
i83/s X i21/s in. (46.5 X 30.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF4645)
Exhibited in Paris
Vente 111:341.1
In 1873, Degas had made an essence study
on a blue ground of a dancer scratching her
back (III:i32.2) for possible use as the cen-
tral figure in The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the
Stage (cat. no. 124). The drawing was ulti-
mately not used, but the artist returned to
the same pose not long after for a dancer to
be included in the foreground of the Orsay
240
134
Fig. 122. Dancers Resting (L343), dated 1874.
Oil and gouache, i%Vs x u3A in. (46 x 32. 5 cm).
Private collection
U5
version of The Dance Class (cat. no. 129). In
the earlier drawing the dancer appeared
graceful; for the new composition Degas
chose a psychologically more affecting image,
with the dancer almost convulsed by her ac-
tion in this most informal of poses.
Squared for transfer, the study was also
used for Dancers Resting (fig. 122), painted
in 1874. However, George Shackelford,
who has dated the drawing about 1874, has
placed it chronologically between the two
paintings and has concluded that it repre-
sents an elaboration of the dancer appearing
in Dancers Resting.1
1. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 15.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 341. 1,
in the same lot with no. 341.2 [cat. no. 223], for
Fr 2,850); bought at that sale by the Musee du Lux-
embourg, Paris; transferred to the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 84; 1969 Paris,
no. 170; 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 15, repr.
p. 56.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, II, pi. 76 (re-
print edition 1973, pi. 49); Cabanne 1957, p. 112,
pi. 64; Valery 1965, fig. 47; 1984-85 Paris, fig. 128
(color) p. 151; Sutton 1986, p. 168.
135.
Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper
1873
Graphite heightened with white chalk on now-
faded pink paper
12% X 95/g in. (33 X 24.4 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Inscribed center right: "le bras est enfonce un/
peu dans la/mousseline" (the arm is depressed
slightly in the muslin)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.941)
Exhibited in New York
This drawing has considerable interest as the
prototype for the dancer originally in the
foreground, leaning on the piano, in The
Dance Class (cat. no. 129). Between 1873
and 1874, Degas drew several studies of
dancers adjusting their shoes, in different
poses and from different angles, but none
displaying quite the same mastery of the
medium.1 Jean Sutherland Boggs has shown
that the model, unusually sensual for a
dancer, is the same as the one who posed for a
241
related drawing in the Fogg Art Museum,
Cambridge, Mass., A Ballet Dancer in Posi-
tion Facing Three-Quarters Front (1: 3 28). 2 As
that drawing was one of the preparatory
studies carried out in 1873 for The Rehearsal
of the Ballet on the Stage (cat. no. 124), it can
reasonably be surmised that Dancer Adjusting
Her Slipper also dates from 1873.
Painted out of The Dance Class, where
she was replaced with a figure derived from
Standing Dancer Seenjrom Behind (cat. no. 137),
the dancer survives, nevertheless, in the re-
lated Dancers Resting (fig. 122). In the latter,
she is shown with the dancer scratching her
back (cat. no. 134), very much in the same
relationship as she would have had originally
in The Dance Class.
1. See the sketch on a sheet detached from a note-
book (Musee du Louvre, Paris, RF30011) and an
essence study (L325), both related to Dancers in a
Practice Room (L324, private collection, Paris). A
drawing, once the property of Edmond Duranty,
shows a dancer in the same pose. See Chronology
II, January 188 1.
2. 1967 Saint Louis, no. 71.
provenance: Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York;
her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1930 New York, no. 160; 1955 San An-
tonio, no number; i960 New York, no. 84; 1967
Saint Louis, no. 71, repr.; 1977 New York, no. 16 of
works on paper, repr. cover; 1980-81, Bordeaux,
Galerie des Beaux- Arts, Profil du Metropolitan Museum
of Art de New York, de Ramses a Picasso, no. 146.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 186;
Walter Mehring, Degas, New York: Herrman, 1944,
no. 25; Browse [1949], no. 20; Rene Huyghe, Edgar-
Hilaire-Germain Degas, Paris: Flammarion, 1953,
no. 31; Rosenberg 1959, no. 206, repr.; 1984-85
Washington, D.C., pp. 47-48, fig. 2.4 p. 47; Sutton
1986, p. 168, fig. 144.
136.
Seated Dancer
c 1873
Graphite and charcoal heightened with white on
pink wove paper, squared for transfer
i63/s X i27/s in. (42 X 32 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.942)
Lillian Browse has pointed out that this
dancer, apparently rearranging her skirt, is
actually tracing with her fingers the steps
she is meant to memorize.1 Her coiffure, ar-
ranged with a braid on the crown of her
head, suggests she may be the same model
that posed for Seated Dancer in Profile (cat.
no. 126).
The drawing is squared, indicating it was
intended for transfer, but no identically posed
dancer appears in a painting. It is probable
that the drawing was used only for a dancer
with similarly posed legs and folded arms
that appears in the background of the two
versions of The Dance Class (cat. nos. 129,
136
137
242
130). The pose of the legs is repeated on a
sheet with six studies of dancers' legs
(IV: 1 3 8. a), all but one used in the Paris ver-
sion (cat. no. 129) and probably executed to
clarify details in the painting.
1. Browse [1949], no. 18, p. 341.
provenance: H. O. Havemeyer, New York; Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York, from 1907; her be-
quest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 13 of drawings;
1930 New York, no. 159; 1973-74 Paris, no. 34,
pi. 63; 1977 New York, no. 17 of works on paper.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 186, repr.
p. 187; Browse [1949], no. 18, repr. (as c. 1873).
137.
Standing Dancer Seen from Behind
c. 1873
Essence on pink paper
15V2 X 11 in. (39.4X27.8 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF4038)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Maurice Serullaz was the first to observe
that this drawing is closely related to the
dancer in the foreground holding a fan in
The Dance Class (cat. no. 129) in the Musee
d'Orsay and, hence, that it could not date
from c. 1876 as previously thought.1 There
can be little doubt that the study belongs,
along with Two Dancers (cat. no. 138) and
several other essence studies, to a group of
working drawings executed largely in 1873.
Even though the poses are not identical, it is
likely that Degas consulted this drawing
when he decided to delete from the Orsay
painting the figure based on Dancer Adjusting
Her Slipper (cat. no. 135).
The term "dessin" (drawing) as used by
Degas covered a wide range, and included
essence paintings. He exhibited some of his
drawings, a sign of the importance he at-
tached to them, but these are seldom identi-
fiable today. Standing Dancer Seen jrom Behind
is one of the rare studies that was certainly
shown in public. It was included along with
a related drawing (L388, private collection,
Paris) in the second Impressionist exhibition,
in 1876, where it was seen by Huysmans. In
the first of many enthusiastic reviews of the
artist's work, he noted "two drawings on
pink paper in which one ballerina, seen
from behind, and another, adjusting her
slipper, are carried off with an uncommon
ease and vigor."2
1. 1969 Paris, no. 168.
2. Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gazette des Amateurs, 1876.
Reprinted in Huysmans 1883, p. 112.
provenance: Armand Guillaumin, Paris; Jack
Aghion; Serghei Shchukin, Moscow (anonymous
[Shchukin] sale, Drouot, Paris, 24 March 1900, no, 6
[as "Danseuse lacant son corset"]); bought by Comte
Isaac de Camondo, Paris; his bequest to the Louvre,
Paris, 191 1 ; entered the Louvre 19 14.
exhibitions: 1876 Paris, no. 51 (one of several draw-
ings under the same number); 1937 Paris, Orangerie,
no. 94 (as c. 1878); 1969 Paris, no. 168; 1976-77, Vi-
enna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, 10 Novem-
ber 1976-25 January 1977, Von Ingres bis Cezanne:
Aquarelle und Zeichnungen aus der Louvre, repr. (color)
cover.
selected references: Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gazette
des Amateurs, 1876, reprinted in Huysmans 1883,
p. 112; Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, no. 218;
Browse [1949], no. 32 (as c. 1876).
138.
Two Dancers
1873
Dark brown wash and white gouache on bright
pink commercially coated wove paper now
faded to pale pink
24V&X 15V2 in. (61.3 X 39.4 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.187)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 1005
Dated 1889-95 by Lemoisne, 1878-80 by
MofFett,1 and c. 1880 by Shackelford,2 this
freely brushed drawing rightfully belongs to
243
the stock of figure drawings Degas executed
in sepia wash on colored papers — usually
pink — for his great rehearsal pictures of the
mid-i870s. Browse dated it 1876,3 but
without taking into account that the two
figures appear to the left and right of the
ballet master in the Orsay Dance Class (cat.
no. 129), begun in 1873. The two bent-
armed women seen here, unlike the figures
in most of Degas's working poses, reappear
later only infrequently. The figure at the right
looks into the mirror of the Metropolitan's
version of The Dance Class (cat. no. 130) of
1874, while Degas may have used the figure
at the left for Dancer in Her Dressing Room
(L529, Oskar Reinhart Collection "Am Romer-
holz," Winterthur) of c. 1879-80. Degas made
two fine pencil drawings of the figure at the
left (11:332, Detroit Institute of Arts, and
II 1326), and there are notebook studies of
the pose on the right.4 Both figures appear
on a fan of the late 1870s (BR72).
Shackelford observed that Degas may
have drawn the two poses from the same
model, "as if the dancer had been turned
around to face herself."5 There is indeed a
peculiar quality of interior conversation evi-
dent in this drawing, much like that evoked
by Picasso's 1906 drawings and painting
Two Women (The Museum of Modern Art,
New York).
GT
1. Moffett 1979, p. 12, no. 25.
2. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 77.
3. Browse [1949]. no. 33.
4. Reff 1985, Notebook 29 (private collection, p. 25),
Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 1). Related draw-
ings include 11:9 1, HI: 8 1.4, and a drawing at the
Louvre, cat. no. 137.
5. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 77.
provenance: Presumably sold by the artist to Goupil-
Boussod et Valadon, Paris; apparently bought, at an
unknown date, from Boussod et Valadon by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York1; Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, by 1922 until 1929; her bequest to the muse-
um 1929.
I . Handwritten notes among Havemeyer papers in
the archives of the Metropolitan Museum in New
Y>rk indicate that a Degas drawing of "2 Dancers —
on pink," presumably this work, was purchased
through Boussod et Valadon, Paris.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 90 (as "Deux dan-
seuses," on pink paper), lent anonymously by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer; 1930 New York, no. 162; 1947
Washington, D.C., no. 6; 1977 New York, no. 25 of
works on paper,
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 185; New
York, Metropolitan, 1943, no. 53, repr.; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 1005; Browse [1949], p. 347,
no. 33, repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 1061; Moffett 1979,
p. 12, pi. 25 (color); 1984-85 Washington, D.C.,
p. 77, repr.; 1987 Manchester, p. 113, fig. 148.
139-
Dancer Posing for a Photograph
1875
Oil on canvas, squared
255/s X i93/4 in. (65 X 50 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Pushkin Fine Art Museum, Moscow (3237)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 447
It has been demonstrated by Ronald Pick-
vance that Dancer Posing for a Photograph was
exhibited in London in May 1875 and hence
could not date from 1876 or 1878-79 as pre-
viously thought. Pickvance has dated it
1874, placing it logically in the sequence of
ballet scenes connected with The Dance
Class (cat. no. 128) of 1873. 1 The correspon-
dence between Degas and Charles Des-
champs, his dealer in London, allows in fact
for a slightly more precise dating, simulta-
neously casting an interesting light on the
pains Degas took to ensure the proper con-
servation of his works.
In a letter dated 15 May 1876 by Theo-
dore Reff, Degas expressed his concern over
the possible yellowing of In a Cafe (The Ab-
sinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172) and The Dance
Class (cat. no. 129) if glazed before being al-
lowed to dry. He advised that his works
should not be prematurely varnished, so as
not to repeat the mishap experienced with
"the little dancer in silhouette, which was
done so much too soon that it is all yellow,
and we could not remove the varnish com-
pletely."2 This would indicate that the Mos-
Fig. 123. Study of a Dancer with Arms
Raised (IIL338.2), 1874. Charcoal,
18 X 11V4 in. (45.7 X 28.6 cm). Private
collection, New York
cow painting, surely the picture in question,
was not dry when it reached London in late
spring 1875 and» consequently, that it could
not have been painted long before March of
that year.
The work is the only known composition
by Degas that could be recognized as the
"Dancer in Front of a Looking Glass,"
which he listed in a notebook with a series
of ballet scenes that he intended to show in
an exhibition to be titled Degas: dix pieces sur
la danse d'Opera (Degas: Ten Works on
Dance from the Opera). If RefTs tentative
identification is correct, it would follow that
Degas's exhibition was not planned for early
1874, as Reff noted, but perhaps for 1875,
when no Impressionist exhibition was held.3
It is tempting to suppose that the title of the
work, with its deliberately modern connota-
tions, was an afterthought, as it appears for
the first time as "at a photographer's studio —
dancer" only in a list of works Degas drafted
for the fourth Impressionist exhibition, in
l879-4
A study for the dancer (fig. 123), squared
for transfer, represents her on the same scale
as in the finished painting, which also retains
traces of squaring. The pose is one Degas
used often, in a variety of combinations, un-
til relatively late in life. Performed by a dancer
before a mirror in an apparently empty room,
against the chilly light of the window, the
movement becomes the miraculous expression
of a concentrated examination of self.
Despite the artist's dazzling performance,
recognized in 1875 by a British reviewer
who called the picture "really a chef d'oeuvre
in its way ... by the hand of a thorough
master," the work failed to sell.5 It returned
to Paris, where, as noted earlier, attempts to
remove the varnish were made and where it
formed part of the Doria collection before
becoming the property of the famous Rus-
sian collector Serghei Shchukin.
1. Pickvance 1963, pp. 264-65.
2. Reff 1968, p. 90, and n. 44, where the picture is
tentatively identified as Danseuse posant chez le pho-
tographe (Dancer Posing at the Photographer's
Studio).
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 203).
4. RefF 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 67).
5. Pickvance 1963, pp. 264, 266. See also Reff 1968,
where it is noted that the work was sold to Henry
Hill after it was exhibited by Deschamps in No-
vember 1875. In fact, it was Rehearsal before the
Ballet (L362) that was shown in London in No-
vember 1875 and subsequently purchased by Hill.
provenance: With Charles W. Deschamps, London,
spring 1875. Hector Brame, Paris, by 1879; bought
by Comte Armand Doria, Paris (Doha sale, Galerie
Georges Petit, Paris, 4-5 May 1899, lot 137, repr.,
for Fr 22,000); bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris (stock
no. 5192); deposited with Cassirer, Berlin, 8 Septem-
ber 1899; returned to Durand-Ruel, Paris, 29 Decem-
ber 1899 (stock no. 6212); bought by Serghei
Shchukin, Moscow, 19 November 1902, for Fr 35,000;
Shchukin collection, until 19 18; to the Museum of
244
139
Western Art, Moscow, 19 18; transferred to the Push-
kin Museum 1948.
exhibitions: 1875, London, 168 New Bond Street,
spring-summer, Tenth Exhibition of the Society of
French Artists, no. 72 (as "Ballet Dancer Practising");
1879 Paris, no. 72; 1902, Brussels, Societe des
Beaux-Arts, March-May, Le Salon — geme exposition,
no. 68; 1955, Moscow, Pushkin Museum, Exhibition
of French Art from the i$th to the 20th Century, p. 30;
1956, Leningrad, Hermitage, Exhibition of French Art
from the 12th to the 20th Century, p. 87, repr. ; 1960,
Leningrad, Hermitage, Exhibition of French Art of the
Second Half of the 19th Century from Soviet Art Muse-
ums Held in the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, p. 14;
1974-75, Leningrad, Hermitage/ Moscow, Pushkin
Museum, Impressionist Painting on the Occasion of the
Centenary of the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874
(catalogue by Anna Grigorievna Barskain), no. 8,
repr. (as 1874).
selected references: The Echo, 1 8 May 1875, The
Graphic, 22 May 1875, cited in Pickvance 1963, p. 264
n. 73; Mauclair 1903, p. 389; Otto Grautoff, "Die
Sammlung Serge Stschoukine in Moskau," Kunst und
Kunstler, XVII, 1918-19, repr. p. 85; Lafond 1918-
19, II, p, 27, repr. before p. 37; Paul Ettinger, "Die
modernen Franzosen in den Kunstsammlungen
Moskaus," pt. I, Der Cicerone, XVIII: 1, 1926, p. 23,
repr. p. 26; Louis Reau, Catalogue de Vart francais dans
les musees russes, Paris: A. Colin, 1929, no. 763; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 447 (as 1877- 78); Browse
[1949], no. 43 (as 1878-79); Charles Sterling, Great
French Painting in the Hermitage, New "York: Abrams,
1958, p. 90, pi. 66 (erroneously as in the Hermitage);
Pickvance 1963, pp. 264-65, fig. 18 (as 1874); RefF
1968, p. 90 n. 44; Minervino 1974, no. 505 (as 1877-
78?); Die Gemaldegalerie des Pushkin Museums in Moskau
(by Irina Antonova), Moscow: Pushkin Museum,
1977, no. 97; The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in
Moscow: Painting (compiled by Tatyana Sedova), Len-
ingrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1978, no. 75, repr,;
Irina Kuznetsova and Evgenia Georgievskaya, French
Painting from the Pushkin Museum: 17th to 20th Century,
New York: Abrams /Leningrad: Aurora Art Publish-
ers, 1979, no. 170, repr. (color) (as 1874); RefF 1985,
Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 203), Notebook 31
(BN, Carnet 23, p. 67) (as 1874); Sutton 1986, p. 172,
repr. (color) p. 173 (as c. 1877-79).
245
140.
Woman on a Sofa
1875
Essence, oil, and India ink over pencil on
four pieces of pink paper joined together
19VS X i63/4 in. (48 X 42 cm)
Signed and dated upper right: Degas 1875
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.185)
Lemoisne 363
The careful rendition of the features of the
woman and the absence of a related version
in oil seem to confirm that this drawing had
an independent status and was not a study
for a more formal work. Certain technical
aspects of the portrait suggest that it may
have been developed in two stages. It proba-
bly began as a pencil drawing on a smaller
sheet of paper which was then enlarged
(somewhat less carefully than was custom-
ary for Degas) with additional strips of pa-
per at the bottom and sides, allowing the
artist to expand the design beyond the con-
fines of the original sheet and resume work
in a different technique. In its final form, it
was drawn largely with a brush in a combi-
nation of diluted oil paint, essence, and India
ink. The remarkably spirited style is recog-
nizably that of the similarly dated study of
the ballet master Jules Perrot (cat. no. 133).
The warm tone of the pink paper, won-
derfully put to use to set off the turquoise
trimmings of the dress, intensifies the pres-
ence of the informally posed sitter. The ulti-
mate effect is not so much that of a portrait
in the conventional sense as that of a digres-
sion on a theme or of a likeness captured
during a pause between sittings. Despite her
enormous dress, rather old-fashioned for
1875, the woman appears at ease, if slightly
aloof. Posed with an arm raised, rather like
a dancer holding onto a stage flat, she has a
kind of grace that is as attractive as it is un-
expected. On the surface, the sitter appears
to be a typical conservative bourgeoise from
Degas's circle. Her identity, however, re-
mains elusive.
provenance: Michel Manzi (d. 191 5), Paris; Char-
lotte Manzi, his widow, Paris; bought by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York, through Mary Cas-
satt, 5 December 191 5; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 108; 1930 New
York, no. 161; 1947 Washington, D.C., no. 14; i960
New York, no. 88; 1974 Boston, no. 79; 1977 New
York, no. 19 of works on paper.
selected references: Wehle 1930, p. 55; New York,
Metropolitan, 1943, pi. 51; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 363; Boggs 1962, p. 48, fig. 82; Minervino 1974,
no. 389; Reffi976, pp. 280-82, pi. 195 (color);
WeitzenhofFer 1986, p. 231,
141.
Mme de Rutte
c. 1875
Oil on canvas
24V2 X i93/4 in. (62 X 50 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Private collection, Zurich
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 369
Friedrich-Ludwig de Rutte (1829-1903), the
husband of the woman in this portrait, was
a Swiss architect from Bern who apparently
practiced architecture in Paris in the 1870s
before returning to his native city. His wife,
an Alsatian from Mulhouse, was the sister
of the painters Emmanuel and Jean Benner,
and his son Paul, also an architect, was born
in Paris in 1871. Degas probably met the
family in the late 1860s in the circle of paint-
ers around Emmanuel Benner. A former
student of Bonnat, Emmanuel Benner had a
studio he occasionally shared with Jean, his
twin brother, who spent long periods paint-
ing in Capri.
According to Paul de Rutte — as reported
by Lemoisne — Degas painted this portrait
about 1875 in Emmanuel Benner's studio on
23 rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin. The date
has been accepted by Jean Sutherland Boggs,
who has drawn a parallel between this por-
trait of Elise de Rutte and the earlier portrait
painted in New Orleans, Woman with a Vase
of Flowers (cat. no. 112). Boggs has noted
that the two works share a compositional
scheme. The sitter is physically separated
246
from the viewer by a barrier of accessories,
and the foreground is dominated by a vase
with flowers. She has emphasized, however,
that in Mme de Rutte' s portrait Degas was
not "as concerned with the definition of the
background, the shape of the table, the pre-
cise sculptural form of the vase; even her
body is not so fully realized, and the hands
are left undone. As a result, the painting's
three-dimensional existence is not so force-
ful (nor as psychologically oppressive) as
the Woman with a Vase."1 The remarkably
free and abridged treatment of the objects
around Mme de Rutte acts as a foil for her
solidly constructed, grave face.
i. Boggs 1962, p. 47.
provenance: Probably a gift of the artist to the sitter;
Paul de Rutte, her son, Paris; (?) Mme Emile Couvreu,
nee Violette de Rutte, his sister; Andre de Wiirstem-
berger, her nephew; with Wildenstein and Co. , Lon-
don; bought by the present owner 1986.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 61, lent by
Paul de Rutte.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 369; Boggs 1962, pp. 47-48, 59, 129; Minervino
1974, no. 394; Keyser 1981, p. 53.
142.
Mme Jeantaud before a Mirror
c. 1875
Oil on canvas
29V8 X 331/2 in. (70 X 84 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1970-38)
Lemoisne 371
Berthe Marie Bachoux (1851-1929), a cousin
of Vicomte Ludovic Lepic, an engraver,1 mar-
ried Charles Jeantaud on 1 February 1872. 2
The Jeantauds were part of the circle of
friends around Degas in the early 1870s, and
when they established themselves at 24 rue
de Teheran, near the artist's old friends the
Henri Rouarts, Degas continued to see them.
This portrait of Mme Jeantaud, originally
dated 1874 and later c. 1875 by Lemoisne,
was the first of two portraits Degas painted
of her and certainly the more complex '
In more than one sense, the fainting ex-
tends an idea that Degas touched on in
Dancer Posing for a Photograph (cat. no. 139)
of 1874. In that work, as in a later pastel, At
the Milliner's (cat. no. 232), a reflection of
the subject, invisible to the viewer, was im-
plied by the action of the figure and the
presence of a looking glass, seen from the
back. In the portrait of Mme Jeantaud the
notion is reversed: the sitter shows only her
profile, and it is the reflection that provides
the conventional, frontal view expected in a
portrait. The multiplication of viewpoints
was a concern increasingly expressed in
Degas's notes and drawings of the late 1870s,
but the confrontation of dissimilar images in
Mme Jeantaud before a Mirror achieves a dis-
turbing antithetical effect seldom observed
in his other works.
Dressed in street clothes, Mme Jeantaud
appears to stand poised for a brief glance in
the mirror before going out. The suggested
animation of her body, with her fashionable
dolman still sweeping out behind her, may
be said to be contradicted only by the lan-
guid droop of her right hand resting on her
muff. In the reflection, however, where she
is seen dimly against a flash of light emanat-
ing from a window behind her, the ambigu-
ities multiply. She is seated, not standing,
with her back erect, looking directly at the
painter — or the viewer — rather than at her-
self, and her right hand is firmly lodged in
the muff held in her lap.
The dramatic antithesis between the
charm of Mme Jeantaud and her lugubrious
reflection, ultimately beyond analysis, is
reconciled pictorially in the extraordinary
use of light, captured even by the pearl in
the sitter's ear, the spontaneous, almost
fiery application of paint, and the subtle
247
142
harmony of colors that dominates through-
out— black, gray, blue gray, and blue, with
violent shots of white in the armchair and
the mirror. X-radiographs show that except
for a slight correction in the line of the nose,
the portrait was executed virtually without
a break.
Around the time this portrait was painted,
Mme Jeantaud also sat for Jean-Jacques
Henner, with whom Degas shared another
model, Emma Dobigny.3 It would be diffi-
cult to find two pictures more indicative of
the aesthetic gap that divided Degas from
even the most idiosyncratic of artists con-
nected with the Salon. In this context, it is
perhaps revealing that Mme Jeantaud even-
tually sold her portrait by Degas but willed
that by Henner to the Musee du Petit Palais.
Degas himself painted her a second time, in
about 1877 according to Lemoisne, in a more
subdued composition (L440) of equally vig-
orous execution now in the Staatsgalerie
Stuttgart.
Recently it has been proposed that Mme
Jeantaud before a Mirror may have been exhib-
ited in 1876 in the second Impressionist ex-
hibition under the title "Modiste."4 A brief
description of the painting in Emile Porche-
ron's review of the exhibition appears to
rule out the possibility.5
1. See "The First Monotypes," p. 257.
2. See cat. no. 100.
3 . Juliette Laffon, Musee du Petit Palais, Catalogue
sommaire illustre des peintures, Paris, 1882, no. 467,
repr.
4. 1986 Washington, D.C., p. 161.
5. "We shall not mention the Milliners, who are obvi-
ously too ugly to be anything but chaste"; Emile
Porcheron, "Promenades d'un flaneur: les impres-
sionnistes," Le Soleil, 4 April 1876. Which of De-
gas's works was actually exhibited remains a tan-
talizing question, as it appears to have preceded by
several years his first known paintings of milliners.
provenance: Mme Jeantaud, Paris; bought by Bous-
sod, Valadon et Cie, Paris (shared half-interest with
Wildenstein and Co.), 11 April 1907, for Fr 23,000
(as "Portrait d'une dame se refletant dans une glace");
bought by Jacques Doucet (d. 1929), Paris, 18 April
1907; Mme Jacques Doucet, his widow, Neuilly-sur-
Seine; Jean-Edouard Dubrujeaud, Paris; bequest of
248
Jean-Edouard Dubrujeaud, with life interest to his
son, Jean Angladon-Dubrujeaud, 1970; cession of life
interest 1970.
exhibitions: 19 12, Saint Petersburg, Centennale de
Vartjrancais, no. 176; 19 17, Kunsthaus Zurich, 5 Oc-
tober-14 November, Franzdsische Kunst des 10. und
20. Jahrhunderts, no. 89; 1924 Paris, no. 50, repr. ;
1925, Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 28 May-12
July, Cinquante ans de peinture jrangaise, iSj$-ig2$,
no. 154; 1926, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 3 July-
3 October, Exposition retrospective d'art fiangais, no. 41;
1928, Paris, Galerie de la Renaissance, 1-30 June,
Portraits et figures defemmes, d1 Ingres a Picasso, no. 56;
193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 56, pi. VIII (incorrectly
identified); 1932 London, no. 344 (402), pi. 125, lent
by Mme Jacques Doucet; 1936, London, New Bur-
lington Galleries, Anglo-French Art and Travel Soci-
ety* i_3 1 October, Masters of French Nineteenth Century
Painting, no. 63; 1937 Paris, Palais National, no. 304;
1949 New York, no. 32, repr. (private collection),
lent through Cesar de Hauke; 1955, Rome, Palazzo
delle Esposizioni, February-March/ Florence, Palazzo
Strozzi, Mostra di capolavori della pittura fiancese
delVottocento, no. 31.
selected references: Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 63-64,
pi. xxiv; Lafond 19 18-19, II, P- 14; Jamot 1924,
pp. 52, 141-42, pi. 34; Lemoisne 1924, p. 98 n. 4;
Riviere 1935, repr. p. 41; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 371; Boggs 1962, p. 120; Minervino 1974, no. 393;
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures, 1986, III, p. 197.
143-
Henri Rouart and His Daughter
Helene
1871-72
Oil on canvas
25 X 29V2 in. (63. 5 X 74.9 cm)
Private collection, New York
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 424
The son of a manufacturer of military equip-
ment, Henri Rouart (183 3-19 12) belonged to
a group at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand that in-
cluded Degas, Ludovic Halevy,1 and Louis
Breguet, the brother of the future Mme Ha-
levy. At the time, Rouart's interests — always
very diverse — were not yet so clearly directed
to painting and music. Possessed of an inven-
tive mind, he studied at the Ecole Polytech-
nique, then embarked on a military career.
In the early 1860s, he returned to his first
passion, engineering, and, with his younger
brother Alexis (1839-19 11), successfully
launched novel industrial projects that ranged
from the first equipment for artificial refrig-
eration to engines propelled by gasoline.
Until late in life he retained a demeanor that
reminded people of both his former profes-
sions, as Daniel Halevy observed in his diary
in August 1899: "Yesterday, Henri Rouart
came to call, an old friend of my father and
of Degas ... a former engineer, still mili-
tary in his bearing, but at the same time gentle
and charming."2
After graduation, Degas lost sight of
Henri Rouart, but in 1870-71, during the
Franco-Prussian War, chance assigned him
to an artillery unit led by Rouart. The old
friendship was renewed, and Degas discov-
ered Rouart was now also an amateur land-
scape painter and about to start a collection
of modern pictures. His more precocious
brother Alexis, who collected lithographs
and paintings by artists of the 1830s, was to
share with Degas an interest not only in
Daumier, Gavarni, and Delacroix, but also
in Japanese prints.
It is difficult to exaggerate the friendship
that united Degas and the Rouarts. He was
closer to Henri, whom he convinced to join
the Impressionists and exhibit with them,
but discussed Ingres and Gavarni with Alexis.
He saw both Rouarts regularly, and when
Henri Fevre, Degas's brother-in-law, built
adjacent houses on rue de Lisbonne for
Alexis and Henri, Degas dined on Tuesdays
with one Rouart family and on Fridays with
the other. By 1906, the artist could truthfully
acknowledge to his sister Therese that the
Rouarts were his only family "in France."5
Sad to say, he had the misfortune to outlive
both brothers, see their collections sold, and
witness the dispersal of his own works, in-
143
eluding Dancers Practicing at the Barre (cat.
no. 165), the finest painting in Henri's col-
lection, and The Little Milliners (fig. 207),
owned by Alexis.
It is curious that Degas never painted a
portrait of Alexis Rouart, who remains a
shadowy figure, though a series of portraits
of his brother and his family cover a period
of over thirty years. The painting of Henri
with his daughter Helene, the first in the
series, must have been begun in the relative-
ly short period between the end of the war
in 1 87 1 and the artist's departure for New
Orleans in October 1872. A date in the early
1870s, suggested by the age of the child —
born in 1863 — appears to belie the confident,
luscious handling of the paint, reminiscent
of Degas's work of the late 1870s, which has
led Lemoisne, Jean Sutherland Boggs, and
Theodore RefF to date the work c. 1877.
Nevertheless, the scheme of the portrait,
with the figures against a background paral-
lel to the picture plane, is one Degas used
only before his departure for New Orleans.4
It occurs in The Collector of Prints (cat. no. 66),
the portrait of James Tissot (cat. no. 75), and
Mme Theodore Gobillard (cat. no. 87), all of
which share an almost compulsive interest
in the dynamic contrast generated by the
placement of a figure against a background
dominated by the interplay of rectangles.
Vigorous but somewhat uneven, the exe-
cution of this painting suggests an idea in
249
progress rather than a completed work, and
it may be that it is indeed unfinished. The
surprisingly broad brushwork of the left
side of the composition is equaled only by
that in Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town
(fig. 336), an evidently unfinished work also
commonly dated in the late 1870s but prob-
ably from about 1872. The asymmetrical
composition of the Rouart portrait is a varia-
tion on an idea Degas experimented with in
Mme Theodore Gobillard. Henri Rouart is
seated in profile. The child, with eyes
strangely focused in an otherwise blurred
face, is already recognizable as the sitter for
the great, later portrait in the National Gal-
lery in London (fig. 192). Here, she sits rather
uncomfortably on her father's knee. His
right hand affectionately clasps her hands
while his left arm, with fist clenched, rests
on the armchair. The painting in the back-
ground appears to be the deliberately sketchy
rendition of a landscape by Rouart and is
certainly close to a painting by him published
by Dillian Gordon.5 The latter has also pub-
lished a photograph of Helene Rouart,
which she has tentatively proposed as a pos-
sible model for the painting.6 Despite the
childish face, however, the photograph
shows Helene Rouart at a later, more ma-
ture stage and already in the costume of an
adult.
1. See cat. nos. 166, 328, and "Degas, Halevy, and
the Cardinals," p. 280.
2. Halevy i960, p. 131; Halevy 1964, p. 102 (transla-
tion revised).
3. "I was able to arrive last Friday in time to go to
dinner at the Rouarts', who are my family in
France." Letter from Degas to Therese Morbilli of
5 December 1906, written after the artist's return
from Naples, in the archives of the National Gal-
lery of Canada, Ottawa.
4. Exceptions are the two portraits of Diego Martelli
of 1879, cat. nos. 201, 202.
5. Dillian Gordon, Edgar Degas: Helene Rouart in Her
Father's Study, Portsmouth, 1984, p, 6, fig. 12.
6. Ibid., fig. 13.
provenance: Henri Rouart, Paris; Ernest Rouart, his
son, Paris; Capitaine and Mme Bricka, daughter of
Helene Rouart (Mme Eugene Marin), Montpellier.
Hector Brame, Paris. Feilchenfeldt, Amsterdam; pri-
vate collection, New York.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 63, pi. IX,
lent by Capitaine and Mme Bricka, Montpellier; 1947
Cleveland, no. 26, pi. XX; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 28,
repr. p. 41; 1966, New York, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, Summer Loan Exhibition, Paintings,
Drawings and Sculptures from Private Collections, no. 42;
1967, New York* The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Summer Loan Exhibition, Paintings from Private Collec-
tions, no. 28; 1978 New York, no. 16, repr.; 1984,
London, The National Gallery, 11 April- 10 June,
Degas: Helene Rouart in Her Father's Study, p. 4, fig. 1
P- 5.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 424; Meier-Graefe 1923, pi. XXXIII; Alexandre
1935, p. 159, repr.; Boggs 1962, pp. 45, 47, 67, 74,
128, pi. 87; Minervino 1974, no. 423; Reff 1976,
p. 130, pi. 93.
144.
Henri Rouart in front of His Factory
c. 1875
Oil on canvas
2$¥s x i93/4 in. (65. 1 x 50.2 cm)
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh,
Acquired through the generosity of the Sarah
Mellon Scaife Family (69.44)
Lemoisne 373
For reasons known only to Degas, all his
portraits of Henri Rouart represent his friend
in near-profile and always from the left.1
Rouart' s face in profile was manifestly ex-
pressive, a consideration not easily dismissed
in any attempt to transfer a likeness favor-
ably, and the artist was probably sensitive to
the subtle variations he could experiment
with in presenting an integral personality
with — so to speak — only half the facts. The
format of this portrait, with Rouart shown
bust-length, follows an Italian fifteenth-
century formula Degas knew well, but with
an accomplished twist. The slightly bent sitter
is placed completely off center, rather as if
he were about to cross the field of the paint-
ing, dynamically framed by the schematic
rendering of railway tracks converging diz-
zily, in perspective, behind his head.
As noted by George Moore, Degas's por-
traits almost always present the subjects in a
setting characteristic of their interests.2 Here,
Rouart's factory becomes an extension of his
personality.
250
us
1. See L293, L424 (cat. no. 143), L1176 (cat. no. 336),
L1177 (fig. 306).
2. Moore 1890, p. 422.
provenance: Henri Rouart, Paris, probably a gift of
the artist; Ernest Rouart, his son, Paris; Mme Ernest
Rouart (nee Julie Manet), his widow, Paris; Clement
Rouart, her son, Paris. Private collection, Paris; Wil-
denstein and Co., Inc., New York; bought by the
museum 1969.
exhibitions: 1877 Paris, no. 49 (as "Portrait de Mon-
sieur H.R. . ."); 1924 Paris, no. 52; 1943, Paris,
Galerie Charpentier, May-June, Scenes et figures
parisiennes, no. 73; 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 62, repr.;
i960 Paris, no. 14, repr.; 1986 Washington, D.C,
no. 47.
selected references: Jamot 1924, no. 49, p. 125 n. 4;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 373; Agathe Rouart-
Valery, "Degas in the Circle of Paul Valery," Art
News, LIX:7, November i960, p. 64, fig. 4 p. 39;
Rewald 1961, p. 392, repr. p. 449; Boggs 1962, pp. 45,
93 n. 14, 128-29; Fred A. Myers, "New Accessions/
Degas," Carnegie Magazine, XLIV:3, March 1970,
pp. 91-93, repr. facing p. 91 and detail on cover;
Minervino 1974, no. 392.
Uncle and Niece (Henri Degas
and His Niece Lucie Degas)
c. 1876
Oil on canvas
39^4 X 47^4 in. (99. 8 X 119. 9 cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs.
Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
(1933 429)
Lemoisne 394
When Hilaire Degas died in 1858, the per-
petuation of the house of Degas in Naples
was less than certain. Although his eldest
son, Auguste, father of the artist, was mar-
ried and established as a banker in Paris,
none of Hilaire's three sons living in Naples
showed an inclination for marriage. Finally,
in 1862, at the relatively advanced age of
fifty-two, Edouard Degas (1811-1870) mar-
ried Candida Primicile Carafa, the sister of
his brother-in-law, the Duca di Montejasi.
Within a few years there were two children,
Rene-George, who died young, and Lucie
(1867-1909; fig. 124). Candida Degas died
Fig. 124. RafFaello Ferretti, Lucie Degas, c. 1882.
Photograph. Private collection
251
in June 1869, and her husband followed her
to the grave shortly afterward, in March
1870. In 1870, the children became the
wards of Achille Degas, one of their uncles.
The death of Achille in 1875 left Lucie, at
the age of eight, sole heiress to her father's
estate and cobeneficiary, with her cousins,
the brothers Edgar and Achille De Gas, of
some of their uncle Achille's estate.1 Or-
phaned again, as it were, she became the
ward of her last surviving uncle, Henri Degas
(1809-1879). Why she was not entrusted to
the charge of an aunt or a cousin remains
unclear, but the reasons must have been
largely financial. Whatever life Lucie may
have had in the dignified gloom of the Pa-
lazzo Degas with yet another bachelor uncle
came to an end in 1879 with the death of
Henri Degas, who left her the entire share
of his estate. Aged twelve by then and the
principal heiress to what had been the Degas
fortune, Lucie changed guardians for the
third time in three years when her cousins
Therese and Edmondo Morbilli moved into
the Palazzo Degas as her legal tutors. As
subsequent events proved, the arrangement
was less than ideal.2
It is probable that Degas met Lucie briefly
for the first time in December 1873, when
he brought his father to Naples. He no
doubt saw her in March 1875, when he at-
tended the funeral of his uncle Achille, and
again in June 1876, when he returned to Na-
ples in a failed attempt to raise money for
his creditors in Paris. The double portrait of
Henri Degas and his ward is known to have
been painted in Naples, where it remained
in Lucie's possession until her death.
Both Lemoisne and Jean Sutherland Boggs
have dated the portrait to the time of De-
gas's visit of 1876, but recently Richard
Brettell has proposed a more cautious date
of 1875-78, with the death of Henri Degas
as a terminus ante quern. It is probable that
Uncle and Niece was not begun in 1875,
when the commotion caused by Achille's
death and the arrangements for Lucie's
guardianship would have been scarcely con-
ducive to so tranquil an interpretation of life
in the Degas family. A date later than 1876
is equally improbable, since Degas did not
visit Naples again until 1886, long after
Henri's death. It is therefore likely that the
work was begun and finished in 1876, when
guardian and ward had settled into the rou-
tine of their existence, and that the portrait
records one of the few peaceful moments
in an otherwise stormy period of Lucie
Degas 's life.
The carefully constructed composition of
Uncle and Niece has been admirably dis-
cussed by Boggs and Brettell, both of whom
have pointed out the psychological implica-
tions of the scheme. Brettell has noted pen-
timenti in the arms and hands of the little
girl, who had originally been holding her
uncle's armchair more firmly, and the care
with which the artist defined the relation-
ship between the two sitters. The most
striking aspect of the portrait is the extraor-
dinary sense of immediacy it conveys. Henri
Degas has been reading the newspaper, with
Lucie looking over his shoulder, and they
have been interrupted by the artist, whom
they confront directly. The uncle, slightly
weary, merely lifts his eyes for a moment;
more self-consciously, the child strikes the
semblance of a pose. Both react to the in-
truder, who captures them with the apparent
informality of a photograph. In this respect,
the work transcends conventional notions of
portraiture and moves firmly into the realm
of life caught in its unpredictable aspects.
Brettell has suggested the composition ap-
proximates that of In a Cafe (The Absinthe
Drinker) (cat. no. 172), a more obvious ren-
dition of two solitary figures, unaware, in
that instance, of the presence of an observer.
In conception, the Chicago painting is a
type of experimental portrait imaginable only
within the framework of an artist's immediate
circle — family or friends. Degas's later at-
tempt to convey an equal degree of life in
the commissioned portrait of Mme Dietz-
Monnin (L534), also in the Art Institute of
Chicago, revealed to him, in full force, the
tenuous nature of the relationship between
sitter and portrait painter.
As Theodore Reff has pointed out, Lucie
Degas posed a second time for the artist
during a visit to Paris in 188 1.3 This time, it
was not for a portrait but for a relief — The
Apple Pickers (cat. no. 231).
1. For the complicated conditions of Achille Degas's
will, see Boggs 1963, p. 275.
2. Following her marriage to her cousin Edoardo
Guerrero, Lucie became estranged from the Mor-
billis and from Edgar Degas. The question of the
inheritance left by Achille Degas, settled only after
Lucie's death in 1909, was evidently one of the
causes of the breach.
3. Reff 1976, pp. 249-51.
provenance: Degas family, Naples; Marchesa Edo-
ardo Guerrero de Balde (nee Lucie Degas), Naples;
Signora Marco Bozzi (nee Anna Guerrero de Balde),
Lucie Degas's daughter, Naples; bought by Wilden-
stein and Co., New York, November 1926; Mrs.
Lewis Larned Coburn, Chicago; her bequest to the
museum 1933.
exhibitions: 1926, Venice, Pavilion de France,
April-October, XVa Esposizione Internazionale d'arte
nella citta di Venezia, no. 16, fig. 104; 1929 Cam-
bridge, Mass., no. 34, pi. XXII; 1932, The Art Insti-
tute of Chicago, Antiquarian Society, Exhibition of the
Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection: Modern Paintings and
Water Colors, no. 6, repr.; 1933 Chicago, no. 289,
fig. 289; 1933 Northampton, no. 17; 1934, The Art
Institute of Chicago, 1 June-i November, A Century
of Progress, no. 204; 1934 New York, no. 1; 1934,
Saint Louis, City Art Museum, April-May, "Paint-
ings by French Impressionists" (no catalogue); 1936
Philadelphia, no. 24, repr.; 1949 New York, no. 35,
repr.; 1951-52 Bern, no. 22, repr.; 1952 Amsterdam,
no. 13, repr. (detail); 1984 Chicago, no. 26, repr.
(color).
selected references: Kunst und Kunstler, XXX,
1926-27, p. 40, repr. (as "Father and Daughter");
Manson 1927, pp. 11-13, 48, pi. 5; Daniel Catton
Rich, "A Family Portrait of Degas," Bulletin of the
Art Institute of Chicago, XXIII, November 1929, pp.
125-27, repr. cover; W. Hausenstein, "Der Geist des
Edgar Degas," Pantheon, VII:4, April 193 1, p. 162,
repr.; Daniel Catton Rich, "Bequest of Mrs. L. L.
Coburn," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago,
XXVI, November 1932, p. 68; Walker 1933, p. 184,
repr. p. 179; Mongan 1938, p. 296; Masterpiece of the
Month, Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, July
1941, pp. 188-93; Hans Grabar, Edgar Degas nach
einigen und fremden Zeugnissen, Basel: Schwabe, 1942,
repr. facing p. 60; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 394;
Raimondi 1958, p. 264, pi. 24; Paintings in the Art In-
stitute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection,
Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1961, p. 119,
repr. p. 287; Boggs 1962, pp. 45-46, pi. 86; Boggs
1963, p. 273, fig. 32; Supplement to Paintings in the Art
Institute of Chicago, A Catalogue of the Picture Collection
(catalogue by Sandra Grung), Chicago: The Art In-
stitute of Chicago, 1971, p. 27; Minervino 1974,
no. 401; Koshkin-Youritzin 1976, p. 38; Keyser 198 1,
p. 55, pi. XIX; Sutton 1986, p. 278, fig. 270 p. 277.
I46.
The Duchessa di Montejasi with
Her Daughters Elena and Camilla
c. 1876
Oil on canvas
26 X 38Y2 in. (66 X 98 cm)
Private collection
Lemoisne 637
Degas's portrait of his aunt Stefanina and
her two daughters Elena and Camilla is the
last of his family portraits and probably the
most arresting. Dramatically placed against
a glistening blue-green background, Stefanina
Primicile Carafa, Marchioness of Cicerale
and Duchess of Montejasi, dominates the
scene by virtue of her placement at the top
of a pyramidal mound of black taffeta that is
in turn centered in a square consisting of all
but the left third of the canvas.1 But the true
basis of her commanding presence is her un-
compromising expression of resignation and
world- weary knowledge. In contrast, her
daughters seem frivolous and gay. They are
active (perhaps playing a piano2), while she
is immobile (listening?); they seem carefree,
while she is heavy with the weight of life.
By separating the mother from the daugh-
252
ters Degas emphasized the differences rather
than the similarities of the two generations
portrayed.3 As Jean Sutherland Boggs has
written, Degas's sympathies now lie with
the older generation, as they did not, for
example, in the great family portrait of his
youth, The Bellelli Family (cat. no. 20). 4
It is not known for certain when Degas
painted this portrait. The most useful clue is
the black garb of the sitters, which has been
interpreted by Paul Jamot, Jean Sutherland
Boggs, and others as mourning dress.5 De-
gas went to Naples, where his aunt lived, to
look after his dying father in the winter of
1873-74. He returned in 1875 for the funeral
of his uncle Achille, and visited again briefly
in June 1876. However, the majority of writ-
ers on the painting subscribe to a date of 188 1,
too late to reflect events of the mid- 1870s.
Boggs has suggested that the women may
have been in mourning again in 1879, when
the duchess's sister Rosa-Adelaida, Duchessa
Morbilli, and another brother, Henri Degas,
died. But after 1876, Degas did not return
to Naples until 1886. This last date, 1886,
can be ruled out first on the evidence of style,
for the present painting has nothing in com-
mon, for example, with the 1886 portrait of
Helene Rouart (fig. 192), and second on ac-
count of the sisters' ages. In 1886, the duch-
ess would have been sixty-seven, a plausible
age for the woman portrayed here, but the
daughters, Elena and Camilla, would have
been thirty-one and twenty-nine respectively,
too old for the young sisters in this portrait.
In a notebook he was to use in 1879, De-
gas wrote of doing a series of aquatints on
mourning.6 In this painting, he has made
black more than a simple descriptive tool to
characterize the sitters: he has made it the
virtual subject of the work,7 As worn by
the duchess, the color is tragic; as worn by
the daughters, it is striking and incongru-
ous. Despite the temptation to associate this
portrait with the notebook project, it should
be remembered that even in a notebook dated
by Reff as early as 1859-64, Degas had con-
templated painting a portrait of Mme Paul
Valpingon in mourning dress, "which suited
my aunt Laura [Bellelli] so well."8 It is diffi-
cult to imagine that Degas was working in
this portrait style even as late as 1879. The
Fig. 125. The Duchessa di Motttejasi (BR53), 1868.
Oil on canvas, 19V4 X 15V2 in. (48.9 X 39.4 cm).
The Cleveland Museum of Art
253
space of the present picture does not share
the energetic diagonal movement of the
1879 portraits of Duranty (fig. 146 and
L518) and Martelli (cat. nos. 201, 202), nor
is the method of description or even the ap-
plication of paint reminiscent of Degas' s el-
liptical operations in the portrait of Mme
Dietz-Monnin (LsH* The Art Institute of
Chicago). Instead, the closest analogies seem
to lie in portraits of the early and mid-i870s,
such as Henri Rouart and His Daughter Helene
(cat. no. 143) and Uncle and Niece (Henri De-
gas and His Niece Lucie Degas) (cat. no. 145,
painted in Naples in 1876), both of which
are lateral, almost narrative, compositions.
There is more than a family resemblance be-
tween the faces of Henri Degas and his sis-
ter Stefanina: they are painted in very much
the same manner. Thus, it seems logical to
assume that the portrait of the duchess with
her daughters was painted during the same
stay in Naples. Degas evidently began his
series on mourning some four years before
he made those notes in his notebook, in the
midst of the enormous losses he and his
family had sustained over the previous year.
It should be noted that Paul Jamot consid-
ered the playing of music, rather than the
effect of mourning, to be central to the mean-
ing of this portrait. "As a psychologist as well
as a painter, he [Degas] studied the effects of
music on a given listener. With all the pene-
tration of which he was capable, and with-
out abandoning that dash of irony that he
adds to all his most sympathetic curiosities,
he created *the portrait of the man or wom-
an listening to music' [i.e., as a new class of
portraiture]."9
Degas portrayed Elena and Camilla in a
double portrait of about 1865 (L169, Wads-
worth Atheneum, Hartford). Elena, who
appears here on the right, was portrayed
separately in 1875 in a portrait formerly in
the Tate Gallery and now in the National
Gallery, London (L327).10 The duchess was
painted by Degas about 1868 in a portrait
now in the Mellon collection (BR 52),
which was preceded by a life-size portrait
head in oil (fig. 125). A related charcoal
drawing formerly in the collection of T.
Edward Hanley that was last sold publicly
at the Palais Galliera, Paris, in 1973, does
not appear to be by Degas.
GT
1. Degas seems to have calculated the composition
according to geometric formulas: the canvas is
one and a half times as wide as it is tall, a stan-
dard format; the two figural groups, centered on
the axes of their respective segments, divide the
canvas according to the proportions of the "golden
section" (a ratio of 1:16; i.e., the smaller part is to
the larger part as the larger part is to the whole).
2. According to Henriot (Catalogue de la Collection
David Weill, II, 1927, p. 231), Marcel Guerin was
the first to suggest that the daughters are playing
a piano.
3. The watercolor portrait of Mme Michel Musson
and her daughters in the Art Institute of Chicago
is an example of the opposite, a family group
emoting in unison.
4. Boggs 1962, p. 59.
5. Jamot 1924, p. 60; Boggs 1962, pp. 58-59. 95
n. 45.
6. Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 206).
7. The observation is Jacques Bouffier's.
8. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 96).
9. Jamot 1924, p. 60.
10, There is some dispute over the identity of the
sitter in L327. Signora Bozzi, niece of Camilla
Carafa, identified her aunt in the portrait (see
Ronald Alley, Tate Gallery Catalogues: The For-
eign Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London,
J959» P- 53)- However, on the basis of photo-
graphs provided by Elena's nephew and Camilla's
son, Signor Francesco Cardone di Cicerale, Boggs
identified the portrait as that of Elena Carafa
(Boggs 1962, p. 124).
provenance: Presumably given by the artist to the
Duchessa Montejasi (nee Stephanie Degas), his aunt,
Naples. With Vincent Imberti, Bordeaux, 1923; bought
from him by David David-Weill, Paris, 1923; private
collection.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, p. 46, no. 64, repr. (as "Por-
trait de Mme de Rochefort [?] et de ses deux filles,
Helene et Camille [?]," c. 1881), lent by David Weill;
193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 75, repr.; 1934, Venice,
XIX Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte,
May-October, II ritratto dell'800, no. 6 (as "La Du-
chessa di Montejasi Cicerale con le sue figHe Elena e
Camilla"), lent by David-Weill, Paris; 1952, Paris,
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, March- April, Cinquante
ans de peinture franqaise dans les collections particulieres de
Cezanne a Matisse, no. 37, pi. I.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Jamot I924, pp. 21, 58-6O,
150, pi. 56 (as "Portrait de famille," 1881, David-
Weill collection); Daniel Guerin, "L'exposition
Degas," Revue de I' Art, April 1924, p. 286; Lemoisne
1924, p. 98, no. 4 (as "Portrait de Stephanie Degas et
de ses deux filles"); H. Troendle, "Die Tradition im
Werke Degas," Kunst und Kunstler, XXV, 1926-27,
repr. p. 245 (as "Bildnis Mme de Rochefort und
ihrer Tochter," 188 1); Gabriel Henriot, Catalogue de
la Collection David Weill, II, Paris: Braun et Cie, 1927,
pp. 229-32, repr. p. 233 (as "Portrait de famille: La
duchesse de Montijase [sic] et ses deux filles," c. 1881);
Marcel Guerin, "Remarques sur des portraits de fa-
mille peints par Degas a propos d'une vente recente,"
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, June 1928, pp. 372-73 n. 1
(as formerly with Vincent Imberti and now in the
David-Weill collection); Alexandre 1935, repr. p. 160;
Grappe 1936, repr. p. 11; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 637; Raimondi 1958, p. 264; Boggs 1962, pp. 58-
59, 95, 124, pi. 114; Minervino 1974, no. 583.
147.
Woman with an Umbrella
c. 1876
Oil on canvas
24 X i93/4 in. (61 X 50.4 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (15838)
Lemoisne 463
Nothing is known about the circumstances
surrounding the painting of Woman with an
Umbrella, which came to light only at the
time of Degas's death and was purchased at
the third atelier sale by one of his friends,
Denys Cochin. When the portrait was thor-
oughly examined for the first time in 1969
(see fig. 126), it was discovered that it was
painted over an unfinished picture of a
standing young woman in black, shown
three-quarter length, left of the center of the
canvas. She wears a white bonnet, white
collar and cuffs, and except for the absence
of an apron one could perhaps imagine her
to be a nursemaid.1 Her left arm, though
scraped of paint, is still visible at the center
of the coat of the woman with the umbrella,
dividing it in two, almost as if it were a dec-
orative element.
The second portrait was painted on top of
a thin ground, directly, without preparatory
drawings, in assured strokes of the brush
that outlined the principal elements — the
head, the erect body, and the firmly crossed
arms. As Clement Greenberg has noted, if
the pose and the manner of execution are
faultlessly classical, the naturalism of the
image is worthy of Goya.2 The woman
could never be considered beautiful and has
Fig. 126. X-radiograph of Woman with an Umbrella
(cat. no. 147)
254
more than a share of that "pointe de laideur
sans laquelle point de salut" (saving touch of
ugliness) always appreciated by Degas.3 The
nose echoes the curiously constructed face,
with oblong cheekbones and an unexpectedly
round chin. The lips are shut with a defiant
twist, and the eyes confront the viewer with
a fixed, mesmerizing gaze. Elegant but mo-
rose, holding her umbrella as a kind of shield,
she projects a frosty indifference to being
anatomized in exact physical detail.
The portrait has been dated c. 1876 by
Jean Sutherland Boggs and c. 1877-80 by
Lemoisne. The style, remarkably Ingresque
for so late a date, is of little assistance in dat-
ing the work; the costume would fit into
any time slot in the late 1870s. The more
probable date is about 1876, before Degas's
portraits took the more complex formal
turn that culminated in the late 1870s.
1 . There is no apparent connection between this figure
and the notes and drawing of a nursemaid appear-
ing in one of Degas's notebooks for two projected
compositions on the theme of birth and mother-
hood. See Reflf 1985, Notebook 34 (BN, Carnet 2,
pp. 8, 10, 11).
2. Clement Greenberg, "Art/' The Nation, CLXVIII:i8,
30 April 1949, p. 509.
3 . See Degas's description of the women of New
Orleans: "The women here are almost all pretty,
and many, even in their attractiveness, have that
saving touch of ugliness." Letter to Henri Rouart,
5 December 1872; Lettres Degas 1945, III, p. 28;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 5, p. 27 (translation
revised).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 6,
for Fr 7,000); bought by Baron Denys Cochin, Paris;
with Hector Brame, Paris; with Paul Cassirer, Ber-
lin. Arthur Sachs, Paris, by 1949. With Marianna
Feilchenfeldt, Zurich; bought by the museum 1969.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, hors catalogue;
1949 New York, 'no. 41, repr.; 1961, Paris, Musee
Jacquemart-Andre, summer-autumn, "Chefs-
d'oeuvre des collections franchises" (no catalogue);
1962, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Chefs-d'oeuvre des
collections frangaises, no. 25, repr.; 1964-65 Munich,
no. 84, repr., lent by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Sachs;
1975, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 6 August-
5 October, "Exploring the Collections: Degas and
Renaissance Portraiture" (no catalogue, multigraph
essay and checklist by Jean Sutherland Boggs); 1983,
Vancouver Art Gallery, Masterworks from the Collec-
tion of the National Gallery of Canada, p. 48, repr.
(color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 463; Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation,
CLXVIII:i8, 30 April 1949, p. 509, reprinted in
Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism
(edited by John O'Brian), II, Chicago /London: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1986, p. 302; Boggs 1962,
p. 48, pi. 84; Jean Sutherland Boggs, The National
Gallery of Canada, Toronto: Oxford University Press,
1971, pp. 61, 114, pi. xxiii (color); Minervino 1974,
no. 461.
I48.
Women Combing Their Hair
c. 1875
Oil on paper, mounted on canvas
12V4 x i8Vb in. (32. 3 x 46 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
(0482)
Lemoisne 376
Sometime around 1878, Degas startled the
Halevy family when he asked to be allowed
to see Genevieve Halevy comb her hair.1 It
was a curious request to make and in more
than one sense revealing of an interest in a
theme that would become increasingly evi-
dent as years went by. There is little in De-
gas's early work to indicate this interest —
perhaps a drawn copy of Botticelli's Birth of
Venus of the late 1850s (IV:99.b), or draw-
ings after a model with long flowing hair
(Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre
[Orsay], RF12262, RF12266) studied just
before 1865 in anticipation of Scene of War in
the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45). Possibly more
revealing is a remark he made in a notebook
used in 1868-74, where he confided, "I can
readily call to mind the color of certain hair,
for example, because I associate it with the
color of gleaming walnut or of hemp, or in-
deed of horse chestnuts, real hair, with its
shimmering flow and its lightness, or its
coarseness and its weight."2
Somewhat unexpectedly, about 1875-76
the theme appears fully realized, in rapid
succession, in Women Combing Their Hair, as
a subsidiary motif in Peasant Girls Bathing in
255
the Sea toward Evening (cat. no. 149), and as
the central subject of At the Seashore (L406,
National Gallery, London), in which a child
has her hair combed by a nursemaid. Of
these, Women Combing Their Hair is the most
conspicuously studied, focusing exclusively
on the movements of three figures, evidently
painted from the same model in three differ-
ent poses. The figure at the center can be
safely considered the first expression of a
prototype that Degas repeated in several
versions, with the model nude, in the 18 80s
(see cat. nos. 284, 285). But the other two
figures do not reappear in his later work ex-
cept as remote echoes — for instance, in Young
Woman Combing Her Hair (cat. no. 310),
where the gesture of the figure at the left is
reexamined but with entirely different results.
Some of the working process that under-
lies the painting is still visible and indicates
it may have originated as a simple triple
study of a woman combing her hair. The
support, a sheet of paper, is of the same size
and type as that used, for instance, in Four
Studies of a Jockey (cat. no. 70)^ for some of
the studies of women at the races (L260,
L261), and in the individual sheets that make
up At the Seashore. The figures, originally
nude, were sketched in essence, quite freely,
rather like the studies of women at the races.
It seems reasonably certain that the idea to
turn the work into a painting followed im-
mediately after the original design. Though
presumably drawn in the studio, the figures
were placed in a semblance of narrative in a
landscape, and their positions were slightly
altered for compositional reasons. The
woman at the center and the one at the left
were moved farther to the left, and it was in
this final stage that the figures were dressed.
Degas's emphasis was consistently on the
upper part of the figures, with the arms and
the hair observed with particular care. Parts
of the landscape, apparently a beach by a
river, were left unfinished, however, as were
parts of the figures. The woman in the cen-
ter is only partially covered by her clothes,
and the figure still reveals a section of the
previous, underlying nude.
As usual with Degas, the notion of "fin-
ished" and "unfinished" is an especially
thorny question. Degas probably considered
this work finished, as he did the even less
complete Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town
(fig. 336), which he exhibited in 1879. He
signed the painting, possibly for its first
owner, the artist, and later a friend, Henry
Lerolle, but he appears never to have exhib-
ited it.
1 . Genevieve Halevy was the cousin of Ludovic
Halevy and the widow of Georges Bizet, who had
died in 1875. See George D. Painter, Marcel Proust,
I, London: Chatto and Windus, 1959, p. 89.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, p. 4).
provenance: Bought from the artist in 1878 by Henry
Lerolle (d. 1929), Paris; Madeleine Lerolle, his widow,
Paris. With Carstairs, Carroll, New York, after 1936;
bought by Duncan Phillips, Washington, D.C.,
1940.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 56, repr.; 193 1 Paris,
Rosenberg, no. 27; 1935, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-
Arts, V impressionnisme, no. 15, repr.; 1936, London,
New Burlington Galleries, Anglo-French Art and
Travel Society, 1-3 1 October, Masters of French Nine-
teenth Century Painting, no. 62 (from the collection of
the late Henry Lerolle); 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no.
23, pi. XIV; 1947 Cleveland, no. 27, pi. XXVII;
1949 New York, no. 33, repr.; 1950, New Haven,
Yale University Art Gallery, 17 April-21 May,
French Paintings of the Latter Half of the 19th Century
from the Collections of Alumni and Friends of Yale, no. 6,
repr.; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 25; 1959, New Haven,
Yale University Art Gallery, 19th Century French
Paintings, no. 6, repr.; 1962 Baltimore, no. 40, repr.;
1977, Cincinnati, Taft Museum of Art, 24 March-8
May, Best of $0 (no number), repr. (color); 1977-78,
Memphis, Tenn., Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 4 De-
cember 1977-8 January 1978, Impressionists in 1877,
no. 10, repr.; 1978 New York, no. 11, repr. (color).
selected references: Hertz 1920, pi. 8; Meier-Graefe
1920, pi. 38; Rouart 1945, pp. 13, 70 n. 24 (as "es-
sence"); Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 86, II, no. 376;
The Phillips Collection: Catalogue, Norwich, Conn. ,
1952, p. 27; Cabanne 1957, pp. 97, 111, pi. 56; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 397; Roberts 1976, pi. 21 (color);
Keyser 198 1, p. 72, pi. vii; McMullen 1984, p. 275;
1984-85 Paris, fig. 111 (color) p. 132.
149.
Peasant Girls Bathing in the Sea
toward Evening
1875-76
Oil on canvas
255/s X 3714 in. (65 X 81 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection
Lemoisne 377
The mood of this startling composition,
simultaneously exuberant and somber, sug-
gests a youthful, romantic intensity seldom
observed in the artist's mature work, and
the ritual aspect of the jubilant dance of the
bathers, in a primal union with nature, sets
the subject apart from almost anything else
Degas painted.1 The idea for a composition
of this type seems to have arisen from a
handwritten note in a notebook Degas used
during the period 1868-72, in which he pro-
posed to make "on a large scale, groups, in
pure silhouette, at twilight."2
In a theme that preoccupied him from
about 1856 to 1858, the artist attempted to
convey the symbolic moment when Dante
and Virgil entered Inferno. This work ap-
pears to reflect the opposite notion, entry
into an almost ecstatic state of bliss, and it
may not be entirely coincidental that the
two figures holding each other by the hand
distantly echo the pose of the models Degas
used for his Dante and Virgil (fig. n).3 The
lyrical passages in the background, with the
tranquil-looking women quietly combing
their hair or introspectively turning then-
backs to the sunset, are close in feeling and
256
Fig. 127. Study of a Nude Girl (IV:28(m),
c. 1875? Charcoal, i2xAxj5/s in. (31 X 19.3 cm).
The British Museum. London
style to those in Women Combing Their Hair
(cat. no. 148), in the Phillips Collection.
The contrast between the still mood of the
background and the flamboyant bathers in
the foreground is echoed in the astonishingly
free handling of paint, liquid and diaphanous
nearly throughout but used sparingly, in-
deed almost brutaliy, in the bathers.
A drawing of a nude girl (fig. 127) in the
British Museum served as the model for the
figure at the left. The frenzied figure at the
right, doubdess inspired by the standing nude
at the center of The Death of Sardanapalus by
Delacroix (now in the Louvre but during
the 1 870s and 1880s owned by Durand-
Ruel), was also used for a pastel (L606) in
the Sidney Brown collection in Baden,
Switzerland.
According to the catalogues of the second
and third Impressionist exhibitions, Degas
exhibited the painting in 1876 and again in
1877. Although the shows were extensively
reviewed, no mention of the picture ap-
peared in print. As the artist frequently
changed his mind about works to be exhib-
ited, it is possible that he decided against
showing it in 1876 after the catalogue was
printed, hence its somewhat unusual inclu-
sion one year later in the exhibition of 1877.
The remark of a critic who noted the ab-
sence of several of Degas 's works nine days
after the opening of the exhibition of 1876
lends some strength to this hypothesis.4
1. A different bathing scene in a monotype (J262) of
decidedly comic cast, c. 1876, is in fact closely
connected to the small, subsidiary figures appear-
ing in the background of At the Seashore (L406,
National Gallery, London).
2. See Reff 1985, Notebook 23 (BN, Carnet 21, p.
60). The author is grateful to Jean Sutherland
Boggs for having drawn this notebook entry to
his attention.
3. See in particular the nude studies IV: 106. e and
IV:ii6.b.
4. Emile Blemont [Emile Petitdidier], "Les impres-
sionnistes," Le Rappel, 9 April 1876.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 32,
for Fr 5,500). Charles Vignier, Paris. Private collec-
tion. Sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 4 Decem-
ber 1984, no. 6, repr. (color); bought at that sale by
present owner.
exhibitions: (?) 1876 Paris, no. 56 (as "Petites pay-
sannes se baignant a la mer vers le soir"); 1877 Paris,
no. 5 1 (as "Petites filles du pays se baignant dans la
mer a la nuit tombante"); 1986 Washington, D.C.,
no. 27, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 377; Cabanne 1957, pp. 35, 111, 129, pi. 57;
Miner vino 1974, no. 396.
The First Monotypes
cat. nos. 150-153
A monotype is made by applying printer's
ink or oil paint with a brush or rag on a
metal plate and then printing the image on a
sheet of dampened paper with the aid of a
rolling press. Only one really good impres-
sion can be pulled, although a second, inevita-
bly less richly textured, impression can also
be obtained. It has frequently been stated that
Degas, who preferred the phrase "dessin fait
a Tencre grasse et imprime" (drawing made
with thick ink and then printed) to the term
"monotype," first experimented with the
process under the supervision of his friend
Ludovic Lepic, an engraver, who had devel-
oped a system that allowed considerable
variability in the inking of engraved plates.
In a relatively short time, Degas created not
only some of his most striking works but
also some of the most innovative monotypes
to be produced in modern times. From the
evidence of the large number of surviving
monotypes, he was clearly fascinated with
the process, and it has been recorded on
various occasions that he considered himself
its inventor.1
257
Fig. 128. Cabaret (L404), 1876-77. Pastel over monotype, 9V2 X 17V2 in. (24.1 X 44. 5 cm).
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Two options are open to the maker of
monotypes: one, commonly known as the
"dark-field manner," consists of completely
covering the untouched plate with ink and
then removing parts of the ink with a rag or
an implement. With the second method, the
"light-field manner," one simply draws on
the plate with a brush and printer's ink. De-
gas used both methods, sometimes on the
same plate, and with such different results
as to seriously confuse the question of their
date. He appears to have almost invariably
pulled second impressions and in a few in-
stances even attempted to obtain counter-
proofs. Eugenia Janis, whose analysis of the
role of monotypes in Degas's work remains
the essential text on the subject, has pointed
out the artist's use of first impressions of
monotypes for transfer lithographs and his
extensive use of second impressions as a
base for pastels. More recently, Sue Reed,
Barbara Shapiro, Douglas Druick, and Peter
Zegers have elaborated on the remarkably
ingenious manner in which Degas used any
image he produced, including the mono-
types.
The chronology of the monotypes re-
mains indefinite, in spite of the significant
work of Denis Rouart, Eugenia Janis, and
Francoise Cachin on the subject. It seems
the first works were not begun as early as
previously believed, and, paradoxically,
many are probably dated later than they
should be. The fixed points for a chronology
of the works are few. Denis Rouart origi-
nally proposed 1875 as a tentative date for
the earliest monotypes, which he believed
to be the cafe-concert scenes, but now it is
generally agreed that Degas's earliest mono-
type is The Ballet Master (cat. no. 150), du-
ally signed "Degas" and "Lepic." This has
been dated 1874-75 by Eugenia Janis on the
assumption that a second impression of the
monotype covered in gouache and pastel
(fig. 130) existed in the summer of 1875
when it was allegedly purchased by Louisine
Elder, the future Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer.2
A dated bill of sale has been cited as evi-
dence, but no such document appears to ex-
ist, and the earliest firmly established date
for the pastel is 1878, when it was exhibited
in New York.3
According to Mrs. Havemeyer's memoirs,
she bought the pastel from a color shop in
Paris on the advice of Mary Cassatt when
she was "about sixteen years old" — that is,
around 1871, clearly an impossibility.4
There is no question that she could have ac-
quired works of art in 1875 when she visited
Paris, yet it is more likely that she bought
the pastel in 1877 on a subsequent visit.
This hypothesis is supported by her remark
about a note of thanks Degas wrote to Mary
Cassatt, difficult to imagine long before
1 877, 5 and would also correspond with other
evidence indicating that Degas did not actu-
ally begin producing monotypes until, most
probably, the summer of 1876.
Jules Claretie, who saw Degas frequently
and was not likely to be wrong about such
things, mentioned in a letter of 4 July 1876
that the artist spoke to him "about a new
printmaking process that he had discovered!"6
As Claretie was the one critic who at the
time of the exhibition of 1877 made a point
of discussing Degas's monotypes and even
recommended their publication, his voice
has the ring of authority.7 And in a well-
known letter of 17 July 1876, Marcellin
Desboutin, a close friend of Degas's, wrote
about the artist's tremendous enthusiasm for
printing: "Degas ... is no longer a friend,
a man, an artist! He's a zinc or copper plate
blackened with printer's ink, and plate and
man are flattened together by his printing
press, whose mechanism has swallowed
him completely!"8
The results of this intense activity were
evident in the third Impressionist exhibition
of 1877, to which Degas contributed three
separate sets of monotypes, unfortunately
not identified in the catalogue, as well as a
number of works in pastel over monotype.
Among the pastelized monotypes were The
Chorus (cat. no. 160), Women on the Terrace of
a Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174), Cabaret
(fig. 128), Cafe-concert at the Ambassadeurs (L405,
Musee de Lyon), Woman Leaving Her Bath
(cat. no. 190) — always known or suspected
to have figured in the exhibition — and, almost
certainly, Ballet (The Star) (cat. no. 163).
The catalogue also listed a "Cabinet de toilette"
(no. 56) and "Femme prenant son tub le soir"
(no. 46), which may be identified respective-
ly as The Toilette (L547, Musee d'Orsay, Pa-
ris), variously dated from 1879 to 1885, and
Woman at Her Toilette (fig. 145), commonly
dated 1885-90.9
Rouart, Janis, and Cachin have all ob-
served that Degas's monotypes fall into cer-
tain thematic and stylistic groups and have
dated them accordingly. It is a useful divi-
sion for the purposes of dating, and for the
sake of simplicity, it is retained here. One
group, the cafe and cafe-concert scenes, has
been dated by Rouart, Janis, and Cachin be-
tween roughly 1875 and 1880. From the evi-
dence of the two scenes exhibited in 1877
and a few more small monotypes transferred
by Degas as lithographs, generally dated
1876-77, the entire group can probably be
dated 1876-77. 10 Another group of some
forty monotypes (not counting second im-
pressions), conceived by Degas as illustrations
for Lafamille Cardinal by Ludovic Halevy
and usually dated 1879-83, also belongs to a
date prior to April 1877, when a number
were shown in the third Impressionist exhi-
bition and were reviewed by Jules Claretie.11
The group of brothel scenes, along with a
few subjects aptly titled "scenes intimes" by
Francoise Cachin, have been unanimously
dated c. 1879-80 by Rouart, Janis, and Ca-
chin. From the point of view of style, the
series has been frequently and justly con-
nected with the Famille Cardinal monotypes,
and Cachin has even suggested that some of
them may have been exhibited in 1877. 12 Jules
Claretie, in his review of the exhibition of
1877, intimated as much.13 The series should
likely be reconsidered as belonging to the
period 1876-77 and not separated from the
Famille Cardinal group.
A number of monotypes that fall into
small subgroups should be noted separately.
The few portraits and busts, some connected
with cafe-concert subjects, have in fact al-
ready been redated in part. The portrait of
258
Fig. 129. Cafe-concert (J25), 1876-77. Monotype, second impression, 8 X 16V2 in. (20.3 X41.9 cm).
Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina
Ellen Andree (cat. no. 171), dated c. 1880
by Janis and Cachin, belongs more properly
with that of Marcellin Desboutin (J233, Bib-
liotheque Nationale, Paris), dated by them
1876, which in turn carries a sequence of
small monotypes, such as The Jet Earring
(cat. no. 151), dated in the second half of the
1 870s, 14 Three monotypes (two of them
covered in pastel) of women leaving their
bath, in spite of the varying dates in the late
1 870s assigned by Janis and Cachin, are likely
closely related and are at home in 1876-77,
before the third Impressionist exhibition in
which one of them figured.15
More enigmatic are a number of dark-
field monotypes representing dance subjects
and nudes in interiors. The dance subjects,
few in number, were dated very late by
Rouart, along with the nudes, c. 1890-95.
Janis, followed by Cachin, moved them
much earlier, to c. 1878-79, with one ex-
ception, The Ballet Master (cat. no. 150),
which she dated c. 1874-75. On the basis of
this monotype, Janis concluded that Degas
may have employed the subtractive or dark-
field method at the outset, and, owing to its
relationship to works in other mediums, she
suggested that in his earliest experiments he
depended on subjects from his paintings.16
This, indeed, happens to be true with most
of the dark-field ballet subjects, which are
variations on drawings. Hence, t it is difficult
to imagine why the small group of dance
subjects should be separated by several years
from a single, first experiment, The Ballet
Master. It seems more likely that all are con-
temporary and thus to be placed among his
early efforts.
Janis originally dated the group of dark-
field nudes and "scenes intimes" 1880-85,
but redated it 1877 on stylistic grounds.17
The matter would not require attention if the
group were not relatively mixed, containing
scenes such as The Fireside (cat. no. 197),
The Tub (cat. no. 195), and Women by a Fire-
place (cat. no. 196), easily accommodated in
1876-77, along with the variety of stylistic-
ally different large nudes such as Nude Woman
Reclining on a Chaise Longue (cat. no. 244),
Woman in a Bath Sponging Her Leg (fig. 229),
Nude Woman Wiping Her Feet (cat. no. 246),
or the two versions of Reader (J 139, J 141).
The question remains open, but calls for
some comment. First, there appears to be a
typological connection between the single
nudes and the brothel scenes — both groups
abounding in extravagant poses — that hints
at a closer relationship than is generally noted.18
Second, in several instances it is clear that
the same plate was shared by a number of
monotypes, perhaps suggesting contempo-
raneity. Three Ballet Dancers (J9, Clark Art
Institute, Williamstown), Cabaret (fig. 128),
Nude Woman Reclining on a Chaise Longue
(cat. no. 244), and every oblong dark-field
nude — all were obtained from the same plate.
Almost no attention has been paid to the
sizes and formats of the plates Degas used,
and the variety is greater than might at first
be imagined. The largest plate, 2i5/s by 263/4
inches (55 by 68 centimeters), appears to
have been used only three times, in every in-
stance for a dark-field monotype: The Ballet
Master (cat. no. 150); The Dance Lesson (L396,
Joan Whitney Payson Gallery of Art, Port-
land, Me.), not recorded by Janis and Cachin;
and, partially, Ballet at the Paris Opera
(L513, The Art Institute of Chicago).19 The
second largest, 223/4 by 16V2 inches (58 by
42 centimeters), was used for four mono-
types, all dark-field as well: the two impres-
sions of Ballet (The Star) (cat. no. 163 and
L601); Women on the Terrace of a Cafe in the
Evening (cat. no. 174); the two impressions
of The Tub, called Woman at Her Toilette in
its pastelized version (cat. no. 195 and fig. 145);
and The Fireside (cat. no. 197). 20 That these
large-format monotypes were made with
pastels in mind, as Janis has proposed, is fairly
evident from the record.
The most frequently used formats, how-
ever, were roughly 43/4 by 6lA inches (12 by
16 centimeters) and 8V4 by 6Va inches (21
by 16 centimeters), covering together over
one third of Degas *s entire output. A plate
of the first format was used for some sixty
monotypes, among which are many brothel
scenes and nudes, a number of scenes from
daily life, several cafe-concert scenes, a few
landscapes, and a circus scene. The second
format served for at least forty-seven mono-
types— including one dancer, two cafe-concert
subjects, twenty-eight nudes and brothel
scenes, the portrait of Ellen Andree, and
four landscapes — most of which are assumed
to be contemporary.
The production of such a large number of
monotypes in a relatively short time is re-
markable, as is the great stylistic difference
that separates dark-field monotypes from
the freely drawn light-field works. The dif-
ference ultimately may be ascribed less to
the distance in time that might separate
them than to the technique employed,
doubtless determined by the final destina-
tion of the work. It is clear that during
1876-77, Degas was energetically trying to
sell as many works as he could, and it can-
not be entirely coincidental that so many of
the monotypes were produced during that
period. Whether as embryonic compositions
to be finished as pastels or as proposed plates
for publication, they all appear to have had
some part in the artist's attempt to raise
money with his work.
1. Rouart 1945, p. 62.
2. Janis 1967, p. 72 n. 9.
3. Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 23. Frances Weitzenhoffer
believes, however (p. 21), that Mrs. Havemeyer
indeed bought the pastel in 1875 Dut without
mentioning a bill of sale.
4. Havemeyer 196 1, pp. 249-50. In fact, Louisine
Havemeyer met Mary Cassatt only in 1874.
5. "Miss Cassatt told me Degas had written her a
note of thanks when he received the money, say-
ing he was sadly in need of it.**; see Havemeyer
1 96 1, p. 250. Frances Weitzenhoffer, in a different
context, agrees that Cassatt and Degas may have
first met only in 1877; see Weitzenhoffer 1986,
p. 22.
6. Letter from Jules Claretie to Giuseppe and Leon-
tine De Nittis, 4 July 1876, in Pittaluga and Pi-
ceni 1963, p. 339.
7. Claretie 1877, p. 1.
8. Letter from Marcellin Desboutin, Dijon, 17 July
1876, to Leontine De Nittis, in Pittaluga and Pi-
ceni 1963, p. 359 (translation, Reed and Shapiro
1984-85, p. xxix). Claretie's and Desboutin's let-
ters have been cited as evidence of Degas's great
interest in printmaking in general, but it is diffi-
cult to conceive of any other type of print he
produced — aside from the monotype — as his dis-
259
150
covery. See Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers in
1984-85 Boston, pp. xxviii-xxix.
9. A critic noted in a review, "Why has M. Degas
included in his contribution a squatting female
nude that is scandalizing women viewers?" which
is a reasonably close description of The Toilette-,
see Pothey 1877, p. 2. In fact, there are no other
true candidates datable to 1877 for "Femme prenant
son tub le soir" beyond the pastel in Pasadena
(fig- H5).
10. For the dating of the lithographs, see Reed and
Shapiro 1984-85, nos. 27, 28.
11. Claretie 1877, p. 1.
12. Cachin 1974, p. 83.
13. Claretie 1877, p. 1. See also "The Brothel
Scenes," p. 296.
14. For the more recent redating of Ellen Andree, see
cat. no. 171.
15. See cat. nos. 190, 191.
16. 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 1.
17. Janis 1972, passim.
18. See cat. no. 181.
19. The Dance Lesson (L396) was dated c. 1876 by
Lemoisne and c. 1879 by Lillian Browse (see
Browse [1949], no. 40). Ronald Pickvance, how-
ever, has redated it about 1874 (see Pickvance
1963, p. 265). The monotype base suggests that
Lemoisne 's date was close to the mark, and the
dependence of the figure of the dancer on a known
drawing (fig. 123) appears to indicate that the
work was among Degas's earlier monotypes.
20. It may be added that Reclining Nude Holding a
Cup (L1229) gives every impression of being a
pastelized monotype. The measurements, 16V2 by
223A inches (42 by 58 centimeters), are those of the
monotypes under discussion, but judging from
the photographs published in Lemoisne [1946-
49], III, no. 1229, and Vente II, no. 131, it is pos-
sible that the work was enlarged.
150.
The Ballet Master
1876
Executed in collaboration with the Vicomte
Ludovic Lepic
Monotype heightened with white chalk or wash
Plate: 22V4 X 27V2 in. (56. 5 X 70 cm)
Signed on plate upper left: Lepic Degas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Rosenwald Collection, 1964 (1964. B24. 260)
Exhibited in Paris and New York
Janis 1 / Cachin 1
The joint signature of Lepic and Degas at
the upper left surely indicates — as maintained
by Eugenia Janis — that this work was the
artist's first attempt at a monotype, carried
out with the assistance of Ludovic Lepic.1
The plate is Degas's largest, and appears to
have been used on only two other occa-
sions.2 It is possible that a large plate was
chosen for practical reasons, to allow Degas
to work on a familiar scale and in a relatively
broad fashion. This hypothesis is confirmed,
to an extent, by the simple composition,
with only two figures, and by the size of the
figures; the ballet master is similar in scale
to his counterpart in the drawing that served
as a model. Both the composition and the
execution (in the dark-field manner) are
rather awkward.
In conception the design is adapted from
The Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage (cat.
no. 124), where the dancer appears as part
of the group to the right. The ballet master,
precariously positioned in the monotype be-
tween the stage and the void below it, was
derived from the charcoal study of Jules Per-
rot (fig. 121). The second impression of the
monotype (fig. 130) was worked over with
pastel and gouache into a composition with
several additional figures.
1. Janis 1968, pp. xvii-xviii.
2. See "The First Monotypes," p. 257.
provenance: Ambroise Vollard, Paris; Henri Petiet,
Paris; LessingJ. Rosenwald, Jenkintown, Pa., 1950;
his gift to the museum 1964.
exhibitions: 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 1, repr.;
1982, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 7
February-9 May, LessingJ. Rosenwald: Tribute to a Col-
lector (catalogue by Ruth Fine), no. 66, repr. p. 193;
1984-85 Washington, D.C, no. 17, repr.
selected references: Guerin 1924, p. 78; Janis 1967,
p. 21 n. 13, fig. 45; Janis 1968, no. 1 (as c. 1874-75);
Cachin 1974, no. 1 (as 1874); Sutton 1986, pp. 125-26.
Fig. 130. Ballet Rehearsal (L365), 1876-77.
Gouache and pastel over monotype, 2i3/4 X 26Y4 in.
(55.7X68 cm). The Nelson- Atkins Museum of
Art, Kansas City
260
I5i.
The Jet Earring
c. 1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white laid paper
Plate: $V* X iYa in. (8.2 x 7 cm)
Sheet: 7X5% in. (18 X 13.2 cm)
Atelier stamp lower right corner, in margin
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Anonymous gift, 1959 (59.651)
Janis 243/Cachin 39
Seventeen monotypes of this size are
known, occasionally in more than one im-
pression, all but one representing busts of
women or portraits.1 There is every reason
to think they were pulled from the same
plate, and they are generally believed to be
contemporary. Among them is a sketchy
but convincing portrait of Marcellin Des-
boutin (J233, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris),
known only from a second impression; a
fine head of an old man (J232, Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston), possibly derived from
an image in a publication; and busts of cafe-
concert singers, women observed at cafes,
and even a nursemaid. Some of the figures
have sufficiently pronounced features to
prompt Jean Adhemar to propose a number
of identifications — Ellen Andree, for ex-
ample (RS27, J253), and, probably wrongly,
the singer Theresa (RS27).2 It is not known
if Degas had a particular reason for making
these monotypes, which are attractive enough
in their own right. But they do seem to
have had a purpose; some of them, indeed,
served as a transfer base for lithographs.3
The woman in this monotype, recogniz-
able by her black hat and long hair with a
high chignon, appears in profile in another
monotype of the same size (J244) and twice
more, again in profile, on a larger sheet
(J241). No identification has been proposed
for her, but it may be noted that the profile
views of her face remain consistent enough
to suggest she may have been adapted from
a photograph. The splendid head shown here
is in an altogether different category from
those in the other monotypes and is justly
celebrated as one of Degas's more spellbind-
ing images. The accent is on the rendition of
the woman's lost profile, defined with an
exceptionally pure outline and set off by the
somber background. Eugenia Janis has
shown that the especially fine effects were
achieved by means of a combined monotype
technique. The background and the hair
were executed in the dark-field manner, and
the outline and details of the face and the
perfectly placed earring were painted with a
brush in the light-field manner.4 Janis dated
the work 1877-80, a date accepted by Bar-
bara Shapiro.5 It seems, nevertheless, that a
date of about 1876 would bring it more in
line with its counterparts.6
1. The exception is a small landscape (J273).
2. Adhemar 1974, no. 44. For Theresa (Emma Vala-
don), see cat. no. 175.
3. Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, nos. 27, 28.
4. 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 56.
5. 1980-81 New York, no. 28.
6. Sue Reed and Barbara Shapiro have dated the li-
thographs derived from the monotypes 1876-77;
see Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, nos. 27, 28.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
lot 281 [as "Buste de femme de profil perdu"]);
bought by Marcel Guerin, Paris (his stamp, Lugt
suppl. 1872b, lower right corner, in margin). Mau-
rice Loncle, Paris (according to Helmut Wallach).
Bought by the museum 1959.
exhibitions: i960 New York, no. 99; 1968 Cam-
bridge, Mass., no. 56, repr.; 1974 Boston, no. 92;
1977 New York, no. 1 of monotypes; 1980-81 New
York, no. 28, repr. (as 1877-80).
selected references: Janis 1968, no. 243; Cachin
1974, no. 39, repr.
152.
At the Seashore
c. 1876
Monotype in black ink on white wove paper
(formerly mounted by the artist on light-
weight cardboard)
Plate: 4?A X 63A in. (12 X 15. 8 cm)
Sheet: 61/2X61/4 in. (16.5 X 17.2 cm)
Atelier stamp lower left, in margin (and on verso
of original mount removed in 1952)
Private collection
Janis 264/ Cachin 181
Dated c. 1880 by Eugenia Janis and others,
this monotype appears to belong to an earlier
period, probably about 1876. In fact, there is
every reason to assume that it is contempo-
rary with another monotype, The Bathers
(J262), dated c. 1875-80 by Janis, and that
both are connected with related figures ap-
pearing in the painting At the Seashore (L406)
in the National Gallery, London, generally
261
dated 1876-77 and certainly exhibited in the
third Impressionist exhibition, of 1877.
Exceptionally fresh and luminous, this
monotype is also one of the most charming
works by the artist in this process, with the
often melancholy theme treated with slighdy
comic overtones. As Janis has noted, the
highly simplified figure may have been
touched up in the area of the hat and the
umbrella after the impression was pulled.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
no. 300); bought by Gustave Pellet, Paris; by descent
to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, from 19 19; Marcel Gue-
rin, Paris (his stamp, Lugt suppl. 1872b, lower left
corner, in margin). With Gerald Cramer, Geneva;
bought by present owner March 1952.
exhibitions: 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 61, repr.
(as c. 1880); 1974 Boston, no. 103; 1985 London,
no. 21, repr.
selected references: Janis 1968, no. 264; Cachin
1974, no. 181, repr.
153.
Factory Smoke
c. 1876-79
Monotype in black ink on white laid paper
Plate: 43/4 X 6lA in. (11.9 X 16 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha
Whittelsey Fund (1982. 1015)
Janis 269/ Cachin 182
153
In a series of subjects that Degas listed in a
notebook used from about 1877 to 1884 as
being of interest to him, he wrote: "On
smoke — people's smoke, from pipes, ciga-
rettes, cigars; smoke of locomotives, tall
chimneys, factories, steamboats, etc.; smoke
confined in the space under bridges; steam."1
Of course, smoke also captivated Monet,
who in 1877 devoted a series of pictures to
the smoke-filled interior of the Gare Saint-
Lazare. Degas himself had included factory
smokestacks and steamships somewhat un-
expectedly in the backgrounds of The Gentle-
men's Race: Before the Start (cat. no. 42) and
Horses in the Field of 187 1 (L289), and, more
predictably, in Henri Rouart in Front of His
Factory (cat. no. 144), At the Seashore (L406,
National Gallery, London), and the small
monotype At the Seashore (cat. no. 152).
Factory Smoke is the only work Degas de-
voted purely to the visual possibilities of
smoke in the abstract, almost devoid of con-
text. Monotype as a medium was ideally
suited to capturing the impalpable quality of
the subject. The image has "sentiment" (the
effect Constable recognized in his studies of
clouds) and should probably be read as the
aesthetic reaction to a perceived phenome-
non rather than as a visual metaphor of
modern times.
Eugenia Janis has dated the work c. 1880-
84. On the basis of Degas's notes on smoke,
made in May 1879 or shortly afterward in
connection with etchings planned for the pro-
posed periodical he four et la Nuity a date of
about 1879 or earlier appears more reasonable.
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 205);
see also Reff 1976, p. 134.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
no. 3 16, in the same lot with "Les deux arbres" [J273 ,
C174]). Cesar M. de Hauke; given by him to a pri-
vate collector, London; bought by the museum 1982.
selected references: Janis 1968, no. 269; Cachin
1974, no. 182.
154.
Woman with Field Glasses
c. 1875-76
Oil on cardboard
i87/s X iiVs in. (48 X 32 cm)
Signed twice, lower right: "Degas" (in white)
and, again, "Degas" (in ochre)
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemalde-
galerie Neue Meister, Dresden (Gal. Nr. 2601)
Withdrawn from exhibition
Lemoisne 43 1
This haunting figure seems to be Degas's final
return to a motif that had preoccupied him
since the mid-i86os (see cat. no. 74). The
composition, with the figure shown full
length, is known in three painted sketches —
two smaller ones, in the Burrell Collection,
Glasgow (fig. 131), and in a Swiss private
collection (L269), and this slightly larger oil
painting in Dresden. None are dated except
for the Burrell version, inscribed by the art-
ist on a piece of paper on the back "Degas
vers 1865" (Degas c. 1865), but from the
dress of the woman depicted, they possibly
date from somewhat later.
The oil sketch in Switzerland (L269), in-
scribed with the sitter's name — Lyda — has
led William Wells to tentatively propose that
all the versions might represent the same
model, Lydia Cassatt, Mary Cassatt's semi-
invalid sister who settled in Paris in 1877,
and that all the pictures date from c. 1874-
80. 1 It is almost certain that the sitter is not
Lydia Cassatt, but the question of her iden-
tity was tantalizingly raised as early as 19 12
when Lemoisne noted that her face "through
a whim of the artist, a bit paradoxical for
those who knew the very beautiful woman
whom he was thus hiding, is strangely
masked by the two glittering lenses of the
field glasses."2 Richard Thomson has sug-
gested that the pose may be derived from a
classical representation of the goddess Pudi-
citia, and Degas certainly used it on at least
one occasion for a drawing of a dancer.3
Indisputable is the notion that all the studies
were in one manner or another related to a
262
figure to be integrated in a racing picture.
The figure in the Burrell sketch was actually
included in At the Racetrack (L184, Weil Enter-
prises and Investments Ltd., Montgomery)
but was subsequently overpainted; such a fig-
ure was possibly also intended for The Race-
course, Amateur Jockeys (cat. no. 157), the large
work painted for Faure, which may explain
the necessity for this study, datable on the
basis of the costume c. 1875-76.4
The existence of several versions of the fig-
ure and the artist's failure to use them in a
painting inevitably raises questions. As the
figure is unquestionably powerful — so pow-
erful as to become emblematic of the very
act of looking — it can be imagined that it de-
feated any attempt at successful integration
within the broader context of a composition.
Fig. 131. Woman with Field Glasses
(L268), c. 1865? Pencil and essence on
paper mounted on canvas, i23/s X jVs in.
(31.4 X 18 cm) (paper). The Burrell
Collection, Glasgow
Isolated, standing by herself, the woman re-
mains mysterious and not a little perverse as
she reverses the common relationship be-
tween viewer and viewed.
It is interesting that all three sketches for
Woman with Field Glasses were known in
Degas's lifetime and enjoyed a certain repu-
tation. The Burrell version was contributed
by Degas to the Duranty sale of 1881, at
which time, according to Ronald Pickvance,
it may have been inscribed by the artist.5
The version in Switzerland, said by Lemoisne
to have belonged to Puvis de Chavannes, was
certainly owned by A. Duhamel and, briefly,
by Egisto Fabbri before becoming the pri-
vate property of Joseph Durand-Ruel. The
painting now in Dresden was given by De-
gas to James Tissot (see cat. no. 75), who
eventually sold it to Paul Durand-Ruel, to
the artist's great irritation.
1. William Wells, "Who Was Degas's Lyda?" Apollo,
XCV:i20, February 1972, p. 130.
2. Lemoisne 1912, p. 69.
3 . 1987 Manchester, p. 69. For the drawing of the
dancer, see IV: 251.
4. An identical dress is worn by a figure in Eugene
Giraud's Le jardin de la marraine of 1876. See also
Francois Boucher, Histoire du costume en Occident,
de I'antiquitea nos jours, Paris, 1965, fig. 1047 p. 393.
5. See 1979 Edinburgh, no. 2.
provenance: Given by the artist to James Tissot;
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 11 January 1897, for
Fr 1,500 (stock no. 4012); bought by H. Paulus, 11
November 1897, for Fr 6,000. Woldemar von Seid-
litz, Dresden, by 1907; bought by the museum 1922.
exhibitions: 1897, Dresden, May-June, Intemation-
alen Kunst-Austellung, no. 122 (for sale); 1907, Dres-
den, Modeme Kunstwerke aus Privatbesitz, no. 16;
1964-65 Munich, no. 83.
selected references: Ernst Michalski, "Die neuer-
werbungen der modernen Abteilung der Dresdner
Gemaldegalerie," Kunst und Kiinstler, XXIII, 1924-
25, p. 276, repr. p. 277; Gemaldegalerie Neue Meister
(edited by Hans Joachim Neidhardt), 2nd edition,
Dresden, 1966, p. 39, pi. 46; Gemaldegalerie Neue
Meister (edited by Christa Freier), 4th edition, Dres-
den, 1975, p. 29, pi. 78; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 431; 1967 Saint Louis, under no. 55; William
Wells, "Who Was Degas's Lyda?" Apollo, XCV:i20,
February 1972, p. 130, pi. II (color); Minervino 1974,
no. 425; 1979 Edinburgh, under no. 2.
263
155-
At the Races
c. 1876-77
Oil on canvas
19 X 24 in. (48.3 X 61 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor
Thaw, New York
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 495
Although this small painting is assumed to
represent a scene at the races, its focus, in
fact, is on two spectators, chatting and un-
concerned about the track. The artist's im-
mediate, apparent concern is a formal one,
expressed in the shapes of the headgear
worn by the two women and the outlandish
transformations it performs on them. The
figure at the center has a coquettish hat ter-
minating at the back in two speckled black
ribbons, and her face is covered with a veil
that successfully removes any suggestion of
a physiognomy. The woman at the left, no
less veiled, remains equally inaccessible, de-
spite the hint of a profile. The wonderful
white-and-green parasol, which figures also
at the center of At the Seashore (L406, Na-
tional Gallery, London), might appear under
the circumstances to be a needless precaution.
This is evidently not the case, to the advan-
tage of the composition, which becomes to-
ward the right a sequence of ever expanding
curved segments.
Ronald Pickvance has connected the paint-
ing with monotypes by Degas in which the
artist evokes the same half-whimsical mood.
To these one may add the large, vigorous
essence drawing on canvas of a woman with
an umbrella (L414) in the Courtauld Insti-
tute, London, which may have provided the
prototype for the central figure in this work.
At the Races was given by Degas to his friend
Marie Dihau, sister of the musician Desire
Dihau. It was dated c. 1878 by Lemoisne, but
may date from slightly earlier, c. 1876-77.
provenance: Gift from the artist to Marie Dihau;
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 19 July 1922 (stock
no. 1205 1); transferred to Durand-Ruel, New York,
1 December 1922 (stock no. 4764); bought by Etienne
Bignou, in partnership with Alex. Reid and Lefevre
Ltd., London, 12 February 1928. E. J. Van Wisselingh
and Co., Amsterdam, 193 1. (?) Marcel Guerin, Pa-
ris, 193 1. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.,
by 1966; present owners.
exhibitions: 1928, New York, Durand-Ruel Galle-
ries, 3 1 January-18 February, Paintings and Pastels by
Edgar Degas, 1834-1917, no. 6; 1928, Glasgow/Lon-
don, Alex. Reid and Lefevre Ltd. , June, Works by De-
gas, no. 14; 193 1, Amsterdam, E.J. Van Wisselingh
and Co., 9 April-9 May, La peinture jrancaise aux
XIXe et XXe siecles, no. 31; 1966, Washington, D.C,
National Gallery of Art, 17 March-i May, French
Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
155
and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, no. 49, repr.; 1974 Boston,
no. 17 (as c. 1878); 1979 Edinburgh, no. 63, repr.;
1983 London, no. 13, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne 193 1, p. 289, fig. 57;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 495; Cabanne 1957,
p. 117, pi. 103 (as c. 1878); Rewald 1973, p. 429,
repr. (color); Minervino 1974, no. 446; Lipton 1986,
pp. 65-66, fig. 37.
156.
Two Studies of a Groom
c. 1875-77 ?
Essence heightened with gouache on tan paper,
laid down, prepared with oil
95/s X 13V2 in. (24. 5 X 34-3 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF5601)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 382
Degas's early studies of jockeys present a
problem of dating and sequence that has
been addressed, in part, by Ronald Pick-
vance.1 It has been generally assumed that
they cover a period from the mid-i86os to
as late as 1878, and their chronology has
been largely justified by the known or as-
sumed date of paintings for which they may
have served as studies. The various studies
can be roughly divided into three groups:
those appearing in Degas's notebooks; sheets
with individual pencil studies of jockeys; and
the famous essence-and-gouache drawings,
one of which, Four Studies of a Jockey, is in-
cluded in this exhibition (cat. no. 70). The
relevant notebook — no. 22 in Theodore RefF s
catalogue — was dated c. 1867-74 by Reff.2
The group of pencil studies of jockeys has
for some time been dated c. 1878, though
more recently Pickvance, who originally
subscribed to a date in the 1870s, redated
the studies 1866-68. 3 The essence-and-
gouache studies have also been thought by
Lemoisne to date from about 1866-72, a
fairly broad range narrowed down by Pick-
vance to 1 866-68. 4
The interesting aspect of the question lies
in the relationship between the various
types of studies, a relationship that extends
beyond the implications of their assumed
near-contemporaneity. For instance, the
groom on horseback on page 121 of Note-
book 22 is certainly the first draft of the
carefully drawn study of a jockey (IV:26o.a)
now in a New York private collection. Yet
another sketch, on page 86 of the notebook,
along with two studies of the same jockey
on sheets that may have been detached from
the notebook (IV:240.c, IV:240.e), led to
an essence drawing showing the jockey re-
versed (Li 53). A pencil drawing of a jockey,
his right hand on his hip, not included in the
Degas atelier sales, is closely related to two
of the three essence studies appearing on an-
other sheet (fig. 86) and used as prototypes
for the Boston Racehorses at Longchamp (cat.
264
no. 96). The unavoidable impression is that
of a progressive development toward the
brilliant essence-and-gouache studies, and
that the latter indeed represented what
Richard Brettell termed a "visual grammar
of the horse race,"5 as if by an Eadweard
Muy bridge in advance of his time.
This unusually spirited study on oiled pa-
per formed part of a group with two other
£5v
Fig. 132. Study of a Jockey (III:i28.i), 1866-68.
Pencil, I23/4X 95/s in. (32.4 X 24.5 cm). The
Detroit Institute of Arts
drawings of grooms on horseback.6 Because
of its relationship with the jockey and horse
appearing at the far left of Racehorses (cat.
no. 158) and the Orsay Racecourse , Amateur
Jockeys (cat. no. 157), it has traditionally been
assumed to be a preparatory study and, hence,
to date (along with the other two drawings)
from about 1875-78. As in the instances
cited above, this study is related to a pencil
drawing of a jockey (fig. 132) which did, in
fact, serve for the paintings and was also
dated c. 1878 until Pickvance ascribed it, with
its counterparts, to a decade earlier, 1866-
68. 7 Degas observed in a letter to Jean-
Baptiste Faure in June 1876 that he would
have to go to the races to refresh his mem-
ory before he could finish The Racecourse,
and it might be claimed that his ink-and-
gouache studies of jockeys were the result of
a visit to the racetrack. This seems unlikely,
as they appear conceived in the studio and
were grouped on two of the three sheets with
considerable concern for the overall appear-
ance of the sheet, in a manner similar to the
gouache studies of jockeys of the late 1860s.
Grooms do not figure frequently in Degas' s
drawings, but to those already mentioned
above one may add a sketch on page 121 of
Notebook 22. In this sheet from the Louvre,
the figure on the left, riding a horse at full
tilt, is peculiarly effective and the striking
contrast between the dark rider and the white
horse, as noted by Jean Sutherland Boggs,
adds to the power of the image.8 Variations
on the theme of the rider atop a horse at full
gallop occur in a gouache study of a jockey
(Li 5 2) and in a small ink drawing in the
Mellon collection.9
1. 1979 Edinburgh, under nos. 6, 7.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 22 (BN, Carnet 8, passim).
3. 1968 New York, nos. 37-39; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 7.
4. 1979 Edinburgh, no. 6.
5. 1984 Chicago, no. 17, p. 49.
6. One drawing (L383) is in a private collection in
Zurich; the other (L383 bis) is in the Sterling and
Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
7. See Theodore Reff, "Works by Degas in the De-
troit Institute of Arts," Bulletin of the Detroit Insti-
tute of Arts, LIII:i, 1974, p. 36, no. 13, repr.
8. 1967 Saint Louis, no. 77.
9. The Mellon drawing belongs with two other draw-
ings of the same size, not included in the Degas
atelier sales and reproduced by M. L. Bataille in
"Zeichnungen aus dem Nachlass von Degas," Kunst
und Kunstler, XXVIII, July 1930, pp. 400-01.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 153.2,
in the same lot with no. 153. 1 [cat. no. 69], for
Fr 3,300); bought by Marcel Bing; his bequest to the
museum 1922.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 92; 193 1, Bucharest,
Muzeul Toma Stelian, 8 November-15 December,
Desenul fiancez, no. 103; 1964 Paris, no. 73; 1967
Saint Louis, no. 77, repr. text and cover (shown in
Saint Louis only); 1969 Paris, no. 171.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, I, p. 44; Ri-
viere 1922-23, II, pi. 16 (reprint edition 1973, pi. 29);
Jamot 1924, pi. 30; Rouart 1945, pp. 16, 71 n. 38; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 382; Leymarie 1947, no. 13,
pi. XIII; Cooper 1952, no. 3, repr.; Minervino 1974,
no. 404.
156
265
157-
The Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys
Begun 1876, completed 1887
Oil on canvas
26X3i7/8in. (66X81 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1900)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 461
This picture formed part of the group of five
works that Degas undertook to paint for
Jean-Baptiste Faure in 1874. 1 It proved the
most difficult, requiring repeated alterations,
and took over thirteen years to complete.
The painfully long genesis of the painting
can be traced, in part, through Degas's cor-
respondence with the singer, even though at
least one of the letters is somewhat uncer-
tainly dated.
The earliest reference to the work, sug-
gesting perhaps that it was not yet begun,
occurs in an undated letter from Degas to
Faure apparently written in June 1876, be-
fore the artist's failure to deliver the painting
began to seriously affect the tone of the cor-
respondence: "I received your friendly notice
and am going to start right away on your
Courses [The Racecourse]. Will you come
here toward the end of next week to see
how it is progressing? The unfortunate
thing is that I shall have to go and see some
real racing again, and I do not know if there
will be any after the Grand Prix. ... In any
case you will be able to see something of your
own next Saturday, 24 June, between 3 and
6 o'clock."2
Another letter to Faure, presumably written
a few months later, indicates that the picture
was in a very advanced state.3 Although the
second version of The Ballet from "Robert le
Diable" (cat. no. 159) was almost certainly
delivered in 1876, The Racecourse was evi-
dently not finished, as shown by a letter of
31 October 1877 in which the artist prom-
ised again to complete the work within five
days: "You will have Les courses on Monday.
I have been at it for two days and it is going
better than I thought."4
Nine years later the painting was no nearer
completion, and the understandably angry
Faure was not disposed to give it up. In a
letter postmarked 2 July 1886, Degas asked
for another delay: "I shall need a few more
days to finish your big picture of the races. I
have taken it up again and I am working on
it. . . .A few days more and you will have
it."5
The final known document, a letter from
the artist dated 2 January 1887 in reply to a
telegram from Faure, is yet another exhausted
appeal for patience, but without promises
for an early delivery.6 According to Guerin,
following a lawsuit — or perhaps the threat
of legal action — Degas surrendered the
painting to Faure in 1887 along with one or
perhaps two other works.7 However, Faure
did not retain the painting for long. Six
years later, in 1893, he sold it to Durand-
Ruel with four other works by Degas.
X-radiographs of The Racecourse confirm
that the painting was reworked in several
stages that marked the transition from a rel-
atively symmetrical composition with a
strong center to an emphatically asymmetri-
cal one. Originally, a railing parallel to the
picture plane ran across the foreground. Two
figures (faintly legible in the radiograph)
leaned on the railing or stood in front of it at
the center of the picture in an arrangement
reminiscent of that in the equally altered At
the Racetrack (L184, Weil Enterprises and In-
vestments Ltd., Montgomery). The figure
to the left had a skirt, and may have been a
woman with field glasses such as the one ap-
pearing in the Dresden painting of the sub-
ject (cat. no. 154). The carriage now at the
right was introduced after the railing and the
two figures were eliminated. In an earlier
form of the composition, the carriage was
slightly farther to the right; the hood was
raised at a higher angle, and the rear back-
ground wheel showed entirely. After the re-
positioning of the carriage, however, the
wheels were modified twice before the fig-
ure entering from the right was finally added.
The mounted jockey immediately behind
the carriage was at first identical to the jock-
ey in pink and black in the related Racehorses
(cat. no. 158) and to the one at the far right
in Racehorses at Longchamp (cat. no. 96). How-
ever, in the final reworking the horse was
turned to the left, thus covering the previous-
ly visible lower part of the adjoining jockey
in red, and the rider was given a new pose
adapted from an earlier drawing (fig. 133).
If, on the basis of the letters, it can be es-
tablished that Degas worked on the compo-
sition in 1876, the fall of 1877, the summer
of 1886, and, presumably, sometime after
January 1887, it is difficult to establish the
dates when the major alterations took place.
The few related drawings add little light,
proving only that Degas frequently relied
on earlier studies. The horse at the center is
unmistakably based on a much used drawing
(IV:237.b) dating probably from the mid-
1860s. The flying horse with rider to the left
has no exact precedent but is in the last
analysis derived from studies for The
Steeplechase (fig. 67) and a related but less
stretched-out horse in The False Start (fig. 69).
Jean Sutherland Boggs has indicated (in pri-
vate communication) that the landscape back-
ground is singularly evocative of the village
of Exmes and could be loosely connected to
drawings in a notebook.8 In quite a different
vein, Siegfried Wichmann has pointed out
the connection between the truncated wheels
of the carriage in the painting and a related
design in a Hiroshige woodcut.9
As it stands, the composition is among
the most monumental — and original — race-
course scenes Degas ever conceived, with
order and whimsy fused in almost perfect
unison. Though set in the country, this is
not a leisurely day at the races of the sort
depicted in At the Races in the Countryside
(cat. no. 95) but a full-scale event, with a
wall of spectators somewhat incongruously
assembled on the outskirts of a village
where fields and trains coexist with an opti-
Fig. 133. Study of a Jockey (IV:274.2), 1866-68.
Pencil, i25/8 X 9^2 in. (32 X 24 cm). Location
unknown
mism characteristic of the machine age. The
speeding jockey at the left, wittily echoing
the movement of the train, counteracts the
stately frieze of jockeys at the right, who,
upon closer examination, reveal less than
classical profiles and ears. And the specta-
tors in the right foreground, reduced to an
amusing meeting of hats, are drifters from a
different, urban world, Degas's modistes of
the early 1880s.
1. For the entire question of Faure's commissions,
see "Degas and Faure," p. 221.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, XCV, p. 122; Degas Letters
1947, no. 104, p. 120 (translation revised). Dated
by Degas only "Jeudi matin" (Thursday morning),
the letter was given the date of 16 June 1886 by
Marcel Guerin. As 16 June 1886 was a Wednesday,
not a Thursday, Guerin probably made an error in
266
157
transcription. The one clue in the letter leading to
a possible dating is Degas's own mention of "Sam-
edi, 24 Juin" (Saturday, 24 June), which could
have occurred in the relevant years only in 1876
and 1882 (in 1886, June 24 was a Thursday). The
amiable tone of the letter suggests June 1876 as a
likelier date than June 1882.
3. Lettres Degas 1945, XI, p. 39; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 19, p. 45; dated 1876 by Marcel Guerin.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, XIII, pp. 40-41; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 21, p. 46.
5. Lettres Degas 1945, XCVI, pp. 122-23; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 105, p. 120 (translation revised).
6. Lettres Degas 1945, XCVII, pp. 123-24; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 107, p. 121.
7. Lettres Degas 1945, V, pp. 31-32 n. 1; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 10, p. 36 n. 2, and "Annotations,"
p. 261.
8. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 173).
9. Siegfried Wichmann, Japonisme, New York: Park
Lane, 1985, pp. 249-50, fig. 661.
provenance: Commissioned from the artist by Jean-
Baptiste Faure 1874; delivered to Faure 1887; bought
by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 2 January 1893, for Fr 10,000
(stock no. 2567); bought by Comte Isaac de Camon-
do, Paris, 20 April 1893, for Fr 27,000; his bequest to
the Louvre 1908; entered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 63; 1926, Maison-Laffitte,
Chateau de Maison-Laffitte, 20 June-25 July, Les
courses en France; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 27; 1951,
Albi, Palais de la Berbie, Toulouse-Lautrec, ses amis,
ses maitres; 1951-52 Bern, no. 25; 1952 Amsterdam,
no. 15; 1952 Edinburgh, no. 10; 1956, Warsaw, Mu-
zeum Narodowe, 15 June- 3 1 July, Malarstwo Francuskie
od Davida do Cezanne'a, no. 35, repr.; 1956, Mos-
cow/Leningrad, French Painting from David to Cezanne,
no. 34, repr.; 1957, Paris, Musee du Louvre, Salle
d' Auguste, Reception for the Queen of England at the
Mus6e du Louvre (no catalogue); 1969 Paris, no. 29.
selected references: Frederick Wedmore, "Manet,
Degas, and Renoir: Impressionist Figure-Painters,"
Brush and Pencil, XV:5, May 1905, repr. p. 259; Alex-
andre 1908, p. 32; Paul Gauguin, "Degas," Kunst und
Kiinstler, X, 1912, repr. p. 334; Lafond 1918-19, II,
p. 44, repr.; Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, no. 166;
Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. XXXIV; Jamot 1924, pi. 53;
Rouart 1937, repr. p. 19; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 461; Cabanne 1957, pp. 28-29, 117, pi. 104; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 460, pi. XLV (color); Lipton 1986,
pp. 19, 23, 26, 45-46, 62-63, fig- 15 PP- 24. 47; Sut-
ton 1986, p. 120, fig. 131 (color) p. 156, fig. 133 (de-
tail, color) p. 157; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Peintures,
1986, III, p. 194.
267
158.
Racehorses
1875-78
Oil on panel
12% X 1$% in. (32. 5 X 40.4 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 387
The numerous elements shared by this
painting with the large canvas in the Musee
d'Orsay (cat. no. 157) strongly imply a rela-
tionship beyond the merely casual, repeated
exploration of motifs characteristic of the
work of Degas. In a recent, detailed exami-
nation of Racehorses, Richard Thomson has
discussed its friezelike conception in the
context of Degas's study of Benozzo Goz-
zoli's fresco in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in
Florence.1 Indeed, one of the artist's copies,
now in Amsterdam (fig. 134), has a particu-
lar relevance to the question: the scheme of
its composition, with horsemen seen in pro-
file and from the rear, is reminiscent of the
solution adopted by Degas in Racehorses and
in the Orsay painting. Both works are vari-
ations on a theme, with differently posi-
tioned but identical components — a leaping
horse at the left, a principal horseman in
profile, and jockeys seen from behind at the
right. As might be expected, the same earlier
drawings were used for both paintings, and
the horse appearing at the far right figures
also in the Boston Racehorses at Longchamp
(cat. no. 96).
Thomson's discussion includes the inter-
esting discovery that Racehorses was sub-
stantially altered by the painter and that
originally it had included a horse and jockey
seen from behind at the center of the com-
position, as well as a fence to the left, which
is still partly visible. Thomson concluded
that the original work may have dated from
the late 1860s but that it was transformed in
the mid- 1 8 70s when Degas painted out the
fence, replaced the central jockey and horse
with the steward holding a flag, and added
the jockeys on horseback at the far right.
The alterations noted by Thomson are
similar to those that affected the Orsay
painting. From the sequence of transforma-
tions in each painting, it would appear that
Racehorses may have been altered first and
that it served, if not as a sketch or a model,
at least as a testing ground for the larger com-
position at Orsay. That this was the actual
sequence is suggested by the pink-and-black
mounted jockey to the right, apparently in-
vented for Racehorses and then adopted also
in the Orsay painting before its ultimate
transformation.
After two failed experiments with race-
track scenes having a strong focus at the
center, Racehorses was Degas's only compo-
sition of this type to leave his studio in this
Fig. 134. Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople and His
Attendants, detail after Benozzo Gozzoli, The
Journey of the Magi (IV:oi.b), dated i860. Pencil,
10 X i23/4 in. (25.5 X 32.6 cm). Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam
form.2 A later, vastly simplified reenact-
ment of the design in a small oil painting on
panel (L852, private collection, California)
has an entirely different asymmetrical accent
that nevertheless reveals its origins.3
1. 1987 Manchester, p. 99.
2. For another composition with figures in the center
foreground, see| At the Racetrack (L184, Weil
Enterprises and Investments Ltd., Montgomery),
discussed by Ronald Pickvance in 1979 Edinburgh,
no. 10.
3. See Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 852, where it is
wrongly identified as a pastel.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 16 October 1891, for Fr 5,000 (stock no. 1865,
as "Course de Gendemen"); deposited with Heilbuth,
Hamburg, 28 October 1891; returned 13 November
1 891; deposited with Behrens, Hamburg, 22 Febru-
ary 1892; returned 29 February 1892; bought by Du-
rand-Ruel, New York, 14 June 1892, for Fr 5,500; (?)
bought by Lawrence, New York; (?) bought back from
Lawrence, New York, by Durand-Ruel, New \brk,
8 February 190 1 (stock no. 2494); transferred to Du-
rand-Ruel, Paris, 2 February 19 10 (stock no. 9237);
deposited with Cassirer, Berlin, 30 September 191 1.
Edouard Arnhold, Berlin. Biihrle collection, Zurich,
1958. Present owner.
exhibitions: (?) 1913, Berlin, Galerie Paul Cassirer,
November, Degas /Cezanne, no. 23; 1976-77 Tokyo,
no. 14 bis, repr. (color); 1978 New York, no. 12,
repr. (color); 1987 Manchester, no. 50, repr. (color).
selected references: Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 140;
Grappe 191 1, p. 17; Gabriel Mourey, "Edgar Degas,"
The Studio, LXXIII:302, May 1918, repr. p. 129 (as
1875); Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. xii (as c. 1872); Walker
!933» P- 181 , fig. 17 p. 183; Riviere 1935, repr. p. 139
268
(as 1872); Lcmoisne [1946-49], II, no. 387 (as 1875-
78); Dr. Fritz Nathan and Dr. Peter Nathan, 1922-
1972, Zurich: Dr. Peter Nathan, 1972, no. 79, repr.
(color); Minervino 1974, no. 434; Dunlop 1979,
fig. 107 (color) p. 119 (as "Before the Start," c. 1875);
Nicolaas Teeuwisse, Vom Salon zur Secession, Berlin:
Deutscher Verlag fur Kunstwissenschaft, 1986, pp. 223
(as bought by Arnhold in 1909), 306 n. 537 (with lo-
cation unknown).
159.
The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
1876
Oil on canvas
293/4X32 in. (76.6x81.3 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London (CAI. 19)
Lemoisne 391
In a letter to James Tissot in the summer of
1872, Degas wrote, in considerable anguish:
"Certain parts of my Orchestre are not done
well enough. At my urgent request Durand-
Ruel promised not to send it [to London],
and he deceived me."1 The object of Degas's
misgivings can easily be identified as the first
version of The Ballet from "Robert le Diable"
(cat. no. 103), which he sold to Durand-Ruel
in January 1872 and which was subsequently
sent to London for exhibition and possible
sale.2 The unsold painting remained a source
of irritation to Degas until early March 1874,
when Jean-Baptiste Faure made it possible
for him to recover it along with five other
works.3 From the evidence available, he did
not rework it, doubtless because in asking
for a new version Faure gave him the oppor-
tunity to revise the composition altogether.
Of all the paintings returned to Degas in
early 1874, Robert le Diable can safely be said
to have been nearest to Faure's personal in-
terests, depicting, as it did, the most famous
scene from an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer,
Faure' s mentor and friend. It may be that
Faure was ready to buy the first version —
which, eventually, he also purchased in
1887 — but that Degas refused to sell it for
the reasons outlined to Tissot.
The second version of Robert le Diable was
probably commissioned shortly before or
during March 1874, when Degas and Faure
discussed the return of his pictures from
Durand-Ruel. Two years later, in 1876,
when questioned by Faure (who had just re-
turned to France) about the state of his com-
missions, Degas wrote to him, promising,
"I am going to send Robert le Diable to you
on Saturday and Les courses on Tuesday."4
As no further reference to Robert le Diable
appears in the subsequent correspondence
between Degas and Faure, it has been rea-
sonably concluded that unlike The Racecourse,
Amateur Jockeys (cat. no. 157) mentioned in
the letter, Robert le Diable was actually fin-
ished and delivered in 1876.
For the first version of Robert le Diable,
Degas had chosen a vertical format rigidly
divided into three parallel sections: the back
of a row of seats, the spectators and the or-
chestra, and, finally, the stage. In the sec-
ond version, Degas turned to a horizontal
format, closer to the actual shape of the
stage, and changed the lower part of the de-
sign by largely eliminating the seats in the
foreground and placing the spectators and
orchestra at an angle. The perception of the
scene was thus substantially altered, with a
159
269
Fig. 135. Adolf Menzel, frontispiece for Heinrich
von Kleist, Der Zerbrochene Krug (Berlin: A. Hof-
mann & Co., 1877). Wood engraving
new, emphatic suggestion that the viewer
was part of the audience.
The foreground of the second Robert le
Diable is unquestionably more finished, and
there are subtle amendments throughout the
picture. The ballet of the demonic nuns, based
on the same drawings used for the first ver-
sion, has been slightly spread out in a scene
that is both more ghostly and more ani-
mated; Degas had obviously consulted notes
he had made after the completion of the first
version of the painting.5 The figures in the
foreground, larger than in the first version
and containing several new faces, have been
partly changed. The musician Desire Dihau,
third from the left, has retained his original
position along with the figure immediately
behind him, but Albert Hecht, with binocu-
lars, has been moved to the far left, where
he looks straight out of the picture, and
Ludovic Lepic, not included in the first ver-
sion, has been added as the bearded figure in
profile, second from the right.
It has been argued by Margaretta Salinger
that the conception of the first version of
Robert le Diable, and by extension also the
second, may have been influenced by Adolf
Menzel's At the Gymnase Theater (National-
galerie, Berlin), painted in Paris in 1856-57.6
In spite of Degas's documented admiration
for Menzel, this does not appear to have been
the case. An equally circumstantial argument
could be made in connection with an en-
graved illustration by Menzel for Heinrich
von Kleist's Der zerbrochene Krug (The Bro-
ken Pitcher), published in 1877 (fig. 135),
which appears related to the bottom section
of Robert le Diable of 187 1. Jonathan Mayne
has pointed out that the second version of
the painting is the last in a series of works in-
cluding The Orchestra of the Opera (cat. no. 97)
and Orchestra Musicians (cat. no. 98) in which
Degas successively refined essentially the
same formula.7 To this series one might add
Ballet at the Paris Opera (L513, The Art In-
stitute of Chicago), an example of the height
of Degas's achievements in this genre.
1. Degas Letters 1947, no. 8, pp. 34-35 (translation
revised). Letter dated "1873?" by Marguerite Kay,
but datable to early summer 1872, when Robert le
Diable was exhibited in Durand-Ruel's London
branch at 168 New Bond Street.
2. See brouillard, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris. See
also cat. no. 103.
3. See "Degas and Faure," p. 221.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, XI, p. 39; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 19, p. 45-
5. For related drawings, see cat. nos. 104, 105. See
also RefF 1985, Notebook 24 (BN, Carnet 2, pp. 9,
20, 21). Degas notes on p. 20, "at the apex of the
arches the moonlight touches the columns very
slightly — on the ground, the effect to be warmer
and rosier than I had made it . . . the trees grayer
. . . and on p. 21, "the nuns' figures more the
color of flannel, but more blurred; in the fore-
ground the arcades [illegible word] grayer and
more blended in . . . On the significance of these
notes, see also the differing views of Henri Loy-
rette (cat. no. 103), who links them to Degas's pre-
paratory work for the first version of the painting.
6. New "York, Metropolitan 1967, p. 67. For Menzel's
illustration, sec Adolf von Menzel, das graphische
Werk (edited by Heidi Ebertshauser), I, Munich:
Rogner und Bernhard, 1976, pi. 681.
7. Mayne 1966, pp. 150-52.
provenance: Commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Faure
1874; delivered to Faure 1876; deposited with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 17 February 188 1 (deposit no. 3057);
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 28 February 188 1,
for Fr 3,000 (stock no. 871); bought by Constantine
Alexander Ionides, London, 7 June 188 1, for Fr 6,000;
his bequest to the museum 1900.
exhibitions : (?) 1876 Paris, no. 53 (as "Orchestre");
1898, London, Guildhall, Corporation of London
Art Gallery, 4 June-July, Pictures by Painters of the
French School, no. 152.
selected references: Cosmo Monkhouse, "The
Constantine Ionides Collection," Magazine of Art,
VII, 1884, pp. 126-27, rePr- P- I2Ii Moore 1890,
p. 421, repr.; "The Constantine Ionides Collection,"
Art Journal 1904, p. 286, repr.; Sir Charles J. Holmes,
"The Constantine Ionides Bequest: Article II —
Ingres, Delacroix, Daumier and Degas," Burlington
Magazine, V, 1904, p. 530, pi. Ill; Richard Muther,
The History of Modem Painting, revised edition, Lon-
don: Dent/ New York: Dutton, 1907, III, repr. (color)
facing p. 118; Hourticq 1912, p. 99, repr.; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 10, p. 36 n. 2, "Annotations," p. 261,
and letter no. 19, p. 45 n. 1; Lettres Degas 1945,
pp. 31-32 n. 1; no. XI, 39 n. 2; Lemoisne [1946-49],
II, no. 391; Browse [1949], no. 9; Cooper 1954,
pp. 60, 67; Pickvance 1963, p. 266; Rosine Raoul,
"Letter from New York: Exhibitions on a Theme,"
Apollo, LXXVILn, January 1963, p. 62 (reproducing
a copy by Everett Shinn); Mayne 1966, pp. 148-56,
fig. 1; Browse 1967, p. 105, pi. 2; Catalogue of Foreign
Paintings, II, 1800-1900 (by Claus Michael Kauff-
mann), London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973,
pp. 24-25, no. 58, repr. text and cover; Minervino
1974, no. 487, pi. XL (color); Reff 1985, p. 9, Note-
book 24 (BN, Carnet 22, pp. 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16-
17, 19, 20, 21); Sutton 1986, p. 120, fig. 139 (color)
p. 163.
l60.
The Chorus
1876-77
Pastel over monotype on laid paper
io5/s X 12% in. (27 X 3 1 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF12259)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 420
In a conversation with Daniel Halevy, De-
gas identified the subject of this pastel as a
scene from the opera Don Giovanni} It was
his only scene from an opera that did not in-
clude dancers, and it may be recognized as
the finale of the chorus occurring in the first
act in celebration of the engagement of Ma-
setto and Zerlina. For want of a suitable
baritone, Don Giovanni was not performed
very often in Paris until the season of 1866.
Then it was revived simultaneously at the
Opera and the Theatre-Lyrique, becoming
for Jean-Baptiste Faure, in the title part, one
of his greatest triumphs. It was frequently
performed afterward, and it might be noted
that Ludovic Halevy's "Monsieur Cardi-
nal," which Degas illustrated about the time
this work was executed, takes place back-
stage during a performance of Don Giovanni.
Fig. 136. Honore Daumier, Crispin and Scapin,
also called Scapin and Silvestre, c. i860. Oil on
canvas, 24^ X 323/s in. (60. 5 X 82 cm). Musee
d'Orsay, Paris
270
Degas himself used ballet scenes from the
opera as the subject of several works.2
When shown in 1877 in the exhibition
that marked Degas 's emergence as the most
fiercely realist of artists, the true — even pic-
turesque— aspect of the scene struck several
critics, one of whom remarked, "And the
hideous chorus, bawling in full voice, aren't
they real!"3 As another critic noted, the group
of singers, set in careful foreshortening
along a conspicuous diagonal but with each
figure carrying on in the most expressive
disorder, is singularly alive.4 The farcical as-
pect of the event and the dramatic lighting
from below link the work to Daumier,
whom Degas greatly admired, and perhaps
more specifically to works of his such as
Crispin and Scapin (fig. 136), which Durand-
Ruel exhibited in 1878 and later sold to
Degas's friend Henri Rouart.
The work originated as a monotype that
was subsequently covered in pastel. No other
impression of the monotype is known, but
an untraced, presumably related monotype
called "Choeur d'opera" was listed without
dimensions in the sale of prints by Degas of
22-23 November 19 18. 5 The plate, of an
unusual, almost square format, was also used
for another pastelized monotype connected
with the stage, The Curtain (L652, Mellon
collection, Upperville, Va.), usually dated
about 188 1 but surely dating earlier, as well
as for a sequence of dark-field monotypes of
bathers and nudes, among them Nude Woman
Combing Her Hair (cat. no. 247) and The
Washbasin (cat. no. 248).
1. Halevy i960, p. 113; Halevy 1964, p. 93.
2. See cat. no. 167. See also Entrance of the Masked
Dancers (L527, Sterling and Francine Clark Art In-
stitute, Williamstown, Mass.), identified by Alexan-
dra Murphy in Williamstown, Clark, 1987, no. 56;
and Ballet Scene (L470, private collection).
3. Pothey 1877, p. 2.
4. Jacques 1877, p. 2.
5. Vente Estampes, 1918, no. 186.
provenance: Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, by April
1877; deposited with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 29 January
1886 (stock no. 4692); consigned by Durand-Ruel
with the American Art Association, New York, 19
February-8 November 1886; returned to Caillebotte
30 November 1886; his bequest to the Musee du
Luxembourg, Paris, 1894; entered the Musee du
Luxembourg 1896; transferred to the Louvre 1929.
exhibitions; 1877 Paris, no. 47 (as "Choristes"), lent
by Gustave Caillebotte; 1886 New York, no. 67 (as
"Chorus d'Opera"); 191 5, San Francisco, Panama-
Pacific International Exposition, Department of Fine
Art, French Section, summer, no. 24 (as "Les Figu-
rants"); 1916, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, 27
April-30 June, Founder's Day Exhibition: French Paint-
ings from the Museum of Luxembourg, and Other Works
of Art from the French, Belgian and Swedish Collections
Shown at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,
Together with a Group of English Paintings, no. 22;
19 16, Buffalo, Albright Art Gallery, 29 October-
December, Retrospective Collection of French Art,
1870-1910, Lent by the Luxembourg Museum, Paris,
France, no. 21; 1924 Paris, no. 171; 1949 Paris, no. 100;
1956 Paris; 1969 Paris, no. 171; 1970, Paris, Musee
Eugene Delacroix, "Delacroix et Timpressionnisme"
(no catalogue); 1985 Paris, no. 66.
selected references: Chevalier 1877, p. 332; Jacques
1877, p. 2; Pothey 1877, p. 2; Paris, Luxembourg,
1894, p. 105, no. 1027; Benedite 1894, p. 132; Grappe
1911, p. 51, repr.; Lafond 1918-19, I, repr. p. 51; Jamot
1924, p. 92; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 420; Ley-
marie 1947, no. 32, repr.; Cabanne 1957, pp. 42-43;
Janis 1968, no. 54, repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 416;
Keyser 1981, pp. 41, 105, pi. xii (color); Paris, Louvre
and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 66.
I6l.
Dancer Onstage with a Bouquet
c. 1876
Pastel over monotype on laid paper
io5/s X i47/g in. (27 X 38 cm)
Signed in pink pastel upper left: Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 515
An examination of Degas's ingenious use of
monotype as a base for pastels reveals that
these works, more frequently than is gener-
ally assumed, underwent a remarkable series
of metamorphoses. This enchanting compo-
sition, for example, began with a monotype.
After having pulled one impression, how-
ever, Degas reworked the plate, touching up
the dancer, changing the angle of her right
arm, and adding a series of dancers in the
background. He thus obtained a second,
rather different monotype. He then produced
a counterproof from the second monotype
by facing it with a damp sheet of paper and
running it through the press. In the end, all
three impressions were used. The first one,
exhibited here, was lightly touched up with
pastel. The second impression, identified by
Deborah Johnson, was enlarged with the
addition of a strip of paper and reworked
completely with pastel. The result was The
Ballet (fig. 1 3 7) . 1 The counterproof (L515
bis), also slightly touched up with color, was
tentatively if erroneously connected with the
first impression.2
In Dancer Onstage with a Bouquet, the
monotype was created by wiping away the
light areas — notably the dancer's skirt and
bouquet — and giving texture and direction
to the remaining surface. Pastel was applied
sparingly in the background, allowing the
monotype base to show through, and in the
skirt and bouquet the white paper (now
darkened) was used to simulate the glow of
light, an effect now lost. The dancer's head,
torso, and arms were carefully worked up
in pastel to convey with maximum intensity
the reflection of the footlights that brilliantly
model her frame.
271
This pastel has generally been dated
1878-80, too late for its style, and a date of
about 1876 is probably more appropriate.
The dancer is very close to one appearing in
reverse in the reworked upper section of Or-
chestra Musicians (cat. no. 98), close enough
to imply a connection. It might be supposed
that a drawing existed, in reverse by com-
parison with the monotype. Indeed, a
somewhat schematic study of this type was
in the artist's atelier sale (111:259.2).
1. Deborah J. Johnson, "The Discovery of a Tost*
Print by Degas," Bulletin of Rhode Island School of
Design, LXVIII:2, October 198 1, pp. 28-31.
2. 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 5.
provenance: Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York,
until 1929; Mrs. Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen, her
daughter, New York, 1929-63; Peter H. B. Freling-
huysen, Jr., her son; present owner.
exhibitions : 19 1 5 New York, no. 30; 1968 Cam-
bridge, Mass., no. 5, repr.; 1980-81 New York,
no. 22, repr. (color).
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 367; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 515; Janis 1967, p. 75; Janis
1968, no. 12; Cachin 1974, p. LXVI; Minervino
1974, no. 725; Deborah J. Johnson, "The Discovery
of a 'Lost* Print by Degas," Bulletin of Rhode Island
School of Design, LXVIII:2, October 198 1, pp. 28-31,
fig- 4-
162.
Dancer with a Bouquet Bowing
c. 1877
Pastel and gouache or distemper on paper,
enlarged with five strips
28Vs x 3o5/s in. (72 X 77. 5 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF4039)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 474
This pastel, touched up with gouache or
distemper, represents the culmination of
Degas 's infatuation with effects induced by
artificial light, but in an image that by com-
parison to Dancer Onstage with a Bouquet (cat.
no. 161) is both startling and complicated.
The general impression is that of a privileged
angle of vision, one that permits a view of
the stage seen by the audience as well as a
glimpse of backstage activity visible only from
the wings. 1 In the right background, lit from
above, dancers and supernumeraries have
assumed the pose for the ballet's finale. To
the left, presumably hidden from the public
by stage flats, other dancers are already pre-
paring to leave the stage. Near the footlights,
the prima ballerina takes a curtain call, glar-
ingly lit from below, her harshly illuminated
face frozen like a Japanese mask. It is an un-
forgettable face, both thrilling and horrific,
that could have been shaped only on the
stage.
Genevieve Monnier has remarked on the
unusual shape of the work, almost square,
which can be partly ascribed to the manner
in which it was assembled.2 Originally the
image was smaller, some is3A by 23%
inches (40 by 60 centimeters), and contained
only the principal dancer, her head touching
the upper limit of the sheet. This was appar-
ently first expanded with the addition of
strips of paper at the right and at the top,
resulting in a larger, asymmetrical design
with the dancer in the left half of the com-
position. However, the work was further
enlarged, in a second stage, at the top, to
the left, and finally at the bottom. The pat-
tern in which the added strips interlock leaves
little doubt that this was the sequence fol-
lowed, and the various additions indicate pri-
marily a shift in emphasis in the composition.
Pentimenti and examination under infra-
red light show additional small but signifi-
cant changes in the dancer that also may
have been made in two stages. Her left arm
was lowered by a fraction, the enormous
bouquet was reduced in size, and her right
leg was extended downward. The altera-
tions to the arm and the bouquet were not
made spontaneously and were first verified
in a charcoal drawing (IV: 165), obviously
intended as a preparatory design. The study,
on a sheet of the same size as the central,
original portion of the pastel, shows the
dancer on the same scale and in the same
position as she appeared originally. The
drawing was corrected, however: the dancer's
arm was moved to a slightly different posi-
tion, and the bouquet was made smaller.
The only part of the drawing that was not
revised is the right leg, indicating probably
that the revisions tested in the drawing were
carried out in the pastel prior to the addition
of the strip of paper at the bottom and that
the need for that strip became obvious only
when Degas decided to extend the leg, per-
haps in the ultimate phase of the work.
Very few of Degas 's ballet scenes repre-
sent actual stage performances, and the sce-
nery or costumes alone may evoke the
event. With some exceptions, notably the
two versions of The Ballet from "Robert le
Diable" (cat. nos. 103, 159), the artist's fre-
quent use of the same figures indicates that
he seldom followed literally the actual pro-
duction of a ballet, even if on occasion he
borrowed elements from it. Theodore Reff
has shown that in Dancer at the Footlights
(BR77)? the artist used elements from the
stage set of the ballet Yedda, Legende Ja-
ponaise.* The same seems to apply to this
pastel, in which the background figures in
Hindu costume appear to be derived from
the ballet scene in the third act of Massenet's
opera LeRoi de Lahore, first performed in Pa-
ris on 27 April 1877. This is consistent with
the date generally proposed for the work,
about 1877-78, but allows little room for the
recent suggestion that the dancer is a portrait
272
273
of Rosita Mauri, who made her debut only
in 1878, an identification hazardous under
any circumstances in a face so distorted by
light.4 In 1892, the compiler of a sale cata-
logue assumed her to be one of the Cardinal
girls, a tribute to the fame of Ludovic Hale-
vy's short stories.5
A slightly smaller variant of the pastel
(L475) in the Clark Art Institute, catalogued
in Lemoisne as by Degas, is no longer be-
lieved to be by the artist.
1. See Upton 1986, p. 95.
2. See Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985,
no. 52.
3. Brame and Reff 1984, no. 77.
4. The identification, made by Janet Anderson, is
cited by Suzanne Folds McCullagh in 1984 Chica-
go, no. 41.
5. "The star steps back from the footlights, bowing
and curtseying again and again . . . her mouth,
opened wide, evinces the pleasure of her tri-
umph— mere success isn't enough for Mile Cardi-
nal." See the Bellino sale catalogue, Galerie
Georges Petit, Paris, 20 May 1892, no. 44.
provenance: A. Bellino, Paris (Bellino sale, Galerie
Georges Petit, Paris, 20 May 1892, no. 44, repr. [as
"Danseuses"], for Fr 12,500); bought by Comte Isaac
de Camondo, Paris; his bequest to the Louvre 1908;
entered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 121; 1937 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 89; 1949 Paris, no. 101; 1956 Paris; 1969
Paris, no. 179; 1985 Paris, no. 51, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 75-76,
pi. XXX; Lafond 1918-19, I, repr. p. 57, II, p. 29;
Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914, no. 216, p. 50, repr.;
Jamot 1914, pp. 455-56; Meier-Graefe 1920,
pi. XLIII; Jamot 1924, pi. 49; Lemoisne 1937, p. A,
repr. p. D; Lassaigne 1945, p. 44, repr. (color); Rou-
art 1945, pp. 18, 72 n. 48, repr. p. 21; Lemoisne [1946-
49], II, no. 474; Leymarie 1947, no. 31, pi. XXXI;
Browse [1949], no. 56; Cabanne 1957, pp. 35, 41;
Minervino 1974, no. 510; Roberts 1976, pi. 26 (color);
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 51; Sutton
1986, pp. 179, pi. 168 (color) p. 185.
163.
Ballet (The Star)
I876-77
Pastel over monotype on laid paper
227/s X 16V2 in. (58 X 42 cm)
Signed in the monotype upper left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF12258)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 491
An appreciation of the realism of Degas's
dancers was most briefly and felicitously
expressed in 1877 by the young Georges
Riviere, who, in a review of the third Im-
pressionist exhibition, told his readers, "After
having seen these pastels, you will never have
to go to the Opera again."1 In a sense, it is
curious that the dancers should have received
that kind of notice, as this was the year in
which Degas's cafe and cafe-concert scenes
appeared in public for the first time, making
an extraordinary impression and eclipsing
almost everything else. The Star, or
"L'etoile" — as the Orsay pastel has been
known for almost a hundred years — is one
of the series of pastelized monotypes that
Degas started in the summer of 1876 and
probably one of the four dance subjects ex-
hibited in 1877.
That The Star was exhibited in 1877 is re-
vealed by a reviewer who wrote under the
pseudonym of Jacques, who, as impressed
as was Riviere by the veracity of the scene,
noted that "the prima ballerina, who bows,
after a movement that has left her completely
out of breath, swoops forward toward the
footlights with such elan that if I were the
conductor I would think about reaching out
to support her." This sentiment was echoed
by Louis de Fourcaud, who pointed out that
in the work titled Ballet, "the dancer, with a
look of rapture on her face, completes a
sweeping bow, making her tutu stand out in
the swirling movement."2 Because two works
entitled Ballet were shown by Degas in 1877,
under nos. 39 and 57, it is likely that this
work was one of them. It is equally probable
that it was bought from the exhibition by
Gustave Caillebotte, who already owned
three pastelized monotypes by Degas.3 It may
well have been the single work Degas sold
from the exhibition that he mentions in a
letter of 21 May 1877 to Leontine De Nittis.4
Two decades later, when the Caillebotte
bequest was finally exhibited at the Musee
du Luxembourg, it was known among
Degas's friends that he was unhappy to be
represented in the museum by a handful of
small pastels. In his diary entry for 27 Feb-
ruary 1897, Daniel Halevy wrote of a dis-
cussion with Degas on the subject. The artist
commented: "I did lots of women like
that. ... All of them are more or less rapid
sketches. If you have to go to the Luxem-
bourg, it is annoying to go in such im-
promptu style."5 As Eugenia Janis was the
first to note, several related monotypes of
this subject were indeed covered by Degas
with pastel, in itself a vivid testimony to his
efforts to supply his dealers with small, per-
haps rapidly executed works that pleased his
public. The monotype under The Star is
known in two impressions, and both are
covered with pastel. The second pastelized
impression, with dancers added in the fore-
ground and background, is now in the Art
Institute of Chicago (L601) and is different
enough in effect not to immediately indicate
its origins.6 Yet another smaller, related
monotype known in two impressions, with
the same dancer but shown at the left, re-
sulted in two pastels (L492, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, and L627).7
For The Star, Degas used one of his largest
plates — in fact his second largest. A study
for the dancer in the Art Institute of Chicago
(IL336) was followed faithfully for the fig-
ure of the ballerina, shown in reverse in the
monotype. The drawing has been dated
c. 1878 but clearly precedes this work and
should be dated 1873-74, as it seems con-
nected with the preparatory studies for The
Dance Class (cat. no. 130). 8
The subsequent fame of this pastel, per-
haps the most loved and certainly the most
frequently reproduced of the artist's works,
owes something to its location, in the Lux-
embourg, confirming Degas's fears for the ef-
fect his pastels were making there. Already
in 1897, Daniel Halevy remarked on "that
ballerina dancing all alone — grace and poetry
embodied," a far cry from the sentiments
voiced by the previous generation, who had
admired its realism.9 It is the magical aspect
of the dancer's performance that has survived
intact, overriding the work's singular novel-
ty— the curious angle of vision, the vast ex-
panse of stage left bare, the dancers in the
wings, and, not least, the male figure, the
star's "protector" waiting for her to finish her
turn.
1. Georges Riviere, "L'exposition des impression-
nistes," L'Impressionniste, 6 April 1877, p. 6.
2. See Jacques 1877, p. 2, and Leon de Lora [Louis de
Fourcaud], "L'exposition des impressionnistes," Le
Gaulois, 10 April 1877, p. 2.
3. It has been proposed by Richard Brettell that the
picture exhibited in 1877 as Ballet was Ballet at the
Paris Opera, in the Art Institute of Chicago (L513);
see 1986 Washington, D.C., p. 204. As the reviews
mention only one dancer in Ballet and several ap-
pear in the foreground of the pastel in Chicago, the
more probable identification remains The Star.
4. "I had a small room all to myself, full of my wares.
I sold only one, unfortunately." See Chronology II,
21 May 1877.
5. See Halevy i960, p. 113; Halevy 1964, p. 93.
6. For the Chicago version, see 1984 Chicago, no. 29.
7. For the Philadelphia pastel and its cognate, see
Boggs 1985, pp. 8-9, 44 no. 3.
8. For the drawing, see 1984 Chicago, no. 40. This
work was once with the Kleemann Galleries, New
\brk, and the Harris Goldstein collection, Philadel-
phia, and appeared at the Parke-Bernet, New "York,
auction of 2 May 1956, no. 37. In addition to the
transfer drawing (III: 166. 3) noted by Suzanne Folds
McCullagh in 1984 Chicago, a study (III: 15 1.2) of
the same dancer in reverse is known.
9. Halevy i960, p. 113; Halevy 1964, p. 93.
provenance: Bought (from the artist?) after April 1877
by Gustave Caillebotte, Paris; his bequest to the Musee
du Luxembourg, Paris, 1894; entered the Luxembourg
1896; transferred to the Louvre 1929.
exhibitions: 1877 Paris, no. 39 (as "Ballet"); 1937 Pa-
ris, Orangerie, no. 88; 1956 Paris; 1969 Paris, no. 183.
selected references: Jacques 1 877, p. 2; Paul Sebillot,
"Exposition des impressionnistes," Le Bien Public, 7
April 1877, p. 2 (as "Ballerine qui salue le public");
274
Leon de Lora [Louis dc Fourcaud], "L'exposition des
impressionnistes," Le Gaulois, 10 April 1877, p. 2; Pa-
ris, Luxembourg, 1894, p. 105, no. 1024; Benedite
1894, P- 132; Jean Bernac, "The Caillebotte Bequest to
the Luxembourg," Art Journal XV, 1895, pt. I, repr.
p. 231, pt. II, p. 359; Marx 1897, repr. p. 324 (engrav-
ing by Nielsen); Woldemar von Seidlitz, "Degas," Pan,
III: 1, 1897, p. 58; Mauclair 1903, pL 390; Karl Eugen
Schmidt, Franzosische Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts, Leip-
zig: E. A. Seemann, 1903, pi. 75; Pica 1907, repr.
p. 414; Louis Hourticq, Geschichte der Kunst in Frank-
reich, Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, 19 12, p. 438; Gabriel
Mourey, "Edgar Degas," The Studio, LXXIIL302,
May 1918, repr. p. 131; Lafond 1918-19, I, p. 47, repr.;
Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. XXXVIII; Riviere 1935, repr.
frontispiece; Rouart 1945, pp. 54, 74 n. 81, repr. (de-
tail) (as "Danseuse saluant") pp. 58-59; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 491; Leymarie 1947, no. 26,
pi. XXVI; Browse [1949], no. 55; Janis 1967, pp. 72-
75, fig. 46; Janis 1968, no. 5; Cachin 1974, p. 281; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 520, pi. XLII (color); Paris, Louvre
and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 65.
I64.
Dancers at the Barre
c. 1873
Essence and sepia on green paper
i87/s X 245/s in. (47.4 X 62.7 cm)
Signed in black chalk lower right: Degas
Trustees of the British Museum, London
(1968-2-10-25)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 409
This essence study was one of twenty draw-
ings selected by Degas for reproduction in
the album Degas: vingt dessins, 1861-1896,
where it was said to date from 1876. It has
since been universally dated 1876-77, al-
though the drawing belongs, along with
other comparable studies, to the group of
preparatory drawings executed in 1873 after
the artist's return from New Orleans. A
second, related essence composition (fig. 138)
has a figure that was evidently a sketchy at-
tempt at defining the dancer at the left in the
British Museum sheet, along with a figure
that Degas used in The Dance Class (cat.
no. 128) of 1873, in the Corcoran Gallery of
Art in Washington. A third essence drawing
(111:2 12) of the same period, originally the
same size as the British Museum study but
subsequently divided into three separate
sheets, must have belonged to the same group
and clearly also served as a source for the
Corcoran painting.1
The drawing in the British Museum has
been assumed to be a preparatory study for
Dancers Practicing at the Barre (cat. no. 165)
in the Metropolitan Museum. This is true
only inasmuch as the chance presence of
two dancers on the same sheet later suggested
to the artist the possibility of using them
conjointly in a composition.2
Three drawings that can be dated 1873
appear connected to the essence study. One
(III: 8 3. 3) is a charcoal-and-chalk variant of
the dancer at the left; the other two (fig. 139
and IV:278.d) are related to the dancer at
the right and show her torso inclined at two
different angles.
1. The drawing (111:2 12) was reproduced intact in the
Degas atelier sale catalogue, though the three frag-
ments— all privately owned — are each marked
with the Vente stamp. See 1984 Tubingen, nos. 96,
99, 227, where they are dated c. 1874.
2. That Degas, indeed, used to advantage such chance
encounters on a page is confirmed by The Re-
hearsal (fig. 154) in the Frick Collection, New
York, and a study of a dancer connected with it
(111:336.1). In addition to one of the figures, the
drawing also provided a detail — the now famous
unattached leg intruding into the composition.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 338,
for Fr 8,200); bought by Gustave Pellet, Paris. J. H.
Whittemore, Naugatuck, Conn.; Cesar M. de Hauke,
New York; his bequest to the museum 1966.
exhibitions: 1935 Boston, no. 126; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 8o, repr.; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 85; 195 1-
52 Bern, no. 23; 1968, London, British Museum,
12 July-28 September, Cesar Mange de Hauke Bequest,
1984 Tubingen, no. 103, repr. (color); 1987 Man-
chester, no. 48, fig. 78 (color).
selected references: Vingt dessins [1897], pi. 13;
Lafond 1918-19, II, repr. after p. 36; Riviere 1922-
23, pi. 86 (reprint edition 1973, pi. E [color]); Rouart
1945, p. 71 n. 28; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 409
(as c. 1876-77); Browse [1949], no. 47; Cooper
1952, pp. 12-13, no. 4, pi. 4 (color); Rosenberg
!959» P- II2> pl- 2°8; Minervino 1974, no. 496; John
Rowlands, "Treasures of a Connoisseur: The de Cesar
[sic] Hauke Bequest," Apollo, LXXXVIIL77, July
1968, p. 46, fig. 9 p. 47 (as c. 1876).
276
165.
Dancers Practicing at the Barre
1876-77
Oil colors freely mixed with turpentine on canvas
293/4X32 in. (75.6X81.3 cm)
Signed left of center: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.34)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 408
The instant fame acquired by this picture at
the time of the sale of Henri Rouart's collec-
tion in 19 12 has overshadowed its true, subtle
qualities — qualities that prompted George
Moore in 1890 to consider it "perhaps . . .
the finest of all" the artist's paintings devoted
to the dance.1 A century later, Dancers Prac-
ticing at the Barre appears more clearly to be
the culmination of Degas's attempts in the
mid- 1 8 70s to simplify his compositions. It is
also one of the most happily phrased obser-
vations on the nature of rhythm, not only as
the preeminent property of dance but also as
a pervasive quality in nature.
The idea for the composition was sug-
gested by the earlier essence study of two
dancers (cat. no. 164) in the British Museum.
Perhaps because the dancers in the study
were each observed from a different angle,
alternative studies were used for the painting.
Degas drew the dancer at the left once
more, from a model, elaborating on details
of the torso, arms, and left leg, both in a
pastel (11:234. 1 ) and in a pencil study now in
277
Fig. 139. Dancer at the Bam (111:133.4), c. 1873?
Charcoal, 12V4 X 77/s in. (3 1. 1 x 20 cm). Cabinet
des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris
(RF4644)
the collection of Mr. and Mrs. William R.
Acquavella. The dancer at the right was not
entirely based, as one might expect, on the
splendid prototype in the British Museum
study but on one of the related drawings
(fig. 139), where she is shown with her torso
less bent to the right. As her right arm was
not clearly defined in either the drawing or
the British Museum study, the pose of the
arm alone was examined separately on the
Acquavella sheet.2
The resulting composition, audacious in
its grouping of figures in the upper right
quadrant, focuses attention completely on
the two dancers performing their exercises
in a sun-filled rehearsal room. One dancer,
her back to the viewer, is entirely absorbed
in her work; the other, equally wrapped up
in herself, appears momentarily distracted.
The rear wall shimmers with reflected light
in contrast to the dusty floor, recently sprin-
kled with water in rhythmical patterns. To
the left, a watering can is placed in such a
way as to echo the movement of the dancer
at the right, a deliberately established corre-
spondence between animate and inanimate
forms that Degas employed on other occa-
sions.3 In this instance, he came to regret it
but was apparently denied permission to al-
ter the composition by the owner of the
work, Henri Rouart.4
In his earliest analysis of the painting,
Paul-Andre Lemoisne concluded that Dancers
Practicing at the Bane was shown in the Im-
pressionist exhibition of 1877. Subsequently
he adopted an ambiguous stance on the sub-
ject, and doubt was expressed as recently as
1986 by George Shackelford,5 Without dis-
cussing this painting, Georges Riviere repro-
duced a drawing of a related Dancer at the
Barre (L421) with a review of the 1877 exhi-
bition.6 However, Paul Mantz in his review
noted "the floor of the theater, where the
spout of the watering can cleverly draws
figure 8s in the dust," surely a reference to
Dancers Practicing at the Barre.1 This painting
was certainly exhibited, and it is known
that it was given by Degas to Henri Rouart
as a replacement for an earlier work, now
lost, which the artist wished to alter and de-
stroyed in the process.8
1. Moore 1890, p. 423. At the Rouart sale, the pic-
ture fetched the highest price paid up to that date
at public auction for the work of a living artist.
2. For a different dating of all the drawings connected
with the painting, see Richard Thomson in 1987
Manchester, pp. 48-49.
3. See also Woman in a Tub (L766, private collection,
California), where a jug in the foreground repeats
the form of the bather.
4. Browse [1949], p. 353.
5. Lemoisne 1912, p. 71, as most probably exhibited;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 421, indicating that
the single Dancer at the Barre (L421) was shown;
1986 Washington, D.C., p. 204, noting that L421
was exhibited, and p. 217, where it is suggested
that L408 may have been the work shown.
6. L'Impressionnistey 2, 11 April 1877, repr. p. 5. That
there is no connection between the drawing repro-
duced by Riviere and the painting exhibited in
1877 is made clear by Riviere's monograph on
Degas, in which he states: "In 1877, at the time of
the publication of the periodical L'Impressionnistey a
short-lived paper that lasted as long as the exhibi-
tion at 6 rue Le Peletier, Degas very kindly gave
us a beautiful drawing, Dancer at the Barre, which
we published in our first number." See Riviere.
1935, P- 23.
7. Mantz 1877, p. 3.
8. Lettres Degas 1945, Paul Poujaud to Marcel
Guerin, 11 July 1936, p. 256; Degas Letters 1947,
p. 236.
provenance: Given by the artist to Henri Rouart,
Paris (Rouart sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 9-
11 December 1912, no. 177, for Fr 478,000); bought
by Paul Durand-Ruel as agent for Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, New York; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1877 Paris, no. 41; 1930 New York,
no. 57; 1970, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 17 Sep-
tember-i November, Masterpieces of Painting in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 83, repr. (color); 1970-
71, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
14 November 1970-14 February 1971, Masterpieces of
Fifty Centuries, no. 376, repr.; 1977 New York, no. 15
of paintings, repr.
selected references: "Exposition des impression-
nistes," La Petite Republique Frangaise, 10 April 1877,
p. 2; Mantz 1877, p. 3; Charles Bigot, "Causerie ar-
tistique: Imposition des 'impressionnistes,'" La Revue
Politique et Litteraire 44, 28 April 1877, p. 1047; Moore
1890, p. 423; Alexandre 1902, p. 10, repr. p. 5; Geffroy
1908, p. 20, repr. p. 21; Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 71-72,
pi. xxviii; American Art News, XI, 28 December 1912,
p. 5; Charles Louis Borgmeyer, "The Master Im-
pressionists," The Fine Arts Journal, Chicago, 1913,
pp. 85, 87-88, 219, repr. p. 83; R E. D.[Dell], "Art
in France," Burlington Magazine, XXII: 11 8, January
19 1 3, p. 240; Moore 1918, p. 64; Lafond 1918-19, I,
p. 150, repr. facing p. 150, II, p. 27; Havemeyer 193 1,
p. 120, repr.; Burroughs 1932, p. 144; Venturi 1939,
II, pp. 131-33; Tietze-Conrat 1944, pp. 4176°., fig. 4
p. 416; Degas Letters 1947, pp. 235-36; Rouart 1945,
pp. 10, 70 n. 13, repr. p. 11; Lemoisne [1946-49], I,
pp. 93, 239 n. 118, II, no. 408; Browse [1949], pp. 32,
38, no. 46; Cabanne 1957, pp. 108, 116, no. 63, pi. 63;
Halevy 1964, pp. 108, 111; Valery i960, p. 92; Have-
meyer 196 1, pp. 252ff., 257; Boggs 1964, pp. 2-3,
fig. 2; New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 78-81,
repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 497; Reff 1976, pp. 277-78,
300, 337 n. 25, fig. 190 (detail); Charles S, Moffett
and Elizabeth Streicher, "Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer as Collectors of Degas," Nineteenth Century,
3, 1977, p- 25, fig. 4 p. 26; Moffett 1979, pp. 11-12,
16, fig. 21 (color); 1984 Tubingen, pp. 109 n. 184,
113 n. 287, 374, under no. 102; Moffett 1985, p. 74,
repr. (color) p. 75; 1986 Washington, D.C., no. 46
(included in the catalogue but not exhibited); Weitzen-
hoffer 1986, pp. 208-09, fig. 147 (color).
166.
Portrait of Friends in the Wings
(Ludovic Halevy and Albert
Cave)
1879
Pastel (and distemper?) on five pieces of
tan paper joined together
3i1/s X 2i5/s in. (79 X 55 cm)
Signed in black pastel lower right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF31140)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 526
Easily the most brilliant of the group Degas
had met at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Lu-
dovic Halevy (183 4-1 908) was the product
of a prodigiously gifted family. Beginning in
1852, he pursued a career in public adminis-
tration which culminated ill the years
1861-65, when he acted as correspondence
secretary to the Due de Morny, the speaker
of the legislative assembly and one of the
most influential public figures during the
Second Empire. At the same time Halevy
showed considerable versatility, publishing
short stories and plays and collaborating in
1855 with Jacques Offenbach on a musical
comedy. With Hector Cremieux, and later
with Henri Meilhac, another friend from
the Louis-le-Grand days, he wrote librettos
for OrTenbach*s operettas and established an
unrivaled reputation in this field. In 1867, he
left the civil service and began publishing
enormously popular short stories in La Vie
Parisienne, and in 1874, he surprised his ad-
mirers by producing the libretto for the opera
Carmen by his cousin-in-law, Georges Bizet.
Albert Cave (183 2-19 10) was a marginal,
278
if attractive, figure whose love for the stage
and connection with both Ingres and Dela-
croix interested Degas. Born in Naples, he
was the son of the painter Clement Boulan-
ger. After his father's death, his mother,
Marie-Elisabeth Blavot, a recognized painter
in her own right, married Edmond Cave, a
government official in charge of the Fine
Arts Directorate. Her son by Boulanger
took Cave's name and grew up knowing
practically everyone connected with the
arts. In 1852, shortly after his stepfather's
death, he was given a position in the Minis-
try of the Interior, where he met the young
Halevy, and subsequently became Director
of Censorship. His instinct on matters relat-
ing to the stage was considered flawless, and
although he appeared to have drifted
through life with a minimum of effort, his
advice was frequently sought. Degas, who
objected to his idleness, was nevertheless
fascinated by him.
On 15 April 1879, five days after the
opening of the fourth Impressionist exhibi-
tion, Halevy noted in his diary: "Yesterday
Degas exhibited a double portrait of Cave
and me on stage, standing in the wings, face
to face. There I am, looking serious in a
place of frivolity; just what Degas wanted."1
This play of contrasts was given form in a
highly unconventional double portrait with
the two figures seen against the liveliest of
blue-green stage flats. To the right, a rigid,
vertical side scene occupies a third of the
composition, partly concealing Cave and
subtly counteracting the sharp diagonals at
the left. This remarkable placing of visual el-
ements was first experimented with early in
1873 in Cotton Merchants in New Orleans
(cat. no. 116), where a figure in profile also
appears from behind a wall. The idea was
further refined with even greater boldness
in Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings
Gallery (cat. nos. 207, 208). There is a delib-
erately fastidious compositional touch in the
angle of Halevy's umbrella, calculated to
suggest spontaneity but far removed from
it. It has long been recognized that Degas's
masters in this instance were the great eigh-
teenth-century Japanese printmakers, and
echoes of their art can be found even in the
background stage flat, which evokes a blurred
memory of a field of irises in a Japanese
screen.2
1 . "Les carncts de Ludovic Halevy" (edited by Daniel
Halevy), Revue des Deux Mondes, 37, 15 February
1937, p. 823.
2. Boggs 1962, p. 54. For the Japanese effects in Cot-
ton Merchants, see Gerald Needham in Japonisme:
Japanese Influence on French Art 1854-1910 (exhibi-
tion catalogue), Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975;
and Theodore Reff, "Degas, Lautrec, and Japanese
Art," in Japonisme in Art: An International Symposi-
um, Tokyo: Committee for the Year 2001, 1980,
pp. 196-98.
provenance: Given by the artist to Ludovic Halevy,
c. 1885 (according to Hie Halevy, cited in 193 1 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 136); Mme Ludovic Halevy, his wid-
ow, Paris, from 1908; Elie Halevy, her son, Paris;
gift of Mme Elie Halevy to the Louvre, retaining life
interest, 1958; entered the Louvre 1964.
exhibitions: 1879 Paris, no. 60 (as "Portrait d'amis,
sur la scene"); 1924 Paris, no. 140, repr. (as c. 1880-
82); 1930, Paris, Revue des Deux Mondes, Cent ans
de viefranqaise (catalogue not consulted); 193 1 Paris,
Orangerie, no. 136, repr. (as c. 1880-82); i960 Paris,
no. 26, repr.; 1965, Paris, Musee du Jeu de Paume,
"Exposition temporaire" (no catalogue); 1966, Paris,
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, Pastels et
miniatures du XIXe siecle, no. 35; 1967-68 Paris,
no. 459, repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 188, fig. 10; 1969, Paris,
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, "Pastels" (no
catalogue); 1974, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre, "Pastels, cartons, miniatures, XVI-XIXe
siecles" (no catalogue); 1975 Paris; 1980-81, Paris,
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, "Pastels et
miniatures du XIXe siecle: acquisitions recentes du
Cabinet des Dessins" (no catalogue); 1985 Paris,
no. 76, repr. (color) p. 28.
selected references: Lemoisne 1924, repr. p. 100;
Louis Gillet, "Cent ans de vie franchise a la Revue
des Deux Mondes," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, III, Janu-
ary 1930, pp. 111-12; "Les camets de Ludovic Halevy"
(edited by Daniel Halevy), Revue des Deux Mondes,
37, 15 February 1937, p. 823; Rouart 1945, pp. 22,
279
72 n. 49; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 526 (as 1879);
Cabanne 1957, p. 42; Boggs 1962, pp. 54, 56, 59,
112, pi. 99 (as 1876); Minervino 1974, no. 567; Reff
1976, p. 183, fig. 128 (as 1879); Dunlop 1979, pp. 127,
166, fig. 158; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985,
no. 76; Sutton 1986, p. 261, fig. 256 p. 260.
Degas, Halevy, and the
Cardinals
cat. nos. 167-169
Ludovic Halevy's reputation as a writer was
based not only on his success as a librettist
but also on a series of related short stories of
a satirical character published separately be-
tween 1870 and 1880 and eventually collected
in 1883 under the title Lafamille Cardinal. As
early as 1873, the first two stories about Paul-
ine and Virginie Cardinal, two young dancers
at the Opera, and their parents were sufficient-
ly notorious to be described in Larousse's
Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe Steele as
"unhealthy."1 As might be expected, Halevy's
vivid sketches of life backstage inspired Degas,
who made a series of monotype illustrations
of the stories, his only project of that nature
intended for publication.2
The corpus of monotypes mistakenly said
to be connected with the printing in 1883 of
Lafamille Cardinal has been dated about
1880-83, even though it has been suspected,
on the basis of Degas's notebooks, that the
artist embarked on the project in about 1877
or 1 878. 3 There is reason to believe that in
early 1877 tne project was in fact already
completed, as in the spring of that year
Degas sent several of the monotypes to the
third Impressionist exhibition, where they
were admired by Jules Claretie, one of the
reviewers:
M. Degas, a man of intellect, an acute,
original, and profound observer of Paris
life, is one of those artists who sooner or
later achieve popular success through the
more private successes of amateurs. He
knows, and represents like no one else,
life backstage at the theater, the rehearsal
halls of the ballet, and the luscious appeal
of young ballerinas, with their bouffant
skirts. He has undertaken to illustrate
Monsieur et Madame Cardinal [sic] by Lu-
dovic Halevy. His drawings have extraor-
dinary character: they are life itself. He is
the equal of Gavarni and Goya. ... In
short, M. Degas has created scenes of
Paris — its everyday life and its lowlife —
which will one day astonish the public
when a publisher decides to collect and
produce them in an album. This man's
profound understanding of humankind
will then be truly revealed. ... 4
The relatively complicated publishing his-
tory of the short stories collected in La fa-
mille Cardinal was the chief cause for the
dates previously ascribed to the monotypes.
"Madame Cardinal," written in one after-
noon on 6 May 1870, appeared in La Vie Pa-
risienne one week later. The second story,
"Monsieur Cardinal," followed in November
1 87 1. Both were signed with the pseudonym
"A. B.C." Stimulated by their enormous suc-
cess, Halevy in 1872 collected the two stories
along with ten unrelated ones in a volume
titled Madame et Monsieur Cardinal (Paris:
Michel-Levy, 1872). Issued under his real
name, the volume was illustrated with twelve
vignettes by Edmond Morin, only two of
which — not all twelve as usually stated —
related to the Cardinal stories. In December
1875, by which time Madame et Monsieur
Cardinal had appeared in eighteen editions,
Halevy published in La Vie Parisienne a third
short story, "Les petites Cardinal."
Five years later, on 3 June 1880, Halevy
noted in his diary: "I suddenly decided that
I would finish off the Madame Cardinal series
and produce a second volume with five pre-
viously unpublished chapters. I had many
notes, though these were scattered and dis-
organized. In eight days, I had completed
five chapters; of the last three, not one line
had been written before. The drawings will
be done by a young man, Henry Maigrot."5
One month later, on 7 July 1880, the pre-
viously published "Les petites Cardinal,"
the five new Cardinal chapters, and six un-
related stories appeared together under the
title Les petites Cardinal (Paris: Calmann-
Levy, 1880). As with the previous volume,
the illustrations were restricted to one for
each short story.
The success of Les petites Cardinal sur-
passed all expectations. In 1882, when
Halevy published a highly sentimental novel,
L'Abbe Constantin, he noted in his diary:
"My friend Degas is furious with L'Abbe
Constantin — 'nauseated' would be a better
word. He was insulting to me this morning."6
Halevy actually never wrote another short
story about the Cardinals, but in 1883 he
published the eight Cardinal stories in one vol-
ume under the title La famille Cardinal, with
illustrations by Emile Mas (Paris: Calmann-
Levy, 1883).
Inasmuch as Degas's monotypes illustrate
specific episodes from the narrative, it is ev-
ident that they are linked to only three of
the eight stories — "Madame Cardinal,"
"Monsieur Cardinal," and "Les petites Car-
dinal," all of which had been published by
the end of 1875 — and that the artist did not
illustrate the remaining five chapters written
by Halevy in May-June 1880. Thus it is dif-
ficult to agree with Marcel Guerin and others
that Degas intended the illustrations to be
used in La famille Cardinal, the volume pub-
lished in 1883, and it is just as difficult to
suppose that they were considered for Les
petites Cardinal, issued in 1880. It is more
probable that in the summer of 1876, at the
height of his interest in monotype, Degas
conceived the idea of illustrating the three
existing Cardinal stories in the event they
were collected in a volume. That the project
was at a fairly advanced stage and that a pub-
lication, probably a book, was contemplated
are suggested by the existence of heliogravure
reductions of one of the illustrations.7 Guerin
claimed that such was the case and that
Halevy rejected the illustrations, an opinion
confirmed by Mina Curtiss.8 It has been as-
sumed that Halevy failed to recognize their
greatness, and there is evidence that he in-
variably chose mediocre illustrators for his
works.9 It is also true that in his illustrations
Degas gave the narrator of the Cardinal sto-
ries Halevy's recognizable physiognomy,
transmuting sketches published as fiction
into autobiography. If for Degas — as for
Flaubert — Art was a second Nature, a neces-
sary reenactment of Nature, this unexpected
pictorial device may have embarrassed
Halevy. Whether the entire question was
raised before or after Claretie's pointed re-
mark of April 1877 about the monotypes
deserving publication as an album remains
to be determined.
When the portfolio of monotypes and
drawings related to the project appeared as
one lot in the 19 18 sale of prints from the
artist's estate, it was said to consist of thirty-
seven monotypes, according to the cata-
logue, including eight retouched with pastel,
thirty contretypes (actually, second impres-
sions), and eleven drawings.10 However, the
portfolio was withdrawn from sale and most
of its contents were deposited in 1925 with
Durand-Ruel. On 17 March 1928, the port-
folio was sold, again as one lot, for the ex-
traordinary sum of Fr 408,500, at a sale
organized by Marcel Guerin at which the
principal buyers were Guerin himself, the
publisher Auguste Blaizot, who also acquired
the reproduction rights, and the collector
David David-Weill. Seven monotypes and
drawings accidentally removed from the port-
folio before it had been left with Durand-
Ruel were sold at auction separately on 25
June 193 5* 11
The monotype illustrations are all exe-
cuted in the light-field manner. Although
most of them are in black ink on white paper,
at least nine impressions were substantially
reworked with red, white, and black pastel.12
Many of the illustrations refer to episodes in
280
the narrative, but there are also a number
that are simply evocative of the backstage of
the Opera, with no specific relation to the
text. It is evident throughout the series that
Degas devoted several monotypes to one
episode, working his way through varying
compositions and refining visual effects.
Viewed together, the sequences of illustra-
tions showing the same scene from different
angles, from a distance, and close up achieve
a curious cinematic quality that would have
been lost in a book. It could be claimed that
Degas perhaps intended only the colored
monotypes for publication, but this does
not seem to have been the case considering
the evidence of the one known engraved repro-
duction.13 It was only in 1938 that thirty-one
of the monotypes finally appeared, repro-
duced in engraved form in a limited edition
of La famille Cardinal published by Blaizot.
In the end, it was not the project Degas had
in mind.
1 . Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du
XlXesiecle, IX, Paris, 1873, p. 30, "Halevy (Lu-
dovic)." The entry also states that the short sto-
ries "belong to that genre of salacious literature,
typical of the Second Empire, which has given us
such an unfortunate reputation abroad."
2. The only other work of literature for which the
artist agreed to provide an illustration was Mal-
larme's proposed he tiroir de laque, planned for
1887. Degas failed to deliver the etching, tenta-
tively identified by Jean Adhemar as RS55. For
the entire question of the project and Degas's
participation, see Stephane Mallarme, Correspon-
dance, III (edited by Henry Mondor and Lloyd
James Austin), Paris, 1969, pp. 162, 227, 254,
256-57, 290; Henri de Regnier, "Mallarme et les
peintres," in Nos rencontres, Paris, 193 1, pp. 202-
03; and Janine Bailly-Herzberg, "Les estampes de
Berthe Morisot," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XCIII,
May-June 1979, pp. 215-27.
3. Janis 1968, p. xxi (c. 1877); Pickvance in 1979
Edinburgh, p. 68 (c. 1877); Reff 1985, Notebook
27 (BN, Carnet 3, pp. 3-6); and Reff 1976, pp. 80,
185 (c. 1878); see later dating of cat. no. 167 to
1879-80 in Brame and Reff 1984, no. 96A.
4. Claretie 1877, p. 1.
5. "Les carnets de Ludovic Halevy" (edited by Dan-
iel Halevy), Revue des Deux Mondes, 43, I Janu-
ary 1938, p. 117.
6. Ibid., 15 January 1938, p. 399.
7. Two proofs printed by Dujardin of In the Corridor
are recorded in Janis 1968, no. 223, and Cachin
1974, no. 69.
8. Cited in Janis 1968, pp. xxi-xxii.
9. In a letter of 7 January 1886, Degas wrote to Ha-
levy, "you . . . are such a good judge of every-
thing that is not art. ..." See Lettres Degas 1945,
LXXXIX, pp. 114, 115 n. 1; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 98, p. 113. According to Vollard, "Halevy
could not understand Degas's talent but Mme
Halevy, who admired him, encouraged him to
prepare the drawings [i.e., the monotypes]. She
assured Degas that she would persuade her hus-
band, but failed." See Rene Gimpel, Journal d'un
collectionneur marchand de tableaux, Paris: Calmann-
Levy, 1963, p. 37-
10. For Degas's own attempt to sell the Cardinal
monotypes as a group to Paul Gallimard for
Fr 80,000, see Gimpel, op. cit., p. 37.
11. Drouot, Paris, 25 June 1935, Edgar Degas estate,
I67.
Catalogue de sept croquis et impressions (monotypes)
par Edgar Degas exicutis en partie pour Illustration
de Vouvrage "Lespetites Cardinal" par Ludovic
Halevy.
12. There were eight colored impressions in the print
sale of 1918. A ninth given by Degas to Halevy is
recorded in Brame and Reff 1984, no. 96.
13. Nevertheless, the fact that the engraved work, In
the Corridor (J223, C69), appears to be the only
monotype in the series on beige rather than white
paper may have a significance yet to be determined.
Ludovic Halevy Finds Mme
Cardinal in the Dressing Room
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white laid paper
heightened with red and black pastel
First of two impressions
Plate: 8V4X 6lA in. (21.3 X 16 cm)
Vente stamp in blue gray lower right margin
Graphische Sammlung, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
(D1961/145)
Janis 2 12 /Cachin 65
There are two versions of this monotype,
and second impressions are recorded for
both.1 One version, known until recently
281
only from the second impression, is partly
heightened with pastel and is signed and in-
scribed "to my friend Halevy."2 The second
version, exhibited here, is more elaborately
reworked in pastel and is probably the defini-
tive image intended by Degas for publication.
The composition closely follows a para-
graph in "Monsieur Cardinal" in which the
narrator describes his visit backstage to a
dressing room.
I was looking for my worthy friend Mme
Cardinal. The dressing room door was
open, and I looked in. On hooks lining
the walls, dressers were hanging up soiled
gowns and red flannel hoopskirts. These
were the chrysalises from which would
emerge the sparkling butterflies of the
Don Giovanni ballet. Three or four mothers
were there, sitting on rattan chairs, talking,
knitting, or dozing.
In a corner I spied Mme Cardinal. Her
two large white corkscrew curls perfectly
framed her matriarchal face. With her
snuffbox on her knees and her spectacles
on her nose, she was reading a newspaper. I
approached. Mme Cardinal, completely
absorbed in her reading, did not see me
coming.
I dropped down on a little stool beside
her.3
The artist's earliest attempt at illustrating
the scene followed the text more literally.
The picture shows the narrator seated next
to Mme Cardinal, with the corner of a
dressing table prominent in the foreground
and two clearly defined dressers fluttering in
the background.4 In the two later versions,
the narrator stands and the focus is on the
two protagonists. The final image is more
forceful and abstract, with all the subsidiary
elements, such as the indistinct figure in the
background and the red hoopskirt, reduced
to a mere suggestion. The narrator has Ha-
levy's features, identifiable from his portrait
(cat. no. 166). Mme Cardinal is recognizable
not only as the character created by Halevy,
but also as a type of elderly stage mother in-
cluded by Degas in two other, unrelated
works — The Rehearsal (fig. 119) in Glasgow
and Dancers at Their Toilette (The Dance Ex-
amination) (cat. no. 220) in Denver.
1. Janis 1968, nos. 212-214; Cachin 1974, under
no. 65; Brame and Reff 1984, nos. 96, 96 A.
2. Brame and RefF 1984, no. 96. There are several
erased words in the margin, two still legible as
"Halevy" and "croquis" (sketch), as well as the
somewhat muddled inscription "Pour Madame
Cardinal." The illustration, of course, is for
"Monsieur Cardinal," and the inscription is not
necessarily in Degas's hand.
3. Ludovic Halevy, Madame et Monsieur Cardinal,
Paris: Michel-Levy, 1872, pp. 30-31.
4. Catalogued and reproduced in Janis 1968, no. 215,
as in black ink; Cachin 1974, under no. 65, as re-
worked in pastel, without a reproduction.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
part of lot no. 201, not sold; sale, Degas estate, Lair-
Dubreuil et Petit, Paris, 17 March 1928). Maurice
Loncle, Paris. Bought by the museum 1961.
exhibitions: 1984 Tubingen, no. 131, repr. (color);
1984-85 Paris, no. 128, p. 403, fig. 266 (color)
p. 411.
selected references: Ludovic Halevy, La famille
Cardinal, Paris: Auguste Blaizot, 1938, repr. p. 1
(color engraving by Maurice Potin); Rouart 1945,
pi. 7 (color); Christel Thiem, Franzbsischer Maler
illustrieren Biicher, Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie, 1965,
under no. 44; Janis 1968, no. 212 (as c. 1880-83);
Cachin 1974, under no. 65 (as c. 1880); Brame and
Reff 1984, no. 96 A (as 1879-80).
168.
Pauline and Virginie Conversing
with Admirers
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on heavy China paper
tipped onto heavy white wove paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 8V2X 6lA in. (21.5 X 16 cm)
Sheet: n3/s X 7V2 in. (28.9 X 19 cm)
Mount: 12V4 X 83/4 in. (3 1 X 22.2 cm)
Vente stamp in blue gray lower right margin;
atelier stamp right corner of mount
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Massachusetts. Be-
quest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs (M 14. 295)
Janis 218/Cachin 66
282
In an episode of "Les petites Cardinal," the
narrator remembers an event of ten years
earlier, when Pauline and Virginie Cardinal
were young. He was pursuing them in the
company of three of their admirers: a painter
(Degas? Lepic?), a senator, and the secretary
of a foreign embassy.
We were in a corridor. ... In the old
Opera there were delightful corridors,
with masses of nooks and crannies, dimly
lit by smoky lamps. We caught the two
young Cardinals in one of these corridors,
and we asked them to grant us the pleasure
of dining with us the next day at the Cafe
Anglais. The girls were bursting to ac-
cept. "But mama would never consent,"
they said. "You don't know mama!" And
suddenly, who should appear at the end of
the corridor but the redoubtable lady her-
self. "So," she cried, "again you're letting
my daughters in for a sound thrashing."1
In all three monotypes connected with the
scene, Degas placed the dancers and the
four men in the foreground, with Mme
Cardinal as an indistinct presence at the end
of the corridor. He revised the design at
least twice. In a monotype of horizontal for-
mat and of greater compositional complexity
(J220, C67), Mme Cardinal looms larger
and the group, unaware of her presence, is
more spirited.2 In the work in this exhibi-
tion, the weight is more emphatically on the
foreground and the dark figures of the men.
In a very close variant (J219, C66), there is a
slight shift in time: one of the admirers has
turned around and has discovered the pres-
ence of Mme Cardinal.
1. Ludovic Halevy, Les petites Cardinal, Paris:
Calmann-Levy, 1880, pp. 6-7.
2. A previously unrecorded second impression of this
monotype was sold anonymously in 1984, Nouveau
Drouot, Paris, 24 October 1984, no. 57, repr.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
part of lot no. 201, not sold; sale, Degas estate,
Lair-Dubreuil et Petit, Paris, 17 March 1928). Paul J.
Sachs, Cambridge, Mass.; bequeathed to the museum
1965.
exhibitions: 196 i, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts,
4 May-16 July, The Artist and the Book: 1860-1960,
with no. 71; 1965-67 Cambridge, Mass., no. 97,
repr.; 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 49, repr.; 1974
Boston, no. 104; 1979 Northampton, no. 27, repr.
p. 40; 1980-81 New York, no. 30, repr.
selected references: Ludovic Halevy, La famille
Cardinal, Paris: Auguste Blaizot, 1938, repr. p. 66
(engraving by Maurice Potin); Janis 1968, no. 218 (as
c. 1880-83); Cachin 1974, no. 66, repr. (as c. 1880);
1984-85 Paris, fig. 267 p. 412.
I69.
The Cardinal Sisters Talking to
Their Admirers
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white laid paper
Second of two impressions
Plate: 85/s X 7 in. (21.8 X 177 cm)
Sheet: iolA x 71/2 in. (26. 1 x 19. 1 cm)
Vente stamp in blue gray lower right margin;
atelier stamp on mount
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF30021)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Janis 226 /Cachin 72
There is ample evidence that whenever
possible Degas printed a second impression
of a monotype almost as a matter of
principle, and the Cardinal series does not
deviate from this pattern. Originally, there
was an almost equal number of first and
second impressions. But even if the artist
frequently transformed a second impression
into a pastel, he evidently never did so with
the second impression of a monotype con-
nected with the Halevy project. Notwith-
standing the apparently generic nature of
several illustrations for La famille Cardinal, it
can be concluded that in the artist's mind
they were specific to Halevy 's narrative.
283
This second impression, obtained from an
uncommonly well-inked plate, retains much
of the vigor of the first without being as
richly contrasted or as uniformly dark in the
lower foreground. It is subtler and more
delicate, but the humorous rendition of the
middle-aged admirers, among whom
Eugenia Janis has tentatively recognized Lu-
dovic Lepic, remains unimpaired. Although
the composition is not connected with an
identifiable scene from the Cardinal stories,
it represents a variation on the theme ex-
pressed in Pauline and Virginie Conversing with
Admirers (cat. no. 168).
The first impression of this monotype
was bound with Ludovic Halevy Finds Mme
Cardinal in the Dressing Room (cat. no. 167)
and four other monotypes in an exemplar of
La famille Cardinal published by Blaizot, now
in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.1
1. For the first impression, see Janis 1968, no. 226,
and Cachin 1974, no. 72.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
part of lot no. 201, not sold; sale, Degas estate,
Lair-Dubreuil et Petit, Paris, 17 March 1928). Carle
Dreyfus, Paris; his bequest to the Louvre 1952.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 195; 1985 London,
no. 7, erroneously reproducing the first impression
in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
selected references: Valery 1965, fig. 155 p. 239 (as
1880-90); Cachin 1974, no. 72 (as c. 1880).
170.
In the Omnibus
c. 1877-78
Monotype in black ink on white wove paper
Plate: io7/s X u^A in. (28 X 29.7 cm)
Musee Picasso, Paris
Exhibited in Paris
Janis 23 6 /Cachin 33
A handful of Degas's monotypes are devoted
to scenes from modern life that fall outside
the broad, major themes forming the greater
part of his output. Among these are two
street scenes (J216 and J217), tentatively
linked to the Cardinal family stories,1 and
In the Omnibus, which once belonged to
Picasso. As Paris figures little in Degas' s
work, usually glimpsed only briefly through
a window, it is not surprising to discover that
in this monotype the artist chose the interior
view of an omnibus or a cab; the bustle of
the city is only suggested through the win-
dow by the presence of horses moving in
the opposite direction.
The image is carefully edited, with the
dark rectangular window frame subtly
counterbalancing the horizontal format of
the monotype. The figures — a veiled, pert
young woman, of a type recognizable in
other monotypes, and her unmistakably
farcical-looking male companion — are
slightly blurred, rather as if their proximity
to the viewer prevented a clearer examina-
tion. By contrast, the horses in the back-
ground are energetically defined with a few
bold strokes. A fairly large pastel by Giu-
seppe De Nittis of two women, one of them
veiled, seen through the window of a cab
appears to be related to the monotype and
may actually have been inspired by it.2
1. See Janis 1968, nos. 216, 217. See also "Degas,
Halevy, and the Cardinals," p. 280.
2. In Fiacre (Galleria G. De Nittis, Barletta), repro-
duced in Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, no. 527.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
no. 202); bought by Gustave Pellet, Paris; by descent
to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, from 19 19; with Paul
Brame, Paris. Pablo Picasso; Donation Picasso 1978.
exhibitions : 1924 Paris, no. 251; 1937 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 206; 1948 Copenhagen, no. 106, repr.;
1951-52 Bern, no. 169, repr.; 1952 Amsterdam, no.
98; 1978 Paris, no. 41, repr.
selected references: Rouart 1948, pi. 12; Janis 1968,
no. 236; Cachin 1974, no. 33, repr.
171.
Ellen Andree
c. 1876
Monotype in brown-black ink on ivory wove
paper, laid down on ivory laid paper
Plate: W2 X 6V4 in. (21.6 X 16 cm)
Sheet: 9V4 X 7V4 in. (23 . 5 X 18. 3 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso lower right
The Art Institute of Chicago. Mrs. Potter Palmer
Memorial Fund (1956. 1216)
Janis 23 8 /Cachin 48
The transfer process required by monotypes
does not lend itself readily to producing the
exceptionally limpid effects achieved in this
work, a rare and — as frequently noted —
near-miraculous performance that has al-
ways been considered somewhat apart from
the body of monotypes executed by Degas.
In truth, the artist made few portraits in this
medium, and only one, the very small Por-
trait of a Bearded Man (J232) in tne Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, can be said to share a
few characteristics with this portrait in Chi-
cago. Eugenia Janis has shown that the gentle
gradation of tones in this work was the re-
sult of a highly varied application of ink, in
some places diluted to a point that renders it
barely perceptible, and that the more precise
notations around the eyes and Hps were prob-
ably details added with a brush after the plate
was printed.
284
Francoise Cachin was the first to propose
that the portrait may represent the actress
Ellen Andree, an identification now accepted.
Although it is dated c. 1880 by Janis and Ca-
chin, Suzanne Folds McCullagh has assigned
it more sensibly to c. 1876, when Andree
posed with Marcellin Desboutin for In a
Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172). 1
On the basis of a resemblance with the wom-
an in that painting, Jean Adhemar has recog-
nized her also in a small monotype (J253)
that Degas transferred to lithographic stone
for Four Heads of Women (RS27).2 Helene
Andree (fig. 140), who changed her first
name to Ellen for the stage, was a witty,
lively woman of independent cast of mind
who embarked at an early age on a career as
a model before appearing in pantomimes at
the Folies-Bergere.3 She was a gifted come-
dian and had a natural manner on the stage,
Fig. 140. Franck [Francois de Villecholles],
Ellen Andree , c. 1878-80. Photograph.
Private collection
a quality that allowed her to make the tran-
sition to the legitimate theater. In 1887, after
her marriage to the painter Henri Dumont,
she joined Andre Antoine's first company
and acted in his productions at the Theatre-
Libre, the temple of Naturalist theater.
In the mid- 1 870s, though still very
young — she was at most about twenty —
Ellen Andree frequented the Cafe de la
Nouvelle-Athenes and knew Degas, Halevy,
Manet, and Renoir. About that time, she
posed for the highly sensual nude in Henri
Gervex's Rolla (which created a scandal in
1878 when it was rejected at the Salon) and
for a portrait by Desboutin. She may also
have been the model for La prune, by Manet,
as suggested by Theodore Reff.4 She cer-
tainly figures in several paintings and pastels
by Manet, in Renoir's La fin du dejeuner of
1879 and Le dejeuner des canotiers of 188 1,
and in works by painters connected with the
Salon, such as Alfred Stevens and Florent
Willems.5 Her own preferences were unequiv-
ocally on the side of Salon painters, and till
the end she was unimpressed by the artists
who had immortalized her. When appearing
in 1 92 1 in a play by Sacha Guitry and re-
minded by a journalist that she figured in
several masterpieces, among them The Ab-
sinthe Drinker, she retorted: "so-called master-
pieces!"6
Degas was sufficiently interested in Ellen
Andree to continue to see her after the late
1870s — when she still posed for him —
probably because of her wit and no less for
her association with the stage. Although
somewhat intimidated by Manet, she was
not afraid of Degas and left on record a few
amusing details about his character — his
frugal lunches eaten on a newspaper in his
studio, his hatred of dogs, his sarcastic re-
marks— along with the unthinkable admis-
sion that she refused to accept one of his
pastels of a dancer with the words: "Degas,
my sweet, thank you very much, but she is
too vile-looking."7 As might have been ex-
pected, she was not very happy with her
portrait in The Absinthe Drinker.* One
would like to think, however, that this un-
usually moving, tenderly observed likeness
pleased her.
285
1. For a discussion of the dating of this work, see
1984 Chicago, no. 28.
2. See Adhemar 1974, no. 44, where the lithograph
is dated c. 1877-79. The first impression of the
monotype was lost in the process of transfer to li-
thographic stone. A second impression was cata-
logued by Eugenia Janis (J253), who dated it
c. 1878 (1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 59). Janis's
date should be adjusted to c. 1876-77, in line with
the lithograph derived from it, redated 1876-77
by Sue Reed and Barbara Shapiro (Reed and Sha-
piro 1984-85, no. 27).
3. Ellen Andree was not the daughter of the painter
Edmond Andre, Manet's friend, as claimed by
Rouart and Wildenstein, nor was she the sitter for
a painting identified by them as her portrait, actu-
ally a portrait of Mile Andre, the painter's daugh-
ter. See Denis Rouart and Daniel Wildenstein,
Edouard Manet, Lausanne/ Paris: La Bibliotheque
des Arts, 1975, I, under no. 339, said to be a por-
trait of Ellen Andree.
4. For RefPs tentative identification, see Manet and
Modern Paris: One Hundred Paintings, Drawings,
Prints and Photographs by Manet and His Contempo-
raries (exhibition catalogue by Theodore Reff),
Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1982,
no. 18.
5. For Manet, Ellen Andree posed for La parisienne
of 1875-76 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), Au
Cafe of 1878 (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winter-
thur), and two pastels, Tete de jeune fille and Jeune
femme blonde aux yeux bleus (Musee d'Orsay, Paris).
She originally also posed for Chez le pere Lathuille
of 1879 (Musee des Beaux- Arts, Tournai), but was
replaced by a different model. See Rouart and Wil-
denstein, op. cit., I, nos. 236, 278, 290, II, nos. 8,
9 of pastels. For Renoir, see Frangois Daulte,
Auguste Renoir, Lausanne: Editions Durand-Ruel,
1971, I, nos. 288, 379. For a general account of
Ellen Andree's career as a model, see F.F. 192 1,
pp. 261-64.
6. F.F. 1921, p. 261.
7. F.F. 192 1, p. 262.
8. "Degas! He has butchered me enough!" cited in
F.F. 192 1, p. 261.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
no. 280); bought by Marcel Guerin, Paris (his stamp,
Lugt suppl. 1872b, lower left corner, in margin). Otto
Wertheimer, Paris; with M. Knoedler and Co., Paris.
With Hammer Galleries, New York. Eugene V.
Thaw-New Gallery, New York; bought by the mu-
seum 1956.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 236; 193 1 Paris, Orange-
rie, no. 173 , pi. XIII, lent by Marcel Guerin; 1968
Cambridge, Mass., no. 54, repr.; 1984 Chicago,
no. 28, repr. (color).
selected references: Alexandre 1935, repr. p. 168;
Janis 1968, no. 238; Cachin 1974, no. 48, repr.
172.
In a Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker)
1875-76
Oil on canvas
36^4 X 263/4 in. (92 X 68 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1984)
Lemoisne 393
A notebook Degas used in 1875-77 contains
what seems to be the first reference to the
work, the statement "Helene et Desboutin
dans un cafe. 90 c-67 a," indicating the
size of the work and the name of the models,
Ellen Andree and Degas's good friend Mar-
cellin Desboutin. On two other leaves in the
same notebook are a sketch for the setting,
the Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes, with notes
on color and details, as well as a sketch for a
shoe, presumably Ellen Andree's. On another
page is a list of five pictures to be submitted
to the second Impressionist exhibition,
among them "Dans un cafe" — this picture.1
Degas evidently proposed to exhibit the
painting, and the catalogue for 1876 actually
lists it, again as "Dans un cafe," under no. 52.
However, none of the reviews mention it,
and the likelihood is that it was not finished
on time. When it was completed, Degas must
have sent it to London instead.
As Theodore Reff has pointed out, two
weeks after the exhibition closed in Paris,
Degas wrote about his "Interieur de Cafe"
in a letter of 15 May 1876 to Charles Des-
champs.2 The context of the letter suggests
that the picture had been sent to London
prior to a recent shipment of paintings and
that the work had just been finished. In-
deed, the artist worried that it would yellow
if not placed in the sun to dry.3 As Ronald
Pickvance has noted, the painting was sold
in London to Henry Hill, who a few months
later, in September 1876, lent it to the Third
Annual Winter Exhibition in Brighton, as "A
Sketch in a French Cafe."4 The qualifying
word, "sketch," probably appended to ap-
pease possible criticism of its very modern
manner of execution, proved unnecessary,
as a reviewer cited by Pickvance objected
both to the "slap-dash" manner and the
"very disgusting novelty of the subject" —
the first mention of a topic that was to sur-
face again.5
In the spring of 1877, the painting re-
turned to France and appeared, hors cata-
logue, in the third Impressionist exhibition.
This is confirmed by Frederic Chevalier's
review, in which he noted that one of the
artist's "most strangely true-to-life draw-
ings, done in a broad style, artless and sin-
cere, shows a rather unsettling woman sit-
ting at a table in a cafe. Beside her, an artist-
etcher, whose modesty is as great as his
considerable talent, withdraws into the
background, no doubt to avoid being recog-
nized."6 Although it cannot be proved, it is
likely that Degas made an effort to bring
the painting back to Paris in 1877 (not hav-
ing shown it in 1876) to have it viewed in its
proper context with several recent scenes of
modern life, notably Women on the Terrace of
a Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174). Short of
an attempt to sell the picture on behalf of
Henry Hill, there seems to be no other rea-
sonable explanation for its return. Follow-
ing the exhibition the painting crossed the
Fig. 142. Anonymous, Ellen Andree as Fanny
in "La terre" by Zola, 1902. Photograph.
Private collection
286
287
Channel once more, and it remained in Hill's
collection until his death.
The reappearance of the painting at the
Hill sale of 1892 and the subsequent clamor
that surrounded its exhibition, as "1/ Ab-
sinthe," in London in 1893 nave been de-
scribed in detail by the painter Alfred
Thornton and by Ronald Pickvance, both of
whom have shown the extent to which the
event was symbolic for the emancipation of
the modernist art movement in England.7
The subject of the work was seen to be ob-
jectionable, and even George Moore found
himself hopelessly explaining that the sitters
for the painting were not pathological
drunks: "The picture represents M. De-
boutin [sic] in the cafe of the Nouvelle-
Athenes. He has come down from his studio
for breakfast, and he will return to his dry-
points when he has finished his pipe. I have
known M. Deboutin a great number of
years, and a more sober man does not ex-
ist."8 Only Dugald S. MacColl maintained
the argument above the level of the subject,
referring to the work as the "inexhaustible
picture, the one that draws you back, and
back again."9 However, this curious episode
sufficiently marked the painting to lead a bi-
ographer of Desboutin as late as 1985 to
point out that he did not drink.10
X-radiography suggests that Degas made
surprisingly few alterations to the composi-
tion. The bottle in front of Ellen Andree
was changed slightly, the newspaper that
connects the two tables was originally placed
at a somewhat different angle, and Ellen
Andree's face may have been defined at first
with greater precision. From the evidence, it
is clear that the work was painted directly,
without the benefit of preparatory draw-
ings, and this may account for the great
sense of spontaneity it conveys. Of course
Degas knew his models, and this may have
given him an added sense of confidence.
Desboutin, whom he saw almost daily in
1876, appears in a related monotype (J233,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) used also for
a lithograph (fig. 141), as well as in a por-
trait with another friend, Ludovic Lepic
(L395, Musee d'Orsay, Paris). When ques-
tioned some forty-five years after the event,
Ellen Andree remembered only vaguely that
she posed for "a cafe scene for Degas. I am
sitting in front of an absinthe, Desboutin in
front of a soft drink — what a switch! And
we look like a couple of idiots."11
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 26 (BN, Carnet 7, pp. 68,
74, 87, 90).
2. See the letter (dated by Reff 1876) in Reff 1968,
p. 90.
3. Reff 1968, p. 90.
4. Ronald Pickvance, " 'L'absinthe' in England,"
Apollo, LXXVII:i5, May 1963, pp. 395-96.
5. Ibid., p. 396.
6. Chevalier 1877, pp. 332-33.
7. Alfred Thornton, The Diary of an Art Student of
the Nineties, London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons,
1938, pp. 22-33; Pickvance, op. cit., pp. 397-98.
8. George Moore, "The New Art Criticism,"
Spectator, 25 March, 1 and 8 April 1893, re-
printed in Flint 1984, p. 291.
9. Dugald S. MacColl, "The Inexhaustible Pic-
ture," Spectator, LXX, 25 February 1893, re-
printed in Flint 1984, p. 281.
10. "But Desboutin was abstemious, and, from that
point to being a barfly, there is a range of behav-
ior that false exaggeration and the frantic search
for the picturesque do not excuse. Furthermore,
Degas, in asking his friends to pose for his paint-
ing, only wished to show his aversion to alcohol-
ism"; Bernard Duplaix, Marcellin Desboutin,
Prince des Bohemes, Moulins-Yzeure: Les Impri-
meries Reunies, 1985, p, 60, For an earlier, simi-
lar defense, see Pickvance, op. cit., p. 398.
11. See F. F. 1921, p. 263.
provenance: Sent by the artist in spring 1876 to
Charles W. Deschamps, London; bought by Captain
Henry Hill, Brighton, before September 1876 (Hill
sale, Christie's, London, 20 February 1892, no. 209
[as "Figures at a Cafe"], for £180); bought by Alex-
ander Reid, Glasgow; bought by Arthur Kay, Glas-
gow; returned to Reid and repurchased by Kay, with
Dancers in the Rehearsal Room, with a Double Bass (cat.
no. 239), before February 1893; sold by Kay to Mar-
tin et Camentron, Paris, April 1893; bought by Comte
Isaac de Camondo, Paris, May 1893, for Fr 21,000
(as "L'aperitif"); his bequest to the Louvre 1908; en-
tered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: (?) 1876 Paris, no. 52 (as "Dans un
cafe"); 1876, Brighton, Royal Pavilion Gallery,
opened 7 September, Third Annual Winter Exhibition
of Modem Pictures, no. 166 (as "A Sketch in a French
Cafe"), lent by Captain Henry Hill; 1877 Paris, hors
catalogue; 1893, London, Grafton Galleries, opened
18 February, Paintings and Sculpture by British and For-
eign Artists of the Present Day, no. 258 (as "L' Ab-
sinthe"), lent by Arthur Kay; 1924 Paris, no. 59;
193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 65; 1937 Paris, Orangerie,
no. 25; 1945, Paris, Musee du Louvre, Chefs-d'oeuvre
de lapeinture, no. 14; 1955, New York, Museum of
Modern Art, spring, "15 Paintings by French Mas-
ters of the Nineteenth Century" (no catalogue); 1964-
65 Munich, no. 82, repr. (color); 1969 Paris, no. 26;
1979 Edinburgh, no. 39, pi. 8 (color); 1983, London,
The Courtauld Collection, April- August, on loan.
selected references: Brighton Gazette, 9 September
1876, p. 7; Chevalier 1877, pp. 332-33; [John A.
Spender?], "Grafton Gallery," Westminster Gazette,
17 February 1893, p. 3; "L'absinthe," The Times,
London, 20 February 1893, p. 8; "The Grafton Gal-
lery," The Globe, 25 February 1893, p. 3; Dugald S.
MacColl, "The Inexhaustible Picture," Spectator,
LXX, 25 February 1893, p. 256; "The Grafton Gal-
lery," Artist, XIV, March 1893, p. 86; [Charles
Whibley?], [Review of Grafton Gallery exhibition],
National Observer, 4 March 1893, p. 388; [John A.
Spender], "The New Art Criticism: A Philistine's
Remonstrance," Westminster Gazette, 9 March 1893,
pp. 1-2; Dugald S. MacColl, "The Standard of the
Philistine," Spectator, LXX, 18 March 1893, pp. 357-
58; George Moore, "The New Art Criticism,"
Spectator, 25 March, 1 and 8 April 1893, reprinted in
Flint 1984, p. 291; Arthur Kay, letter to Westminster
Gazette, 29 March 1893; Charles W. Furse, "The
Grafton Gallery, A Summary," The Studio, I:i, April
1893, pp. 33-34; Alfred L. Baldry, "The Grafton
Galleries," The Art Journal, 1893, p. 147; Alexandre
1908, p. 32 (as "L'aperitif"); Lemoisne 1912, pp. 67-
68, pi. XXVI; Jamot 1914, pp. 458-59, repr. facing
p. 458; Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, pi. 14; La-
fond 19 1 8-19, I, p. 44, II, repr. pp. 4-5; Meier-
Graefe 1920, pi. XL; Jamot 1924, pp. 98-99, 145,
pi. 42; Lemoisne 1924, p. 98; Sascha Schwabacher,
"Die Impressionister der Sammlung Camondo im
Louvre," Cicerone, XIX: 12, 1927, p. 371, repr.; Al-
fred Thornton, The Diary of an Art Student of the
Nineties, London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1938,
pp. 22-33, repr. p. 27; Rewald 1946, repr. p. 305;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 393; "15 Paintings by
French Masters of the Nineteenth Century Lent by
the Louvre and the Museums of Albi and Lyons,"
The Museum of Modern Art, Bulletin, XXIL3, Spring
!955, P- 7, repr. p. 18; Cabanne 1957, pp. 23, 98,
112, pi. 62 (color); Rewald 1961, p. 399, repr. p. 398;
Ronald Pickvance, "'L'absinthe' in England," Apollo,
LXXVIL15, May 1963, pp. 395-98, pi. iv (color)
p. 397; Reff 1968, p. 90; Rewald 1973, pp. 399, 401,
repr. p. 398; Reff 1977, fig. 30 and detail; Reff 1985,
pp. 19-20, Notebook 26 (BN, Carnet 7, pp. 90, 87,
74, 68); Lipton 1986, pp. 42-48; Sutton 1986, pp. 210-
11, fig. 196 (color) p. 209; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Peintures, 1986, III, p. 194.
173.
Woman in a Cafe
c. 1877
Pastel over monotype in black ink
Plate: 5% X 63A in. (13. 1 X 17.2 cm)
Signed in pastel at left and bottom right: Degas
Private collection, New York
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 417
Not as well known as the related Women on
the Terrace of a Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174),
this pastel is also the least complex of the
three works Degas devoted to the subject.
The woman represented is recognizably a
prostitute playing a game of solitaire as she
waits for a client at the table of a cafe. The
structure of the image is simple, allowing for
sharp characterization of the single figure bold-
ly placed at the center of the composition.
The woman's face is carefully described but
in an unreservedly amusing manner. She is
very painted, there is more than a hint of
the wanton about her, and her eyes are on
the lookout as she spasmodically fingers the
cards with her clawlike gloved hands. It is a
sardonic but inspired image, very much in
the tradition of Daumier.
The first known owner of the pastel was
Carl Bernstein, a Berlin collector and cousin
of Charles Ephrussi, publisher of the Ga-
zette des Beaux-Arts. Ephrussi, whom Degas
knew well, favorably reviewed the artist's
contributions to the Impressionist exhibi-
tions of 1880 and 1 88 1. He owned at least
two drawings of dancers by Degas and also
bought, among other works, General Mellinet
and Chief Rabbi Astruc (cat. no. 99) and At
the Milliner's (fig. 210). Ephrussi's secretary,
the poet Jules Laforgue, who subsequently
288
lived in Berlin and was close to the Bern-
steins, was also enthusiastic about Degas
and interested Max Klinger in his work.- In
the early 1880s, when the Bernsteins came
to Paris, Ephrussi introduced them to modern
French painting with notable results. They
bought works by Manet, Monet, Morisot,
Pissarro, Cassatt, and others, some of which
were exhibited in Berlin in 1883. In addition
to Woman in a Cafe, Bernstein owned two
other small pastelized monotypes by Degas:
Cabaret Singer (L539) and At the Washbasin
(L 1 199, private collection) . 1
1 . Charles Ephrussi was close enough to Degas to be
invited to his housewarming dinner at the time the
artist moved to 21 rue Pigalle. See Lettres Degas
1945, XX, p. 48; Degas Letters 1947, no. 29, p. 53.
Degas had evidently accepted payments from him
for a work, or works, which he had failed to de-
liver by April 1882. See Eugene Manet's letter in
Chronology III, April 1882. For Ephrussi, with-
out reference to Degas, see the fascinating account
in Philippe Kolb and Jean Adhemar, "Charles
Ephrussi (1849- 1905), ses secretaires: Laforgue,
A. Renan, Proust, 'sa' Gazette des Beaux- Arts,"
Gazette des Beaux- Arts, CIII:i38o, January 1984,
pp. 29-41. For the Bernsteins as collectors, again
without reference to Degas, see Nicholaas Teeu-
wisse, Vom Salon zur Secession, Berlin: Deutscher
Verlag fur Kunstwissenschaft, 1985, pp. 98-101,
103-04, 106-07.
provenance: [Probably Durand-Ruel, Paris, and
Paul Cassirer, Berlin]; Carl Bernstein, Berlin; bought
by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 22 October 19 17 (stock
no. 1 1097); bought by Durand-Ruel, New \brk, 6 No-
vember 19 17; bought by Henry R. Ickelheimer, New
York, 3 (or 10) November 19 19; with M. Knoedler
and Co. , New York; present owner.
exhibitions: 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 15, repr.;
1982-83, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of
Art, 5 December 1982-6 March 1983, Manet and
Modem Paris: One Hundred Paintings, Drawings, Prints
and Photographs by Manet and His Contemporaries, no.
24, repr.
selected references: Vollard 1924, repr. p. 4; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 417; Janis 1967, p. 76, fig.
47; Janis 1968, no. 59; Cachin 1974, p. 281; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 431; Jean-Jacques Leveque, Degas,
Paris: Siloe, 1978, p. 85, repr.; Sutton 1986, p. 211,
fig. 199 (color) p. 212.
174.
Women on the Terrace of a Cafe in
the Evening
1877
Pastel over monotype on white wove paper
i6Vs X 235/8 in. (41 X 60 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF12257)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 419
Prospective visitors to the opening of the
third Impressionist exhibition were told by a
newspaper a day in advance that Degas
would show several "dessins" (drawings),1
of which the most important was Women on
the Terrace of a Cafe in the Evening, Though
facing a good deal of competition from an
uncommonly varied series of works that in-
cluded several splendid cafe-concert scenes,
the pastel attracted considerable attention
173
Em
and completely overshadowed In a Cafe
(The Absinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172), exhibited
in the same room. The subject, prostitutes
chatting on the boulevard, was undoubtedly
considered sensational, but no less so than
its rendition. Alexandre Pothey noted that
"M. Degas appears to have thrown a chal-
lenge to the philistines," an idea echoed by
Paul Mantz, who was convinced that for
Degas "the idea of disconcerting the bourgeois
is one of his most enduring preoccupations."2
Pothey also wrote about the "terrifying real-
ism" of these "painted, faded creatures, ex-
uding vice, who cynically tell each other
about their day's activities and accomplish-
ments," but others found the work brilliantly
satirical.3 However, according to Daniel Ha-
levy's diary, in old age Degas himself thought
the pastel "rather on the cruel, cynical side."4
A slight sense of unease about the work
can be detected as late as 19 12 (by which
time it had been exhibited at the Musee du
Luxembourg for fifteen years) in Lemoisne's
account of it: "The rendition of the women
seems brutal. Degas's superb draftsmanship
was perhaps sacrificed a little for the sake of
exaggeratedly realistic effects and the de-
mands of the composition."5 The composi-
tion is, in truth, remarkable, with a carefully
controlled architecture that gives the illusion
of great informality. To the right, in a framed,
perfect square, two women carry on a con-
versation. One of them is slumped in a chair
while the other, leaning toward her across
the table, in Georges Riviere's words, "clicks
her fingernail against her teeth, saying, 'not
even that,'" her report of a client's lack of
generosity.6 To the left, another woman, cut
in two by the foreground pillar, leans in the
opposite direction, chatting with her neighbor.
But there is no real narrative here. Instead,
Degas offers a series of acute observations
on human behavior.
1. "Echos et nouvelles," Le Courtier de France, 4
April 1877.
2. See Pothey 1877, p. 2, and Mantz 1877, p. 3. For
other views, see Riviere 1877, p. 6, and the anon-
ymous reviewer who saw in it, and other works,
"small masterpieces of sharp and witty satire," La
Petite Republique Francaise, 10 April 1877.
3. Pothey 1877, p. 2.
4. Halevy i960, p. 113; Halevy 1964, p. 93.
5. Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 73-74.
6. Riviere 1877, p. 6.
provenance: Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, by April
1877; deposited with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 29 January
1886 (deposit no. 4690); consigned by Durand-Ruel
to the American Art Association, New York, 19
February-8 November 1886; returned to Caillebotte,
30 November 1886; his bequest to the Musee du
Luxembourg, Paris, 1894; entered the Musee du
Luxembourg 1896; transferred to the Louvre 1929.
exhibitions: 1877 Paris, no. 37, lent by Caillebotte;
1886 New York, no. 35; 191 5, San Francisco, sum-
mer, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, De-
partment of Fine Art, French Section, no. 23; 1916,
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, 27 April-30 June,
289
174
Founder's Day Exhibition: French Paintings from the Mu-
seum of Luxembourg, and Other Works of Art from the
French, Belgian and Swedish Collections Shown at the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition, Together with a
Group of English Paintings, no. 21; 1916, Buffalo, Al-
bright Art Gallery, 29 October-December, Retrospective
Collection of French Art, 1870-1910, Lent by the Lux-
embourg Museum, Paris, France, no. 20; 1924 Paris,
no. 120; 1949 Paris, no. 99; 1955, Paris, Musee Na-
tional d'Art Moderne, Bonnard, Vuillard et les Nabis
(1888- iooj), no. 52; 1956 Paris; 1969 Paris, no. 178;
1974, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre,
"Pastels, cartons, miniatures, XVI-XIXe siecles"
(no catalogue); 1975-76, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins,
Musee du Louvre, "Nouvelle presentation: pastels,
gouaches, miniatures" (no catalogue); 1980-81, Pa-
ris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, Novem-
ber 1980-19 April 198 1, Pastels et miniatures du XIXe
siecle; acquisitions recentes du Cabinet des Dessins, hors
catalogue; 1985 Paris, no. 64, repr.
selected references: Jacques 1877, p. 2; Pothey 1877,
p. 2; Riviere 1877, p. 6; "Exposition des impression-
nistes," La Petite Republique Francaise, 10 April 1877,
p. 2; Benedite 1894, p. 132, repr. p. 131; Marx 1897,
repr. p. 323; Mauclair 1903, p. 394, repr. p. 391;
Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 73-74, repr.; Lafond 19 18- 19, I,
p. 53, repr.; Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. XLIV; Jamot
1924, pi. 45; Rouart 1937, repr. p. 18; Rouart 1945,
pp. 56, 74 n. 83; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 88, 104,
repr. (detail) facing p. 132, II, no. 419; Leymarie
1947, no. 29, pi. XXIX; Cabanne 1957, pp. 35, 43,
98, 113, pi. 69; Halevy 1964, p. 93; Valery 1965,
pi. 86; Janis 1968, no. 58; Cachin 1974, p. 281, repr.;
Minervino 1974, no. 430; Koshkin-Youritzin 1976,
p. 35; Keyser 1981, pp. 38, 46, 62, 101, pi. Ill (color);
Hollis Clayson, "Prostitution and the Art of Later
Nineteenth-Century France: On Some Differences
between the Work of Degas and Duez," Arts Magazine,
LX:4, December 1985, pp. 42-45, fig. 6 p. 44; Sieg-
fried Wichmann, faponisme, New York: Park Lane,
1985, p. 255, fig. 676; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Pastels, 1985, no. 64.
175.
The Song of the Dog
c. 1876-77
Gouache and pastel over monotype on three
pieces of paper joined
Image: 225/sX ijVs in. (57.5 x 45.4 cm)
Sheet: 243/4 X 2oVs in. (62. 7X51.2 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 380
The fashion for cafe-concerts, which com-
bined the attractions of pub and concert
hall, emerged in Paris in the 1830s and
quickly became an established feature of Pa-
risian life, reaching a height of popularity in
the 1 870s. They usually presented quite a
varied program, in a fairly ritualized format
in three parts, with singers and comics ap-
pearing in the opening numbers. People
were free to move about as they pleased,
and drinks were served during the perform-
ance. In the summer, the outdoor cafe-con-
certs on the Champs-Elysees, such as the
Alcazar-d'Ete and the Cafe des Ambassa-
deurs, both of which opened in the early
1 870s, were in great favor. They attracted
huge audiences and, in the evening, a good
many prostitutes. The performers were al-
ways witty and up to date, making the cafe-
concert, in Gustave Coquiot's words, "in
reality a school of sharp news reporting, of
current commentary, celebrated and sung,"
an aspect of modern life Degas was not very
likely to miss.1
Subjects inspired by the cafe-concert,
principally singers in performance, appeared
290
rather suddenly in Degas's work. In 1876-77,
he produced a number of monotypes on the
theme, some of which, reworked in pastel,
were exhibited in 1877 with considerable
success. As Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers
have shown, The Song of the Dog began as a
smaller monotype of the singer's head and
torso, and was subsequently enlarged on
three of the four sides with strips of paper
to include the audience and a landscape.2
The singer has been recognized as the famous
Theresa — her real name was Emma Vala-
don — who already in the late 1860s was said
to command an annual salary of Fr 30, 000. 3 In
1876-77, she was not quite forty, two years
younger than Degas. In a letter of 1883 to the
painter Henry Lerolle, Degas called her voice
"the most natural, the most delicate, and the
most vibrandy tender" instrument imaginable.
Jeanne Raunay, herself a singer, shrewdly
noted of Degas: "I don't believe that music
alone, symphonic music, would have satis-
fied him. He needed words that he could
hear, legs that he could see, human sounds,
physiognomies that would move and inter-
est him — in short, physical traits and features
that, for him, complemented the melodic
line."4
In The Song of the Dog, or " La chanson
du chien," as it is popularly known, much is
contained in the artist's rendering of the
physical presence of the singer — her pleas-
ant face luridly lit by the footlights, her stout
body securely encased in her tight dress, and
her graphic, pawlike gestures. Seen from the
closest possible vantage point, she dominates
her audience from the height of the stage,
ridiculous but real, genuinely absorbed in
her song. The background, hazy with light
from the globes scattered in the garden, is
no less keenly observed. A mustachioed old
man has fallen asleep, a young woman peers
from behind a cluster of heads, a waiter takes
an order, and, in the background, a couple
leaves during the performance.
In a Degas notebook once owned by Lu-
dovic Halevy and inscribed in Halevy's hand
with the date 1877, there are several sketches
of Theresa, including two showing her in
the pose of The Song of the Dog (fig. 101).5
There are numerous reasons to think that
the notebook does indeed date from 1877,
though at least two of the sketches in it ap-
pear to have served for pastelized monotypes
exhibited in April 1877, which places some-
thing of a strain on the period of time during
which Degas could have produced them.6
An additional pencil study (111:305) on an
independent sheet of the same size as the
notebook also exists. Degas repeated the
composition in a lithograph of a narrower,
upright format (RS25), and in 1888 George
William Thornley reproduced the gouache
in a lithograph that follows it closely.
1 . Gustave Coquiot, Les cafes-concerts, Paris: Librairie
de l'Art, 1896, p. 1.
2. See Druick and Zegers in 1984-85 Boston,
pp. xxxv-xxxvi, xxxviii, fig. 19.
3. For more information about Emma Valadon
(1837-1913), see Shapiro 1980, pp. 158-60.
4. Jeanne Raunay, "Degas: souvenirs anecdotiques,"
La Revue de France, XI:2, 15 March 193 1, p. 269.
The letter, first published by Jeanne Raunay, ap-
pears also in Lettres Degas 1945, XL VIII, pp. 74-
75; Degas Letters 1947, no. 57, p. 76 (translation
revised).
5. For the two closest sketches, see RefF 1985, Note-
book 28 (private collection, p. 11); see also fig. 101.
Two additional sketches appear on pp. 37 and 63
of the same notebook and certainly represent
Theresa. One of these was sketched again on a
page in another notebook and has been identified
by Theodore RefF as a study for Women on the Ter-
race of a Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174); see Reff
1985, Notebook 27 (BN, Carnet 3, p. 95) and
Notebook 28 (private collection, pp. 37, 63); two
of the caricatures of heads shown in the upper
right corner of p. 7 in the latter notebook may
have served as models for faces in the audience in
The Song of the Dog.
6. See Reff 1985, Notebook 28 (private collection);
the two bottom figures on p. 15 of this notebook
are connected with the principal figures in Cafe-
concert at the Ambassadeurs (L405, Musee des
Beaux- Arts, Lyons) and Cabaret (fig. 128). The
first of these pastels was shown in the third Im-
pressionist exhibition and was described in detail
in reviews.
provenance: Henri Rouart, Paris (Henri Rouart sale,
Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 16-18 December 1912,
no. 71, for Fr 50,100); bought by Durand-Ruel as
agent for Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York; Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, to 1929; Horace O. Havemeyer,
her son, New York, 1929-56; Doris Dick Have-
meyer, his widow, New York (Havemeyer sale, So-
theby Parke Bernet, New York, 18 May 1983, no. 12,
repr.). Present owner.
exhibitions: 1915 New York, no. 35 (as 1881); 1917,
Paris, Galerie Rosenberg, 25 June-13 July, Exposition
d'art francais du XlXsiecle, no. 25; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 36; 1941, New York, M. Knoedler and Co., 1-20
December, Loan Exhibition in Honor of Royal Cortissoz
and His 50 Years of Criticism in the New York Herald
Tribune, no. 23, lent by Mrs. Horace Havemeyer.
selected references: Hourticq 1912, p. 105, repr.;
Lafond 19 18-19, H> P- 37; Jamot 1924, p. 146, pi. 44;
Vollard 1924, pi. 20 (as "The Song"); Havemeyer
193 1, p. 381; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 380; Have-
meyer 1961, pp. 245-56; Minervino 1974, no. 414;
Reff 1976, p. 283, fig. 187 (detail); Shapiro 1980,
pp. 157-58, 160, 164 n. 21.
I76.
Mile Becat at the Cafe
des Ambassadeurs
Emilie Becat, who had her hour of fame as
a cafe-concert singer in the late 1870s before
becoming briefly and unsuccessfully the
owner of the Gaite-Rochechouart, made her
debut at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs in
1875. She had a strong voice but astonished
her public chiefly with her extraordinary
repertoire of movements and jumps, which
made history as "le style epileptique." Her
songs were undoubtedly on the outrageous
side, enough to provoke in 1875 the inter-
vention of censors and a well-organized de-
fense by writers and journalists, such as Jules
Claretie, one of Degas's friends.1 Degas evi-
dently enjoyed her performances enormously
and recorded her in a number of notebook
sketches and a few other works, including
two lithographs.2
Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
forms part of a group of lithographs that are
doubtless contemporary, or almost so, and
represent the artist's earliest efforts in a new
direction. Three of these contain several
subjects on one sheet, including, again, Mile
Becat (RS27, RS28, RS30). They were pro-
duced with the aid of monotypes datable to
1876 — which indicates a date for Degas's
first experiments in this unfamiliar medium.
Three other lithographs are devoted to sin-
gle figures, cafe-concert singers in perform-
ance. This one of Mile Becat, perhaps the
best known of the group and likely the
most accomplished, has no known anteced-
ent, though it relates to identifiable studies.
Degas's technical skill and the unconven-
tional manner in which he brought about
the splendid, complicated treatment of light
in a nocturnal setting have been discussed
by Theodore Reff and by Sue Reed and Bar-
bara Shapiro, who have also noted that a
lost monotype may have been the point of
departure.3 The lithograph, as they have
shown, is nevertheless the result of extensive
work in lithographic crayon that in some
areas, notably the chandelier and the fire-
works, has been scraped with a tool to bril-
liant effect. The composition contains a
number of Degas's favorite motifs — the
vertical architectural elements that recur in
the contemporary Women on the Terrace of a
Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174), and trun-
cated double basses and hats in the foreground.
An expanded impression of the lithograph was
worked up in pastel in 1885 (cat. no. 264).
1. For Emilie Becat, see Anne Joly, "Sur deux mo-
deles de Degas,'* Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXIX:
1 180—81, May-June 1967, pp. 373-74; and Sha-
piro 1980, pp. 156-57, 163-64 n. 17.
292
176b.
2. For studies directly connected with the lithograph,
see Reff 1985, Notebook 27 (BN, Carnet 3, pp. 89,
92, showing, respectively, the light globes and
Emilie Becat). Other sketches of Mile Becat, in-
cluding one of her in a similar pose, appear in a
notebook dated 1877-80 by Theodore Reff; see
Reff 1985, Notebook 29 (private collection, pp. 13,
15).
3. Reff 1976, pp. 282-88; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85,
no. 31.
I76a.
Mile Becat at the Cafe
des Ambassadeurs
1877-78
Lithograph on buff wove paper
Plate: 9 X j5/s in. (20.4 X 19.4 cm)
Sheet: 13V2 x io3A in. (34.4 X 27.2 cm)
Atelier stamp lower right corner of sheet
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (23352)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Reed and Shapiro 31/ Adhemar 42
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
part of lots 115-28); bought by Henri A. Rouart,
Paris, until 1944; Denis Rouart, his son, Paris, until
1968; with William H. Schab Gallery, Inc., New York;
Donald H. Karshan, New York, by 1970; bought by
the museum through Margo Schab 1979.
exhibitions: 1970, New York, City Center, 8 March-
April /Indianapolis Museum of Art, November-
December, The Donald Karshan Collection of Graphic
Art; 1979-80 Ottawa; 198 1, Ottawa, National Gal-
lery of Canada, 1 May-14 June/Montreal Museum
of Fine Arts, 9 July- 16 August/Windsor, Ont.,
Windsor Art Gallery, 13 September- 14 October, La
pierre park: Lithography in France, 1848-1900, no. 92
(catalogue by Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers).
selected references: Beraldi 1886, p. 153 (as
"Chanteuse"); Alexandre 1918, repr. p. 18; Lafond
19 1 8-19, II, pp. 38, 73; Delteil 1919, no. 49 (as
c. 1875); Rouart 1945, pp. 66, 77 n. 10; Lithographs by
Degas (exhibition catalogue by William M. Ittmann,
Jr.), Saint Louis: Washington University, 1967,
no. 3, repr.; Annejoly, "Sur deux modeles de Degas,"
Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXIX: 11 80-81, May-June
1967, p. 373 (as dated 1877); Joseph T. Butler, "The
Donald Karshan Collection of Graphic Art," Con-
noisseur, CLXXIII:697, March 1970, repr. p. 227;
Adhemar 1974, no. 42 (as c. 1877), repr.; Passeron
1974, pp. 64-68, 214; Reff 1976, pp. 287-88; Reed
and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 31 (as 1877-78); Reff 1985,
pp. 128-29, 132.
Mile Becat at the Cafe
des Ambassadeurs
1877-78
Lithograph on buff-tan, moderately thin,
smooth, wove paper
Plate: 9 X j5/s in. (20.4 X 19.4 cm)
Sheet: I33/4X io3/4 in. (35 X 27.3 cm)
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (A. 09 141)
Exhibited in Paris
Reed and Shapiro 31a/ Adhemar 42
provenance: Alexis Rouart, Paris, until 19 11 (his
stamp, Lugt suppl. 2187a); Henri A. Rouart, his
son, Paris; acquired from him by the Bibliotheque
Nationale 1932.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 211; 1974 Paris, no. 191,
repr.; 1984-85 Boston, no. 31a, fig. 31.
selected references: Beraldi 1886, p. 153 (as "Chan-
teuse"); Alexandre 1918, repr. p. 18; Lafond 1918-
19, II, pp. 38, 73; Delteil 19 19, no. 49 (as c. 1875);
Rouart 1945, pp. 66, 77 n. 10; Lithographs by Degas
(exhibition catalogue by William M. Ittmann, Jr.),
Saint Louis: Washington University, 1967, no. 3;
Inventaire du finds francais apres 1800, VI (catalogue by
Jean Adhemar and Jacques Letheve), Paris: Biblio-
theque Nationale, Departement des Estampes, 1953,
p. in, no. 37; Annejoly, "Sur deux modeles de
Degas," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, LXIX: 118 1, May-
June 1967, p. 373 (as dated 1877); Adhemar 1974,
no. 42 (as c. 1877); Passeron 1974, pp. 64-68, 214;
Reff 1976, pp. 287-88; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85,
no. 31a (as 1877-78), repr.; Reff 1985, pp. 128-29,
132.
293
177-
Two Studies for Music Hall Singers
1878-80
Pastel and charcoal on gray paper
i77/s X 227/s in. (45.2 X 58.2 cm)
Signed in charcoal lower left: Degas
Private collection, New York
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 504
This is the finest of several sheets of studies
connected with a work on the theme of the
cafe-concert. It appears that two women
rather than one posed for all the drawings,
in two different costumes — a chemise and a
dress with black trimmings. In all the stud-
ies, they are shown as they perform a song.
In a drawing once owned by Piero Romanelli
(an acquaintance of Degas' s) and now in a
private collection in Chicago, the model in
the chemise appears twice, with her right
arm raised. In another drawing (III: 335. 1),
she holds her left arm with the right. A third
study in pastel (L507) shows the dressed
model with her arms lowered. A final pastel
study (L506), showing both models wearing
the same dress, served for a finished pastel
(L505) in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Wash-
ington, D.C. The Corcoran work actually
represents a sister act in a setting that is some-
what too well dressed with props, including
a chimneypiece, to easily pass for a cafe-
concert stage.
In spite of a temptation to recognize in
this study the same model observed from
two different angles, the discrepancy in cos-
tume and in features is sufficiently pro-
nounced to discourage such conjecture.
Nevertheless, the figures hold the same
pose, with shoulders hunched, palms turned
upward in a hopeless gesture, appearing to
ask the same plaintive question. The figure
to the left, vigorous but more pathetic and
moving than the other, also has more indi-
vidualized features, recognizably those of
one of the two models in the other draw-
ings. The figure to the right, partly height-
ened with color, has more generalized facial
characteristics, with carefully worked-out
effects of light — including a reflection on the
cheek — that contrast with the splendidly
expressive hands emerging from a dark
mass of erasures and corrections.
provenance: Boussod, Valadon et Cie, Paris; Albert
S. Henraux, Chantilly, by 1922. With Paul Rosenberg,
New York, 1956; Mrs. John Wintersteen, Philadel-
phia [acquired 1956?] (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet,
New York, 21 May 198 1, no. 525, repr. [color]);
bought at that sale by present owner.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 166, lent by Albert S.
Henraux; 1932, Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 23
November-23 December, Pastels et dessins de Degas,
no. 31; 1936, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune, for the Societe
des Amis du Louvre, 25 May-13 July, Cent ans de
theatre, music-halt et cirque, no. 26, lent by Albert S.
Henraux; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 116, lent by Al-
bert S. Henraux; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 31, lent by
Mrs. John Wintersteen; 1966, San Francisco, California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, 10 June-24 July /Santa
Barbara Museum of Art, 2 August-4 September,
The Collection of Mrs. John Wintersteen, no. 5, repr.;
1967 Saint Louis, no. 82, repr.
selected references: Andre Fontainas and Louis
Vauxcelles, Histoire generale de I'art frangais de la Revo-
lution a nos jours, Paris: Librairie de France, I, repr.
p. 197; Riviere 1922-23, II, no. 90 (reprint edition
1973, pl- F [color]); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 504;
Cooper 1952, no. 13, repr. (color); Rosenberg 1959,
pp. 1 16-17, pl. 224; Minervino 1974, no. 574; 1984-
85 Washington, D.C, fig. 3.7.
178, 179.
At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
One of Degas's most eccentric composi-
tions, this is also his largest etching. As Eu-
genia Janis has shown, the idea originated
with a small monotype (J31) now in the
Saarland-Museum, Saarbrucken. The scene
is actually viewed from behind the stage of
the Cafe des Ambassadeurs through an open-
ing in the wood enclosure of the garden. At
the bottom and to the far right, elements of
the palisade frame the image. Farther toward
the center, the second dark vertical element
is a tree, and beyond it and above is a striped
awning. On the stage, dimly lit by a cluster
of gaslights, a singer appears to be bowing
to her public, while in the left foreground
sits one of the "poseuses" who usually graced
the stage during the performance of a singer.1
The etching is known in five states, of
which the third and the fifth are the most
successful. In the third state, the architec-
ture dominates and accentuates the rhythm,
the atmosphere is more mysterious, and the
action of the performance emerges only
dimly out of the darkness. This effect is
particularly noticeable in the impression
shown here (now in the Bibliotheque Na-
tionale), pulled from a plate that was only
partially wiped in the area of the gas globes.
The noticeable difference in inking from im-
pression to impression is a characteristic of
prints produced in the Impressionist milieu
which, as pointed out by Michel Melot,
generally placed the individual qualities of
each exemplar above the uniformity desira-
ble in an edition.2 In the fifth state, several
elements have been altered and the scene
emerges more clearly. The contrast between
294
the background and the illuminated awning
has been strengthened, the singer and the
poseuse have been defined in more pro-
nounced fashion, and the tree to the right
has been expanded.
Dated too early by Loys Delteil — 1875 —
the etching was assigned a date of about
1877 by Jean Adhemar and Michel Melot,
situating it at the height of Degas's interest
in cafe-concert subjects. Recently, however,
Sue Reed and Barbara Shapiro have redated
it 1879-803 — that is, at the time when De-
gas was at his most active in preparing etch-
ings for the proposed publication Le Jour et
la Nuit. As with most of the other etchings,
one or at most a small number of impressions
of each state is known. An impression of the
third state was reworked by Degas in pastel
in 1885 (cat. no. 265).
1 . Gustave Coquiot wrote of the scene: "To get a
true picture of this open bordello, we can only re-
gret the disappearance — already in our time — of
the 'poseuses' who, placed in a fanlike arrange-
ment on the stage, remained seated throughout
the program of vocal numbers" (Des gloires debou-
lonnees, Paris: Andre Delpeuch, 1924, p. 69).
2. See Melot in 1974 Paris, no. 187.
3. Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 49.
m
178.
At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
1879-80
Etching, soft-ground etching, drypoint, and
aquatint on pale buff laid paper, third state
Plate: 10V2 X ii5/g in. (26.6 X 29.6 cm)
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (A. 0923 2)
Exhibited in Paris
Reed and Shapiro 49. Ill /Adhemar 30. II
provenance: Eugene Bejot (1867-193 1), Paris;
E. Bejot gift to the Bibliotheque Nationale 193 1.
exhibitions: 1974 Paris, no. 187 (as second state,
c. 1877); 1987, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, opened
10 September, Hommage a Jean Adhemar (no cata-
logue).
selected references: Delteil 1919, no. 27 (as c. 1875);
Rouart 1945, pp. 64, 66, 74 n. 107; Inventaire du fonds
frangais apres 1800, VI (catalogue by Jean Adhemar
and Jacques Letheve), Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale,
D6partement des Estampes, 1953, p. no, no. 25 (as
second state); Adhemar 1974, no. 30. II (as c. 1877);
Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 49. Ill, repr. (as third
state, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Wil-
liamstown, Mass.).
r
295
179-
At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
1879-80
Etching, soft-ground etching, drypoint, and
aquatint on wove paper, fifth state
Plate: 10V2 X n5/8 in. (26.6 X 29.6 cm)
Sheet: i23/sX i95/s in. (31.3 x 44.9 cm)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (23969)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Reed and Shapiro 49. V/Adhemar 30. Ill
provenance: Alexis H. Rouart, Paris. Donald H.
Karshan, New York, by 1970; with Margo Schab,
New York; bought by the museum 198 1.
exhibitions: 1970, New York, City Center, 8
March- April/ Indianapolis Museum of Art,
November-December, The Donald Karshan Collec-
tion of Graphic Art; 1984-85 Boston, no. 49. V, repr.
selected references: Delteil 1919, no. 27 (as c. 1875);
Rouart 1945, pp. 64, 66, 74 n. 107; Joseph T. Butler,
"The Donald Karshan Collection of Graphic Art,"
Connoisseur, CLXXIII:697, March 1970, repr. p. 227;
William M. Ittmann, Jr., "The Donald Karshan Print
Collection," Art Journal, XXIX:4, Summer 1970,
pp. 442-43, fig. 4; Adhemar 1974, no. 30. Ill (as
c. 1877); Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 49. V, repr.
The Brothel Scenes
cat. nos. 180-188
No other aspect of Degas's work has dis-
concerted his admirers as much as the fifty
or so monotypes featuring brothel scenes.
Arsene Alexandre wrote a short passage in
19 1 8 on the "realistic nudes in a certain series
that must be discussed, however delicate the
subject matter may be." Then, in the fol-
lowing decades, Camille Mauclair, and par-
ticularly Denis Rouart, put forth the idea of
a Degas haunted by sexuality.1 The artist's
extreme reserve seems to have intrigued
some of his contemporaries, and Roy
McMullen recently came to the speculative
conclusion that Degas was likely impotent.2
All indications are that the artist had no
mistress following the 1870s, and, despite
his extraordinarily colorful language, he
surprised his models by his exemplary be-
havior toward them. Nevertheless, when
speaking to one of his models about the possi-
ble causes of his bladder condition, he admit-
ted, "it is true, I had the 'illness' [a venereal
disease] as did all young people, but I have
never led a wild life. "3 In any case, the cari-
catured verism of the monotypes, in which
Rouart found a "mixture of attraction and
fear toward the opposite sex,"4 was inter-
preted quite differently by Eugenia Janis and
Francoise Cachin, whose important studies
shed new light on these works.5
However, some uncertainty continues to
surround the series. Although they are gen-
erally dated c. 1879-80, the monotypes appear
to belong to an earlier period, c. 1876-77,
and it is possible that Degas exhibited some
of them in April 1877. In his review of the
third Impressionist exhibition, Jules Claretie
compared some of the monotypes to Goya's
etchings, saying that "when I mention Goya,
I have my reasons. The horrors of war de-
picted by the Spanish master are no stranger
than the loves that Degas has undertaken to
paint and print. His etchings would make
eloquent translations of some of the pages
from Lafille Elisa"6 Nothing in Degas's
works except the brothel scenes could be
linked in this manner to Edmond de Gon-
court's La fille Elisa, which appeared on 20
March 1877, two weeks before the opening
of the exhibition, and inspired Degas to pro-
duce a few sketches the same year.7
The genesis of the series remains just as
uncertain. One hypothesis is that Degas was
inspired by Joris-Karl Huysmans's Marthe:
histoire d'une fille, published in Brussels in
September 1876, but the tragic naturalism of
this novel is inconsistent with the animation
and distinctive humor of the monotypes.8 In
all likelihood, the series is not related to any
literary work, but rather owes its origin to
the masters of the first half of the century,
such as Guys and Gavarni, and to the dis-
covery of Japanese printmaking. Neverthe-
less, it is evident that a formal link, altered
to the point of being unrecognizable, does
exist between the brothel monotypes and
the earlier studies undertaken by Degas for
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45),
in which we find the same profusion of
women, the same agitated poses, and the
same naturalism extending beyond the norm
of the academic nude. It is therefore not sur-
prising to find the true prototype for the
prostitute stretched out on her back in Idle-
ness (J 102) in a study (cat. no. 47) for Scene
of War.
1. Alexandre 1918, p. 16.
2. McMullen 1984, pp. 268-69.
3. Michel 19 19, p. 470.
4. Rouart 1945, p. 9.
5. See Janis in 1968 Cambridge, Mass., pp. xix-xxi;
Nora 1973, passim; Cachin 1974, pp. 83-84; Hol-
lis Clayson, "Prostitution and the Art of Later
Nineteenth-Century France: On Some Differences
between the Work of Degas and Duez," Arts Mag-
azine, LX:4, December 1985, pp. 40-45. For a dis-
cussion of Degas's alleged misogyny, see Broude
1977, passim.
6. Claretie 1877, p. 1.
7. For sketches for La fille Elisa, see Reff 1985, Note-
book 28 (private collection, pp. 26-27, 29» 31, 33,
35, 45)-
8. Reff 1976, pp. 181-82.
180.
The Name Day of the Madam
1876-77
Pastel over monotype on white wove paper
Plate: 10V2 X ii5/a in. (26.6 X 29.6 cm)
Musee Picasso, Paris
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 549
The largest of Degas's brothel scenes, this
monotype was pulled from a plate almost
twice the size of the larger of the two for-
mats he commonly used in the series. It was
preceded by a different version on a smaller
scale, with the scene in reverse (J90, C100).
Yet another monotype on the same subject
(J88, C99) showing, with some variations, a
detail from the center of the composition,
almost certainly followed the large plate as
an independent though related design.
Renoir, who owned a monotype brothel
scene by Degas, remarked in a conversation
with Ambroise Vollard: "Any treatment of
such subjects is likely to be pornographic,
and there is always a desperate sadness
about them. It took Degas to give to the
Fete de la patronne [The Name Day of the
Madam] an air of joyfulness, and at the same
time the greatness of an Egyptian bas-relief."1
Picasso, to whom this monotype later be-
longed along with ten other brothel scenes
now in the Musee Picasso, was equally
moved by it. When showing the work with
some of his own etchings to the photogra-
pher Brassai, he said: "It's the madam's name
day. A masterpiece, don't you think? See,
I've been inspired by it for a series of etch-
ings I am working on at the moment."2 Pro-
duced during the period between March and
May 1971, Picasso's own variations on the
series frequently include Degas in the com-
position as an observer, sometimes in the act
of drawing or as a symbolic presence in the
form of a portrait hanging on the wall of the
salon.3
The subject is the nearest Degas ever came
to depicting an apotheosis of sorts, and it is
perhaps characteristic of his sense of humor
that he chose a brothel as the stage for a tragi-
comic if good-natured celebration.
1. Vollard 1936, p. 258.
2. Cited in Cabanne 1973, p. 147.
3. For Picasso's etchings, see Georges Bloch, Pablo
Picasso: catalogue de Voeuvre grave et lithographie
1970-1972, IV, Bern, 1979, nos. 1920-91.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 191 8,
no. 212, for Fr 7,000); bought by Gustave Pellet, Pa-
ris; by descent to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, from 1919.
Pablo Picasso, 1958-73; Donation Picasso 1978.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 231; 1934, Paris, Andre
J. Seligmann, 17 November-9 December, Rehabilita-
tion du sujet, no. 82; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 199;
296
1948 Copenhagen, no. 95; 1952 Amsterdam, no. 20;
1978 Paris, no. 42.
selected references: Alexandre 19 18, p. 16; Lafond
191 8-19, II, p. 72; Rouart 1945, pp. 56, 74 n. 84, repr.
p. 60; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 549 (as c. 1879);
Rouart 1948, pi. 4 (color); Cabanne 1957, pp. 83
n. 60, 98, 113 (as 1879); Valery 1965, fig. 154; Janis
1968, no. 89 (as c. 1878-79); Cachin 1974, under
no. 99; Koshkin-Youritzin 1976, p. 36; Keyser 198 1,
p. 73; Sutton 1986, p. 253, repr.; Eva und die Zukunft
(exhibition catalogue, edited by Werner Hofmann),
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1986, fig. 197 A p. 280.
I8l.
In a Brothel Salon
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white heavy laid paper
First of two impressions
Plate: dV^XSVain. (15.9 x 21.6 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso lower left
Musee Picasso, Paris
Exhibited in Ottawa
Janis 82 /Cachin 87
The image includes two sides of a salon pan-
eled with mirrors as well as an elaborate fore-
ground suggesting a third, invisible side. At
the far left, the madam greets a client entering
from the right. Between them, assembled
along two horizontal tiers, are groups of
dressed and undressed prostitutes in a variety
of poses, some lying down, others seated,
and still others caught in mid-movement.
In composition, this is the most ambitious
of the monotypes in the series, and few, if
any, convey with more ferocious intensity
the degraded atmosphere of the brothel. The
principal figure in the foreground, cut off in
remarkable fashion, seems based on one used
in a dark-field monotype, Nude Woman Re-
clining on a Chaise Longue (cat. no. 244).
A previously unknown second impression
of the monotype appeared in an auction sale
held in Bern in 1973. 1
1. Kornfeld und Klipstein, Bern, Auction 147, Mo-
deme Kunst, 20-21 June 1973, no. 147, repr.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
no. 222, as "Salon de maison close"); bought by
Ambroise Vollard, Paris. Maurice Exsteens, Paris;
with Paul Brame, Paris; with Reid and Lefevre Gal-
lery, London, 1958; Pablo Picasso, 1958-73; Dona-
tion Picasso 1978.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 192; 1951-52
Bern, no. 178; 1952 Amsterdam, no. 102; 1958 Lon-
don, no. 11, repr.
selected references: Rouart 1948, pi. 34; Janis 1968,
no. 82 (as c. 1879); Cachin 1974, no. 87 (as 1876-
85); RefF 1976, pp. 181-82, fig. 126 p. 181.
297
182.
Resting
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on China paper
Plate: 6Ya X 8V4 in. (15.9 X 21 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso lower left
Musee Picasso, Paris
Exhibited in Ottawa
Janis 83/Cachin 113
Imaginary or real, Degas's brothel scenes
abound in shrewd psychological observa-
tions on individual behavior. In this mono-
type, one of the prostitutes has caught sight
of an unseen interlocutor — the viewer — and
automatically adjusts a stocking as she steadily
holds his attention. She is past her prime,
but, with a good deal of verve, she sports
whatever is left of her looks. By contrast,
another prostitute has collapsed on a sofa,
though she may have just noticed the appear-
ance of a client. The impending arrival, ren^
dered with only a hand, a leg, and a profile
visible beyond a door, is nevertheless pre-
sented with such deliberate casualness as to
entirely steal a scene that otherwise might
have been both more truculent and direct, if
certainly less literary.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
no. 221, one of sixteen monotypes in a lot); bought
by Gustave Pellet, Paris; by descent to Maurice Ex-
steens, Paris, 1919; with Paul Brame, Paris; with
Reid and Lefevre Gallery, London, 1958; Pablo Pi-
casso, 1958-73; Donation Picasso 1978.
exhibitions : 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 196; 1948
Copenhagen, no. 86; 1952 Amsterdam, no. 101;
1958 London, no. 23, repr.; 1978 Paris, no. 45, repr.
selected references: Rouart 1948, pi. 33; Janis 1968,
no. 83 (as c. 1879); Cachin 1974, no. 113, repr. (as
1876-85).
183^
Brothel Scene
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white laid
paper, heightened with pale ochre watercolor
Plate: 63/s X 83/s in. (16. 1 X 21.5 cm)
Sheet: 8^4 X ioV* in. (21 X 26. 1 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right margin: Degas
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Universites
de Paris (Fondation Jacques Doucet), Paris
(B.A.A. Degas 9)
Exhibited in Paris
Janis 68 /Cachin 83
This monotype provides an interesting com-
plement to Resting (cat. no. 182). The gen-
eral elements of the two scenes are closely
related. The stress on bold contrasts and the
broad handling of line are nevertheless very
different. The foreground dominates; the
woman turning her back to the viewer has
been drawn in a contorted pose, with her
sharply defined leg almost completely di-
vorced from the rest of her body. Her head,
with a rich cascade of black hair indicated by
a few rapid strokes, is shown in lost profile
in a grotesque recollection of the lovely head
in The Jet Earring (cat. no. 151). More sur-
prising, however, is the woman lying down
in the background, reduced to a pair of black
stockings and a head, perhaps the most in-
geniously succinct representation in Degas's
entire work.
provenance: Jacques Doucet, Paris; to the Fondation
Doucet 19 1 8.
exhibitions : 1924 Paris, no. 242.
selected references: Vollard 1914, pi. xvi; Maupas-
sant 1934, repr. facing p. 34; Janis 1968, no. 68 (as
c. 1879); Nora 1973, p. 30, fig. 2 (color) p. 31;
Cachin 1974, no. 83, repr, (as "Scene de maison
close," 1876-85).
I84.
Waiting (second version)
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on China paper
Plate: 8^2X6^2 in. (21.6 X 16.4 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso lower left
Musee Picasso, Paris
Exhibited in New York
Janis 65 /Cachin 86
In the first impression of this monotype,
improvised with the ease of a Japanese cal-
ligrapher, Degas drew the figures of the
women only in outline. For the second im-
pression, he reworked the plate. Shadows
were added to the bodies, the treatment of
the hair was elaborated, and the two women
at the left were given stockings. In addition,
parts of the background and most of the
foreground were heavily inked. The resulting
variant has richer tonalities, and the effects
are more deliberate. Yet most of the figures
have retained the vivid characteristics apparent
in the first impression, particularly the
woman at the far left, an arresting presence
with covered bosom but parted legs, and
the woman next to her, who, with her ges-
ture, turns the viewer into a participant in
the scene.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 191 8,
no. 221, one of sixteen monotypes in a lot); bought
by Ambroise Vollard, Paris; Gustave Pellet, Paris; by
descent to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, 1919; with Paul
Brame, Paris; with Reid and Lefevre Gallery, London,
1958; Pablo Picasso, 1958-73; Donation Picasso 1978.
exhibitions: 1948 Copenhagen, no. 84; 1958 Lon-
don, no. 8, repr.; 1978 Paris, no. 44, repr.
selected references: Rouart 1948, pi. 40; Janis 1968,
no. 65 (as c. 1879); Cabanne 1973, repr. p. 148; Cachin
1974, no. 86 (as 1876-85), repr.
I85.
The Reluctant Client
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on off-white wove paper
Plate: 8% X 6lA in. (2 1 X 1 5 . 9 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso lower left
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (188 14)
Janis 86 /Cachin 96
The comic impact of this image is partly the
result of the witty reversal of commonly
held assumptions about the confident nature
of males. To the amusement of four prosti-
tutes, a confounded client has second thoughts
or perhaps an attack of panic. The narrative
299
i«5
i86
element is as evident as in The Name Day of
the Madam (cat. no. 180), but the apparent
informality of the composition is ruled by a
pervasive sense of symmetry. The client and
the prostitute, on the opposite sides of a cane
(unexpectedly cast in the role of gravitational
center), are mirror images of each other; and
right and left of the prostitute are two seated
figures that frame her in almost perfect uni-
son. Degas's fundamentally satiric streak is
nowhere more apparent than in the treatment
of the client, at once pathetic and ridiculous,
characterized in a few quickly jotted lines.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
no. 221, one of sixteen monotypes in a lot); bought
by Gustave Pellet, Paris; by descent to Maurice Ex-
steens, Paris, 19 19; with Paul Brame, Paris; with
Reid and Lefevre Gallery, London, 1958; W. Peploe,
London (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 27
April 1977, no. 279); bought at that sale by the mu-
seum 1977.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 198; 1948
Copenhagen, no. 87; 1951-52 Bern, no. 176; 1952
Amsterdam, no. 99; 1958 London, no. 30, repr.;
1979-80 Ottawa; 1980, Ottawa, National Gallery of
Canada, 25 January-23 March/Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts, 1 April-18 May/Saint Catharines, Ontario,
Rodman Hall Art Centre, 30 May-30 June, "The
Imprint of Genius: Five Centuries of Master Prints
from the Collection of the National Gallery of Cana-
da" (no catalogue, organized by Douglas Druick).
selected references: Maupassant 1934, repr. facing
p. 48; Rouart 1945, pp. 56, 74 n. 84; Rouart 1948,
pi. 32; Janis 1968, no. 86 (as c. 1879); Cachin 1974,
no. 96 (as 1876-85); Koshkin-Youritzin 1976, p. 36.
186.
Admiration
1876-77
Monotype in black ink heightened with red and
black pastel on white heavy laid paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 8V2 X 63/s in. (21. 5 X 16.2 cm)
Sheet: 12% x 87/s in. (31.5X22.5 cm)
Signed in pencil lower left margin: Degas
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Universites
de Paris (Fondation Jacques Doucet), Paris
(B.A.A. Degas 3)
Exhibited in Paris
Janis 1 84 /Cachin 129
In Admiration, the theme of the voyeur fol-
lows a long tradition in Western art. Yet this
modern transmutation of Susanna at her bath
is not a moral discourse.1 It is, rather, an
ironic comment on the commerce of love as
epitomized by the contrast between the very
beautiful woman, abstractedly performing a
charade, and the fawning, bedazzled admirer.
A second impression of the monotype, not
recorded by Janis or Cachin, gives a better
idea of a problem occasionally encountered
by Degas when working directly, without
the aid of preparatory drawings, in adjust-
ing the relative proportions of his bathers to
the bathtubs in which they take their poses.2
In this first impression, the juncture between
the nude and the edge of the tub has been
covered with color to mask the discrepancy.
The pose of the woman, with both her arms
behind her neck, is one the artist studied per-
sistently from every angle. A related pose
was used for a pastel, Woman at Her Toilette
(L749, private collection), generally dated
1885 but actually exhibited in 1880 in the
fifth Impressionist exhibition under no. 3 9. 3
1 . For Degas's remarks on his subjects and Susanna
and the Elders, see Pierre Borel's note in Fevre 1949,
p. 52 n. 1. See also Halevy i960, pp. 150-60; Ha-
levy 1964, p. 119.
2. For the second impression, see Kornfeld und Klip-
stein, Bern, Auction 147, Moderne Kunst, 20-21
June 1973, no. 150, repr.
3. It has been tentatively suggested (1986 Washing-
ton, D.C., p. 322) that the work exhibited in 1880
was a pastelized monotype related to the brothel
300
series (L554, E. V. Thaw collection, New York).
However, the reviews of Gustave Goetschy (Goet-
schy 1880, p. 2) and Armand Silvestre ("Exposi-
tion de la rue des Pyramides," La Vie Moderne, 24
April 1880, p. 262) make the identification certain.
provenance: Jacques Doucet, Paris; to the Fondation
Doucet 1918.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 227.
selected references: Maupassant 1934, repr. facing
p. 50; Marie Dormoy, "Les monotypes de Degas,"
Art et Metiers Graphiques, 51, 15 February 1936, repr.
p. 37; Janis 1968, no. 184 (as c. 1877-80); Nora 1973,
p. 30, fig. 2 (color) p. 31; Cachin 1974, no. 129, repr.
(as c. 1880); Lipton 1986, pp. 170, 180, fig. 11 1 p. 171;
Andrew Tilly, Erotic Drawings, New York: Rizzoli,
1986, p. 38, no. 12, repr. (color) p. 39.
I87.
Two Women
c 1879
Monotype in black ink on pale buff laid paper
Sheet: 93/4 X iiVb in. (24.9 X 28. 3 cm)
{Catherine Bullard Fund, Courtesy, Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston (61. 12 14)
Janis 1 17 /Cachin 122
There is no evidence that Degas was espe-
cially fascinated by lesbianism. As a theme,
it never occurs in his painting and appears
but twice in his monotypes. In the genera-
tion that preceded Degas, lesbianism had
furnished subject matter to Honore de Bal-
zac, notably for his Lafiile aux yeux d'or\ to
a subtler degree to Jules Barbey d* Aurevilly,
whom Degas knew; and above all to Charles
Baudelaire for his Lesbos and Femmes damnees.
As noted by Mario Praz half a century ago,
Baudelaire in 1846 thought of giving the tide
"Les lesbiennes" to the collected edition of
his poems.1 But until Gustave Courbet, no
true equivalent is found in painting — at least
not in painting that qualifies as a truthful
expression of human feeling — even though
the occasional book illustration suggested
the idea when representing the theme of
sleep or friendship.2
In 1866, Courbet painted as a commission
for Khalil-Bey, a Turkish diplomat living in
Paris, his famous Sleep (fig. 143) — also
known as Les amies — in every respect the
greatest composition to depict the aftermath
of lesbian love. Shortly after 1868, Sleep was
bought by Jean-Baptiste Faure, Degas's fu-
ture patron, and it is not an exaggeration to
say that it furnished the idea for many varia-
tions by artists on the same theme, including
somewhat less sensual depictions exhibited
at the Salon in the last decades of the nine-
teenth century.3
Fig. 143. Gustave Courbet, Sleep, 1866. Oil on
canvas, 53V8X 783/4 in. (135 X 200 cm). Musee du
Petit Palais, Paris
Degas's opinion of Courbet, if it did not
equal his admiration for Ingres, was very
high indeed, and Courbet can be counted
among the major influences on his work.
Although not in fact indebted to Sleep, which
Degas saw or could have easily seen in Faure's
apartment, Two Women is a more animated
if not quite as sumptuous variation on it.
Eugenia Janis has drawn attention to the fact
that Degas deliberately made one of the
women darker, to suggest aggression.4 But
the idea of an exotic contrast in the proximity
of pale and dark nudes, regardless of the re-
lationship between them, was a favorite
nineteenth-century device. Faint outlines of
a human form at the right of the composi-
tion hint that at first it may have been quite
different and that the dark area at the center,
accordingly, could be the inadvertent result
of Degas's attempt to partially wipe the
plate — a stain that he used to the greatest
advantage.
1. Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, London: Oxford
University Press, 1933, p. 333.
2. See, for instance, Achille Deveria's "Minna and
Brenda'* of 1837, an illustration for Walter Scott's
Pirate, or Dante Gabriel Rossetti's frontispiece for
his sister Christina's volume Goblin Market, pub-
lished in 1862. For Deveria, see Eva und die Zukunfi
(exhibition catalogue, edited by Werner Hofmann),
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1986, p. 266, fig. 182c.
Rossetti's engraving is reproduced in Gordon N.
Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from
1790 to 1914, New York: Pierpont Morgan Library,
1976, p. 1862.
3 . Examples include Georges Callot's Sommeil, ex-
hibited at the Salon of the Societe Nationale des
Beaux-Arts in 1895, or the earlier, unintentionally
comic La vieille et les deux servantes by Paul Nan-
teuil, exhibited at the Salon of the Societe des Ar-
tistes Frangais in 1887.
4. 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 30.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
no. 221, one of sixteen monotypes in a lot); Gustave
Pellet, Paris, to 19 19. Marcel Guerin, Paris (his stamp,
Lugt suppl. 1872b, lower left corner, in margin).
Bought by the museum 196 1.
exhibitions: 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 30, repr.
selected references: Janis 1968, no. 117; Cachin
1974, no. 122.
301
188.
Waiting
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on China paper
Plate: 43A x 6V2 in. (12. 1 X 16.4 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso lower left
Musee Picasso, Paris
Exhibited in New York
Janis 91/Cachin 10 1
Degas made several variations on the theme
of the prostitute in bed awaiting her client.1
In this one, the most provocative version,
the staging of the scene is more deliberate
and the outcome is more disturbing and
more complex. The woman looks to her
left, perhaps at the floor or at someone who
has entered the room. Yet her body, with
arms and legs invitingly parted, is positioned
so as to unequivocally implicate the viewer,
and her pubic area is the center of the compo-
sition. Nevertheless, the crude, flamboyant
display of flesh is counterbalanced by the care-
ful, almost scientific notation of the wretched
paraphernalia associated with the prostitute's
daily existence: the mirror on the wall, her
black stockings and high-heeled shoes, the
washbasin ready for use, an article of cloth-
ing left on an armchair.
Several etchings by Picasso testify to his
admiration for this monotype.2
1. Janis 1968, nos. 92, 93, 95, 97, the last two with
counterproofs.
2. Notably Bloch nos. 1988-89, 1992-95, in Georges
Bloch, Pablo Picasso: catalogue de Voeuvre grave et
lithographie, IV, Bern, 1979.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
number unknown); bought by Gustave Pellet, Paris;
by descent to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, 1919; with
Paul Brame, Paris; with Reid and Lefevre Gallery,
London, 1958; Pablo Picasso, 1958-73; Donation Pi-
casso 1978.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 197; 1958
London, no. 16, repr.; 1978 Paris, no. 43, repr.
selected references: Maupassant 1934, repr. facing
p. 48; Janis 1968, no. 91 (as c. 1878-79); Cachin
1974, no. 101 (as 1876-85).
I89.
Waiting
c. 1879
Monotype in brown-black ink on white
wove paper
Plate: 4V4 X 63/s in. (10.9 X 16. 1 cm)
Sheet: 63/sX jVs in. (16.3 X 18.8 cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of
Mrs. Charles Glore (1958. 11)
Janis 103 /Cachin 107
This small monotype forms part of a group
of larger nocturnal scenes representing
women resting, reading, getting in or out of
bed, or perhaps playing with a small dog.1
The scenes frequently include, or suggest
the presence of, a bedside lamp that casts
enough light to draw the essential elements
of the subject out of the pervasive darkness.
The women are always nude, though they
may wear a bonnet or a choker, and appear
to be enjoying a private moment in vast,
heavily curtained beds.
By tradition, these monotypes have been
considered ambiguous enough in subject to
be marginally grouped, most probably
wrongly, with the brothel scenes. However,
their mild eroticism — amusing but never sa-
tirical— belongs to a different category, an
apparently deliberate revival of a type of
eighteenth-century imagery made fashion-
able not least by the Goncourt brothers.
Were it not for the pronounced chiaroscuro
effects, leading stylistically in quite a differ-
ent direction, reminiscent especially of Rem-
brandt, some of these works could hang with
reasonable comfort between amorous sub-
jects by Fragonard, Moreau le Jeune, and
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin.2 Indeed, Degas' s
Woman with a Dog (J 164, L746) makes sense
only if placed next to Fragonard's Young Girl
Making Her Dog Dance on Her Bed.5 If this
kinship is scarcely apparent in the mono-
types, it becomes clearer in the pastelized
impressions.
Waiting is known only as a monotype,
and it is not easy to imagine how it might
look as a pastel. The suggestive title was not
chosen by the artist, but the work's compo-
sitional proximity to a different monotype,
Waiting for the Client 0I04)> nas fed Eugenia
Janis, followed by Franchise Cachin, to cata-
logue it with the brothel scenes. Nevertheless,
it should be grouped with its counterparts
such as Woman Going to Bed (J 129, L747) or
Woman Turning Off Her Lamp (J131, L744)
among the artist's few attempts at traditional
erotic imagery.
1. See Woman Getting Up (J 167), Woman Going to
Bed, which exists in several versions (Jug, J134,
J 166), Woman with a Dog (J 164), Woman Turning
Off Her Lamp 0I3I)» Nude Woman Scratching Her-
self (cat. no. 245), Nude Woman Reclining on a
Chaise Longue (cat. no, 244).
2. For Degas's interest in the work of Moreau le
Jeune, see Reff 1985, Notebook 26 (BN, Carnet 7,
p. 91).
3. See Georges Wildenstein, The Paintings of Frago-
nard, London: Phaidon, i960, no. 280.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
no. 228); bought by Gustave Pellet, Paris; by descent
to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, 19 19; with Paul Brame,
Paris; Cesar M. de Hauke, Paris; acquired by the
museum 1958.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 195; 1948
Copenhagen, no. 85; 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 26,
repr.; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 95; 1984 Chicago, no. 46,
repr. (color).
selected references: Rouart 1945, PP- 5<5, 74 n* 84;
Rouart 1948, pi. 39; Janis 1968, no. 103, repr.; Cachin
1974, no. 107; Keyser 198 1, pi. XXXI.
190.
Woman Leaving Her Bath
1876-77
Pastel over monotype on buff laid paper
6V4 X SV2 in. (16 X 21. 5 cm)
Signed in black pastel lower right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF12255)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 422
This enchanting small pastel over monotype
has on occasion been wrongly identified.
Lemoisne, who recognized it as a work
loaned in 1877 to the third Impressionist ex-
hibition by Gustave Caillebotte, its first
owner, believed it to have been a reworked
lithograph. Subsequently, and in spite of an
admitted connection with the exhibition of
1877, the work was dated 1 877-79. 1 In a re-
cent publication, Genevieve Monnier has
cleared the record and has ascribed it to
1876-77, the closest one could possibly get
to a logical date.2 Eugenia Janis has noted
that at the right edge of the paper there is an
exposed strip of monotype and has added
that traces of Degas's fingerprints can be dis-
cerned. No other impression of the mono-
type under this pastel is known.
The composition, informal but rigorously
constructed, represents a theme Degas re-
peated, with variations, though always main-
taining the two interacting figures — a woman
stepping out of her bath and a maid holding
a dressing gown ready for her. The subject
occurs in another pastelized monotype of
the same size (L423, Norton Simon Muse-
um, Pasadena), probably obtained from the
same plate.3 It also occurs in a monotype of
vertical format included in this exhibition
(cat. no. 191) and in an etching (cat. nos. 192-
194) generally dated to the end of the 1870s.
It is curious that no drawings are known to
be connected with the compositions, though
several later drawings represent a return to
the theme. It could be supposed that, for
Degas, the monotype process was a drawing
process — implied by the terminology he
used — but the absence of models is never-
theless surprising. In this composition, as in
all the other versions, an armchair occupies
a diagonal position in the foreground, a fa-
vorite motif frequently used by the artist.
The partly open door to the right, however,
does not appear in the other bathing scenes
and adds a compositionally unexpected ele-
ment as well as more than a hint of complic-
ity between artist and viewer.
1. Janis 1968, no. 175; Cachin 1974, p. 282.
2. 1985 Paris, no. 63.
3 . The measurements of the pastel have been mistak-
enly listed as 6n/i6 by iiVk inches (17 by 28 centi-
meters) by Lemoisne, Janis, and Cachin. It actually
measures 6XA by 8l/2 inches (16 by 21.5 centi-
meters).
190
303
provenance: Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, by April
1877; his bequest to the Musee du Luxembourg, Paris,
1894; entered the Luxembourg 1896; transferred to
the Louvre 1929.
exhibitions: 1877 Paris, no. 45; 1956 Paris; 1966,
Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, Pastels
et miniatures du XIXe siecle, no. 37; 1969 Paris, no. 176;
1973-74, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre,
"Hommage a Mary Cassatt" (no catalogue); 1974
Paris, no. 194a, repr.; 1985 Paris, no. 63, repr.
selected references: Paris, Luxembourg, 1894,
p. 105, no. 1028; Max Liebermann, "Degas," Pan,
IV: 3-4, November 1898-April 1899, repr. p. 10;
Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 98; Lafond 19 18-19, I» repr.
p. 113; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 422 (as 1877);
Pickvance 1966, pp. 17-21, repr.; Janis 1967, pp. 76-
79* fig- 55; Janis 1968, no. 175 (as c. 1877-79); Cachin
1974, p. 282 (as 1877-79); Minervino 1974, no. 427;
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 63.
191.
Woman Leaving Her Bath
1876-77
Monotype in black ink on off-white
wove paper
Plate: 63/e X 43A in. (16. 1 X 12 cm)
Sheet: 10 x 67/s in. (25. 5 x 17. 5 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right: Degas
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (A. 09792)
Exhibited in Paris
Janis 176/ Cachin 133
The smallest of three monotypes on the
theme of a woman leaving her bath, this is
also the only one of the group not to have
been pastelized. As in the Orsay pastel (cat.
no. 190), the figure is seen from the front.
But the composition here is reversed, and
the armchair has been replaced with a dress-
ing table, viewed from behind, on which
rest a jug and a washbasin. The work is ex-
ceptionally fine, and it was likely not des-
tined for further improvement in pastel.
The method used in inking the plate was
a combination of the dark- and light-field
manners, handled so confidently and imagi-
natively as to generate a range of tones hardly
to be expected from so crude a process. The
plate was covered with ink that was wiped
away for the few light areas. What was left
of the ink was worked up to an astonishing
variety of textures by the most ordinary
means: it was moved about vigorously for
the lower part of the background wall, pat-
ted gently with the tips of the fingers for
the pale gray of the bather, brushed more
carefully for the bathtub, and punched with
the tip of a hard brush for the floor. This
done, the artist added the remaining details
with a fine brush, drawing a few outlines,
such as the edge of the bathtub, the contour
of a hand, or the fold in the abdomen. In
spite of the consciously rigorous structure of
the work, one is captivated by the informal
and true presentation of the image, with the
bather gingerly testing the floor so as not to
slip.
provenance: Dr. Georges Viau, Paris; acquired by
the Bibliotheque Nationale 1943.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 235; 1974 Paris, no. 194;
1984-85 Paris, no. 135, p. 404, fig. 286 p. 431.
selected references: Rouart 1948, pi. 24; Janis 1968,
no. 176 (as c. 1878-79); Cachin 1974, no. 133, repr.
(as c. 1880).
192-194.
Leaving the Bath
From the closing of the fourth Impressionist
exhibition in May i879|to the spring of 188 1,
Degas devoted a large part of his energy
toward planning the production of a publi-
cation— which he referred to as a journal —
dedicated to prints and titled Le Jour et la
Nuit.1 The idea probably germinated during
the exhibition in conversations with the en-
graver Felix Bracquemond.2 Within days of
closing the exhibition, Mary Cassatt and
304
Camille Pissarro joined the project, and sub-
sequent correspondence between Degas and
Bracquemond, all unfortunately undated,
indicates a feverish interest in the subject.
Degas was consulting printers, and all con-
cerned were working on their plates.3 How-
ever, there was also Degas's admission that
it was "impossible for me, having to earn
my living, to devote myself entirely to it as
yet." Sometime after the end of June, he
also revealed that he was busy nearly every
day with sittings for a large portrait.4 A final
undated letter to Bracquemond on the sub-
ject of the journal notified his friend that the
patience of the printer Salmon was at an end,
that he expected the plates from the contrib-
utors within two days, and — somewhat
alarmingly — that he, Degas, was "working
on my plate, doing everything I can."5
The nature of the journal and the number
of contributors, never clear from the corre-
spondence, were only recently established
when Charles F. Stuckey uncovered an article
from Le Gaulois for 24 January 1880 announc-
ing the appearance of the first issue of Le Jour
et la Nuit on 1 February of that year.6 With
the date and a list of participants — including
Cassatt, Caillebotte, Raffaelli, Forain, Bracque-
mond, Pissarro, Rouart, and Degas — the
article gave a full description of the future
publication. It was, in effect, not a journal
but a periodical collection of prints to be
published at irregular intervals, without a
text, at a price varying between five and
twenty francs.7
The publication was never issued, and in
a letter of 9 April 1880 to her son Alexander
(Mary's brother), Katherine Cassatt did not
conceal her opinion on the subject: "As usu-
al with Degas when the time arrived to ap-
pear, he wasn't ready — so that 'Le Jour et la
Nuit' . . . which might have been a great
success has not yet appeared — Degas never
is ready for anything — This time he has
thrown away an excellent chance for all of
them."8 Nevertheless, there was some con-
solation for the artists, not mentioned by
Mrs. Cassatt: her daughter, Bracquemond,
Forain, Pissarro, RaffaelH, and not least Degas
were all exhibiting their etchings in the fifth
Impressionist exhibition that had opened a
few days earlier.
It is not certain what Degas had planned
as his contribution to Le Jour et la Nuit. The
single work known to have been undoubt-
edly connected with the project is Mary
Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery
(fig. 114), his only etching to have been is-
sued in an edition of one hundred and perhaps
the one he was working on shortly before
the printing session arranged with Salmon.
But it is generally assumed that a number of
etchings executed about 1879-80 — among
them Leaving the Bath, the splendid Actress
in Her Dressing Room (RS50), At the Cafe des
Ambassadeurs (cat. nos. 178, 179), and a few
more — were the unusually interesting off-
shoots of his commitment to the publication.
It has been pointed out in recent literature
that nowhere in Degas 's work are his com-
plex method and his compulsive need to re-
vise more readily apparent than in his prints.
Successive states mercilessly record hesita-
tions, changes, a highly expressive use of
any means at his disposal, and a constant re-
evaluation of the possibilities of the image.
Leaving the Bath is known in twenty-two
states — the largest number of any of his
prints (see fig. 96). And each state marks
minor adjustments or major alterations to
the texture or intensity of a composition that
remains otherwise substantially the same.9
According to legend, Degas began this
etching during a visit to Alexis Rouart,
when an ice storm prevented him from
leaving.10 The composition, related to that
of three earlier monotypes but significantly
smaller and of an uncommon square format,
was established from the first state, and the
following twelve states record very slight
alterations to the design but major changes
in emphasis. The walls of the room, the car-
pet, the armchair in the foreground, the water
in the bathtub, the mantel seen in sharp per-
spective at the right — all were altered dra-
matically several times.
The three states included in this exhibi-
tion, each known in only one impression,
are transitional phases in the evolution of the
image. In the seventh state, the sharpness of
the drawing and the contrasts of the blacks
and whites are the most successful. In the
fourteenth state, the previously crisp character
of the bather was changed beyond recogni-
tion with the application of aquatint, the
darkened flesh exploding like a cloud out-
side the confines of its former outlines. The
mantel was also reworked, removing any
sense of its structure; the side of the bathtub
was given the same dark tonal value; and
additional work in drypoint affected the in-
terior of the bathtub and gave a greater
sense of movement to the bathrobe held by
the maid. In the eighteenth state, after two
further major tonal transformations, indi-
vidual components in the composition were
determined with greater clarity. The mantel,
an armchair in the background, and the
bathtub assume discernible shapes; ripples in
the water, introduced in the previous state,
add an unexpectedly suggestive touch, as
does a cup of chocolate on the mantel; and
the bather, her body returned to its former
lighter value, again becomes almost one
with the bathrobe about to engulf her.
The last two states of Leaving the Bath in-
dicate that the plate was so reworked that it
was rendered useless. Sue Reed and Barbara
Shapiro have shown that the small number
of prints pulled from the plate rule out the
possibility of its having been one of the
etchings to be included in Le Jour et la Nuit.u
In 1886, Henri Beraldi mentioned it among
the eight prints by Degas that he listed in his
guide, noting that the bather was a "femme
du quartier Pigalle," thus insinuating she
was a prostitute.12 Eunice Lipton has argued
that Degas's bathers were indeed prosti-
tutes, and the unquestionable audacity of
the design suggests as much.13 This said,
the scene — like all such scenes by Degas — is
probably to be interpreted as an imaginary
one. Paul Valery remembered seeing in the
studio at 37 rue Victor-Masse the props
used for these compositions, "a basin, a dull
zinc bathtub, stale bathrobes, ..." and it
has even been claimed that the great actress
Rejane posed for a later variation of the motif,
"playing the role" of the maid holding the
peignoir.14
1 . For the most detailed account of Le Jour et la
Nuit, see Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers in
1984-85 Boston, pp. xxix-li.
2. Most of Degas's correspondence about the proj-
ect— at least the surviving correspondence — was
with Bracquemond, suggesting perhaps that the
latter played a greater part than is generally as-
sumed. At the end of December 1903 , Degas
would reproach him thus: "Have you forgotten
the monthly review that we wished to launch
in the old days?" See Lettres Degas 1945,
CCXXXIII, p. 235; Degas Letters 1947, no. 255,
p. 220.
3. Lettres Degas 1945, XVIII, p. 45, XIX, pp. 46-
47, XXI, pp. 48-49, XXII, pp. 49-50; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 27, pp. 50-51, no. 28, pp. 51-
52, no. 30, p. 53, no. 31, p. 54.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, XXII, pp. 49-50, XIV, p. 42;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 31, p. 54, no. 23, p. 47.
The second letter, in the Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris, is on mourning paper, suggesting it was
written not long after the death of Henri Degas,
the artist's uncle, on 20 June 1879. The "large
portrait" may have been that of Mme Dietz-
Monnin (L534) now in the Art Institute of Chicago.
5. Lettres Degas 1945, XXIII, p. 50; Degas Letters
1947, no. 32, p. 55 (translation revised).
6. Charles R Stuckey, "Recent Degas Publications,"
Burlington Magazine, CXXVIL988, July 1985,
p. 466.
7. The text of the article is reproduced in part in
Chronology II, 24 January 1880.
8. See letter from Katherine Cassatt, Paris, 9 April
[1880], to Alexander Cassatt, in Mathews 1984,
pp. 150-51.
9. For the most complete examination of the vari-
ous states, see Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 42.
10. See Delteil 19 19, no. 39, and Marcel Guerin's
note in Lettres Degas 1945, XXXII, p. 61 n. 1;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 41, p. 64, and "Annota-
tions," p. 264.
11. Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 42.
12. Beraldi 1886, p. 153.
13. Eunice Lipton, "Degas' Bathers: The Case for
Realism," Arts Magazine, LIV, May 1980,
pp. 94-97-
14. Valery 1965, p. 33; Valery i960, p. 19; Haavard
Rostrup, "Degas of Rejane," Meddeleser fia Ny
Carlsberg Glyptotek, XXV, 1968, pp. 7-13.
305
192.
Leaving the Bath
1879-80
Drypoint and aquatint on pale buff, medium
weight, moderately textured laid paper,
seventh state
Plate: 5 X 5 in. (12.7 x 12.7 cm)
Sheet: n3Ax W2 in. (29,7X21.5 cm)
Inscribed in pencil in lower left margin: La Sortie
de Bain
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (18662)
Reed and Shapiro 42.VII/Adhemar 49
provenance: Camille Pissarro (inscribed in pencil on
the verso: "Cette epreuve a appartenu au peintre C.
Pissarro"). Kornfeld und Klipstein, Bern (sale, Korn-
feld und Klipstein, Bern, Moderne Kun$t, June 1974,
no. 179, repr.). With David Tunick, New York, 1975;
bought by the museum 1975.
exhibitions: 1979-80 Ottawa, fig. 11; 1984-85 Bos-
ton, no. 42. VII, repr.
selected references: Beraldi 1886, p. 153; Delteil
1 9 19, no. 39; Rouart 1945, pp. 65, 74 n. 102; Adhe-
mar 1974, no. 49; Passeron 1974, p. 70; Reed and
Shapiro 1984-85, no. 42.VII, repr.
194
193-
Leaving the Bath
1879-80
Drypoint and aquatint on white, medium weight,
moderately textured laid paper, fourteenth
state
Plate: 5x5m. (12.7 X 12.7 cm)
Sheet: 9V4 X 7 in. (23 . 5 X 17.9 cm)
Watermark: fragment of BLACONS
Faint trace of atelier stamp on verso
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts (69. 19)
Reed and Shapiro 42.XIV/Adhemar 49
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 1918,
part of lots 96-99). William Ivins, Jr., New York;
with Lucien Goldschmidt, New York; bought by the
museum 1969.
exhibitions: 1970 Williamstown, no. 51; 1975,
Cleveland, Museum of Art, 9 July-31 August/New
Brunswick, N.J., The Rutgers University Art Gal-
lery, 4 October-16 November /Baltimore, The Wal-
ters Art Gallery, 10 December 1975-26 January
1976, Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French Art,
1854-1910, no. 55, repr.; 1978, Williamstown,
Mass., Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 23
May-30 July, Manet and His Friends (no catalogue);
1984-85 Boston, no. 42. XIV, repr.
selected references: Beraldi 1886, p. 153; Delteil
1919, no. 39; Rouart 1945, pp. 65, 74 n. 102; Adhe-
mar 1974, no. 49; Passeron 1974, p. 70; Reed and
Shapiro 1984-85, no. 42. XIV, repr.; Williamstown,
Clark, 1987, no. 39, p. 57, repr.
194.
Leaving the Bath
1879-80
Drypoint and aquatint on pale buff, medium
weight, moderately textured wove paper,
eighteenth state
Plate: 5 X 5 in. (12.7 X 12.7 cm)
Sheet: 9V4X7V8 in. (23.5 X 18.2 cm)
The Josefowitz Collection
Reed and Shapiro 42. XVIII /Adhemar 49
provenance: Atelier Degas (no stamp, sold or given
away during the artist's lifetime). New York art mar-
ket, 1984; present owner.
exhibitions: 1984-85 Boston, no. 42. XVIII.
selected references: Beraldi 1886, p. 153; Delteil
1919, no. 39; Rouart 1945, pp. 65, 74 n. 102; Adhe-
mar 1974, no. 49; Passeron 1974, p. 70; Reed and
Shapiro 1984-85, no. 42. XVIII, repr.
195.
The Tub
c. 1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white heavy laid paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 16V2 X 21V4 in. (42 X 54. 1 cm)
Sheet: no margins
Signed in pencil lower right: Degas
Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Universites
de Paris (Fondation Jacques Doucet), Paris
(B.A.A. Degas 4)
Exhibited in Paris
Janis 151/Cachin 154
A pencil study of a nude drying herself
(fig. 144) is one of the rare drawings that
can be brought into direct relationship with
a monotype of a bather by Degas, and the
only one to indicate how he used the mono-
type process. It appears that the artist copied
the drawing roughly on a plate, in reverse,
as part of a scene of an interior. Two mono-
types were pulled from the plate — the first
impression, exhibited here, and a second
impression, subsequently covered in pastel
(fig. 145). It is evident from the first impres-
sion that the composition of the pastel was
clearly thought out in advance and that each
light area in the monotype corresponds to
one that would be elaborated later — includ-
ing the brightly lit wall behind the woman,
the dressing table, the bed in the left fore-
Fig. 144. Nude Woman Drying
Herself (111:347), c. 1876-77.
Pencil heightened with white,
17 X 11 in. (43.3 x 28 cm).
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Fig. 145. Woman at Her Toilette (L890), 1876-77.
Pastel over monotype, 18 X 23% in. (45.7 X 60.3
cm). Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena
307
ground, and even the mysterious spray of
light at the far right that was intended as the
base for a glittering starched petticoat in the
pastel.1 It is also apparent that when Degas
made the pastel, he returned to the study
drawn from the nude in order to define the
figure more clearly.
Originally dated c. 1885 by Eugenia Janis
along with other dark-field impressions, the
monotype is part of a group she redated
1 8 77. 2 The drawing (fig. 144) has been gen-
erally associated with the nudes of the late
1 8 80s, but already some twenty years ago
Jean Sutherland Boggs thought it stylistically
inconsistent with the period and pointed out
that it must have been one of the artist's ear-
liest nudes from the beginning of the eight-
ies.3 The pastel, which belonged to Claude
Monet, who seems to have acquired it in
1885, has been dated 1886—90 by Lemoisne,
a date generally accepted.4 However, the
process and the nature of the monotype, as
well as the fact that the pastelized impression
was not expanded — as is usually the case
with monotypes Degas reworked several
years later — suggest a different chronology.
The drawing, the monotype, and the pastel
probably date from 1877 at the latest, and
the stylistic similarity between the pastel
and Woman Leaving Her Bath (cat. no. 190),
exhibited in 1877, supports this hypothesis.
It is quite possible, then, that the pastel is
actually the unidentified "Femme prenant son
tub le soir" exhibited in 1877 under no. 46.
1 . A similar starched petticoat and Louis XVI bed
appear conspicuously in the contemporary Rolla,
by Henri Gervex, to whom, according to Vollard,
Degas gave some advice. See Ambroise Vollard,
Degas: An Intimate Portrait, New York: Dover,
1986, pp. 47-48.
2. See Janis 1972, passim, but without specific refer-
ence to this work.
3. 1967 Saint Louis, no. 131. Ronald Pickvance has
dated the Ashmolean drawing (fig. 144) c. 1885,
connecting it as well with the pastel nudes in the
Pearlman collection (cat. no. 270) and the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (BR113); see
1969 Nottingham, no. 23.
4. Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 890.
provenance: Jacques Doucet, Paris; to the Fondation
Doucet 19 18.
exhibitions : 1924 Paris, no. 245.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Janis I967, p. 80, fig. 44 p. 77;
Janis 1968, no. 151 (as c. 1885); Cachin 1974, no. 154
(as c. 1882-85); 1984-85 Paris, fig. 287 p. 432.
196
I96.
Women by a Fireplace
c. 1876-77
Monotype in black ink
Plate: io7/s X 14% in. (27.7 X 37.8 cm)
Sheet: i27/s X 19V4 in. (32.7X49.1 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
(1985.64.168)
Exhibited in Paris and Ottawa
A second impression of this composition,
reworked in pastel and cut off at the left,
was first recognized as a monotype by Eu-
genia Janis.1 Her conclusion was confirmed
when Barbara Shapiro published this mag-
nificent first impression, which she dated
with the dark-field monotypes about 1877-
80. 2 From evidence discussed elsewhere in
this catalogue,3 it would seem that this work
dates from slightly earlier, about 1876-77,
and that it is contemporary with the mono-
types of bathers leaving their bath (see cat.
no. 190).
Women by a Fireplace appears to be the ear-
liest instance of a scene by Degas with a
maid combing the hair of her mistress, a
subject that would become a preoccupation
at a much later date. A contemporary paint-
ing, At the Seashore (L406, National Gallery,
London), has a related theme, though it en-
tirely lacks the sensual element central to the
monotype.
The novelty of the design is all the more
surprising as it has no true precedent in the
artist's work and is unsupported by draw-
ings. That there was some preparatory
work — if not a drawing, a posed model,
carefully observed — is nevertheless implied
by the curious recurrence of the seated nude
in a changed context, as a woman in a bath-
tub (fig. 229), known also in a second im-
pression covered in pastel, Woman in a Bath
Sponging Her Leg (cat. no. 251). Indeed,
one is tempted to imagine that the bathtub
scene preceded this monotype and that the
whimsical pose of the nude in Women by a
Fireplace is the result of a direct adaptation of
a pose dictated by the composition of a mono-
type of a woman at her bath (fig. 229). The
wonderful chiaroscuro effects, achieved with
the strokes of a rag and the smudging of ink
with the fingers, only partly model the fig-
ures and furnishings, which emerge as forms
from the dark only with the help of assured
contour lines quickly scratched in the plate
with a sharp instrument.
1. Janis 1968, no. 161.
2. See Shapiro in 1980-81 New York, under no. 23.
3. See "The First Monotypes," p. 257.
provenance: Paul Mellon, Washington, D.C; given
by him to the museum 1985.
exhibitions : 1974 Boston, no. 102, fig. 7 (as "Apres
le bain," c. 1880, anonymous loan).
selected references: 1980-81 New York, pp. 99,
100 n. 2, fig. 51 p. 98.
308
197-
The Fireside
c. 1876-77
Monotype in black ink on white heavy laid paper
Plate: i65/sX 23 in. (42.5 X 58.6 cm)
Sheet: I93/4X 2$V8 in. (50.2 X 64.7 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund; Elisha Whittelsey
Collection; Elisha Whittelsey Fund; Douglas
Dillon Gift, 1968 (68.670)
Janis 159/Cachin 167
The subject of this work, perhaps the strang-
est of all of Degas's monotypes, has never
been satisfactorily explained. Unlike the two
figures in Women by a Fireplace (cat. no. 196),
united in a routine daily activity, each of the
women in this composition appears engaged
in some obscure performance. The figure to
the right may be about to step into bed, and,
like the women in a number of other mono-
types, she is nude — except for her nightcap.
Her pose, implying a wide range of mean-
ings— from pain to private sexual practice —
is related to the study of a wounded woman
(cat. no. 48) drawn for but not used in Scene
of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45), a mo-
tif later studied again and realized also as a
sculpture (cat. no. 349). The woman at the
left is shown in one of the more extravagant
poses devised by the artist, comparable in
the 1 8 70s only to that of a few figures appear-
ing in his monotype brothel scenes. Though
it gives every sign of having been spontane-
ously invented, the figure may in fact have
been inspired by another study for Scene of
War in the Middle Ages — that of a woman
with her legs splayed (cat. no. 47).
The interior, though not identical to that
in Women by a Fireplace, recalls the same ele-
ments with an uncommon vigor — the arm-
chair and the blazing fire, the sole source of
light.
provenance: Gustave Pellet, Paris, until 19 19; by de-
scent to Maurice Exsteens, Paris, to at least 1937.
Cesar M. de Hauke. Private collection, Le Vesinet.
Private collection, France; Hector Brame, Paris,
1968; bought by the museum 1968.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 250, lent by Maurice
Exsteens; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 207 (Exsteens
collection); 1948 Copenhagen, no. 78; 1951-52 Bern,
no. 171 (private collection, Le Vesinet); 1952 Am-
sterdam, no. 104 (private collection, Le Vesinet);
1955 Paris, GBA, no. 100 (no mention of lender);
1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 37; 1977 New York,
no. 3 of monotypes; 1980-81 New York, no. 23
(as c. 1877-80).
selected references: Guerin 1924, p. 78 (as "La
cheminee"), repr. p. 79 (as "Le foyer," Pellet collec-
tion); Rouart 1945, pp. 56, 74 n. 83; Rouart 1948,
p. 6, pi. 20; Cabanne 1957, pi. 71 (as "Deux femmes
nues se chaufTant," c. 1878-80); Henry Rasmusen,
Printmaking with Monotypes, Philadelphia: Chitton,
i960, p. 26; Janis 1968, no. 159 (asc. 1880); Janis
1972, pp. 56-57, 66-67, fig- l7 P- 66; Nora 1973,
p. 28; Cachin 1974, no. 167 (as c. 1880); Reff
1976, repr. (detail) p. 289; 1984-85 Paris, p. 399,
fig. 279 p. 4M-
The Portrait of Edmond
Duranty
cat. nos. 198, 199
Edmond Duranty was born in Paris in 1833.
His first name — actually Louis-Emile — and
the identity of his father were, until the
1940s, the object of some confusion.1 In
1856, Duranty turned to journalism and lit-
erature, joined the staff of Le Figaro, and is-
sued with Champfleury the first number of
Le Realisme. His first and best-known novel,
Les malheurs d'Henriette Gerard, published in
installments in 1858, was followed by a
number of less successful novels and collec-
tions of short stories. These included Les
combats de Francoise Du Quesnoy, once said to
have inspired Degas's Interior (cat. no. 84),
and the novella Le peintre Louis Martin, in
which Degas figures under his own name.2
Nevertheless, it was as a journalist, princi-
pally a literary and art critic, that Duranty
left his mark as one of the important apolo-
gists of the Realist movement and, later, of
Naturalism.
A friend of Manet, Duranty met Zola and
Degas along with most of the circle around
the Cafe Guerbois in about 186 5. 3 As no cor-
respondence between Duranty and Degas
appears to have survived, it is difficult to trace
the progress of their friendship. Duranty
wrote encouragingly if critically on Degas in
his reviews of the Salons of 1869 and 1870
and later noted, "Degas is an artist of rare
intelligence, preoccupied with ideas — which
seems strange to most of his colleagues."4
Duranty and Degas were evidently friends,
sharing not only opinions but also a certain
cast of mind touched with acid, but — as
Marcel Crouzet has pointed out — by 1875
they had not yet reached the degree of close-
ness that would lead Duranty to name Degas
an executor of his will, as he was later to do.5
The extent to which Duranty and Degas
shared an opinion, however, became obvious
in 1876 when Duranty published La nouvelle
peinture (The New Painting), a pamphlet on
the group of artists exhibiting at the Durand-
Ruel galleries. Ostensibly a review of the
second Impressionist exhibition, the text
was the first important document to outline
the aesthetic principles of the Independants,
but it so clearly sanctioned Naturalism and
the position taken by Degas as to lead to the
suspicion that Degas had dictated the text.6
Identified only as "un dessinateur" (a drafts-
man), Degas was unequivocally given the
credit Duranty believed he merited:
Thus, the series of new ideas that led to
the development of this artistic vision
took shape in the mind of a certain drafts-
man [Degas], one of our own, one of the
new painters exhibiting in these galleries,
309
Fig. 146. Edmond Duranty (L517), 1879. Pastel
and tempera, 395/sX39V2 in. (100.9 X 100.3 cm).
The Burrell Collection, Glasgow
a man of uncommon talent and exceedingly
rare spirit. Many artists will not admit that
they have profited from his conceptions
and artistic generosity. If he still cares to
employ his talents unsparingly as a philan-
thropist of art, instead of as a businessman
like so many other artists, he ought to re-
ceive justice. The source from which so
many painters have drawn their inspira-
tion ought to be revealed.7
Before his death on 9 April 1880, Duranty
had only one more opportunity to print a
paragraph about Degas, in a review of the
Impressionist exhibition of 1879. He wrote:
"The astonishing artist, Degas, is at this ex-
hibition with all his brilliance, his whimsy,
his caustic wit. He is a man apart, a man who
is beginning to be very highly esteemed, and
who will be particularly revered in the years
to come, a man to whom twenty other paint-
ers who have been in contact with him owe
their success. It is impossible even to be near
the man without taking on some of his lus-
ter."8 Following Duranty's death, Degas
made every effort to organize a sale of works
of art to raise money for his companion, Paul-
ine Bourgeois, asking Fantin-Latour, Cazin,
and others to help augment Duranty's own
collection. Degas added three works him-
self, among them the small pastel version of
Duranty's portrait.
From the evidence at hand, the evolution
of Degas's great portrait of Duranty in his
library (fig. 146), now in the Burrell Collec-
tion, Glasgow, was as brief as it was direct
and consisted of three preliminary drawings
of the same size. Two of these, in the Met-
ropolitan Museum (cat. nos. 198, 199), are
studies for the figure of Duranty and for the
bookshelves in the background of the paint-
ing. The third drawing, another study of
Duranty but with a more extensive fore-
ground, was dated by Degas "Chez Duranty/
25 Mars 79," thus establishing that the
painting was begun after that date. It has
been convincingly demonstrated by Ronald
Pickvance that the dated drawing was sub-
sequently enlarged with a strip of paper and
worked up by Degas into a pastel (L518,
private collection, Washington, D.C.) that
actually postdates the painting.9 For the figure
of Duranty in the painting, Degas certainly
used the New York drawing (cat. no. 198),
which corresponds in every respect, but he
may also have used the dated drawing, prior
to its transformation, to map out the fore-
ground of the composition.
It is known from a list Degas drafted be-
fore the fourth Impressionist exhibition
opened on 10 April 1879 that he intended to
exhibit the portrait of Duranty, and the por-
trait is listed in the catalogue. 10 Probably be-
cause it was not completed until sometime
after 10 April, the portrait, along with sev-
eral other works announced in the cata-
logue, was not on view throughout the first
part of the exhibition. As late as 26 April, it
was not mentioned by the reviewer Alfred
de Lostalot, one of Duranty's friends, in Les
Beaux-Arts Illustres, but confirmation that it
was finished and exhibited by 1 May can be
inferred from a line in a review by Armand
Silvestre. Proof that it was on view when
the exhibition closed on 10 May appears in
Paul Sebillot's belated review, published on
15 May, where he tersely notes that the por-
trait has "great qualities."11 Duranty's death
a year later, nine days after the opening of
the fifth Impressionist exhibition, prompted
Degas to exhibit the portrait again. On that
occasion it was admired by Huysmans, who
wrote, partly inspired by La nouvelle peinture:
It goes without saying that M. Degas has
avoided those idiotic backgrounds so dear
to painters — the scarlet, olive-green, and
pretty blue draperies, or the wine-colored,
brownish green, and ash-gray blobs that
are such shocking affronts to reality. Be-
cause, in fact, the person to be portrayed
should be depicted at home, on the street,
in a real setting — anywhere except against
a polite backdrop of empty colors. Here
we see M. Duranty surrounded by his
prints and his books, seated at his table,
with his slender, nervous fingers, his
bright, mocking eye, his acute, searching
expression, his wry, English humorist's
air, his dry, joking little laugh — all of it
recalled to me by the painting, in which
the character of this strange analyst of hu-
man nature is so splendidly portrayed.12
1. See Crouzet 1964.
2. For Georges Riviere's views on Les combats de
Francoise Du Quesnoy and alternative proposals of
sources for Interior, see Reff 1976, pp. 202-15.
3. See Crouzet 1964, p. 335, where it is stated that
Degas met Duranty in 1865.
4. Edmond Duranty, Le pays des arts, Paris: G.
Charpentier, 188 1, p. 335.
5. Crouzet 1964, p. 335-
6. For an analysis of the entire question, see Crouzet
1964, pp. 332-38.
7. Edmond Duranty, La nouvelle peinture, 1876,
translation in 1986 Washington, D.C, p: 44.
8. Edmond Duranty, "La quatrieme exposition faite
par un groupe d'artistes independants," La Chro-
nique des Arts, 8, 19 April 1879, p. 127.
9. Pickvance in 1979 Edinburgh, nos, 53-54.
10. Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 68,
under no. 4).
u. Silvestre 1879, p. 53, and Paul Sebillot, "Revue
artistique," La Plume, 15 May 1879, p. 73.
12. Joris-Karl Huysmans, "L'exposition des Indepen-
dants en 1880," reprinted in Huysmans 1883,
p. 117.
198.
Study for Edmond Duranty
1879
Charcoal or dark brown chalk, with touches of
white, on faded blue laid paper
12^8 X i85/sin. (30.8X47.3 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
upper right
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund, 1918 (19.51. 9a)
Exhibited in Paris and New York
Vente 11:242.2
Doubtless with Degas's work in mind, Ed-
mond Duranty outlined in his essay on "the
new painting" a summary of the aspirations
of modern art: "What we need are the spe-
cial characteristics of the modern individual —
in his clothing, in social situations, at home,
or on the street. The fundamental idea gains
sharpness of focus. This is the joining of
torch to pencil, the study of states of mind
reflected by physiognomy and clothing. It is
the study of the relationship of a man to his
home, or the particular influence of his pro-
fession on him, as reflected in the gestures
he makes: the observation of all aspects of
the environment in which he evolves and
develops."1
This statement could have been prompted
by a number of Degas's recent portraits, in-
cluding those of Mme Jeantaud (cat. no. 142)
and Henri Rouart (cat. no. 144), but nowhere
was the concept elaborated to a greater de-
gree than in the portrait of Duranty himself
and the contemporary portraits of Diego
Martelli (cat. nos. 201, 202). Duranty, who
six years earlier — at the age of forty — had
impressed the very young George Moore as
"a quiet elderly man who knew that he had
310
failed and whom failure saddened," is shown
by Degas in his library among his books and
manuscripts, the tools of his profession, his
right arm resting on a large volume.2 Giu-
seppe De Nittis, a great admirer of the paint-
ing, noted that Duranty is "sitting in a typical
position. His finger presses his eyelids as if
he wished in some way to narrow down his
visual range, to focus it, in order to double
its acuity."3 The drawing, supremely ener-
getic though controlled throughout, is touched
up with white highlights in the face and hands,
conveying to a greater degree than the paint-
ing the idea of concentration, almost painful
in its intensity.
1. Edmond Duranty, La nouvelle peinture, 1876, trans-
lation in 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 43-44.
2. George Moore, Reminiscences of the Impressionist
Painters, Dublin: Maunsell, 1906, p. 12. For a dif-
ferently worded similar opinion, see George Moore,
Confessions of a Young Man, New York: Brentano's,
1901, p. 79.
3. Joseph de Nittis [Giuseppe De Nittis], Notes et sou-
venirs du peintre Joseph de Nittis, Paris: Quantin,
1895, p. 192.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 242.2,
in the same lot as no. 242.1 [cat. no. 199], for
Fr 8,000); bought at that sale by the museum.
exhibitions: 1919, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art [new acquisitions] (no catalogue);
1970, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries, no. 381, repr.; 1973-74
Paris, no. 31, repr.; 1977 New York, no. 27 of works
on paper, repr.; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 52, repr.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Burroughs 1919, pp. H5-16;
Riviere 1922-23 (reprint edition 1973, pi. 75); New
York, Metropolitan, 1943, no. 52, repr.; Rewald
1946, repr. p. 342; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, under
no. 517; Rich 195 1, repr. p. 11; "French Drawings,"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XVII :6, Feb-
ruary 1959, repr. p. 169; Boggs 1962, p. 117; Jacob
Bean, 100 European Drawings in The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1964, no. 75, repr.; RefF 1976, p. 50, fig. 26;
RefFi977, P- 3^, fig. 60 p. 33.
199.
Study of bookshelves for
Edmond Duranty
1879
Charcoal or brown chalk, with touches of white,
on faded blue laid paper
18V2 X 12 in. (46.9X30.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
lower right
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund, 1918 (19. 51. 9b)
Exhibited in Paris and New York
Vente 11:242.1
Edmond Duranty's erudition was consider-
able, and in his journalistic career, working —
sometimes simultaneously — for periodicals
as diverse as Paris-Journal and the Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, he wrote articles on topics that
ranged from politics and archaeology to lit-
erature and art. Living in near penury, he
slowly sold his more important books, and
after his death the sale of his library raised
only Fr 3,382.50. This drawing, one of De-
gas's rare still lifes and a study for the right
side of the background in the portrait, rep-
resents the bookshelves in a state of relative
disorder. In the finished painting, the shelves
assumed a more regular, decorative quality.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 242.1,
in the same lot as no. 2422 [cat. no. 198], for Fr 8,000);
bought at that sale by the museum.
exhibitions: 19 19, New York, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art [new acquisitions] (no catalogue); 1973-
74 Paris, no. 32, pi. 60; 1977 New York, no. 27 of
works on paper; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 53.
selected references: Burroughs 1919, p. 116; Jacob
Bean, 100 European Drawings in The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1964, no. 76, repr.
199
311
The Portrait of Diego Martelli
cat. nos. 200-202
In the course of his travels to Florence —
likely during his longest visit, in the winter
of 1858-59 — Degas met a number of Flor-
entine artists, mostly painters, but also a
sculptor, Adriano Cecioni, belonging to the
group commonly known as the Macchiaioli.
He was closest to Telemaco Signorini, his
exact contemporary, but over the years he
met in Paris other members of the group
such as Boldini, De Nittis, and Zandome-
neghi, all of whom he knew well. It is un-
clear, however, when he first met Diego
Martelli (1839-1896), a Florentine writer and
art critic and the principal advocate of the
group. During the late 1860s and early
1 870s, there was considerable movement be-
tween Florence and Paris, with Signorini,
Martelli, and other Macchiaioli spending
periods of time in France; Degas himself
visited Signorini in Florence in 1875. In the
spring of 1878, at the time of the Exposition
Universelle, Diego Martelli came to Paris
for his fourth visit, an extended stay of some
thirteen months. Through the circle of art-
ists at the Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes he
met Desboutin, already a Florentine by adop-
tion, and Pissarro, who became a friend and
from whom he purchased two landscapes.
The beginnings of Martelli's connection
with Degas appear to have been more cau-
tious. In a letter written on Christmas Day
1878 to Matilde Gioli, the wife of the paint-
er Francesco Gioli, he mentioned friends in
Paris, and Degas, "with whom I am in dan-
ger of becoming a friend, a man of wit and
an artist of merit, threatened by blindness
. . . and who consequently spends hours in
a dark and desperate mood, matching the
gravity of his condition."1 In the spring of
1879, he saw a good deal of Degas, and it
was at that time that the painter, more or
less simultaneously with Federico Zando-
meneghi, began a portrait of Martelli.2
In late March, Martelli wrote to Matilde
Gioli again. He enclosed a poster, from De-
gas, of the fourth Impressionist exhibition,
noted that the exhibition was due to open
on 10 April, and told her that among the
works exhibited would be two portraits of
himself, one by Zandomeneghi and one by
Degas.3 Martelli left Paris in April, proba-
bly shortly after the exhibition opened.
Once in Italy, he published a review of the
exhibition in two successive issues of Roma
Artistica and wrote his famous paper on Im-
pressionism, eventually delivered on 16 Janu-
ary 1880 at the Circolo Filologico in Livorno.4
When Martelli left Paris, Degas had in his
studio two different portraits of him, one
now in Edinburgh (cat. no. 201) and the
other in Buenos Aires (cat. no. 202), neither
of which Martelli was to see again. In the
mid- 1 890s, Martelli regularly received news
of Degas from Zandomeneghi, and received
as well a photograph by the "tiresome Degas"
of Albert Bartholome and Zandomeneghi
posing as river gods in the park at Dampierre,
but every effort he made to obtain his por-
trait from Degas failed.5 In 1894, Zandome-
neghi informed him that "a long time ago,
I asked Degas tactfully for your portrait so
that I could send it to you along with the one
of you I did. Naturally Degas refused, first
for the sake of refusing it, then because he
remembered that Duranty disapproved of
the foreshortening of the legs."6 And in
1895, he warned him again: "Don't count
on anything."7
Because of its freer style, the painting in
Buenos Aires has long been assumed to be
the full-scale study for the more finished
painting in Edinburgh.8 In recent years,
however, Ronald Pickvance has shown that
the works were two different, successive
stages of the same project.9 In addition to a
highly finished charcoal-and-chalk study of
Martelli's head (III: 160. 1, Cleveland Muse-
um of Art), a number of preliminary draw-
ings are known to be connected with the
paintings. The most schematic are sketches
in pencil in Notebook 3 1,10 one of them a
compositional study, page 25. An indepen-
dent sketch (fig. 148) in the National Gallery
of Scotland is also a compositional study on
a sheet evidently detached from a notebook
the same size as Notebook 3 1 . Each of the
two compositional studies relates to one of
the paintings. The sketch on page 25 in Note-
book 31, though drawn in haste, is unmistak-
ably the preliminary design for the portrait in
Edinburgh, while the detached sheet (fig. 148),
with a horizontal composition, is close to
the painting in Buenos Aires.
Three additional studies of Martelli also
present variations. Two drawings squared
for transfer, one in the Fogg Art Museum
(111:344.2) and the other in a private collec-
tion in London (fig. 147), show Martelli
seated and identically dressed and differ
only in emphasis. In the London drawing,
the feet are sketchy but the head and torso
are carefully worked out and the outline of
the sofa and the frame above it are indicated;
like the preliminary study for Edmond Du-
ranty's portrait, it is inscribed and dated
"Chez Martelli/ 3 Avril 79/Degas" — which
places it, as pointed out by Jean Sutherland
Boggs, only seven days before the opening
of the fourth Impressionist exhibition.11 The
full-length study in the Fogg, in which Mar-
telli's head and arms are less defined, is more
specific in the description of the lower part
of his figure, particularly the feet. Finally, an-
other squared study of Martelli (cat. no. 200)
in the Fogg Art Museum, identified by Boggs
as a study for the Buenos Aires version, shows
him in the same pose, but only from the waist
up and dressed in the waistcoat he wears in
the Buenos Aires painting. In Pickvance's
reconstruction of the sequence, the compo-
sitional study in Edinburgh (fig. 148) with
the half-length study of Martelli in the Fogg
(cat. no. 200) served for the painting in Bue-
nos Aires, which, in his opinion, almost cer-
tainly preceded the portrait in Edinburgh.
The compositional sketch in Notebook 31,
with the full-length London and Fogg draw-
ings (fig. 147 and III: 3 44. 2), followed close-
ly as studies for the Edinburgh painting.
Despite the great disparity in style, it is
difficult to think that the two paintings
were not executed in rapid succession in the
manner suggested by Pickvance. Martelli
never returned to Paris, and there is no rea-
son to suppose that the Buenos Aires ver-
sion was painted several years later from
drawings. It could be speculated that be-
cause Duranty had made a critical remark
on the rendering of Martelli's legs in the
Edinburgh version, Degas attempted a sec-
ond portrait after Martelli's departure, omit-
ting the legs, which may explain Martelli's
curious request, through Zandomeneghi,
for "his portrait" rather than for one of his
portraits. But the evidence of the paintings
themselves argues against it: the portrait in
Edinburgh, so much more resolved, can only
be the final version.
Other questions remain unanswered. If
the drawing dated 3 April 1879 (fig. 147)
gives a clue to the date when the Edinburgh
version was begun, there is no clear indication
when it was finished. Degas was evidently
working on it at the same time he was paint-
ing Duranty' s portrait and could scarcely
have finished it for exhibition on 10 April.
Both the Duranty and the Martelli portraits
appear on the list Degas drafted in anticipa-
tion of the exhibition as well as in the printed
catalogue.12 Martelli himself was silent on
the subject in his exhibition review — as he
was on the subject of Zandomeneghi's por-
trait— possibly out of modesty or because
he had not seen the painting exhibited. All
other reviewers were equally silent, and,
once again, there is only Armand Silvestre's
word that by 1 May 1879, all of Degas's
works were in the exhibition.13 Which of
the two portraits was ultimately exhibited
remains in doubt.
1. Baccio M. Bacci, L'8oo dei macchiaioli e Diego
Martelli, Florence: L. Gonnelli, 1969, p. 116.
2. The Zandomeneghi portrait, doubtless the pic-
ture signed, dated, and inscribed "A Diego Mar-
telli/Zandomeneghi 79," is now in the Galleria
d'Arte Moderna, Florence.
3. Bacci, op. cit., p. 117, places the letter before a
letter to Matilde Gioli dated 28 March 1879. The
existence of the poster, however, suggests early
April — before 9 April, when the poster was al-
ready prominently displayed throughout Paris.
4. For a recent reprint of the review, originally pub-
lished on 27 June and 7 July 1879 in French, see
Diego Martelli, Les impressionnistes et Vart modeme
(edited by Francesca Errico), Paris: Vilo, 1979,
pp. 28-33.
5. Letter from Zandomeneghi to Martelli, Paris, No-
vember 1895, in Lettere dei macchiaioli (edited by
Lamberto Vitali), Turin: Einaudi, 1953, p. 313.
312
6. Letter from Zandomeneghi to Martelli, Paris, No-
vember 1894, in Lettere dei macchiaioli, op. cit.,
P- 304.
7. Letter from Zandomeneghi to Martelli, Paris," 3 1
August 1895, in Lettere dei macchiaioli, op. cit.,
P- 3io.
8. Theodore RefF, however, has called the Buenos
Aires painting "a second version"; see RefF 1976,
P- 132.
9. See Pickvance in 1979 Edinburgh, p. 50 and
nos. 55-60.
10. RefF 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, pp. 24,
25, 27). In addition, Jean Sutherland Boggs and
Theodore RefF have tentatively recognized in the
same notebook on pages 1 and 3 studies for the
head of Diego Martelli (see Boggs 1958, p. 242,
fig. 40). The studies appear to be of an altogether
different person.
11. 1967 Saint Louis, nos. 88, 89.
12. RefF 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 68,
under no. 1).
13. Silvestre 1879, p. 53.
200.
Study for Diego Martelli
1879
Black chalk heightened with white chalk on bufF
wove paper, squared for transfer
I73/4X nViin. (45 x28.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Harvard University Art Museums (Fogg Art
Museum), Cambridge, Massachusetts. Be-
quest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs (1965.255)
Vente III 13 44. 1
Presumably the earliest and certainly the
most expressive of the three studies of Diego
Martelli seated, this drawing was squared
for transfer onto canvas for the portrait in
Buenos Aires (cat. no. 202). Given that Mar-
Fig. 147. Study for Diego Martelli
(1 1326), dated 3 April 1879. Charcoal
heightened with white, i73/4X 11V2 in.
(45 x 29 cm). Private collection, London
200
telli's head is inclined forward in the study
in London and in the other study, in the
Fogg Art Museum (fig. 147 and III 13 44. 2),
which differ in this respect from the paint-
ing in Edinburgh (cat. no. 201), it is likely
that Degas used this drawing for the head in
both the Edinburgh and the Buenos Aires
portraits. As in the stylistically similar studies
for the portrait of Edmond Duranty, the
head is finished to a greater degree and has
been touched up with white-chalk highlights.
There are slight revisions to the arms and a
major adjustment to Martelli's waist, giving
him a larger frame, consistent with his build
as it appears in photographs of the period.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 344.1,
in the same lot with no. 344.2, for Fr 850). Cesar M.
de Hauke, New York; bought by Paul J. Sachs, 1929;
his bequest to the museum 1965.
exhibitions: 1930, New York, Jacques Seligmann
and Co., 27 October- 15 November, Drawings by
313
Degas, no. 9; 193 1 Cambridge, Mass., no. 17b; 1933
Northampton, no. 27; 1934, Cambridge, Mass.,
Fogg Art Museum, French Drawings and Prints of the
Nineteenth Century, no. 22; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 82,
repr.; 1940, Washington, D.C., Phillips Memorial
Gallery, 7 April-i May, Great Modem Drawings,
no. 13; 1940, San Francisco, Golden Gate Interna-
tional Exposition, Palace of Fine Arts, Master Draw-
ings: An Exhibition of Drawings from American Museums
and Private Collections, no. 21, repr.; 194 1, Detroit In-
stitute of Arts, 1 May-i June, Masterpieces of 19th and
20th Century Drawings, no. 24; 1943, Santa Barbara
Museum of Art, Master Drawings, Fogg Museum; 1945,
New York, Buchholz Gallery, 2-27 January, Edgar
Degas: Bronzes, Drawings, Pastels, no. 69; 1947 Cleve-
land, no. 68, repr. ; 1947, New York, Century Club,
Loan Exhibition; 1947 Washington, D.C., no. 16;
1952, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
French Drawings from the Fogg Art Museum; 1955
Paris, Orangerie, no. 71, repr.; 1956, Waterville, Me.,
Colby College, Miller Library, 27 April-23 May, An
Exhibition of Drawings Presented by the Art Department,
Colby College, no. 31; i960 New York, no. 91; 1965-
67 Cambridge, Mass. , no. 6o, repr. ; 1974 Boston,
no. 85; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 59, repr.
selected references: Mongan 1932, p. 68, repr.;
Cambridge, Mass., Fogg, 1940, p. 362, no. 673,
fig. 349; Henry S. Francis, "Drawings by Degas,"
Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, XLIV, De-
cember 1957, p. 216; Rosenberg 1959, pp. xxiii, no,
pi. 205 (revised edition 1974, p. 148, pi. 269); Wick
!959» PP- 87-101; Boggs 1962, p. 123; Lamberto Vi-
tali, "Three Italian Friends of Degas," Burlington
Magazine, CV:723, June 1963, p. 269, fig. 27; Jean
Leymarie, Dessins de la periode impressionniste de Manet
d Renoir, Geneva: Skira, 1969, p. 43, repr. p. 45; Voj-
tech and Thea Jirat-Wasiutynski, "The Uses of Char-
coal in Drawing," Arts Magazine, LV:2, October
1980, p. 131, fig. 6 p. 130.
201.
Diego Martelli
1879
Oil on canvas
43 y2 x 393/4 in. (no x 100 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
(NG1785)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 519
Among Degas's greatest portraits, the Edin-
burgh version of Diego Martelli is also a
striking example of his interest in unconven-
tional angles of sight. At this time, perhaps
not long before January 1879, he made notes
about the construction of tiers all around his
studio that would enable him to draw from
both above and below the subject. He fol-
lowed with the remark, "For a portrait, place
the model at the lower level and work from
the level above, in order to accustom your-
self to retain the forms and expressions and
never to draw or paint immediately "l The
high viewpoint in this portrait is no differ-
ent from that in the Buenos Aires version
(cat. no. 202) except for the extraordinary
revelation of Martelli' s legs, shown in sharp
perspective, and the abruptly receding floor.
The composition, however, is very differ-
ent, with a clear break between Martelli and
the table and a redistribution of the geomet-
ric forms in the background, where the curve
of the sofa answers the curve of a mysteri-
ous framed object, perhaps a map of Paris.2
The still life on the table, easily the most
inspired interpretation of the miscellanea
scattered about a writer's person, is consistent
with the artist's view of portrait painting as
an exercise extending beyond the recording
of mere physical traits. Martelli's slippers,
lined with red, are the visual counterpart of
another note Degas made: "Include all types
of everyday objects positioned in a context
to express the life of the man or woman —
corsets that have just been removed, for ex-
ample, and that retain the shape of the
wearer's body."3
The correction in black outline at the
juncture of Martelli's legs and the rework-
ing of his left knee may have been prompted
by Duranty's comments on the work.4
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 210).
2. See Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture, 51st edition,
Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1957,
p. 63, where the object is identified as a map. For
Theodore Reff's discussion of the question, see
Reff 1976, pp. 131-32.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 208).
4. See "The Portrait of Diego Martelli," p. 312.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 58,
for Fr 30,500); bought by Dr. Georges Viau, Paris;
bought by Paul Rosenberg and Co., Paris; with Reid
and Lefevre, London, 1920; Mrs. R. A. Workman,
London. With Knoedler and Co. , London and New
York, by 1930. With Reid and Lefevre, London;
bought by the museum 1932.
exhibitions: 1879 Paris, no. 57; (?)i920, Glasgow,
Alex Reid and Lefevre Galleries, January-February,
no. 148; 1922, London, Burlington Fine Arts Club,
summer, French School of the Last Hundred Years,
no. 38; 1923, Manchester, Agnew and Sons Galleries,
Loan Exhibition of Masterpieces of French Art of the 19th
Century, no. 16; 1925, Kirkcaldy, Museum and Art
Gallery, June, The Kirkcaldy Art Inauguration Loan
Exhibition, no. 39; 1926-27, London, National Gallery,
Millbank (Tate), on loan; 1930, Paris, Galerie Georges
Petit, 1 5-30 June, Cent ans de peinture francaise, no. 14;
1930, New York, Knoedler Galleries, October-
November, Masterpieces by Nineteenth Century French
Painters, no. 4, repr.; 193 1 Cambridge, Mass., no. 8,
lent by Knoedler and Co. (as 1880); 1932 London,
no. 347 (433); 1937 Paris, Palais National, no. 306;
1952 Amsterdam, no. 18; 1952 Edinburgh, no. 17,
pi. X; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 60, pi. 13 (color).
selected references: Lemoisne 19 12, p. 86; Lafond
19 1 8-19, II, p. 15; Walter Sickert, "French Art of the
Nineteenth Century — London," Burlington Magazine,
XL:23i, June 1922, p. 265; Coquiot 1924, p. 218,
repr.; James B. Manson, "The Workman Collection:
Modern Foreign Art," Apollo, III, 1926, p. 142, repr.
(color); Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 519; Catalogue of
Paintings and Sculpture, 51st edition, Edinburgh: Na-
tional Gallery of Scotland, 1957, p. 63; Boggs 1962,
pp. 57, 123, pi. 102; Lamberto Vitali, "Three Italian
Friends of Degas," Burlington Magazine, CV:723, June
1963. PP- 269-70; The Maitland Gift and Related
Pictures, Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland,
1963, pp. 22-23, repr. p. 22; Minervino 1974, no. 556;
Reff 1976, pp. 131-32, fig. 94; Piero Dini, Diego
Martelli, Florence: U Torchio, 1978, pp. 144-45, l$S
nn. 64, 66; Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23,
pp. 1, 24, 25, 27, 68); Sutton 1986, p. 290, fig. 277
p. 287.
202.
Diego Martelli
1879
Oil on canvas
293/4 x 455/s in. (75. 5 x 116 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Museo National de Bellas Artes,
Buenos Aires (2706)
Lemoisne 520
In composition, the portrait largely follows
the diagrammatic sketch in Edinburgh
(fig. 148), with two conspicuous exceptions:
the sofa does not appear in the drawing, and
the background wall recedes slightly to the
right whereas in the drawing it recedes
sharply to the left. For the portrait, Degas
returned to a scheme he had used a decade
earlier, particularly in the geometrically di-
vided background, and he evidently adjusted
the composition slightly after it had been
blocked out. He extended the table to the
left in order to connect it with Martelli's
body, in the same relationship apparent in
the drawing in the Fogg Art Museum (cat.
no. 200), and covered part of the extreme
right end of the blue sofa to avoid an exag-
gerated horizontal emphasis.
The handling of paint, brilliant and free
for some of the background and in the still
life with papers, pipe, pencil, inkstand, and
Martelli's red skullcap, is tight and method-
ical in the figure and remaining accessories.
The portrait does not, therefore, suggest a
sketch or an unfinished work.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 35,
for Fr 17,500); bought by Dr. Georges Viau, Paris;
Wildenstein et Cie, Paris; Jacques Seligmann, New
York, by 1933; bought for the museum by the Aso-
ciacion Amigos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes,
December 1939.
exhibitions: 1933 Northampton, no. 11; 1936 Phila-
delphia, no. 30, repr.; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 31;
1938 New York, no. 8; 1939-40 Buenos Aires, no. 41;
1962, Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes,
September-October, El impresionismo fiances en las
colecciones argentinas, p. 17, repr. (color); 1975-76,
Munich, Haus der Kunst, 18 October 1975-
3H
315
202
Fig. 148. Study for Diego Martelli, 1879. Pencil,
43/sX65/8 in. (11. 1 X 16.8 cm). National Gallery
of Scotland, Edinburgh
4 January 1976, Toskanische Impressionen, no. 15,
repr.; 1984-85 Paris, no. 13, fig. 88 (color) p. 107.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Lafond I918-I9, II, p. 1 5»
Coquiot 1924, p. 218; Fosca 1930, p. 377; L' Amour de
I'Art, XIX, October 1938, repr. (color) cover; Retrato
de Diego Martelli (edited by Jose M. Lamarca Guer-
rico), Buenos Aires: Francisco A. Colombo, 1940,
passim; Julio Rinaldini, Edgar Degas, Buenos Aires:
Poseidon, 1943, p. 28; Lassaigne 1945, p. 47; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 520; Oscar Reutersward, "An Un-
intentional Exegete of Impressionism: Some Obser-
vations on Edmond Duranty and His 'La nouvelle
peinture,'" Konsthistorisk Tedskrift, IV, 1949, p. 113,
fig. 2; Boggs 1962, p. 123; Lamberto Vitali, "Three
Italian Friends of Degas," Burlington Magazine, CV:723,
June 1963, p. 269 n. 14; 1967 Saint Louis, p. 142; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 557; Reff 1976, pp. 132, 317 n. 129;
1979 Edinburgh, under nos. 55-58, 60.
203.
Portraits at the Stock Exchange
c. 1878-79
Oil on canvas
393/s x 32V4 in. (100 X 82 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2444)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 499
The name and address of Ernest May appear
for the only time in one of Degas's note-
books dated 1875-78 by Theodore Reflf.1 It
is likely that May and Degas met toward the
end of this period, possibly through Gustave
Caillebotte. In a letter to Caillebotte in early
spring 1879 about the imminent fourth Im-
pressionist exhibition, Degas wrote that they
would meet next evening at Ernest May's
for dinner.2 According to Georges Riviere,
Caillebotte and May were to provide part of
the capital for Le Jour et la Nuit, the journal
that Degas, Bracquemond, and others de-
cided to publish shortly after the end of the
exhibition of 18 79. 3 Whether this is true or
not, later in the year Degas acted as inter-
mediary in May's purchase of a cartoon by
Bracquemond, at which time he gave Bracque-
mond a brief but biting description of May:
"I shall see him in a day or two. He is get-
ting married, and is going to take a town
house and arrange his little collection as a
gallery. He is a Jew, and has organized a sale
for the benefit of the wife of Monchot [sic],
who went mad. He is a man who is throwing
himself into the arts, you understand."4
May, a successful financier, was born in
1845 and was thus about ten years younger
than Degas. The portrait that he commis-
sioned from the sculptor Francois-Paul Ma-
chault was exhibited in plaster at the Salon
of 1876 (no. 3445) and again, as a bronze,
two years later (no. 4426). The sale orga-
nized to help Machault's wife was an obvi-
ous act of charity on behalf of someone May
knew, exactly the sort of gesture Degas him-
316
self was to perform a year later for the widow
of Edmond Duranty, and was not necessari-
ly connected with his considerable interest
in painting, which, over the years, led to a
substantial collection. His earlier, perhaps
more conservative streak had prompted him
to buy a few old masters and the type of
eighteenth-century pictures that would be
seen in any nineteenth-century town house.
About 1878, however, like Jean-Baptiste
Faure, he began buying works by Manet
and the Impressionists as well as a splendid
series of early Corots that rivaled those in
the Rouart collection.5 During late 1879 and
1880, he purchased from Degas, through an
unidentified dealer, Dance School (L399, Shel-
burne Museum, Shelburne, Vt.), The Re-
hearsal on the Stage (cat. no. 125), and Dancers
at Their Toilette (cat. no. 220).
As Degas noted in his letter to Bracque-
mond, May married and moved to Fau-
bourg Saint-Honore, also spending some
time at his country estate. Theodore Reff has
shown that after May's first child, Etienne,
was born on 29 May 188 1, Degas attempted
a pastel portrait of Mme May seated next to
the baby's cradle (L656). The picture was
left unfinished, though May kept it along
with a study for Mme May's head (L657)
and his own two portraits. In 1890, when
he decided to dispose of a great part of his
collection, the portraits were not included in
the sale and he bought in The Rehearsal on
the Stage.6 A member of the Conseil des Amis
du Louvre, in 1923 he willed his oil portrait
by Degas, along with a series of Impression-
ist paintings, to the Louvre, and the collec-
tion entered the museum after his death in
October 1925. 7
There are two versions of this curious
portrait: a smaller, compositionally simpler
preparatory pastel (L392), and this oil
painting — one hesitates to call it finished —
in the Musee d'Orsay, generally dated 1878-
79. In somewhat aberrant fashion, Lemoisne
dated the pastel c. 1876, two to three years
before the oil version, with the indication
that it was exhibited in 1876 in the second
Impressionist exhibition under no. 38 as
"Portrait de M. E.M. . . Though admit-
tedly identical, the initials used in 1876
stood for those of Eugene Manet, whose
portrait (L339) Degas exhibited that year
along with one of Manet's sister-in-law,
Yves Gobillard-Morisot (cat. no. 87). 8
There is no reason to doubt that the pastel
was executed shortly before the oil painting
and thus should also be dated 1878-79. In-
deed, as far as is known, there is no proof
that Degas knew May as early as 1876-77.
It is probable that preparations for this
portrait, never mentioned in Degas' s corre-
spondence, took place in late 1878 or early
1879. The pastel study is enlarged at the top
and bottom with two strips of paper, sug-
gesting that at first Degas intended a hori-
zontal composition with the figures cut off
at the knees and the head of the figure at the
extreme right touching the upper limit of
the design. The final, vertical format was
eventually adopted, but even this underwent
transformations when translated to oil. The
essential elements of the composition neverthe-
less appear in the pastel. Under the portico
of the stock exchange, a deferential secretary
or usher presents May with a document,
likely a financial statement. Behind May, his
companion — identified by Lemoisne as a M.
Bolatre, an associate of May's — leans for-
ward to have a better look at the document.9
Degas retained this basic structure in the
painting but expanded on it. All the figures
were moved slightly upward, and the angle
of vision was rendered more acute with the
inclusion of Bolatre's left foot in the compo-
203
sition. Other figures, barely indicated in the
pastel, were added in the left background,
and two additional ones were introduced at
the right, considerably animating the scene.
From the very obvious pentimenti, it seems
Degas added at the last the figure in the right
foreground, with the head outside the con-
fines of the painting, though he had second
thoughts about it. Originally, the figure had
an arm behind its back, and an attempt to
change it was clearly abandoned, leaving a
fairly large part of the composition unresolved.
The apparently chaotic but highly evoca-
tive composition is held firmly in place by
the architectural elements, which astutely re-
peat the format of the painting. May, at the
center and recognizably the focus of the work,
is surrounded by figures from the hectic
world of the stock exchange. But the faces
of the secondary figures are either concealed
or deliberately left vague so as not to dis-
317
tract attention from May. It comes as a sur-
prise to discover that May was only thirty-
four when he posed for the portrait, his
long, pale, unruffled face appearing older
than his years. It is a distinguished face that
could well emerge from a painting by El
Greco, whom Degas admired. There is no
reason to think that Degas's anti-Semitism,
intolerably pronounced many years later
during the Dreyfus Affair, interfered with
his perception of his sitter. Had this been the
case, May would not have bequeathed the
portrait to the Louvre. But something of
Degas's sentiments about the stock exchange
and the world of finance, a world he knew
only too well, marks the grotesque figures
in the left background.
According to the catalogues of the fourth
and fifth Impressionist exhibitions, Degas
exhibited this canvas both in 1879 and in
1880. This seems unusual for a work that
was not for sale, and can be compared only
to the second, unannounced appearance of
Duranty's portrait in the exhibition of 1880,
as a homage to him, a few days after his
death. Ronald Pickvance has tentatively
proposed that a reference by Louis Leroy, in
a review of the 1879 exhibition, to a "man's
hat, under which, after the most conscien-
tious researches, I found it impossible to
find a head," may have referred to this por-
trait.10 It is more probable that Degas intended
to exhibit the portrait in 1879, listed it in the
catalogue, and then, either because it was
not ready or because he undertook to change
it, failed to show it. This would explain its
presence in the exhibition of 1880, though
not the critical silence that surrounded it.
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 27 (BN, Carnet 3, p. 34).
2. See Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte: sa vie et son oeuvre,
Paris: La Bibliotheque des Arts, 1978, p. 243,
where the letter is dated 1877. The likelier date of
1879 was proposed by Ronald Pickvance in 1986
Washington, D.C., pp. 247, 263 n. 26.
3. Riviere 1935, p. 75. However, if May was indeed
one of the backers of the project it seems remark-
able that Bracquemond should need an explana-
tion of who he was. See the letter cited in note 4.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, XIX, pp. 46-47; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 28, pp. 51-52 (translation revised).
5. See "Necrologie: Ernest May," Le Bulletin de
I'Art Ancien et Moderne, 724, January 1926, p. 16;
M. Rostand, "Quelques amateurs de Tepoque
impressionniste" (unpublished thesis, Ecole du
Louvre, Paris, 1955).
6. See Catalogue de tableaux anciens et modemes,
aquarelles, pastels et dessins composant Vimportante
collection de M. E. May, Paris: Galerie Georges
Petit, 4 June 1890.
7. See "Donation May au Musee du Louvre,"
V Amour del' Art, March 1926, pp. 112-13.
8. The proof is to be found in a letter from Degas
to Berthe Morisot, dating from April 1876 but
misdated April 1874 in Morisot 1957, in which
the artist asked Morisot's permission to exhibit
the two portraits. See Morisot 1950, pp. 93-94;
Morisot 1957, p. 97.
9. It has been suggested by Roy McMullen that Bo-
latre is "whispering a tip into his ear," which is
most unlikely; see McMullen 1984, p. 301.
10. See Pickvance in 1986 Washington, D.C., p. 257
and no. 73.
provenance: Ernest May, Paris, from 1879; his be-
quest to the Musee du Louvre, retaining life interest,
1923; entered the Louvre 1926.
exhibitions: (?) 1879 Paris, no. 61 (as "Portraits, a la
Bourse. Appartient a M. E.M. . . ."); 1880 Paris,
no. 35; 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 69; 1946, Paris,
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Les Goncourt et leur temps,
no. 593; 1952, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, opened
12 December, Emile Zola, no. 422; 1969 Paris, no. 30;
1979 Edinburgh, no. 49, pi, 11 (color); 1986 Wash-
ington, D.C., no. 73, repr. (color).
selected references: Kunst und Kunstler, XXIV,
1925-26, repr. p. 400; Max J, Friedlander, "Das Ma-
lerische," Kunst und Kunstler, XXVI, 1927-28, repr.
p. 13; Rouart 1945, pp. 42, 73 n. 58; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 499; Cabanne 1957, p. 113, pi. 72;
Boggs 1962, pp. 54, 57, 59, no, 123, pi. 101; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 454; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pein-
tures, 1986, III, p. 196; Sutton 1986, p. 216, pi. 204
p. 218.
204, 205.
Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at the
Louvre and Woman in Street Clothes
Among the twenty-five works listed by
Degas in 1879 in the catalogue of the fourth
Impressionist exhibition were five objects
related to the decorative arts — four fans and
an Essai de decoration, detrempe (decorative
scheme in distemper).1 The Essai de decoration
appears also on a draft list for the exhibition
that contains an additional item of apparendy
decorative nature, a Portrait sur abat-jour (por-
trait on a lampshade), in the end not exhib-
ited and therefore not discussed by any of
the reviewers.2 Lemoisne, along with a great
many other scholars, assumed for some
time that a pastel drawing inscribed "Por-
traits in a Frieze to Decorate an Apartment"
(fig. 149) was the work exhibited, until
Ronald Pickvance pointed out that the me-
dium did not correspond and that Portraits in
a Frieze was exhibited hors catalogue one
year later in the fifth Impressionist exhibi-
tion.3 The Essai de decoration, presumably
lost, has thus far evaded identification, but
it is generally believed that Portraits in a
Frieze was in some manner related to the
project. Furthermore, there are reasons to
think that Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at the
Louvre and Woman in Street Clothes (cat.
nos. 204, 205) were also connected with the
scheme.
The question of the nature of these works
is complicated by the difficulty of naming
the figures in the drawings. The ravishing
Woman in Street Clothes has been recognized
by Pickvance as a portrait of the actress Ellen
Andree, and photographs of her support his
interpretation.4 Portraits in a Frieze represents
three female figures in different costumes:
one, standing to the left, so far unidentified;
another, seated at the center, doubtless the
American painter Mary Cassatt; and a third,
standing to the right, usually identified as
Ellen Andree on the strength of a closely re-
lated etching (RS40) identified by Arsene
Alexandre in 191 8. 5 Inasmuch as such mat-
ters can be judged, there is no similarity be-
tween the figures identified by Pickvance
and Alexandre as Ellen Andree, and it would
be very difficult to claim they are the same
person. There is almost universal agreement
that Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre
does indeed represent Mary Cassatt, and
her features are certainly recognizable in the
figure facing the viewer. However, the possi-
bility that the woman might be Ellen Andree
was raised because of the close relationship
between this figure and the one appearing at
the right in Portraits in a Frieze and in the
etching: the women have the same profiles
and wear the same costume. If Alexandre's
identification of the etching is correct — and
this appears highly doubtful — it follows
that the related figures in both Portraits in a
Frieze and Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at the
Louvre represent Ellen Andree.
More enigmatic is the relationship of the
drawings to each other. All three show full-
length figures against a neutral background
and are executed in the same medium — char-
coal and pastel — on gray paper. Pickvance
has indicated that Woman in Street Clothes is
the same height as Portraits in a Frieze and,
hence, that the two might be related as studies
for the same decorative scheme. Theodore
Reff has concurred with this hypothesis.6
A possible connection with three or four
additional works united by formal as well as
conceptual links remains to be explored.
One, Woman Reading a Catalogue (fig. 150), a
preparatory drawing for the pastel and etched
versions of At the Louvre (cat. nos. 206, 207,
fig. 114), has already been associated with
Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre by
Jean Sutherland Boggs.7 A second, Woman
in a Mauve Dress and Straw Hat (L651), pos-
sibly posed for by Ellen Andree, has not been
previously linked with the others but is the
same size as Woman Reading a Catalogue. The
third is the famous Mary Cassatt at the Louvre
(L582, Philadelphia Museum of Art), a study
for At the Louvre drawn on an entirely dif-
ferent scale but identical in size to Two Studies
of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre. As with the
previous group of works, all three drawings
are in pastel on gray paper. Finally, there is
an untraced work described in a sale cata-
logue of 1954: "Two studies of a seated
woman; in the center, the same figure stand-
318
ing (Mary Cassatt?). Charcoal and pastel.
H 6 1 cm; L 94 cm."8 Larger than Portraits in
a Frieze, the drawing may have been not
unlike it.
All these works — except the lost draw-
ing— share characteristics beyond type,
technique, and size. They all represent
women in street dress looking at something
(probably works of art), consulting a book
(likely a catalogue), or carrying a book. All
could be visitors in a museum. Two of the
figures were evidently used for the various
versions of At the Louvre of 1879-80 (cat.
nos. 206, 207; fig. 114), but any of the other
figures could have served equally well. In
this light, it is tempting to consider them as
a stock of figures assembled for some unreal-
ized or lost composition with visitors in a mu-
seum and eventually used for At the Louvre
(cat. no. 206).
In a notebook of 1859-64, Degas twice
stated ideas for decorative projects, an alle-
gorical scheme with figures half life-size for
a library and "Portrait of a Family in a
Frieze." For the latter, he added: "Propor-
tions of the figures barely one meter. There
could be two compositions, one of the fami-
ly in town, the other in the country."9
Portraits in a Frieze appears to be the much
later realization of such an idea, though one
wonders to what extent the term "portrait"
can be understood in the common sense of
the word. Despite the inscription, the figures
in Portraits in a Frieze preclude a satisfactory
interpretation. The frieze either represents
Mary Cassatt twice, in two different cos-
tumes, a curious device for a portrait, or
joins Mary Cassatt with Ellen Andree — a
less than likely association.
1. 1879 Paris, no. 67.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 68).
The curious Portrait sur abat-jour appears listed under
no. 19 on p, 67 of Notebook 3 1 .
3. 1979 Edinburgh, no. 68.
4. Ibid., no. 69.
5. Alexandre 19 18, p. 14. Alexandre's identification
was adopted by all later scholars; however, the dry-
point was listed in the Vente Estampes, no. 141, as
"Femme debout, au livre." The similarity between
the etching and a sculpture by Degas, The School-
girl (RLXXIV), has led Theodore Reff to tenta-
tively propose that Ellen Andree also posed for
the sculpture, which he dated 1881; see Reff 1976,
p. 260. However, according to Jeanne Fevre, the
artist's niece, the model for the sculpture (and,
hence, for the drawings connected with it in
Notebook 34 [BN, Carnet 2, passim]) was her sis-
ter Anne Fevre, who also posed for The Apple
Pickers (cat. no. 231); see Jeanne Fevre's unpub-
lished, undated letter, Archives, Musee du Louvre,
Paris, kindly communicated to the author by
Henri Loyrette.
6. See Pickvance in 1979 Edinburgh, no. 69; Reff, in
Brame and Reff 1984, no. 104.
7. See Boggs in 1967 Saint Louis, nos. 86, 87.
8. Drouot, Paris, 20 December 1954, no. 70.
9. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 123,
204).
204.
Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at
the Louvre
c. 1879
Charcoal and pastel on gray wove paper
i83/4 X 233/4 in. (47. 8 X 63 cm)
Signed in black pastel upper right: Degas
Private collection, U.S.A.
Brame and Reff 105
provenance: Harris Whittemore, Naugatuck, Conn.;
transferred to J. H. Whittemore Co., Naugatuck,
Conn., 1926 (sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 19-
20 May 1948, no. 84). Siegfried Kramarsky, New
York; private collection.
exhibitions: 1935 Boston, no. 125; 1939, Boston,
Museum of Fine Arts, 9 June-10 September, Art in
New England: Paintings, Drawings, Prints from Private
Collections in New England, no. 158; 1944-45, Wash-
ington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 19 November
1944-8 May 1945, French Drawings from the French
Government, the Myron A. Hqfer Collection, and the
Harris Whittemore Collection, no. 68; 1947 Washing-
ton, D.C., no. 17, repr.; 1959, New York, Columbia
University, at M. Knoedler and Co., 13 October-7
November, Great Master Drawings of Seven Centuries,
no. 72, repr. ; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 87, repr. ; 1978
New York, no. 9, repr. (color).
selected references: Brame and Reff 1984, no. 105.
205.
Woman in Street Clothes
c. 1879
Pastel on gray wove paper
i87/s X 17 in. (48 X 43 cm)
Signed in blue pencil upper right: Degas
Collection of Walter M. Feilchenfeldt, Zurich
Brame and Reff 104
provenance: Due de Cadaval, Pau; Paul Rosenberg,
New York; present owner.
exhibitions: 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 29, repr. (color);
1979 Edinburgh, no. 68, repr.; 1984 Tubingen, no.
135, repr. (color).
selected references: Thomson 1979, p. 677, fig. 94;
Brame and Reff 1984, no. 104 (as 1878-80).
206.
At the Louvre
c. 1879
Pastel on seven pieces of paper joined together
28 X 21 14 in. (71 X 54 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Private collection
Lemoisne 581
Louisine Havemeyer implied in her mem-
oirs, quite unintentionally, that Degas and
Mary Cassatt knew each other as early as
1874 or I875, or even earlier.1 The supposi-
tion remains unfounded, though it is certain
that the two had met by 1877 when Degas
invited Mary Cassatt to exhibit with the
Impressionists, a proposal that bore fruit
only in 1879. It is unfortunate for students
of the Impressionist movement that in later
life, when her sentiments for Degas were
decidedly ambivalent, Mary Cassatt destroyed
her letters from the artist, who did not save
his correspondence from her, either.
As a painter, Cassatt was frequently asso-
ciated with Degas by critics, an opinion she
never altogether rejected, and Degas's respect
for her work was common knowledge. In
return, her admiration was unqualified and
she did everything she could to further his
work among her American acquaintances.
She had character and determination along
with talent and great natural elegance, qual-
ities likely to have attracted him, but it must
have been a fairly odd relationship between
two testy, opinionated people. As friends,
they were close enough that Degas would in-
troduce her to his family — his sister Therese,
his brother Rene, his niece Lucie Degas, and
the children of Marguerite Fevre. At the time
of Degas's death, when Cassatt was over
seventy, she courageously stepped into the
midst of family squabbles and helped reunite
the Fevres with the Degas. Nevertheless,
this did not prevent her from reacting sharply
when the Louvre purchased The Bellelli
Family (cat. no. 20), at a time when she
thought money should be spent on the war
effort.2
As friends and colleagues, Degas and
Cassatt appear to have been closest about
1879-80, when they collaborated on Degas's
proposed publication Le Jour et la Nuit and
Cassatt posed for a number of his works.
She has been recognized, for example, in this
splendid pastel, in the two etchings derived
from it, and in some of the figures in Por-
traits in a Frieze (cat. nos. 204, 205; fig. 149).
It should be stated at the outset that the
unconfirmed but long-known traditional
identification of Cassatt in this pastel has
been substantiated by her own words. In a
letter to Louisine Havemeyer of 7 December
320
19 1 8, she wrote: "I posed for the woman at
the Louvre leaning on an umbrella."3 Though
the work is admittedly unconventional, no
one has doubted that it is a portrait. As such,
it belongs to the series of Degas's "psycho-
logical" portraits of the late 1870s representing
friends in settings typical of their calling.
Jean Sutherland Boggs has observed that
these works are among Degas's most mem-
orable and has noted the artist's tendency
during this period to "present things in
bold, self-contained shapes, which have ex-
pressive silhouettes, and in addition to com-
pose clearly but unexpectedly with them."4
The most revealing comparison is proba-
bly with Portrait of Friends in the Wings (cat.
no. 166). Both works depict their subjects
in appropriate settings — Halevy backstage
at the theater, Cassatt at the museum — and
in both instances the main figure is set off
by a companion. In At the Louvre, Mary
Cassatt is observed from behind a catalogue
by another visitor, probably her sister Lydia,
who anticipates the viewer's curiosity about
her. The scene might belong to a genre paint-
ing were it not for the absence of metaphor-
ical elements.
The most provocative aspect of the work
is the artist's decision to represent his sitter
from behind. Boggs has connected this pose
with Duranty's observation in La nouvelle
peinture about the significant interpretations
to be derived from the simple view of a per-
son's back.5
That other choices were open to Degas is
made plain by the contemporary studies of
Mary Cassatt in the surviving Portraits in a
Frieze, as well as, perhaps, in the untraced
large drawing of the same type said to show
her in three poses, standing and seated.6 In
Fig. 150. Woman Reading a Catalogue
(III:i50.2), 1879. Charcoal and pastel,
19 X 12% in. (48 X 3 1 cm). Location
unknown
fact, it can hardly be denied that a relation-
ship between the figures in At the Louvre
and Portraits in a Frieze exists, and the pro-
cess that led to the work is of some interest
to the argument. At the Louvre consists of
seven pieces of paper joined in such a way as
to inadvertently reveal the sequence in
which the composition was assembled.
Originally there was only one, smaller
sheet, measuring some 24?/% by inches
(62 by 50 centimeters) — that is, roughly the
same size as Portraits in a Frieze — with the
two figures side by side at a certain distance
from each other. However, the sheet was
cut vertically in two, and the fragments
were then repositioned in a different rela-
tionship to each other. The section contain-
ing the seated woman was placed lower,
partly overlapping the section containing
Mary Cassatt and covering half of her um-
brella. As the resulting arrangement was no
longer rectangular, two blank fragments were
inserted at the upper right, above the seated
woman, and at the lower left, below Mary
Cassatt. Finally, three additional horizontal
strips of paper were added at the bottom, to
the left (a thin strip), and at the top to obtain a
more pronounced vertical composition.
This additive process occurs in a number
of other works, notably Dancer with a Bou-
quet Bowing (cat. no. 162), and is highly re-
vealing of Degas's exceptional sense of
composition and supreme attention to de-
tail. Normally, however, it applies to works
that began with an identifiable core — a fig-
ure or a preexisting composition — which
was then enlarged on one or several sides.
At the Louvre is uncharacteristic inasmuch as
321
it cannot be said to have such a core. It be-
gan with a friezelike arrangement, which
was then turned into a composition with a
sharply diagonal twist. The further permu-
tations of the figures in two subsequent,
etched compositions, Mary Cassatt at the
Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (fig. 114) and
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings
Gallery (cat. nos. 207, 208), indicate that
once released from the frieze format they
were set in a different relationship that was
revised repeatedly until the two figures al-
most merged into one.
Lucretia Giese has observed that a canceled
notation about a portrait of Mary Cassatt
appears in a list of works Degas proposed to
send to the exhibition of 1879, and indeed
the work is absent from the catalogue printed
for the exhibition.7 The withdrawn work
was not Portraits in a Frieze, listed separately,
and it was probably not the portrait now in
Washington, D.C. (cat. no. 268), generally
dated later, though the fact that Cassatt dis-
liked it may have been good enough reason
to withdraw it from the list. This leaves the
two etched variations, which appear to have
been executed toward the end of 1879 if not
in early 1880, and, finally, this pastel, At the
Louvre, most likely the work Degas wished
to exhibit.8
Two principal drawings are associated
with At the Louvre, and both are central to
its elaboration. One is the famous pastel
sketch of Mary Cassatt (L582, Philadelphia
Museum of Art), which was closely fol-
lowed in the finished work. The other is a
charcoal-and-pastel study of Lydia Cassatt
(fig. 150). From one of Degas's notebooks,
used by the artist from about 1879, Theo-
dore Reff has reproduced a sketch Degas
made at the Louvre that is evidently con-
nected with the wall of pictures appearing
behind the two women, and there are addi-
tional, related sketches in the same note-
book. 9 A pencil drawing (IV:250.b, Mellon
collection, Upperville, Va.) of the two women
in a compositional arrangement similar to
that of the pastel is a preparatory study for
the etching Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The
Etruscan Gallery and certainly postdates the
pastel.
1. See "The First Monotypes," p. 257.
2. Cassatt's negative reaction to the purchase is re-
corded in an unpublished letter written to Paul
Durand-Ruel from Grasse on 5 May 1918; Durand-
Ruel archives, Paris.
3. Mary Cassatt, Grasse, 7 December 19 18, to Lou-
isine Havemeyer; Archives, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New "Vbrk.
4. Boggs 1962, p. 53.
5. 1967 Saint Louis, p. 136.
6. The drawing appeared in an anonymous sale,
Drouot, Paris, 20 December 1954, no. 70, where
it was described as "Two studies of a seated wo-
man; in the center, the same figure standing
(Mary Cassatt?). Charcoal and pastel. H 61 cm;
L 94 cm." See also cat. nos. 204, 205.
7. Giese 1978, p. 47. For Degas's list, see Reff 1985,
Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 67), where the
work is tentatively identified as Mile Cassatt an
Louvre.
8. For the date of the two etchings, see Reed and
Shapiro 1984-85, nos. 51, 52.
9. See Reff 1976, p. 133, and Reff 1985, Notebook 33
(private collection, pp. 1, IV, 9).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 126,
for Fr 30,500); bought at that sale by Jeanne Fevre,
the artist's niece, Nice (Fevre sale, Galerie Charpen-
tier, Paris, 12 June 1934, no. 93, repr.); bought by
Maurice Exsteens, Paris. Sale, Sotheby's, New "Vbrk,
15 May 1984, no. 8, repr. (color); bought by present
owner.
exhibitions: 1939, New York, M. Knoedler and
Co., 9-28 January, Views of Paris, no. 29 (as c. 1875);
i960 New York, no. 32, repr. (as "Mary Cassatt at
the Louvre").
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, II, repr. be-
fore p. 17 (as "La promenade au Louvre"); Riviere
1935, repr. (color) p. 61; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 581 (as 1880); Rewald 196 1, repr. (color) p. 438;
Boggs 1962, p. 51, fig. 111; Minervino 1974, no. 575;
Reff 1976, pp. 132-35, repr. p. 133; Giese 1978,
pp. 43-45, fig. 5 p. 45; 1984-85 Boston, p. xxxvi,
fig. 17 p. xxxvii, and pp. 168-70, no. 51, fig. 1 p. 169.
207, 208.
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre:
The Paintings Gallery
Degas's admiration for Japanese prints is
well documented, and it is known that at
the time of his death over fifteen drawings
by Hiroshige, two triptychs by Utamaro,
sixteen albums of prints — among them two
by Sikenobu — and numerous loose sheets
by Hokusai, Utamaro, Shunsho, and others
were sold along with a framed print by Ki-
yonaga that once hung above his bed. His
fascination with Japanese art at times took
an obvious form, as in the fans noted by
critics in 1879 for their Oriental appearance,
but most of all it affected his approach to
composition. If the pastel At the Louvre (cat.
no. 206) was dominated, with considerable
bravura, by a forced perspective in the Japa-
nese manner, this effect was emphasized to
its limit in a reprise of the composition,
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings
Gallery.
It has often been observed that The Paint-
ings Gallery is the most consciously Japanese
of all Degas's works and that its very shape
was determined by hashira-e prints designed
for hanging on pillars in Japanese houses.1
Indeed, that shape is accentuated in Degas's
print by a marble pillar in the foreground
that occupies one quarter of the composition.
Fig. 151. Study for Mary Cassatt at the Louvre
(IV:249.a), 1879. Pencil, dimensions recorded in
Vente IV as 11V2 X io5/s in. (29 X 27 cm). Loca-
tion unknown
The figures are identical to those appearing
in a related print, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre:
The Etruscan Gallery (fig. 114), and are ex-
actly the same size but positioned differently:
that of Mary Cassatt, more emphatically a
silhouette, was reversed and placed immedi-
ately behind the foreground figure. Some
twenty states for the etching in this exhibi-
tion are known, the second largest number
recorded for a print by Degas, showing sub-
stantial changes to the tonal and textural ef-
fects of the design but only one significant
shift in composition. At first, the pillar at
the left was narrower, and the decision to
expand it to its final width was reached only
in the seventh state. A drawing of almost
the same height, known only from photo-
graphs (fig. 151), played a part in the elabo-
ration of the print and shows the two figures
in the same compositional relationship and
the pillar the same size as it had been in the
first six states.
The sequence in which The Paintings Gal-
lery and The Etruscan Gallery were executed
has never been clear, but it has been cogently
argued that The Paintings Gallery came sec-
ond.2 This can be inferred to an extent from
what is known of the genesis of the two
works. The preparatory sketch (IV:250.b)
for the two figures in The Etruscan Gallery
has survived in the Mellon collection.3 On
the verso, the drawing retains the marks of
its transfer onto the plate. From these traces,
it is evident that it was transferred only once
and that the transfer was for The Etruscan
Gallery. However, both recto and verso con-
tain a vertical line drawn in pencil that clear-
ly marks the original position of the marble
pillar in The Paintings Gallery. There are only
two possible interpretations for the line: ei-
ther it was there from the beginning and was
intended for but not used in The Etruscan
322
207
Gallery, which is not very likely, or it was
added after the fact as a test for The Paint-
ings Gallery, the more probable explanation.
If the latter applies, it can be concluded that
The Paintings Gallery came second in the se-
quence of etchings.
The states included in this exhibition rep-
resent two slightly different moments in the
long evolution of the print. As Michel Melot
has pointed out, the artist's insistence on con-
tinually altering the image led on occasion to
almost illegible plates.4 In the intermediate
state between the fifteenth and sixteenth states
(cat. no. 207), slight modifications were made
to the texture, chiefly in an attempt to har-
monize the highlights on Mary Cassatt' s
dress. It was a minor adjustment, recorded
in two known impressions. The immediate-
ly succeeding state, the sixteenth, shows ex-
tensive work on the pillar, producing a more
pronounced decorative effect. This was first
enhanced and then dissolved altogether in
the subsequent three states. Only one im-
pression of the sixteenth state is known, that
in the Art Institute of Chicago (cat. no. 208).
208
The large number of states and the small
number of impressions recording them have
been cited as convincing evidence of Degas's
relative lack of interest in printmaking as a
financially rewarding enterprise. His etch-
ings were evidendy collected by his admirers,
but there is scarce proof of their being sold
on any scale. After the exhibition of 1880,
there is a record of only one exhibition, at
Durand-Ruel's in 1889, to which Degas
submitted prints, ostensibly for sale, and
there is evidence that although the artist did
attempt to sell prints, his efforts were un-
successful.5 Beraldi noted as early as 1886
that Degas's etchings were "essais" (test
pieces) — the word Degas used in the 1880
exhibition catalogue — and that they some-
times served as a working base for his pas-
tels.6 This is known to have been the case,
and several of these, including Mary Cassatt
at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery (cat.
no. 266), now also in Chicago, found their
way to Durand-Ruel's listed as "eau-forte —
impression rehaussee" (etching — touched-up
proof).
1 . Colta Feller Ives, The Great Wave: The Influence of
Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints, New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974, pp. 36-37.
2. See Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 52, and Ronald
Pickvance, "Degas at the Hay ward Gallery," Bur-
lington Magazine, CXXVII:988, July 1985, p. 476.
3 . It has been proposed that the drawing was prepared
with the help of scaled photographs of At the Louvre.
Although this may have been the case with other
works, it does not seem to apply here: the draw-
ing is tentative and sketchy, with false starts and
revisions in the contours, scarcely a possibility if it
was simply traced from a model. The fact that the
figures are squared appears to indicate that they
were drawn by conventional means.
4. See Michel Melot in 1974 Paris, nos. 197-200.
5. See 1889, Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, 23 January-
14 February, Exposition des peintres-graveurs, under
Degas, no. 104, "Lithographie, 6 exemplaires, 100
fr.," and no. 105, "Lithographie, 3 exemplaires,
200 fr." The Durand-Ruel archives record under
"pictures received on deposit" for 1882-84 a group
of four lithographs and one engraving left by Degas
and returned to him unsold on 31 October 1883.
6. Beraldi 1886, p. 153.
207.
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre:
The Paintings Gallery
1879-80
Etching, soft-ground etching, aquatint, and
drypoint, on China paper, fifteenth-sixteenth
intermediate state
Plate: 12 X 5 in. (30.5 X 12.6 cm)
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (A. 09 167)
Exhibited in Paris
Reed and Shapiro 52.XV-XVI/Adhemar 54.X
provenance: Alexis Rouart, Paris (his stamp, Lugt
suppl. 21872); Henri A. Rouart, his son, Paris. Marcel
Guiot, Paris; acquired from him by the Bibliotheque
Nationale 21 June 1933.
exhibitions : 1974 Paris, no. 199, repr.
selected references: Alexandre 19 18, p. 13; Lafond
1918-19, II, p. 70; Delteil 1919, no. 29; Rouart 1945,
pp. 64-65, 74 n. 100; Inventaire du fonds francais apres
1800, VI (catalogue by Jean Adhemar and Jacques
Letheve), Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, Departe-
ment des Estampes, 1953, p. no, no. 27 (as tenth
state, c. 1876); Adhemar 1974, no. 54.x; Colta Feller
Ives, The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Wood-
cuts on French Prints, New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1974, pp. 36-38; Reed and Shapiro
1984-85, no. 52.XV-XVI (intermediate state, repro-
ducing an exemplar in a private collection); Ronald
Pickvance, "Degas at Hay ward Gallery," Burlington
Magazine, CXX VII: 98 8, July 1985, p. 476.
323
thought twenty-five thousand — in view of
the fact that it belongs to the period of the
'dancers at the bar.' It was exhibited in 1879. "3
The fan was duly recorded in Durand-
Ruel's stock book as a deposit from Cassatt
on 13 January 1913 (deposit no. 11640), and
the same source indicates that it was re-
turned to her, unsold, on 3 June of the same
year. It is evident that Durand-Ruel's return
of the fan was related to the price being
asked, because Cassatt wrote to the dealer
on 11 March 19 13: "Perhaps I was asking
too much for the fan. I was basing myself
on the price of the fan at the Alexis Rouart
sale, which I believe sold for 16,000 without
the commission? I don't find the price too
high, but I know that no one here would ap-
preciate it, and that is why I wish to part with
it, even for less than my asking amount.'*4
More than four years later, in December
19 17, Cassatt offered the fan, with a nude
(cat. no. 269) and a portrait of a woman (L861)
by Degas — both now in the Metropolitan
Museum — to Louisine Havemeyer for the
sum of $20, 000. 5 At the beginning of Febru-
ary 191 8, as the works still remained in
Cassatt's empty apartment on rue de Ma-
rignan, she asked Ambroise Vollard to re-
move them so they could be packed up by
the Dupre firm.6 These works, the fan in-
cluded, were again deposited with Durand-
Ruel, and on 13 March 19 18 she followed
up with a letter asking him to dispatch them
to the United States.7 Marc Gerstein has
shown that the fan was bought by Louisine
Havemeyer, noting that Cassatt had repre-
324
208.
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre:
The Paintings Gallery
1879-80
Etching, soft-ground etching, aquatint, and
drypoint on ivory wove Japanese tissue,
sixteenth state
Plate: 12 X 5 in. (30. 5 X 12.6 cm)
Sheet: i33/s X 67s in. (34 X 17. 5 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso, lower left
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of
Walter S. Brewster (1951.323)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Reed and Shapiro 52.XVI/Adhemar 54. XV
provenance: Atelier Degas. Walter S. Brewster,
Chicago; his gift to the museum 195 1 .
exhibitions: 1964, University of Chicago, 4 May-12
June, Etchings by Edgar Degas (catalogue by Paul
Moses), no. 31, repr.; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 117, repr.;
1984 Chicago, no. 52, repr. (color).
selected references: Alexandre 19 18, p. 13; Lafond
19 1 8-19, II, p. 70; Delteil 19 19, no. 29; Rouart 1945,
pp. 64-65, 74 n. 100; Adhemar 1974, no. 54. xv;
Colta Feller Ives, The Great Wave: The Influence of
Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints, New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974, PP- 36-38; Reed
and Shapiro 1984-85, no. 52.XVI, repr.; Ronald
Pickvance, "Degas at Hay ward Gallery," Burlington
Magazine, CXXVII:988, July 1985, p. 476.
209.
Fan: Dancers
1879
Watercolor and silver and gold paint on silk
7V2 X 22V4 in. (19. 1 X 57.9 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.555)
Lemoisne 566
Degas 's works include twenty-five fans,
whose importance has for a long time been
underestimated; they are the subject of a re-
cent study by Marc Gerstein.1 With the ex-
ception of three of these fans, painted about
1868-69, Degas's output spans the period
1878-85, especially around 1879 — the year
in which he was enthusiastically planning,
for the exhibition of the Independants, a
room that would be devoted entirely to fans
painted by Pissarro, Morisot, Forain, and
Felix and Marie Bracquemond.2 In the end,
only Pissarro and Forain joined Degas, who
showed five fans. This would be the only
time that Degas would exhibit his fans.
In an undated letter to Paul Durand-Ruel,
correctly assigned by Lionello Venturi to
late 19 12, Mary Cassatt made arrangements
for the disposal of her portrait by Degas
(cat. no. 268), along with a fan by the artist.
She wrote: "In my opinion, the fan is the
most beautiful one that Degas painted. I
imagine it is unquestionably valuable — I have
sen ted it in her Young Woman in Black of 1883
(now in the Peabody Institute, Baltimore).8
With an immense, almost bare stage and
dancers at rest clustered at the center, this
composition is one Degas repeated in a re-
lated fan, Dancers Resting (L563, Norton
Simon Museum, Pasadena), that contains an
additional figure. The present version is
stronger, with broader effects and a more pro-
nounced burlesque element. Cassatt's remark
that it figured in the fourth Impressionist
exhibition indicates that it was one of the
two fans exhibited under nos. 80 and 81. As
her name does not appear as a lender in the
exhibition catalogue, it must be assumed
that it was given to her by Degas sometime
after May 1879.
1. Gerstein 1982, passim.
2. See Lettres Degas 1945, XVII, p. 44; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 26, p. 49.
3. Venturi 1939, II, p. 129.
4. Ibid., p. 132.
5. See letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse, to Louisine
Havemeyer, 28 December 19 17, in Mathews 1984,
p. 330.
6. See letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse, to Paul
Durand-Ruel, 9 February 19 18, in Venturi 1939,
II, p. 136.
7. See letter from Mary Cassatt to Paul Durand-Ruel,
13 March 19 18, in Venturi 1939, II, p. 137; deposit
book, 31 October 1909-1926, Durand-Ruel ar-
chives, Paris.
8. Gerstein 1982, pp. 105-18. According to Frances
Weitzenhoffer, Mrs. Havemeyer bought the fan in
1917; see Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 238. However,
she seems to have acquired it only after March
1918.
provenance: Mary Cassatt, Paris, by 1883; deposited
with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 13 January 19 13 (deposit
no. 1 1640, inscribed on a label on verso: "Degas
no. 11640/Danseuses/eventail"); returned to Mary
Cassatt 3 June 1913; redeposited with Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 8 March 1918 (deposit no. 11924, inscribed on a
label on verso: "Degas no. ii924/Eventail:/Danseuses");
bought from Mary Cassatt by Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, New York; transmitted to Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer by Durand-Ruel 1919; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, from 19 19; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1879 Paris, no. 80 or 81; 1922 New York,
no. 87 or 89 of drawings; 1930 New York, no. 164;
1977 New York, no. 2 of fans, repr.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 185;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 556; Minervino 1974,
no. 547; Gerstein 1982, p. no, fig. 2 p. in; 1986
Washington, D.C., p. 268; Weitzenhoffer 1986,
pp. 238, 242.
210.
Fan: The Ballet
1879
Watercolor, India ink, and silver and gold
paint on silk
6Vs X 21V4 in. (15.6X54 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.554)
Lemoisne 457
The most overtly Japanese of all Degas's de-
signs, this fan was painted in monochrome
in imitation of lacquer on a black ground. In
this respect, it is a unique experiment in the
artist's oeuvre. The stage, to the left, was
sprinkled with silver powder and painted
with thin washes of simulated silver paint,
actually tin, less apt to tarnish. The same
silvery paint was used in greater concentra-
tion for the large stage flat to the right and
for other areas. The dancers were left in
black, with outlines and highlights drawn in
gold-colored paint obtained from brass
powder. 1 The mottled design with stylized
patterns on the stage flat, the irregular form
on which the principal dancers move, and
the abrupt transitions from one plane to an-
other are greatly indebted to Japanese prece-
dents, as is the general conception of the
work. The figures, however, are part of
Degas's known repertoire. The main dancer
to the left appears also in the Orsay Ballet
(The Star) (cat. no. 163), and her counter-
part to the right is the dancer performing an
arabesque for Jules Perrot in The Dance Class
(cat. no. 130).
Recently it has been proposed that the fan
was loaned by the dealer Hector Brame to
the Impressionist exhibition of 1879 and that
it may have been one of the fans singled out
by the critic Paul Sebillot as "a very curious
Japanese fantasy. "2 It is known that the fan
belonged to Brame in 1891, at which date it
was sold to Durand-Ruel, who in turn sold
it to the Havemeyers.3 Yet the fan is one of
the very few to have been folded. It seems
highly unlikely that Degas would have ex-
hibited it after it was folded, and it appears
just as improbable that it would have been
325
211
211.
mounted and used by Brame, Durand-Ruel,
or Mrs. Havemeyer. If indeed the fans owned
by Brame in 1879 and 1891 are the same, it
is possible that sometime between those dates
it was the property of a different, unidenti-
fied owner who was responsible for the
mounting.
1 . An analysis of the metallic paints was carried out
in 1986 by Barbara H. Berrie and Gary W. Carri-
veau at the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C. By means of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy,
they established that the gold-colored area contains
predominantly copper and zinc and that tin was
substituted for silver.
2. Gerstein 1982, p. no, and 1986 Washington, D.C,
no. 76. See also Paul Sebillot, "Revue artistique,"
La Plume, 15 May 1879, p. 73.
3. The provenance of the work was established by
Marc Gerstein; see Gerstein 1982, p. no.
provenance: Hector Brame, Paris, possibly in 1879
and certainly by 1891; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris,
22 December 1891, for Fr 250 (stock no. 1963);
bought by H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 19 Sep-
tember 1895, for Fr 1,500; Mrs, H. O. Havemeyer,
New "York, from 1907; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: (?)i879 Paris, no. 77, lent by Hector
Brame; 1922 New York, no. 87 or 89 of drawings;
1930 New York, no. 163; 1977 New York, no. 1 of
fans; 1986 Washington, D.C, no. 76.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 185; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 457; Minervino 1974, no.
542; Gerstein 1982, p. no, fig. 1 p. in; Weitzenhoffer
1986, p. 242.
Fan: The Cafe-concert Singer
1880
Watercolor and gouache on silk mounted
on cardboard
12V6 X 237/s in. (30. 7 X 60. 7 cm)
Signed and dated in black China ink
lower left: Degas 80
Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Kunsthalle,
Karlsruhe (1976-1)
Lemoisne 459
The only known fan by Degas to represent
a cafe-concert scene, this is also his only
dated fan. The subject matter is an exten-
sion of a theme that preoccupied him
throughout the later 1870s. Here it is treated
with the greatest elegance, suggesting only
distantly the boisterous atmosphere of eve-
nings at the Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar-
d'Ete. The larger part of the fan is filled by
the dark night sky and the foliage of the cafe
garden, scintillatingly lit by gaslight, with
the singer, seen from behind, asymmetrically
placed to the right side of the composition.
Gotz Adriani has shown how the column
dividing the image vertically is placed so as
to create a careful geometric ratio of two to
one. 1 It has been suggested that the singer
may be Mile Dumay (or Demay),2 though
the angular position of the arm is more rem-
iniscent of "le style epileptique" of Mile Be-
cat (see cat. no. 176). 2
1. 1984 Tubingen, no. 122.
2. Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-
Wurtemberg, XIV, 1977, p. 172.
provenance: Ernest-Ange Duez, Paris (Duez sale,
Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 12 June 1896, no. 273,
for Fr 500); bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris (stock
no. 3839); deposited with Cassirer, Berlin, 28 Sep-
tember-20 December 1898; loaned to the New Gallery,
London, 1 December 1905; deposited with Bernheim-
Jeune, Paris, 10 October 1906; transferred to Durand-
Ruel, New York, 1912 (stock no. N.Y. 3554); bought
by William P. Blake, 12 October 19 12, for Fr 4,000;
deposited by Blake with Durand-Ruel, New York,
18 September 1919 (stock no. N.Y. 7790); returned
to William P. Blake, 29 December 19 19; by descent
to J. M. Blake, New York; bought by Durand-Ruel,
New York, 3 March 1937 (stock no. N.Y. 5346);
bought by Sam Salz, New York, 20 September 1940;
returned to Durand-Ruel, New York, 3 February
1942 (stock no. N.Y. 5478). Sale, Palais Galliera,
Paris, 29 November 1969, no. 5. Anne Wertheimer,
Paris. Bought by the museum 1976.
exhibitions: 1898, Berlin, Bruno and Paul Cassirer
Gallery, autumn, Ausstellung von Werken von Max
Liebermann, H. G. E. Degas, Constantin Meunier,
no. 69; (?) 1906, London, New Gallery, International
Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, January-
February, Pictures and Sculpture at the Sixth Exhibition,
hors catalogue; 1909, Brussels, Societe "Les Arts de
la Femme," inaugurated 31 March, Exposition retro-
spective d'eventails, no. 125, lent by Durand-Ruel;
1983, Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, 10 September-
20 November, Die jranzbsischen Zeichnungen, 1570-
1930 (catalogue by Johann Eckart von Borries and
Rudolf Theilmann), no. 75, repr.; 1984 Tubingen,
no. 122, repr.; 1984, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Graph-
ische Sammlung, 1 July-2 September/Zurich,
Museum Bellerive, 12 September- 4 November,
326
212
Kompositionen im Halbrund: Facherblatter aus vier Jahr-
hunderten (catalogue by Monika Kopplin), no. 70,
repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 459;
Minervino 1974, no. 541; Staatliche Kunsthalle,
Karlsruhe, "Neuerwerbungen 1976," Jahrbuch der
Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Wurtemberg,
XIV, 1977, pp. 170, 172, pi. 21; Monika Kopplin,
Das Fdcherblatt von Manet bis Kokoschka: Europaische
Traditionen und Japanische Einflusse (Ph.D. disserta-
tion), Cologne, 1980/Saulgau, 198 1, pp. 88-89,
pi. 95; Gerstein 1982, pp. 110, 112, 114, pi. 7.
212.
Fan: The Farandole
1879?
Gouache on silk, mounted on cardboard,
with some silver and gold
12X24 in. (30.7X61 cm)
Signed in black China ink upper left: Degas
Private collection, Switzerland
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 557
The farandole is an old Provencal dance in
which long human chains are formed by
linking hands. La Farandole is also the title of
a ballet in three acts on a Provencal theme
by Gille, Mortier, and Merante, to music by
Theodore Dubois, performed at the Opera
de Paris beginning in December 1 88 3. 1 It is
known that Degas saw the ballet, paired
with the opera Rigolettot on 3 June 1885, and
it is quite possible that he saw earlier per-
formances.2 The traditional title of the fan
should perhaps be linked to the ballet rather
than to the Provencal dance, even though
Degas's composition is most likely not con-
nected with any specific event witnessed on
the stage.
The sweeping view from a high vantage
point is characteristic of many of Degas' s
fans, but in this instance the effect is en-
hanced by the unusually large number of
dancers included in the design. To the right,
the corps de ballet, like dragonflies in flight
across the stage, is shown in a curved for-
mation that gently counterposes the round-
ed shape of the fan. To the left, the leading
ballerina, based on a figure who also ap-
pears in the background of The Star (L598)
in the Art Institute of Chicago, holds the
stage alone with a melodramatic wave of the
arm. As noted by Jean Sutherland Boggs,
there is considerable humor in the rendition
of the dancers and the drawing is as free and
uninhibited as it is formal and controlled in
the artist's paintings of the same period.3
The fan has generally been dated 1879 or
1878-79. If a connection with the ballet La
Farandole is allowable, a date shortly after
1883 would be more appropriate.
1 . For an illustration showing two scenes from the
ballet, see L' Illustration, LXXXIL2130, 22 Decem-
ber 1883, p. 388.
2. Information kindly supplied to the author by
Henri Loyrette, who compiled a record of Degas's
attendance at the Opera for the years 1885-87.
3. 1967 Saint Louis, p. 150.
provenance: Mme de Lamonta collection, Paris
(sale, Mme X [de Lamonta] estate . . . , Drouot, Pa-
ris, 13 February 1918, no. 77, for Fr 8,000); bought
by Gustave Pellet, Paris; by descent to Maurice Ex-
steens, Paris, 19 19; Klipstein und Kornfeld, Bern, by
i960; to present owner.
exhibitions: 1933 Paris, no. 1654; 1937 Paris, Or-
angerie, no. 186; 1938, London, The Leicester Gal-
leries, The Dance, no. 77; 1939 Paris, no. 20, lent by
Exsteens; 1948-49, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Danse
et Divertissements, no. 75; 1951-52 Bern, no. 30; 1952
Amsterdam, no. 23; 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 86, repr.;
i960, Bern, Klipstein und Kornfeld, 22 October-30
November, Choix d'une collection privee, Sammlungen
G.P. und M.E.y no. 15, repr.; 1965, Bregenz, Kiinst-
lerhaus Palais Thum und Taxis, 1 July-30 September,
Meisterwerke der Malerei aus Privatsammlungen im Bo-
denseegebiet, no. 30b, pi. 10; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 95,
repr.; 1984 Tubingen, no. 117, repr. (color); 1984,
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Graphische Sammlung, 1
July-2 September/ Zurich, Museum Bellerive, 12
September-4 November, Kompositionen im Halbrund:
Facherblatter aus vier Jahrhunderten (catalogue by Mo-
nika Kopplin), no. 64, repr. (color).
selected references: Riviere 1935, repr. p. 155;
Rouart 1945, p. 70 n. 22; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no- 557! Minervino 1974, no. 549; Monika Kopplin,
Das Fdcherblatt von Manet bis Kokoschka: Europaische
Traditionen und Japanische Einflusse (Ph.D. dissertation),
Cologne, 1980/Saulgau, 198 1, pp. 63, 79-80, 85,
pi. 83; Terrasse 198 1, no. 301, repr.; Gerstein 1982,
pp. noff, pi. 3; Siegfried Wichmann, Japonisme, New
York: Park Lane, 1985, p. 162, fig. 407 (color) p. 163.
327
213-
Little Girl Practicing at the Barre
1878-80
Black chalk heightened with white chalk on
pink laid paper
izVsX iiVfcin. (31 X29.3 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right: Degas
Inscribed in black chalk above left: "bien accuser/
l'os du coude" (emphasize the elbow bone),
and below right: "battements a la seconde/a la
barre" (battements in second position at the
barre)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.943)
Exhibited in Paris and Ottawa
This very young dancer, at the most eight
or nine years old, also appears in two other
drawings first published by Lillian Browse. 1
All three have inscriptions that explain or
correct the design, and all three were osten-
sibly executed during the same session, per-
haps in the beginners' class at the Academy
of Music.2 As Ronald Pickvance has pointed
out, a misreading of the inscription "dessin
de Degas" (drawing by Degas) in Henri
Rouart's hand on one of the drawings, the
only one not signed, led to the faulty con-
clusion that the model's name was "Duges."3
Although much of the effect of the drawing
rests on the compelling youth of the model,
with her touchingly large head and — as
Browse has pointed out — bony, unformed
knees, it is a fairly dispassionate examina-
tion of a pose Degas studied on several occa-
sions in the late 1870s. Characteristically,
Degas noted above the girl's right arm:
"bien accuser l'os du coude" (emphasize the
elbow bone). Louisine Havemeyer, who ob-
tained the drawing from Degas, drew atten-
tion to its relationship to the pastel Dancers
at the Barre (L460, private collection), which
she then owned/ A more developed study
of the same pose, drawn from a slightly older
dancer, appears in Dancer at the Barre (fig. 152),
and variations occur in three other drawings
(L460 bis, 111:372, II:220.b).
1. Browse [1949], nos. 76, 78 (fig. 152).
2. For a contemporary account of training in the be-
ginners* class of the Academy of Music, see
*'L' ecole de danse a TAcademie de Musique: la
classe des petites," V Illustration, LXXI:i829, 16
March 1878, pp. 172-73, with twelve illustra-
tions. A description of a posing session attended
by Degas in Lepic's studio in 188 1 has been given
by Georges Jeanniot: "The next day we actually
saw [Rosita] Maury and her friend [Mile Sanla-
ville] arrive with two young dancers. The ballet
positions were demonstrated by the two students
of the corps de ballet, while the two stars posed
for the heads. Life contains these surprises.*'
Jeanniot 193 3 , p. 153.
3. Browse [1949], no. 76; Pickvance 1963, p. 258
n. 24.
4. Havemeyer 196 1, p. 252.
provenance: Bought from the artist by H. O. Have-
meyer, New York; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New
'York, from 1907; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New *¥brk, no. 24 of drawings;
1930 New York, no. 158; 1947, San Francisco, Cali-
fornia Palace of the Legion of Honor, 8 March-
6 April, 19th Century French Drawings, no. 88; 1977
New Y3rk, no. 24 of works on paper; 1984 Tubingen,
no. 116, repr.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 186; New
York, Metropolitan, 1943, no. 54; Browse [1949],
PP- 59» 68, 364, no. 77, repr.; Havemeyer 1961, p.
252; Linda B. Gillies, "European Drawings in the
Havemeyer Collection,'* Connoisseur, CLXXIL693,
November 1969, pp. 148, 153, repr.
Fig. 152. Dancer at the Barre, 1878-80.
Charcoal, 12 X 9V6 in. (30. 5 X 24. 1 cm).
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,
England
328
214-
Dancer Resting
1879
Pastel and gouache or distemper on laid paper,
with strips added top and bottom, mounted on
cardboard
235/s X 25% in. (59 X 64 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Private collection
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 560
An interest in the bodies of seated dancers
resting, only occasionally studied before by
Degas, appears in his work about 1878.
The firmly dated study (inscribed "Dec. 78")
of the fifteen-year-old Melina Darde seated
on the floor (11:230.1, private collection, Pa-
ris) and a host of studies of dancers observed
from every angle — resting, tying their slip-
pers, pulling at their stockings, or collaps-
ing with exhaustion — formed the stock from
which he drew figures for numerous new
ballet scenes, almost exclusively concerned
with the dance class, that begin to appear
about 1878-79. In the finished pastels and
paintings, the dancers are shown singly or
in pairs absorbed in their occupation; these
are unquestionably Degas 's most moving
inventions, but also the first to attract unfa-
vorable criticism at the Impressionist exhibi-
tion of 1880, where the representation of
their prematurely wasted bodies brought
forth remarks prefiguring those that greeted
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (cat.
no. 227) in 1 88 1.
It is somewhat uncharacteristic that in this
pastel Degas concentrates on a single dancer,
with the compositionally unorthodox indi-
cation of a second dancer outside the field of
vision. The work is a variation of a different
pastel on a related subject, Two Dancers
(fig. 153), which shows both dancers in a
more abrupt, expressive design that figured
in the exhibition of 1880 with Dancers at
Their Toilette (cat. no. 220) and startled even
well-disposed critics such as Charles Eph-
russi. In the present version the drawing is
stronger, with the volumes more carefully
Fig. 153. Two Dancers (L559), c. 1879. Pastel and
gouache, i8Vfc x 26V4 in. (46 x 66.7 cm). Shelburne
Museum, Shelburne, Vt.
defined and with a degree of finish that Degas
affected in some works around 1878-80. The
young dancer, shown absorbed in massaging
her left foot, an act far removed from the
magic illusions of the stage expected from
Degas, slightly resembles the adolescent
Marie van Goethem, whom Degas repre-
sented in The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.
*I4
329
330
It would be inappropriate to call this
work a simple pastel, as it is technically
more complex than that. Denis Rouart has
explained that Degas sometimes steamed his
pastels, afterward rubbing the moist powder
on the surface of the paper with a brush.
This appears to have occurred in Dancer
Resting, in which parts of the background
wall and the floor were clearly handled dif-
ferently from the figure and were also re-
worked with gouache or distemper.
provenance: Durand-Ruel, Paris; bought by Jules-
Emile Boivin, Paris; Mme Jules-Emile Boivin, his
widow, Paris, 1909-19; Madeleine-Emilie Boivin
(Mme Alphonse Gerard), her daughter, Paris; pre-
sent owner.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 116; 1955 Paris, GBA,
no. 87; i960 Paris, no. 26, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne 1924, pp. 102-03
n. 1; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 560; Pierre Cabanne,
Degas Danseuses, Lausanne: International Art Book,
196 1, repr. (color) p. 3 (as c. 1879); Minervino 1974,
no. 739.
215.
Dancer Resting
c. 1879-80
Pastel and black chalk on off-white wove paper,
laid down
3oV8X2i7/8 in. (76.5 X 55.5 cm)
Inscribed and signed bottom right: a mon
ami Duranty/ Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 573
When in 1880 the writer Edmond Duranty
died, Degas organized a sale to raise money
for his companion, Pauline Bourgeois. For
the sale he contributed three works of his
own — a drawing of a dancer, a version of
Woman with Field Glasses (fig. 131), and,
aptly, a portrait of Duranty (L518).1 The
fourth and last work by Degas in the sale
was this pastel of a dancer, his gift to Duranty,
inscribed in his hand. The prices obtained at
the sale were very low, and it is indicative of
the artist's cast of mind that instead of buy-
ing back any of his own works he bought a
drawing by Adolf Menzel, whom both he
and Duranty admired very much.
There is something touching about Degas's
giving Duranty, one of the most erudite of
his friends, a pastel of a dancer reading. The
subject does not occur again in any of his
developed works, though it might appear as
a detail of a larger composition.2 Figures im-
mersed in their newspapers dominate the
foreground of both Portraits in an Office (New
Orleans) (cat. no. 115) of 1873 and The Dance
Class (cat. no. 219) of eight years later, but
the serenity of the moment achieved in this
pastel is unparalleled in Degas's work. The
approach evident here is very much that of
Degas at the very end of the 1870s — the
view from a slightly elevated point, the
rather self-conscious composition, and the
admirable directness of observation, a faculty
that Duranty would have appreciated. That
faculty, so nearly resembling a science, is
nevertheless worn lightly, and all the precise
notations of the dancer's anatomy, or the
season (winter), or the time (morning) are
tempered by the free handling of pastel, riot-
ously applied on the stove.
As Charles Millard noted in his catalogue
entry on the work, the pastel may have been
posed for by Marie van Goethem and should
be dated late 1879 or early 1880, shortly be-
fore Duranty 's death.3 The work subse-
quently belonged to another of Degas's
friends, Henri Rouart, and while it was in
the Rouart collection it was reproduced as a
lithograph, by George William Thornley, in
1888.
1. See "The Portrait of Edmond Duranty," p. 309,
and Chronology II, 9 April 1880.
2. A dancer reading a letter figures in two studies
(III:ii5.3, 111:342.1) as well as in the Orsay Dance
Class (cat. no. 129). Another study, full length,
appears in a later sheet with several dancers
(IV:284.6).
3. See Charles Millard in The Impressionists and the
Salon (1874-1886) (exhibition catalogue), Los An-
geles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1974,
no. 16.
provenance: Given by the artist to Edmond Duranty,
Paris (Duranty sale, Drouot, Paris, 28-29 January
1881, no. 17, as "Danseuse"); bought by Alphonse
Portier, Paris; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 12
February 1881, for Fr 200 (stock no. 816); bought the
same day by Henri Rouart, Paris, for Fr 350 (Henri
Rouart sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 16-18 De-
cember 19 12, no. 76, for Fr 37,000); bought by Alfred
Strolin, Paris (sale, Drouot, Paris, Collection de M.
Alfred Strolin, ayantfait Vobjet d'une mesure de siquestre
de guerre, 7 July 192 1, no. 42, repr., as "Pendant le
repos," for Fr 204,000); bought by Durand-Ruel,
Paris. With M. Knoedler et Cie, Paris; Mrs. Peter A.
Widener, Philadelphia, by 1970; Sari Heller Gallery,
Ltd. , Beverly Hills, by 1974. Sold, Christie's, New
York, 15 November 1983, no. 50, repr. Private
collection.
exhibitions: 1922, London, The Leicester Galleries,
January, Paintings, Pastels and Etchings by Edgar Degas,
no. 55; 1970, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 7july-30
August, Private Collections: Mr. and Mrs, Henry Clif-
ford; Mr. and Mrs. Louis C. Madeira; Mrs. John Winter-
steen; Mr. and Mrs. Jack L. Wolgin (no catalogue);
1983, San Diego Museum of Art, Selections from San
Diego Private Collections.
selected references: Thornley 1889; Lemoisne [1946-
49], II, no. 573; Browse [1949], no. 79; Minervino
1974, no. 768; The Impressionists and the Salon (1874-
1886) (catalogue entry by Charles Millard), Los An-
geles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1974,
no. 16, repr. and cover (color) (included in the cata-
logue but withdrawn from the exhibition).
2l6.
The Violinist
c. 1877-78
Chalk, charcoal, heightened with white, and
gray wash on buff wove paper
i87/sX 12 in. (47.9 X 30.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Francis
Warden Fund (58. 1263)
Exhibited in New York
Vente III: 161. 1
In the Impressionist exhibition of 1879, Degas
exhibited no fewer than three (probably re-
cent) compositions of dancers practicing with
a violinist. He had included rehearsal violin-
ists in his earliest paintings on dance subjects —
Dance Class (cat. no. 106) and Dance Class at
the Opera (cat. no. 107) — but in subsequent
compositions music figured only by impli-
cation, in the dancers' movements or in
fragments of musical instruments cannily
intruding in a design. In the group of works
shown in 1879, the violinist was given ex-
traordinary prominence in the foreground
as a presence of equal or almost equal im-
portance to the dancers. In a sense, these
later compositions are an affecting scrutiny
of contrasts and are as much about music as
they are about dance. The dancers, usually
shown as a group, follow the music, while
the musician, an isolated presence function-
ing in a different realm, appears divorced
from the events surrounding him.
This study of a jovial elderly violinist is
one of a series of such studies made from at
least three different models. It is the liveliest
of the series, not only because of the aston-
ishing degree of personality it projects but
also because the quick, alternative notations
for the position of the arms and legs are so
evocative of movements associated with
performance. The same model, in a more
solemn mood, appears also in a related, less
animated drawing (III: 161. 2, Clark Art In-
stitute, Williamstown), intended to record
more precise notations for the violin and the
hands. Nevertheless, Degas studied the
hands and violin again, from a different
model, on a sheet in a private collection in
Minneapolis (III: 164. 2). As noted by Peter
Wick, a synthesis of the three studies served
for the more severe-looking violinist in the
foreground of The Rehearsal (fig. 154), al-
though that figure retains little of the exu-
berant vitality of the musician in the Boston
drawing.1
Both Wick and Jean Sutherland Boggs2
have dated the drawing about 1879. An ear-
lier date, of about 1877-78, perhaps 1878
for the series of related drawings, seems
more probable.
331
1. Wick 1959, pp. 87-101.
2. 1967 Saint Louis, no. 96.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 161. 1).
Marcel Guerin, Paris. Bought by the museum 1958.
exhibitions: 1958, New York, Charles E. Slatkin
Galleries, 7 November-6 December, Renoir, Degas,
no. 23, pi. XIX; i960 New York, no. 93; 1967 Saint
Louis, no. 96, repr.; 1970 Williamstown, no. 25,
repr.; 1974 Boston, no. 83.
selected references: Lemoisne 193 1, p. 290, fig. 62;
Denis Rouart, Degas, Dessins, Paris: Braun, 1948,
no. 3; Browse [1949], under no. 35; Wick 1959,
pp. 92-93, 97, 99 n. 4; Williamstown, Clark, 1964,
I, p. 83, fig. 66; 1979 Edinburgh, under no. 22.
332
217-
The Violinist, study for
The Dance Lesson
c. 1878-79
Pastel and charcoal on green paper, squared for
transfer, with letterpress printing on verso
i53/sX n3/4in. (39.2X29.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
lower right
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund, 1918 (19.5 1.1)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 45 1
A nervous and succinct charcoal drawing in
the Minneapolis Institute of Art (fig. 155)
records Degas's first attempt to capture this
violinist as he performs. In this beautiful,
more elaborate study in the Metropolitan Mu-
seum, the musician is in almost the same pose
but observed with greater penetration. His
enormously moving, pathetic head is described
in unsparing detail, down to the vainly parted
remnants of hair, and his arms grasp the vio-
lin with a greater sense of surrender to the
music. As Peter Wick has observed, the way
the model holds his fingers indicates he was
likely a cafe or theater player. 1
Worked up in pastel and squared for trans-
fer, the drawing served as a reference for the
violinist in Portrait of a Dancer at Her Lesson
(The Dance Lesson) (cat. no. 218), as well as
for The Violinist (BR99), dated 1880, where
he appears alone, somewhat tidied up, and
certainly younger. Theodore RefF has called
Fig. 155. The Violinist (IV:247.b), c. 1879. Char-
coal, i25/8 X 9l/2 in. (32 x 24 cm). Minneapolis
Institute of Art
the latter a study and placed it in the se-
quence leading to the figure in Portrait of a
Dancer at Her Lesson, but it was more likely
conceived as an independent work.2 The Met-
ropolitan's drawing has been dated c. 1877-
78 by Lemoisne and Douglas Cooper, c. 1879
by Jean Sutherland Boggs, and 1882-84 by
Lillian Browse.3 A date around 1878, after
The Violinist (cat. no. 216) in Boston, seems
more likely. It is curious that the drawing
was executed on the back of a bookseller's
advertisement; all the books on the list seem
to date from before 1878.
1. Wick 1959, pp. 87-101.
2. Brame and Reff 1984, under no. 99.
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 451; Browse [i949].
no. 100; Cooper 1952, no. 11; Boggs in 1967 Saint
Louis, p. 154.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 171,
for Fr 4,500); bought at that sale by the museum.
exhibitions: 19 19, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, May, Recent Accessions (no cata-
logue); 1922 New York, no. 60a of drawings; 1977
New York, no. 22 of works on paper, repr.
selected references: Burroughs 1919, p. 1 1 5; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 451 (as c. 1877-78);
Browse [1949], no. 100 (as c. 1882-84); Cooper
1952, p. 18, no. 11, pi. 11 (color) (as c. 1877-78);
Wick 1959, p. 97, fig. 10 p. 100; 1967 Saint Louis,
p. 154; Minervino 1974, no. 504; Brame and RefF
1984, under no. 99.
333
218.
Portrait of a Dancer at Her Lesson
(The Dance Lesson)
c. 1879
Black chalk and pastel on three pieces of wove
paper joined together
253/s X 22l/s in. (64.6 X 56.3 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
A partially legible inscription in graphite in the
artist's hand at the upper right reads: 9c a
droite/3c en haut/. . . cote pour . . . /
refaire . . .
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Anonymous Gift, 1971. H. O. Havemeyer
Collection (1971.185)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 450
An interesting anecdote about this work
was related by Ambroise Vollard, who
claimed to have been present when the
events took place. According to Vollard, the
painter Gustave Caillebotte, at the time of
his death in 1894, bequeathed a painting to
Renoir, to be chosen before his collection
went to the Louvre. After considering one
of Caillebotte's own works, Renoir was
persuaded by Caillebotte's brother to take
one by Degas. Renoir, however, according
to Vollard, "soon tired of seeing the musi-
cian forever bending over his violin, while
the dancer, one leg in the air, awaited the
chord that would give the signal for her pir-
ouette. One day, when Durand-Ruel said to
him: 'I have a customer for a really finished
Degas,* Renoir did not wait to be told twice
but, taking down the picture, handed it to
him on the spot. When Degas heard of it, he
was beside himself with fury, and sent Re-
noir back a magnificent painting that the
latter had once allowed him to carry off
from his studio. ... I was with Renoir
when the painting was thus brutally re-
turned to him. In his anger, seizing a palette
knife, he began slashing at the canvas."1
Part of the painting was saved, but Renoir
mailed the shreds of canvas to Degas with a
note cryptically inscribed with only one
word: "Enfin" (Finally!).
The pastel indeed belonged to Caille-
botte, who probably bought it from — or
after — the Impressionist exhibition of 1879.
334
In 1886, he lent it, along with Women on the
Terrace of a Cafe in the Evening (cat. no. 174)
and The Chorus (cat. no. 160), to the sale
exhibition organized by Durand-Ruel at the
American Art Association in New York. It
is possible that Caillebotte was ready to dis-
pose of the works, but an annotated exhibi-
tion catalogue in the Durand-Ruel archives
suggests otherwise.2 Caillebotte died on 24
February 1894. By 31 March, Renoir, who
had owned the work less than a few weeks,
deposited it with Durand-Ruel, ostensibly
wifh the idea of selling it. On 13 May 1895,
Durand-Ruel returned the pastel to Renoir,
but three years later, having found in the
Havemeyers prospective clients, he purchased
it and dispatched it to New York in the
shortest possible time.
Compositions with single dancers ob-
served with such precision are uncommon
for Degas, and this alone is sufficient to
identify this pastel as the "Portrait de dan-
seuse, a la lecon" (Portrait of a Dancer at Her
Lesson) that was exhibited in 1879. Despite
the violinist's overwhelming presence, it is
the dancer who dominates. She is no longer
a child, but is not yet an adult, and her
expression — worried and attentive — is em-
phasized at the expense of anything her
awkward body may convey. She is drawn
delicately, almost cautiously, in contrast to
the powerfully and more freely outlined
musician. Lillian Browse has indicated that
the dancer is shown as she performs her
"grands battements en avant," but the un-
gainly posture of her raised right leg and the
absence of studies for this pose suggest that
the composition underwent a transforma-
tion. Erased lines under the pastel hint that
originally the dancer was conceived with
her right leg raised sideways, farther to the
left, in a variant grand battement or deve-
loppe similar to that of the dancers appearing
in a contemporary pastel (L460, private col-
lection) and in the background of The Dancing
Lesson (cat. no. 221) in the Clark Art Insti-
tute. The suggestion is that the leg was
moved forward for compositional reasons at
a fairly early stage, when the artist decided
to include the violinist in the design. The
added strips of paper at the top and to the
right argue for such an interpretation, as
does the different handling of the two fig-
ures. If this was the case, it is likely that a
study of almost certainly the same model
(fig. 156) and two differently posed studies
(IL220. b, L460 bis) played a part in the con-
ception of the work.
Lemoisne and Moffett have proposed a
date of 1877-78 for the pastel, but Browse
believed it to have been executed as late as
1882-84. Recently, on the basis of The
Violinist (BR99), dated 1880, Theodore Reff
has proposed 1880 as a firmer date.3
1. Vollard 1936, pp. 19-20. Jeanne Baudot, a friend
of Renoir, gave a somewhat different account of
the events. Following an illness that forced him to
stop working, Renoir "after many hesitations, fi-
nally resigned himself to accept Fr 45,000 [for the
pastel] from Durand-Ruel." See Jeanne Baudot,
Renoir, ses amis, ses modeles, Paris: Editions Litte-
raires de France, 1949, p. 23. From Julie Manet's
diary, it is clear that the incident between Degas
and Renoir took place at the beginning of Novem-
ber 1899, almost a year after Renoir sold the pas-
tel. See Manet 1979, pp. 279, 282.
2. The catalogue is priced throughout. Against the
three works owned by Caillebotte the word "sold"
appears. As the works were not sold in New
York, it can only be concluded that "sold" actually
meant "not for sale."
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 450; Browse [1949],
no. 101; Moffett 1979, p. 11.
provenance: Gustave Caillebotte, Paris, probably
bought in 1879 at the fourth Impressionist exhibi-
tion; deposited with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 29 January
1886 (deposit no. 4691); consigned by Durand-Ruel
to the American Art Association, New York, 19
February-8 November 1886; returned to Caillebotte,
30 November 1886; bequeathed by Caillebotte to
Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1894; deposited by Renoir
with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 13 March 1894 (deposit
no. 8398); returned to Renoir, 13 May 1895; bought
by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 12 December 1898, for
Fr 5,000 (stock no. 4879); transferred to Durand-
Ruel, New York, 31 December 1898 (stock no.
N.Y. 2071); bought by H. O. Havemeyer, New York,
3 January 1899, for Fr 27,750; Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, New York, 1907-29; Horace Havemeyer, her
son, New York; given to the museum 197 1.
exhibitions: 1879 Paris, no. 74; 1886 New York,
no. 63; 1975-76, New York, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, December 1975-23 March 1976, Nota-
ble Acquisitions 1963-197$, p. 91, repr.; 1977 New
York, no. 23 of works on paper.
selected references: Max Liebermann, "Degas,"
Pan, IV: 3 -4, November 1898- April 1899, repr.
p. 196; Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 103; Geffroy 1908,
p. 20, repr. p. 22; Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 31, repr.
before p. 37; Alexandre 1929, pp. 483-84, repr.
p. 480; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 116, II, no. 450;
Browse [1949], no. 101 (as c. 1882-84); Wick 1959,
p. 97; 1967 Saint Louis, p. 154; Minervino 1974,
no. 503; Moffett 1979, p. 11, pi. 22 (color); The Cri-
sis of Impressionism 1878-1882 (exhibition catalogue
by Joel Isaacson), Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Museum of Art, 1979, pp. 34 (as 1878-82),
88 (as 1879), repr. p. 35; Brame and Reff 1984, under
no. 99 (as 1880); Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 133, fig. 90.
219.
The Dance Class
1881
Oil on canvas
32V8X30V8UI. (81.6X76.5 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased for the
W. P. Wilstach Collection (W37-2-1)
Lemoisne 479
Mary Cassatt's attempts in 1880 to persuade
her brother to buy a work by Degas were
defeated less by Alexander Cassatt's lack of
enthusiasm than by a succession of unantici-
pated difficulties. It is curious that although
Alexander Cassatt and his family spent the
summer of 1880 in France and certainly met
Degas, he appears not to have seen any
paintings by the artist. Perhaps for this rea-
son, commissioning a work was out of the
question for fear that Degas might paint, in
the words of Alexander's mother, Katherine
Cassatt, "something so eccentric you might
not like it."1 Failure to secure for Alexander
Cassatt the first version of Fallen Jockey (see
cat. no. 351) or Horseback Riding (L117),
however, was followed by the tentative pro-
posal of a picture with dancers — the work
that was to become the present Dance Class,
now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The vicissitudes of this painting, the sec-
ond of Degas's works to cross the Atlantic
(the first was Ballet Rehearsal, fig. 130), are
partly chronicled in the Cassatt correspon-
dence, where clues to the changes made to
the painting are also found. In late 1880, the
composition was clearly finished in the form
it had before Degas altered it but, as usual,
he was unhappy with the results. On 10 De-
cember of that year, Mrs. Cassatt informed
her son that Degas was unwilling to part
with it because "he says he must repaint it
all merely because a small portion was washed
out."2 Four months later, the question of the
painting was still unresolved. On 18 April
188 1, Mr. Cassatt wrote to his son that he
would not hear from his sister "until she can
tell you that she has the Degas in hand —
. . . Degas still keeps promising to finish
the picture you are to have & although it
does not require more than two hours of
work it is still postponed — However he said
today that want of money would compel
him to finish it at once — You know he
would not sell it to Mame [Mary Cassatt], &
she buys it from the dealer — who lets her
have it as a favor and at a less price than he
would let it go to anyone not an artist."3
If Mr. and Mrs. Cassatt underestimated
the extent to which Degas reworked the
painting, they had the satisfaction of knowing
two months later that on 18 June 1881,
335
219
336
Degas had delivered the work to Durand-
Ruel.4 There were further difficulties with
the price being asked by the dealer, ship-
ping, and duty to be paid, but the picture,
along with a Monet and a Pissarro, arrived
safely in Philadelphia in September.5
It was only after the death of Alexander
Cassatt, when concern over the dispersal of
his pictures prompted her to discuss the
matter with her friend, Louisine Havemeyer,
that Mary Cassatt again mentioned The
Dance Class. In a letter of 18 April 1920, she
described it as a "girl reading seated on a
bench, the same model as the one who posed
for the statue and bust of her, a very fine
classic group of dancers, one of Degas's best."
In a subsequent letter, on 28 April, she gave
further particulars, noting, "I wanted the pic-
ture which then had a large figure of a dancer
in the foreground but he changed it substi-
tuting the girl in blue reading the paper."6
The extent to which the picture was re-
worked is visible in X-radiographs. In the
background, the dancer en pointe was origi-
nally slightly more to the right, with her
arm extended before her, as she appears in
the study for the figure (L479 bis). In the
foreground, in the place now occupied by
the seated woman, was a seated dancer ad-
justing her shoe, seen from the left in a pose
that appears to have duplicated that of a
dancer in a study (L600) formerly in the
Wadsworth collection. Near her left foot, at
the lower edge of the canvas, slightly left of
center, was a watering can.
The principal dancer in the right fore-
ground was roughly in the same location in
which she appears now, but somewhat higher
and in a different pose. Whether she was ac-
tually transformed only once or twice is not
entirely clear from the X-radiograph, but the
trace of an alternative pose for her left arm
suggests that she may indeed have been al-
tered twice. Originally, the dancer was
posed in a manner close to that of the dancer
on the left in Two Dancers in the Dressing
Room (BR89, National Gallery of Ireland,
Dublin), but with her head raised as in Dancers,
Pink and Green (cat. no. 307), dated 1894,
and Two Dancers in Green Skirts (cat. no. 308).
The bow of her sash, which protruded con-
siderably behind her, and her left arm, visi-
ble to the naked eye in a large pentimento,
completely covered the ballet master, who
did not form part of the original composi-
tion. In a subsequent stage, the dancer ap-
pears to have had her left arm raised, with
her hand touching her left shoulder. This pose
is nearly identical to that of the dancer ap-
pearing in a black-chalk-and-pastel drawing
in the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C., dated c. 1878 by George Shackelford
but possibly executed somewhat later, spe-
cifically as a study for the Philadelphia paint-
ing.7 The dancers in the foreground were
based in their ultimate form on an elaborate
black-chalk-and-pastel drawing (L480, pri-
vate collection), clearly contemporary with
the Washington sheet.
In its reworked form, the painting can be
firmly dated late spring 188 1 rather than
1878, as believed by Lemoisne, or c. 1880,
as proposed by Lillian Browse. The work
evidently already existed in its previous
form in December 1880 and may have dated
from slightly earlier, perhaps 1879. Some of
the studies used for the painting date from
considerably earlier: the two dancers in the
background with their arms raised en cou-
ronne are based on drawings II: 3 12 and
III:2i8, one of which (11:3 12) Degas proba-
bly used in The Dance Class (cat. no. 128) in
the Corcoran Gallery. No study has been
uncovered for the woman in blue, which
suggests that she was painted directly from
the model, the young Marie van Goethem,
who was hardly the right age required for
the figure, but who also likely posed at the
time for the last details of The Little Four-
teen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227). Penti-
menti to the left of her shoe indicate that at
first her legs extended farther to the left and
that both her feet were shown.
The composition obviously preoccupied
Degas, who painted several variants on the
theme in different formats — upright (L587),
rectangular (L588, National Gallery, London),
and horizontal (L703). In all, the background
figures are related to those in the Philadel-
phia painting, but the large figure in the right
foreground is of a standing dancer adjusting
her shoe. As the compositions of all three
are more resolved than the design originally
under the painting in Philadelphia, they cer-
tainly must postdate it. A fourth painting
(L1295), originally perhaps contemporary
with this work but extensively repainted at
a much later date, may have been an early,
abandoned attempt toward the composition.
1. Mathews 1984, p. 155.
2. Ibid.
3. Mathews 1984, p. 161.
4. Recorded in the "Grand Livre," Durand-Ruel ar-
chives, Paris.
5. Mathews 1984, p. 162.
6. Mary Cassatt, letters to Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer
dated 18 April and 28 April 1920. Archives, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
7. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 29, repr. p. 90.
provenance: Painted for Alexander Cassatt; delivered
by the artist to Durand-Ruel, Paris, 18 June 1881, for
Fr 5, 000 (stock no. 11 15, as "Le foyer de la danse");
delivered by Durand-Ruel the same day to Mary
Cassatt, Paris, for Fr 6,000; Alexander Cassatt,
Philadelphia, 1 881 -1906; Lois Cassatt, his widow,
Philadelphia, to 1920; Mrs. W. Plunkett Stewart,
their daughter, to 193 1; Mrs. William Potter Wear,
her daughter; Mrs. Elsie Cassatt Stewart Simmons,
her daughter; bought by the Commissioners of Fair-
mount Park for the W. P. Wilstach Collection 1937.
exhibitions: 1886 New York, no. 299 (as "Repetition
of the Dance"); 1893, Chicago, World's Columbian
Exposition, Loan Collection: Foreign Masterpieces Owned
in the United States, no. 39 (as "The Dancing Les-
son"); 1902-03, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, 5
November 1902-1 January 1903 , A Loan Exhibition
(Seventh Annual Exhibition), no. 41; 1934, Philadel-
phia Museum of Art, 27 October-5 December, Im-
pressionist Figure Painting; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 35,
repr.; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 30, pi. XIX; 1936
Philadelphia, no. 35, repr.; 1947 Cleveland, no. 36,
pi. XXXIX (as "Ballet Class"); 1948, New York,
Paul Rosenberg and Co., Loan Exhibition of 21 Mas-
terpieces by 7 Great Masters, no. 8; 1950-51 Philadel-
phia, no. 75; 1955, Sarasota, The John and Mable
Ringling Museum of Art, Director's Choice, no. 25;
1958 Los Angeles, no. 29, repr.; i960 New York,
no. 26, repr.; 1962 Baltimore, no. 42, repr.; 1969,
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 3 July- 7 Septem-
ber, The Past Rediscovered: French Painting 1800-1900,
no. 23, repr.; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 21, pi. 7 (color)
(as 1880); 1979 Northampton, no. 2, repr.; 1985
Philadelphia.
selected references: Ambroise Vollard, Degas: An
Intimate Portrait, New York: Greenberg, 1927, pi. 26;
Lemoisne 1937, repr. p. B (as "Pendant la lecon de
danse"); "Portfolio of French Painting," The Pennsyl-
vania Museum Bulletin, XXXIII: 176, January 1938,
repr. cover; Sixty-second Annual Report of the Philadel-
phia Museum of Art . . . , Philadelphia, 1938, repr.
p. 12; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 479 (as "Classe de
ballet [Salle de danse]," c. 1878); Browse [1949],
no. 98 (as c. 1880); Cabanne 1957, pp. 44, 98, 114,
pi. 78 (color) (as c. 1878); Minervino 1974, no. 529;
Thomson 1979, p. 677, fig. 97; Boggs 1985, pp. 11-
13, 40-41 nn. 21-32, 44-45, no. 4, repr. (color)
p. 10 (as c. 1880); Sutton 1986, p. 178, fig. 163 (color)
p. 181.
220.
Dancers at Their Toilette
(The Dance Examination)
c. 1879
Pastel and charcoal on heavy gray wove paper
25 X 19 in. (63.4X48.2 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Denver Art Museum. Anonymous gift (194 1.6)
Lemoisne 576
This famous pastel was one of two very dif-
ferent works on the subject of ballet that
Degas contributed to the Impressionist exhi-
bition in 1880, where it was noticed by
Charles Ephrussi and Joris-Karl Huysmans.
Both entranced and repelled by it, Ephrussi
nevertheless commended the "audacity of
the foreshortening [and] the astonishing
strength of the drawing." Huysmans, less
qualified in his admiration, gave an ex-
tended account of the work, concluding:
"What truth! What life! See how realistic
these figures are, how accurately the light
bathes the scene. Look at the expressions on
337
220
these faces, the boredom of painful mechan-
ical effort, the scrutiny of the mother whose
desires are whetted whenever the body of her
daughter begins its drudgery, the indiffer-
ence of the friends to the familiar weariness.
All these things are noted with analytical in-
sight at orice subtle and cruel."1
Although Huysmans, as a novelist, may
have been inclined to reinvent the scene for
himself, he agreed with Ephrussi that the
artist's distortions were unusually effective.
Indeed, both authors noted, independently,
what they observed as the dislocated, clown-
like movements of the dancers.2
The origins of the composition can proba-
bly be traced to the group at the far right in
The Rehearsal (fig. 1 19) in Glasgow, finished
by February 1874. There Degas introduced
the theme of the mother preparing her
daughter for rehearsal. In the Denver work,
the motif was developed into an extremely
refined composition dominated by strong
diagonals that underline the peculiarly high
angle of vision. Faint traces under the pastel
indicate changes in the design that are not
entirely intelligible, as well as, in part, the
sequence in which the figures were built up.
At first, Degas intended the floor to rise at a
more acute angle, and the dancer to the left,
though in the same location and pose, was
338
seated on the bench, which was subsequently
moved farther into the background. Behind
that dancer, there was probably a different
figure, evidence of which is still visible above
the head of the old woman. The woman and
the inquisitive bystander with a plumed hat
were evidently introduced after the figure in
the background was eliminated. The dancer
to the right was added last, partly covering
the seated dancer and the figure behind her.3
The extraordinary concentration of heads in
the upper right corner of the composition,
with limbs unfolding below like segments
of a half-open fan, is so unusual and at the
same time so casual as to invest the design
with the tenor of an observed incident. The
whole is psychologically convincing, with
the relationships clearly defined. The dancer
to the right flexes her leg as she waits for
someone to adjust the back of her dress; the
figure behind her is temporarily distracted
by the dancer to the left; the old woman is
absorbed in her newspaper.
The ingenious grouping of figures is all the
more remarkable as it apparently evolved
without the aid of preliminary drawings.
The dancer adjusting her stocking is of a
type Degas observed repeatedly, but she has
no direct antecedent; indeed, she is closer in
spirit to a different type of seated dancer
that he included in a pastel (L542, The Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art, New York).4 The
old woman was posed for by Sabine Neyt,
Degas's housekeeper, who sat for the stage
mothers in some other works (including the
painting in Glasgow, fig. 119). No study of
her in this pose is known, though a related
drawing (11:230. 1) was used for a different
pastel (fig. 163). The dancer to the right,
the most forceful of the figures, was devel-
oped directly in the composition, as shown
by pentimenti around her back and right leg.
Degas must have been pleased with her, be-
cause he adapted the pose for the portrait of
one of the Mante sisters in the two versions
of The Mante Family (L971; L972, Philadel-
phia Museum of Art).
The application of pastel is less consistent
than a first glance would suggest. The seat-
ed dancer was drawn lightly, with assured
strokes, frequently permitting the paper to
show through; the face of the old woman
was realized with tightly organized vibrant
hatched lines in flesh tones and blue that an-
ticipate the evolution of Degas's later style;
and the solidly constructed dancer to the
right, defined very much in terms of light
and shade, was built up to a considerable
degree of finish.
1 . Charles Ephrussi, "L'exposition des artistes inde-
pendants," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXL4, May
1880, p. 486; Huysmans 1883, pp. 1 13-14 (transla-
tion in 1986 Washington, D.C., p. 323).
2. Ephrussi, op. cit., p, 486; Huysmans 1883, p. 114.
3. Some of these conclusions were reached on the basis
of an examination and report of condition carried
out in 1984 by Anne Maheux and Peter Zegers,
Degas Pastel Project, National Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa.
4. However, the seated dancer in the pastel in the
Metropolitan Museum is clearly derived from the
well-known study dated December 1878 of Melina
Darde seated (11:230.1).
provenance: Ernest May, Paris (May sale, Galerie
Georges Petit, Paris, 4 June 1890, lot 76, as "Dan-
seuses a leur toilette," for Fr 2,550). Bernheim-
Jeune, Paris; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 26
March 1898, for Fr 10,000 (stock no. 4589); trans-
ferred to Durand-Ruel, New York, 22 December
1898 (stock no. N. Y. 4589); bought by H. O. Have-
meyer, New York, 31 December 1898-9 January
1899; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 1907-29;
Horace Havemeyer, her son, New York, until 1941;
anonymous gift to the museum 194 1.
exhibitions: 1880 Paris, no. 40 (as "Examen de
danse"), lent by Ernest May; 1898 London, no. 117
(as "Dancers at Their Toilet"); 1949 New York,
no. 54, repr.; 1953-54 New Orleans, no. 76; 1958
Los Angeles, no. 39, repr. (color); i960 New York,
no. 31, repr; 1961, Richmond, Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts, 13 January- 5 March, Treasures in America,
p. 78, repr.; 1962 Baltimore, no. 45, repr. cover;
1965, New York, Wildenstein and Co., 28 October-
27 November, Olympia's Progeny, no. 28, repr.; 1986
Washington, D.C., no. 92, repr. (color).
selected references: Charles Ephrussi, "L'exposi-
tion des artistes independants," Gazette des Beaux-
Arts, XXL4, May 1880, p. 486; Joris-Karl Huysmans,
"L'exposition des independants en 1880," reprinted
in Huysmans 1883, pp. 1 13-14; Frederick Wedmore,
"Modern Art at Knightsbridge," The Academy, 1359,
21 May 1898, p. 560; Thomas Dartmouth, "Interna-
tional Art at Knightsbridge," The Art Journal [XVII],
1898, repr. p. 253; Lafond 1918-19, I, repr. p. 69, II,
p. 27; Meier-Graefe 1923, pi. 36 (as "Danseuses
s'habillant," c. 1876); Havemeyer 193 1, p. 384, repr.
p. 389; Riviere 1935, repr. p. 99; Lemoisne [1946-
49], II, no. 576 (as 1880); Browse [1949], no. 102 (as
c. 1882); European Art: The Denver Art Museum Col-
lection, Denver: Denver Art Museum, 1955, no. 73,
p. 28, repr. p. 30; Minervino 1974, no. 761, pi. XL VI
(color); Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 133, pi. 91 (as 1880).
221.
The Dancing Lesson
c. 1880
Oil on canvas
ISV2 X 343/4 in. (39.4 X 88.4 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts (562)
Lemoisne 820
Both Lemoisne and Lillian Browse supposed
that Degas's remarkable horizontal compo-
sitions with dancers belonged to the 1880s.
Lemoisne concluded that they followed the
artist's equally singular experiments with
horizontal racetrack scenes, which he dated
in the second half of the 1870s.1 George
Shackelford demonstrated, however, that
one of the ballet scenes, The Dance Lesson
(fig. 218) in the Mellon collection, was ex-
hibited in the Impressionist exhibition of 1880,
and that the composition, based on a draw-
ing in a notebook, had been elaborated by
about 1 878. 2 He therefore dated this work —
stylistically closest to the Mellon painting —
about 1880.
The unusual format of the painting, over
twice as wide as it is high, is one Degas ex-
perimented with in monotypes as early as
1876, notably in a work covered with pastel
(L513, The Art Institute of Chicago), dating
from 1 876-77. 3 What distinguishes the ballet
scenes of the end of the 1870s is an altogether
new approach to composition. As Shackel-
ford has pointed out, almost invariably they
are based on a module that includes one or
several large figures in the foreground,
counterbalanced by a vast open space lead-
ing, in perspective, to dancers in the dis-
tance who are greatly diminished in size.4
This compositional device is observed with
an emphatic diagonal cast in the Williams-
town painting, in which the transition from
shadow to light reflects the perspectival ef-
fects of the design. The handling of light is,
indeed, unusually fine and is reminiscent of
works from the earlier 1870s. Dancers are
seen against the light or more elaborately lit
from two sides, as is the central dancer
holding a resplendently colorful fan.
Degas's particularly careful preparations
for this work are indicated by the number of
important pastel drawings that served for
the movements of the individual dancers. In
almost every instance, these show that the
general plan of the painting and the manner
in which the figures were to be lit were de-
termined before the painting was begun. One
study, Dancer with a Fan, is included in this
exhibition (cat. no. 222). There are two oth-
ers (L822, L884 bis) for each of the seated
dancers at the right. Formerly dated 1885
339
and c. 1886 by Lemoisne, these studies in-
clude elaborate indications about light, closely
followed in the painting, as well as, in one
instance (the study of the girl smoothing her
stocking), about the positioning of the floor,
the wall, and the bench. A fourth drawing
of the same size (L821) is a study for the
dancer at the bar re at the far left. The two
dancers by the windows at the center were
based on existing drawings (II:220.b, 11:352
[fig. 156]) not necessarily connected with
this project at the outset.
Alexandra Murphy has recently observed
that Degas altered slightly, if significantly,
the format of the composition while the
work was in progress. He removed the can-
vas from the stretcher, expanded the stretcher
by three-eighths of an inch (one centimeter)
at the top and three-quarters of an inch (two
centimeters) at the bottom, and retacked the
margins.5 She surmised that the operation
may have been carried out partly to ensure
that the left foot of the second dancer from
the right did not touch the edge of the paint-
ing. In addition, examination under infrared
light has revealed several pentimenti in the
lower right quadrant. The figure of the dancer
seated at the far right, identical in origin to
that in a drawing (fig. 157) in the Johnson
Collection in the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, was completely altered.6 Beside her
there was an unidentified object, rather like
a rectangular box, that was subsequently re-
moved. The legs of the dancer smoothing
her stocking changed position several times:
her left leg was moved farther to the right,
and her right leg was altered four times. The
problem evidently required an additional
drawing (111:37 1) tnat settled the dancer in
the pose finally chosen for the painting.
The Dancing Lesson, by tradition, was a
commission executed for J. Drake del Cas-
tillo, a member of the Chamber of Deputies
for Indre-et-Loire, and his address, 2 rue
Balzac, appears in a notebook dated 1880-
84 by Theodore RefF.7 Drake del Castillo
was in some way connected with Paul La-
fond, Degas's friend and biographer, and his
wife, who occasionally stayed at 2 rue Bal-
zac when visiting Paris in the early 1890s.8
1. See cat. no. 304.
2. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 85-91.
3. 1984 Chicago, no. 31.
4. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 85.
5. See Alexandra Murphy in Williamstown, Clark,
1987, no. 44.
6. Communicated to the author by Alexandra
Murphy.
7. Reff 1985, Notebook 34 (BN, Carnet 2, p. 2).
8. The address, "Madame Lafond/chez Mr. Drake/
del Castillo/2 rue Balzac," appears on the envelope
of a letter from Degas, postmarked 25 October
1894, published in Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 171
(where, however, the envelope is not described).
provenance: J. Drake del Castillo, Paris; bought by
Boussod, Valadon et Cie, Paris, 10 January 1903, for
221
Fr 30,000 (stock no. 27863, as "Le foyer de la danse");
bought the same day by Eugene W. Glaenzer and
Co., New York, for Fr 60,000; bought back by
Boussod, Valadon et Cie, Paris, 30 June 1906 (stock
no. 28847); bought by Georges Hoentschel, Paris,
the same day, for Fr 65,000. [Samuel Courtauld, Lon-
don, according to Lemoisne]. Galerie Barbazanges,
Paris; bought by M. Knoedler and Co. , Paris, 1924;
bought by Robert Sterling Clark, New York, 1924;
his gift to the museum 1955.
exhibitions: 191 3, Ghent, Exposition Universelle et
Internationale de Gand, Groupe II, Beaux- Arts: oeuvres
modemes, no. 121 (as "La repetition de danse"), lent
by Georges Hoentschel; 1914, London, Grosvenor
House, Art fiancais: exposition d'art decoratif contempo-
rain 1800-1885, no. 24 (as "Legon de danse"), lent by
Hoentschel; 1956, Williamstown, Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute, opened 8 May, French Painting of
the Nineteenth Century, no. 101, repr.; 1959 Williams-
town, no. 3, pi. XVIII; 1970 Williamstown, no. 7;
1979 Northampton, no. 3, repr.; 1984-85 Washing-
ton, D.C., no. 32, repr. (color) (as c. 1880).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 820
(as 1885); Browse [1949], no. 116 (as c. 1883); French
Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Williamstown,
Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, n.d.
[after 1962], n.p., no. 36, repr.; Minervino 1974,
no. 819; Kirk Varnedoe, "The Ideology of Time: De-
gas and Photography," Art in America, LXVIIL6,
Summer 1980, p. 105, fig. 12 (color) p. 106; List of
Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Mass. : Sterling and Francine Clark
Art Institute, 1984, p. 12, fig. 257; Boggs 1985,
p. 13, fig. 6; Williamstown, Clark, 1987, no. 44,
repr. (color) p. 61 and cover.
340
34i
222.
Dancer with a Fan
c. 1880
Charcoal and pastel heightened with white chalk
on greenish paper
24 X 16V2 in. (61 X 41.9 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.188)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 823
This large, expressive drawing used for the
central figure in The Dancing Lesson (cat.
no. 221) is one of the identifiable studies
linked to the finished composition. This
said, it should be noted that in the drawing
the dancer is at least twice as large as she
appears in the painting, considerably en-
hancing her dramatic impact and bestowing
a sense of immediacy absent in the painted
version.
The drawing is one of the few representa-
tions of a dancer in repose that gives the im-
pression the subject is reacting to the gaze
directed toward her. She is young and al-
most alarmingly thin, but with the fan un-
folded before her she has the manner of an
adult perfectly aware of the arsenal of mean-
ings she could convey with a movement of
her wrist. If her left arm is in the familiar
pose of the tired dancer rubbing her neck,
there is more than a hint that she is striking
an attitude — indeed, that with a toss of her
head she almost defies the viewer.
provenance: H. O. Havemeyer, New York, proba-
bly bought from the artist with Little Girl Practicing
at the Bane (cat. no. 213); Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, 1907-29; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1930 New York, no. 155, repr.; 1977
New York, no. 33 of works on paper (as 1880-82).
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 185, repr.
p. 187; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 823 (as 1885);
Browse [1949], no. 117, repr. (as c. 1883); Minervino
1974, no. 821.
The Little Fourteen- Year-Old
Dancer
cat. nos. 223-227
Marie van Goethem, who posed for The
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227,
fig. 158), turned fourteen in 1878. 1 That date
and the title of Degas's most important
sculpture — the only one to be exhibited in
his lifetime — represent the sole clues to a
possible date for its genesis. The stages
through to its completion are marked by a
number of drawings datable to the end of
the 1870s, separately examined below, and
by a wax model of the dancer nude that pre-
ceded the final work (fig. 158). There are no
references to the sculpture in Degas's known
correspondence from that period, and no
sketches in his notebooks. As Theodore Reff
has pointed out, a notebook used by the art-
ist between 1880 and 1884 contains Marie
van Goethem's address, and also refers to a
Mme Cusset (actually Cussey), a merchant of
doll's hair, probably connected with the wig
assembled for the statue.2
It is almost certain, however, that by the
end of March 1880, the Little Dancer was
largely finished and probably looked as it
did a year later when it was finally seen in
public. Degas listed it in the catalogue of the
1880 Impressionist exhibition under the title
retained for the exhibition of 188 1, and it is
known that in 1880 he went as far as installing
the glass case in which it was to be shown.3
On 6 April 1880, however, a sympathetic
critic, Gustave Goetschy, told his readers:
"Everything M. Degas produces interests
me so keenly that I delayed by one day the
342
publication of this article to tell you about a
wax statuette that I hear is marvelous and
that represents a fourteen-year-old dancer,
modeled from life, wearing real dance slip-
pers and a bouffant skirt composed of real
fabric. But M. Degas isn't an 'Independant'
for nothing! He is an artist who produces
slowly, as he pleases, and at his own pace,
without concerning himself about exhibi-
tions and catalogues. All the worse for us!
We will not see his Dancer [cat. no. 227],
nor his Young Spartans [cat. no. 40], nor a
number of other works he has announced."4
What prevented Degas from showing the
statue remains unknown — perhaps his cus-
tomary last-minute hesitations or simply a
matter of adjusting a detail. According to
Renoir, a change of detail did occur at some
point in the history of the work, though not
necessarily at this time. In a conversation
with Ambroise Vollard, he intimated that
several people had remarked on how sum-
marily the mouth had been rendered and
that as a result Degas had changed it — for
the worse.5
As in the previous year, on 2 April 188 1
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer was an-
nounced for the sixth Impressionist exhibi-
tion and the empty glass case was set up
again. From the sequence of reviews, many
published before the work was actually in-
cluded in the exhibition, it can be deter-
mined that the Little Dancer was finally seen
only shortly before 16 April, and its original
appearance can be partly determined from
the reviews. The dancer was dressed in a
real bodice, tutu, stockings, and ballet shoes;
on her head was a wig with a pigtail tied
with a leek-green ribbon, and she wore a
similar ribbon around her neck.6 The wax
body was tinted to simulate flesh, but already
at that time it was being said that the poly-
chromy was slightly defective. Charles
Ephrussi, one of the reviewers, expressed
the wish that "the work had been more fin-
ished, that the color of the wax had been
better blended, without those dirty blotches
that spoil the overall appearance."7
The astonishing effect of the statue has been
analyzed in considerable detail by John Re-
wald, Charles Millard, and Theodore Reff.8
The exhibition reviews of 188 1 were unani-
mous in admitting that it was an extraordinary
work, even if they disagreed on its relative
merits. Paul Mantz, who had heard of the
Little Dancer while it was in the making, had
to admit that no amount of warning could
have possibly prepared the viewer for the
realism of the work. Ephrussi's statement,
"This is a truly modern effort, an essay in
realism in sculpture," was followed by Joris-
Karl Huysmans's lengthier comment, pref-
aced with the words: "The fact is that at one
fell swoop, M. Degas has overthrown the
traditions of sculpture, as he has for a long
time been shaking up the conventions of
painting."9 And like Ephrussi, Huysmans
concluded that the work was "the only
truly modern initiative that I know of in
sculpture."10
Critics were quick to link the work with
polychrome sculpture of the past. But it is
curious that the negative criticism focused
not on the novelty of the materials but on a
moral issue raised by the physical aspect of
the dancer. Mantz noted her expression of
"brutish insolence" and asked, "Why is her
forehead, as are her lips, so profoundly
marked by vice?" words echoed by Henry
Trianon, who described her as "the arche-
type of horror and imbecility."11 Even Jules
Claretie, who had been very much affected
by the work, remarked that "the pug-
nosed vicious face of this scarcely pubescent
girl, a blossoming street urchin, remains
unforgettable."12
The most remarkable aspect of the statue
was its extraordinary naturalism, achieved
by highly unusual means in a unique combi-
nation of the artificial with the real — wax,
with hair and cloth. The choice of wax as
the basic medium may have been dictated
by convenience or by force of habit; indeed,
as far as is known, most of Degas's sculp-
ture was made of wax. However, it appears
that in this work Degas aimed at a certain
quality of surface that only wax could pro-
vide and that he wished to retain.
The renewal of interest among Degas's
contemporaries in the wax sculpture of the
past was related to the ongoing argument
about the use of color in sculpture that cul-
minated with the exhibitions of polychrome
sculpture in Dresden in 1883 and in Berlin
in 1886. In France, enthusiasm for wax
focused on the work of Antoine Benoist,
whose well-known colored-wax portrait of
Louis XIV, complete with a wig of real hair,
was on display at Versailles, and on a now
almost completely forgotten polychrome
wax head of a woman in the Musee Wicar at
Lille, once ascribed to the circle of Raphael.
The fame of the head at Lille in the latter
part of the nineteenth century can scarcely
be exaggerated. Several studies were devoted
to it, including a major article by Louis
Gonse, a friend of Duranty's. As early as
1859, in a discussion of the Lille head, Jules
Renouvier had encouraged the use of wax as
a medium by stating that "wax can lend
itself to developments in polychrome sculp-
ture that have been only timidly attempted
thus far." Even more notable is the fact that
Renouvier defended the naturalistic effects
obtained in wax sculpture by claiming that
in certain circumstances, "art becomes more
affecting by approximating reality more than
academic rules allow it."13
When the new Musee Retrospectif opened
its doors in Paris in 1864, one of its sections
was devoted to wax sculpture. Private collec-
tors began to acquire wax sculpture — Alfred-
Emilien de Nieuwekerke, the Surintendant
des Beaux-Arts, for example. Other collectors
closer to Degas were Philippe Burty and
Charles de Liesville, a friend of Duranty's.14
Burty, on seeing the wax head at Lille in
1866, had pronounced it "the most aston-
ishing wonder that one could hope to see"
and enlisted Henry Cros, a young sculptor
with a marked interest in new materials, to
execute a copy for Alexandre Dumas fils.
Cros followed this work with painted wax
medallions and busts, among them one of
Burty 's daughter.15 Reviews indicate that
most wax sculpture shown at the Salon,
Cros's included, was well received until
1879, when the controversy unleashed by
Desire Ringel's Demi-monde, again a moral
issue, prefigured the events that surrounded
the exhibition of The Little Fourteen- Year-Old
Dancer.16
Thus Degas's work expressed a mood
and an aesthetic that were current at the
time. The advocates of polychrome sculp-
ture were known to Degas, and Burty was
a friend of several years' standing. There is
no known link between Cros and Degas,
but their names were mentioned together in
Huysmans's review of 188 1, and Charles
Cros, the sculptor's brother, dedicated a poem
to Degas in 1879. It is not surprising, there-
fore, that Nina de Villard, Charles Cros's
mistress, wrote in her review of the Little
Dancer, "Standing before this statuette I ex-
perienced one of the sharpest artistic sensa-
tions of my life; for a long time after, I dreamt
of it."17
Degas's insistence on wax as the only
possible material for the Little Dancer was
tested in 1903 when the possibility of casting
it arose in connection with its proposed sale.
Louisine Havemeyer's memoirs leave no
doubt that her intention to buy the work
was prompted by a visit to Degas's apart-
ment in the spring of 1903 . In later life, she
recollected:
During another visit to Degas, I had an
opportunity to look around the apart-
ment. I found a little vitrine containing
the model of a horse and the remains of
his celebrated statue of "La Danseuse."
... As I looked into the little vitrine, I
remember how faded the gauze was and
how wooly the dark hair appeared, but
nevertheless I had a great desire to possess
the statue, and as soon as I met Durand-
Ruel afterward I requested him to inter-
view Degas and find out if the statue
could not be put together again for me.
The answer came — "it might and it might
not be done. There were hopes and there
343
were doubts!" There would be work De-
gas could no longer see to do, that would
have to be entrusted to another, but above
and beyond other considerations, the statue
was past for him and far away from his
present line of thought . . . and so after
much hesitation and a great deal of ad-
vice, I finally abandoned the idea. 18
Before negotiations broke down, Mary
Cassatt, who had accompanied Mrs. Have-
meyer during her visit to Degas, wrote to
Paul Durand-Ruel in late 1903: "I have just
received a letter from Mrs. Havemeyer
about the statue. She will have nothing but
the original, and she tells me that Degas, on
the pretext that the wax has blackened,
wants to do it all over in bronze or plaster
with wax on the surface. What an idea,
what does it matter that the wax is black-
ened? The price seems reasonable, which is
what I wrote to her. It is Degas who is not.
Couldn't you arrange it, she wants the statue
so much."19
Throughout the summer and fall of 1903,
Degas was preoccupied with his sculpture.
In an undated letter to his friend Louis Bra-
quaval, written shortly after 19 July 1903,
he informed him that he would not visit
him at Saint-Valery because "I must finish
this sculpture, though I really ought to stop
at my age. I shall work until I drop, and
I'm feeling steady enough on my legs, in
spite of having just reached 69. ',20 In a letter
of September 1903 to Alexis Rouart, he ob-
served: "I am still here, in this studio, after
doing some wax figures. Old age would be
sad without work."21 If the letters may only
indicate a renewed interest in sculpture in
general, it is clearer from other sources that
the wax statue of the little dancer was very
much on Degas 's mind. A letter from Bar-
tholome to Paul Lafond, dating from the
same period, mentions a visit from Degas,
who wanted advice on repairs to a wax sculp-
ture "that was going to go to America."
And discussions about the possibility of Bar-
tholomews supervising the casting of the work
are certainly suggested by Degas's letter to
Bartholome datable 1903 that begins: "My
dear friend, and perhaps caster. . . .',22
Nothing came of the project, however,
and the Little Dancer was cast in bronze only
in 192 1. It is interesting to speculate on the
alterations made to the statue, possibly to
facilitate its casting. The ballerina's hair is
covered with wax, indicating that either the
critics who commented on the work in 188 1
were mistaken or that it was subsequently
Fig. 158. The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer
(RXX), 1879-81. Wax, cotton skirt, satin hair
ribbon, height 37^ in. (95.2 cm). Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
modified. It has been suggested that the al-
terations were made after the artist's death
and were required for the casting process,
though photographs of the Little Dancer taken
after it was found in Degas's apartment
show unmistakably that it was already in
that condition (figs. 159, 160). It is therefore
possible that the alterations were made by
Degas himself in 1903 in anticipation of
casting that year.
The drawings connected with the work
constitute a particular problem of dating.
The studies can be divided into two princi-
pal groups. One set consists of two sheets
that are more distantly associated with the
work than the other group. These show
Marie van Goethem dressed or nude from
five different angles in a pose related to that
of the statue, though she has her arms in
front of her chest and, where she is clothed,
is adjusting her shoulder strap.23 Five other
sheets contain twelve — not sixteen as is some-
times stated — full-length studies of Marie
dressed or nude in the general pose she as-
sumed for the sculpture.24 An additional
drawing related to the latter group has four
studies of her head, torso, and arms, and
there is also a sheet containing five studies
of only her feet.25
The studies, highlighted with chalk or
pastel, are absolutely assured. In almost every
instance, the layout on the sheet is unusually
careful. The paper used, sometimes green
or pink, appears to be from the same stock
that served for Portraits in a Frieze (see cat.
nos. 204, 205), and six of the nine sheets are
very large. How the artist himself regarded
them may be inferred from the fact that he
sold three of the larger sheets to collectors
he knew — Jacques Doucet, Roger Marx, and
Louisine Havemeyer.
Rewald was the first to propose that the
studies of the model adjusting her dress pre-
date the others and may indicate that at an
early stage Degas intended to represent the
sculptured figure in a different pose.26 His
hypothesis was accepted by Lillian Browse
but received little general support.27 Lately,
however, George Shackelford concluded that
at least one of the two studies, Two Dancers
(cat. no. 225), dates from about 1880, a year
or two after the dates he assigned to the other
drawings.28 The second group of studies,
showing the model with her arms behind her
back, has been analyzed by Ronald Pickvance,
who proposed a sequence if not a date. Based
on differences he noted between the nude
studies and the nude sculpture, he concluded
that the drawings preceded the waxes in a
specific order and that the ones of Marie van
Goethem dressed followed the nude wax
sculpture as studies for the final, dressed
version of the statue.29
Fig. 159. Photograph taken in 1919 of The
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (see fig. 158)
1 . For details about Marie van Goethem, see cat.
no. 223.
2. RefF 1985, Notebook 34 (BN, Carnet 2, p. 228).
3. Mantz 1881, p. 3.
4. Goetschy 1880, p. 2. Charles Millard has pro-
posed that in 1880, Degas intended to exhibit the
nude version of The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer; see Millard 1976, p. 9. For a similar
view, see also 1986 Florence, no. 73 .
5. "That dancer, in wax. . . . There was a mouth, a
simple indication of one, but such modeling! Un-
fortunately, after hearing people say, 'But you
have forgotten to make the mouth!' he changed
it." Cited in Vollard 1924, p. 63. John Rewald
has suggested that Renoir may have had the nude
version in mind; see Rewald 1956, pp. 17-18.
6. Joris-Karl Huysmans noted that the fabric bodice
was covered with wax and that the color of the
ribbons was "porreau," that is, leek-green — con-
firmed by Nina de Villard, who also described
the ribbons as green. Paul Mantz alone added
that the dancer wore "a blue ribbon around her
waist" as well. See Huysmans 1883, p. 227; Vil-
lard 188 1, p. 2; Mantz 188 1, p. 3.
7. C.E. [Charles Ephrussi], "Exposition des artistes
independants," La Chronique des Arts et de la Curi-
osity 16 April 188 1, p. 127. Paul Mantz also noted
"stains, spots, and scaly patches that M. Degas
made on the flesh," suggesting they were delib-
erate; see Mantz 1881, p. 3.
8. Rewald 1956, pp. 16-20; Millard 1976, pp. 27-
29, 60-65; Reff 1976, pp. 239-48.
Fig. 160. Photograph taken in 19 19 of The Little
Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (see fig. 158)
9. C.E. [Charles Ephrussi], op. cit., p. 127; Huys-
mans 1883, p. 226.
10. Huysmans 1883, p. 227.
11. Mantz 1881, p. 3; Henry Trianon, "Sixieme ex-
position de peinture par un groupe d'artistes," Le
Constitutionnel, 24 April 188 1, p. 2.
12. Claretie 1881, p. 150.
13. Jules Renouvier, "La tete de cire du Musee Wicar
a Lille," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, 111:6, 15 Septem-
ber 1859, pp. 340-41. For the Lille head, see also
Louis Gonse, "Musee Wicar, objets d'art: la tete
de cire," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XVII: 3, March
1879, pp. 193-205.
14. See Paul Mantz, "Musee Retrospectif: la Renais-
sance et les temps modernes," Gazette des Beaux-
Arts, XIC:4, October 1865, pp. 343-44; see also
Spire Blondel, "Les modeleurs en cire," Gazette des
Beaux- Arts, XXVI: 5, November 1882, p. 436.
15. Philippe Burty, "Exposition des beaux-arts a
Lille," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXL4, October
1866, pp. 389-90. For Henry (or Henri) Cros,
who in 1879 was doing a series of mural decora-
tions for the museum of pathology at the Sal-
petriere in Paris, see Maurice Testard, "Henry
Cros," L'Art Decoratif, XVIII, 1908, pp. 149-55;
see also Henry Roujon, La Galerie des Bustes,
Paris: Hachette, 1909, pp. 293-98; Leonce Bene-
dite, "Henry Cros 1840- 1907," in preface to the
catalogue for the retrospective exhibition in 1922,
Paris: Societe du Salon d'Automne, 1922, pp. 369-
76; and Henry Hawley, "Sculptures by Jules Da-
lou, Henry Cros and Medardo Rosso," Bulletin of
345
the Cleveland Museum of Art, LVIIL7, September
I97I» PP- 201-05, 2°9 nn- 5-16. A sitting for the
portrait of Madeleine Burty (who subsequently
married Charles Haviland, a collector of works
by Degas) was described in Edmond de Goncourt's
diary entry for 10 December 1872; see Journal
Goncourt 1956, pp. 923-24.
16. For wax sculpture in the latter part of the nine-
teenth century, see Spire Blondel, "Les driers
modernes," L 'Artiste, I, 1898, pp. 225-34; for
Desire Ringel, see Antoinette Le Normand Ro-
main's chapter on polychromy in La sculpture Jran-
$aise au XIXe siecle (exhibition catalogue), Paris:
Grand Palais, 1986, p. 155.
17. See Villard 188 1, p. 2. For Charles Cros's con-
nection with Nina de Villard and Degas, see
Louis Forestier, Charles Cros, Vhomme et Voeuvre,
Paris: Lettres Modernes Minard, 1969, pp. 54-
67, 124-29, 170-71, 279-81.
18. Havemeyer 196 1, p. 255.
19. Letter from Mary Cassatt, Mesnil-Beaufresne,
Tuesday [1903], to Paul Durand-Ruel. The original
letter is in a French private collection, a transcript
in the Durand-Ruel archives, Paris. Translation
in Mathews 1984, p. 287.
20. Unpublished letter from Degas, Paris, Wednes-
day, to Louis Braquaval, datable 1903 from
Degas's statement about his age.
21. Letter from Degas, Paris, Monday [September
1903], to Alexis Rouart, who wrote the date on
the letter; see Lettres Degas 1945 » CCXXII,
p. 234; Degas Letters 1947, no. 254, p. 219 (trans-
lation revised).
22. Letter from Degas, Paris, Friday, to Bartholome.
Marcel Guerin, who published the letter, included
it with the correspondence for 1888. However,
the letter can be dated 1903 on the basis of an
Ingres exhibition mentioned in the text, recog-
nizable as "Portraits dessines par Ingres," held
that year at the Galerie Bulloz, Paris, in connec-
tion with the publication of Henry Lapauze's Les
portraits dessines de J.-A.-D. Ingres, Paris: J. E.
Bulloz, 1903. See Lettres Degas 1945, CI, p. 127;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 112, p. 125.
23. See cat. no. 225 and fig. 161.
24. See 111:386 and IV:287.i, showing the model
nude; and L586 bis, L586 ter (cat. no. 224), and
IIL277, showing her dressed.
25. See III: 149 and cat. no. 223.
26. Rewald 1956, p. 17,
27. Browse [1949], no. 92.
28. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 73-78.
29. 1979 Edinburgh, p. 64 and nos. 74, 77.
223.
Four Studies of a Dancer
1878-79
Chalk and charcoal, heightened with gray wash
and white, on buff wove paper
19V4 X i25/s in. (49 X 32. 1 cm)
Inscribed in graphite upper left: 36 rue de
Douai Marie
Vente stamp lower right; atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF4646)
Exhibited in Paris
Vente 111:341.2
This study, inscribed with a name and
address — the same as that appearing in a
notebook used by Degas between 1880 and
1884 — identified Marie van Goethem as the
model for The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer
(cat. no. 227). 1 As Charles Millard has es-
tablished, Marie was one of three daughters —
all ballet students — of a Belgian tailor and a
laundress.2 The name of the eldest daughter,
Antoinette, later a supernumerary, appears
as a prospective model in a notebook used
by Degas until the early 1870s.3 The youngest
daughter, Louise-Josephine, who became a
dancer at the Opera and performed until
19 10, subsequently claimed that it was she
who posed for the Little Dancer.4 Marie,
born on 17 February 1864, would have been
fourteen in 1878.
Unfortunately, there are few descriptions
of Marie van Goethem outside of the splen-
did visual records of her left by Degas. A
small item published in a newspaper on 10
February 1882, when she was one week
short of eighteen, states: "Mile Van Goe-
uthen [sic], — Fifteen years old. Has a sister
346
who is a supernumerary and another at the
ballet school. — Poses for painters. — There-
fore frequents the Brasserie des Martyrs and
Le Rat Mort"5 The discrepancy between
Marie's real age and that noted in the news-
paper is interesting. It could be an editorial
mistake, but it may also suggest that she
was not truthful about her age, in which
case an attempt to attach the date of 1878 to
the first idea for the Little Dancer could
prove misleading. Blanche Mante, also a
young dance student and several years
Marie's junior, remembered her as having
beautiful long hair which she wore hanging
down her back when dancing. But Millard
has suspected, probably rightly, that it was
Louise-Josephine whom Mile Mante remem-
bered.6 From the evidence of the drawings,
Marie van Goethem also had a wonderful
head of hair, shown in all its beauty in The
Dance Class (cat. no. 219) in Philadelphia.
Her face, no less than her angular body, had
an interesting structure, though it was not
necessarily beautiful by the standards of
1880.
In these four studies, as in the other stud-
ies directly related to the project, the dancer
is shown in the pose adopted for the statue.
The study at the lower right duplicates to
some degree a study appearing at the center
of a different sheet (L586 bis, private collec-
tion). The presence of the name and address
on the drawing has suggested, with some
reason, that it may have been the first in the
sequence of studies of Marie in this pose in
dance costume.
1. "Marie, 36 rue de Douai/Van Gutten." See Reff
1985, Notebook 34 (BN, Carnet 2, p. 4).
2. Millard 1976, pp. 8-9 n. 26.
3. "Vanguthen Boulevard [de] Clichy. Antoinette pe-
tite blonde/ 12 ans." See Reff 1985, Notebook 22
(BN, Carnet 8, p. 211). Reff dates the notebook
1867-74.
4. Pierre Michaut, "Immortalized in Sculpture,"
Dance, August 1954, pp. 26-28, cited in Millard
1976, pp. 8-9 n. 26.
5. "Paris la nuit: le ballet de l'Opera," VEvenement,
10 February 1882, p. 3. The note cannot refer to
Antoinette van Goethem, too old in 1882 to pass
for fifteen, or to Louise-Josephine who, born on
18 July 1870, was not yet twelve years old. The
text of the note was also used in 1887 by the anon-
ymous author of a book on dancers at the Opera
(Un vieil abonne [An old subscriber], Ces demoiselles
de l'Opera, Paris: Tresse et Stock, 1887, pp. 265-
66). For both, see Coquiot 1924, p. 76; Millard
1976, p. 8 n. 26; and Shackelford in 1984-85
Washington, D.C., p. 69.
6. See Browse [1949], p. 62, and Millard 1976, pp. 8-
9 n. 26.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 341.2,
in the same lot with no. 341. 1 [cat. no. 134], for
Fr 2,850); bought at that sale by the Musee du Lux-
embourg, Paris; transferred to the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 84; 1952,
London, Arts Council Gallery, 2 February-16 March,
French Drawings from Fouquet to Gauguin, no. 49; 1952-
53 Washington, D.C., no. 157; 1959-60 Rome,
no. 182; 1964 Paris, no. 71, repr.; 1969 Paris, no. 186,
pi. XIX; 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 19, repr.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 36 (re-
print edition 1973, pi. 63); Browse [1949], no. 94; Ro-
senberg 1959, p. 113, pi. 213; Millard 1976, pi. 27;
Reff 1976, pp. 245, 333 nn. 17, 18, fig. 161; Keyser
198 1, pi. XXXVII; 1984 Chicago, p. 97, fig. 42-2.
224.
Three Studies of a Dancer in
Fourth Position
1879-80
Charcoal and pastel with stump, over graphite,
heightened with white chalk, on buff
laid paper
i87/s X 24V4 in. (48 X 61.6 cm)
Signed in black pastel lower left: Degas
The Art Institute of Chicago. Bequest of
Adele R. Levy (1962.703)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 586 ter
There are no true precedents in Degas's ear-
lier work for multiple studies, from differ-
ent angles, of a model holding strictly the
same pose. Richard Thomson has observed
that in an early drawing after the classical
Borghese Gladiator, Degas was careful to study
the sculpture from three different angles,1
and over the years he seems to have main-
tained the same interest in an anatomical
model (attributed to Edme Bouchardon) of
which he owned a cast.2 Degas's increasing
fascination with mirror images, documented
in a notebook used in the late 1870s3 and
very much in evidence in the repetitive mo-
tifs of some of his later compositions, has
been cited as a possible reason for the multi-
plicity of views of Marie van Goethem, seen
from every imaginable point of view as she
holds her pose.4
That hypothesis, attractive as it is, does
not appear completely convincing when ap-
plied to this particular set of drawings. In
fact, there may have been a simpler reason for
them. From the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when Bouchardon made a famous
series of such studies (now in the Louvre),
until the later nineteenth century, drawings
of this type served a special function in the
evolution of a sculpture: far from being the
initial study toward it, they usually followed
the making of the first modeled sketches.5
Thus they were not the first projection on
paper of something that had not yet taken
form in three dimensions, but rather a re-
fining tool that gave the sculptor the oppor-
tunity to take a second, more analytical
look at the model before proceeding with the
final sculpture. Whether Degas deliberately
adopted the procedure cannot be proved,
but it is unlikely that he was unaware of it,
and the drawings associated with The Little
Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227), what-
ever their status within the sequence, do
correspond closely to the practice. What dis-
tinguishes them from the usual productions
of this type is their quality and the complete
absence of pedantry.
347
The drawing in the Art Institute of Chi-
cago, one of the finest of the group, is relat-
ed to one on a sheet of the same size in a
private collection (L586 bis) that represents
Marie van Goethem in three views from the
back. Erasures and subtle changes in both
drawings indicate the effects the artist strove
for. In the Chicago sheet, corrections affect
mostly the pose of the legs, though the right
arm of the figure in the center, erased and
covered with a shadow, indicates it was
pushed farther behind the model's back. In
the related drawing, it is principally the pos-
ture of the arms that underwent revision. In
two of the three studies on the sheet, Marie
van Goethem originally held her arms be-
hind her back with her elbows farther apart,
but then she adjusted her pose, probably at
the request of the artist, with her arms held
closer together.
1. 1987 Manchester, p. 82, no. 112 p. 85.
2. See the drawings in Reff 1985, Notebook 8 (pri-
vate collection, pp. 2V, 3V, 43) and Notebook 9
(BN, Carnet 17, p. 18), as well as IV:i23.b, IV:i23.c,
IV:i82.a, IV:i82.b.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 65).
4. George Shackelford (1984-85 Washington, D.C.,
pp. 73-78) cites as a precedent van Dyck's triple
portrait of Charles I of England. However, this is
not a portrait in the traditional sense but is a set of
studies painted specifically as a guide for the sculp-
tor Gianlorenzo Bernini.
5. For Bouchardon's studies and the role of prepara-
tory drawings in sculpture, see La sculpture: methode
et vocabulaire, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1978,
pp. 22-41. For a later manifestation of the prac-
tice, see the case of Paul Dubois's Eve of 1873, re-
produced by Anne Pingeot in La sculpture jrancaise
au XlXsiecle (exhibition catalogue), Paris: Grand
Palais, 10 April-28 July 1986, pp. 61-64.
provenance: Roger Marx (d. 1913), Paris (Marx
sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 11-12 May 1914,
no. 124, repr.); bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, for
Fr 10,070 (stock no. 10552); bought by R. Bunes, 28
February 192 1, for Fr 26,000. [? Bibliotheque d'Art
et d'Archeologie, Paris, according to Lemoisne.]
Adele R. Levy, New \brk; her bequest to the museum
1962.
exhibitions: 196 1, New York, The Museum of
Modern Art, 9 June- 16 July, The Mrs. Adele R. Levy
Collection: A Memorial Exhibition, no. 14, repr. ; 1979
Edinburgh, no. 76, repr.; 1984 Chicago, no. 42,
repr. (color); 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 20,
repr.
selected references: Marx 1897, repr. (detail) pp. 321,
323; Rewald 1944, pp. 21, 62, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-
49], II, no. 586 ter; Browse [1949], no. 91; Harold
Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings
and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century, The Art In-
stitute of Chicago, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1979, II, 2F2.
225.
Two Dancers
c. 1879
Charcoal and white chalk on green commercially
coated wove paper, which retains its original
color
2$Vs X 191/4 in. (63.8X48.9 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.189)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 599
Fig. 161. Three Studies of a Nude (IIL369), c. 1879.
Charcoal, i87/sX 25% in. (48 X 65 cm). Private
collection
348
Even among Degas's surviving works of
sculpture, there are examples that show he
modeled the same subject again and again,
making adjustments or expanding a theme.
From the evidence, it would appear that of
all his major works, The Little Fourteen-Year-
Old Dancer (cat. no. 227) had the least diffi-
cult genesis, with a clear progression from
the nude modeled version to the dressed one
he exhibited. This is somewhat difficult to
imagine, however, and it is not unreasonable
to suppose that other modeled sketches, now
lost, may have existed.
Two fine studies of the model, Marie van
Goethem, adjusting her shoulder strap are
the only indication that Degas may have en-
tertained a different idea for the sculpture.
In addition to this sheet, in which she ap-
pears in her ballet dress, there is a drawing
of almost exactly the same size, also on green
paper, in which she is shown nude in three
different views of the same pose (fig. 161). 1
The effect of each drawing is quite different.
The nude version, vigorous and direct, can
easily be accepted as the analysis of a model
for a sculpture. In the one exhibited here,
the dancer is seen from above, from an angle
that is stylistically consistent with the artist's
preoccupations in the late 1870s but far from
common in a drawing purporting to be a
study specifically related to a sculpture. Thus
the relationship of the drawing to the sculp-
ture remains vague, and it may well be that
it was simply executed in the course of study-
ing the model for the interesting points of
view it offered.
The pose, with one arm raised and the head
turned slightly to the side, is one Degas had
examined periodically since the early 1870s,
notably in an earlier study of two dancers in
the Metropolitan Museum (cat. no. 13 8). 2
About 1878—79, Degas took a new interest
in the motif and in one instance included a
dancer of this type, apparently based on an
earlier drawing, in a fan (BR72) painted for
Louise Halevy and subsequently exhibited
in 1 879. 3
1 . Seldom exhibited and reproduced, it was never-
theless included in Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 35.
2. See 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 77, fig. 3.4,
and 1987 Manchester, p. 113, fig. 148 p. 112.
3. Among many drawings of various dates, one
might cite two that certainly precede the Metro-
politan drawing (cat. no. 138). These are III: 8 1.4
and III: 166. 1. The fan appeared in the fourth Im-
pressionist exhibition under no. 78.
provenance: Possibly the drawing that was bought
from the artist for Fr 500 by Durand-Ruel, Paris
(stock no. 2184, as "Danseuses," drawing), 26 January
1882, and sold by Durand-Ruel for Fr 800 to M. Des-
champs, 31 August 1882; possibly the same "Dan-
seuses" sold by Deschamps for Fr 800 to Durand-Ruel,
Paris (stock no. 567), 30 June 1890, which was then
sent to New York on 29 November 1893, arrived at
Durand-Ruel, New York, 12 December 1893 (stock
no. N.Y. 1 105), and was sold to H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, 16 January 1894; Mrs. H. O. Havemey-
er, from 1907; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 60 (as "Deux dan-
seuses, vues de dos," on green paper), no lender given;
1930 New York, no. 156; 1977 New York, no. 31 of
works on paper.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 185, repr.
p. 187; Hitaire-Germain Edgard [sic] Degas, 1834-
19x7: 30 Drawings and Pastels (introduction by Walter
Mehring), New York: Erich S. Herrmann, 1944,
pi. 16; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 599; Browse
[1949], p. 369, no. 92; 1984-85 Washington, D.C.,
p. 70, fig. 31.
226.
Nude Study for The Little
Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer
1878-80
Bronze
Height: 2SV2 in. (72.4 cm)
Original: red wax with black spots. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Collection
of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. See fig. 162
Rewald XIX
There has never been any doubt that the
nude version of The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer is the model for the dressed version
(cat. no. 227) and that, as such, it preceded
it. About one-fourth smaller than the final
349
Fig. 162. Nude study for The Little Fourteen-Year-
Old Dancer (RXIX), 1878-80. Wax, height i43/4 in.
(37.5 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
work and modeled with less regard for de-
tail, the sculpture is a vigorous final draft
that anticipates, with unexpectedly different
results, the pose, proportions, and general
effect of the dressed Little Dancer.
Marks on the wax model — visible also in
the bronze version — and a comparison with
the nude studies of Marie van Goethem
(fig. 161) have led Charles Millard and Ron-
ald Pickvance to suggest that the wax model
(fig. 162) underwent a number of transfor-
mations.1 Noting that in the drawings Marie
van Goethem holds a slightly different pose,
Pickvance proposed that at some point dur-
ing its final stage the statue was altered in
three ways: the arms were pulled farther
back from the body, the right leg was moved,
and the head was tilted back a bit more, re-
sulting in a crack at the level of the neck.2
Devoid of her stage costume, the dancer
seems younger than in the final work. The
body, clearly that of an adolescent, is firmly
planted on its large feet, and the arms echo
in their curve the forward thrust of the yet
unformed torso, an effect that was attenu-
ated in the ultimate version. The small size
of the wax model, along with the term
"statuette" used to describe the work in the
catalogues of the 1880 and 1881 Impressionist
exhibitions, has led to the tentative suggestion
that the nude wax study may have been ex-
hibited in the fifth Impressionist exhibition,
of 1880.3 However, Gustave Goetschy's de-
scription of the work that was expected at
the exhibition, clearly the dressed version,
rules out the possibility.4
1. Millard 1976, p. 9; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 75.
2. Millard was the first to point out that the right leg
had been displaced. See Millard 1976, p. 9.
3. See 1986 Florence, under no. 73.
4. Goetschy 1880, p. 2.
selected references: Lemoisne 1919, repr. p. 112
(wax original); Janneau 1921, repr. p. 352 (unidenti-
fied bronze cast); Bazin 193 1, p. 294, fig. 69 (uniden-
tified bronze cast); Rewald 1944, no. XIX, reprs.
pp. 57-60, details pp. 60-61 (bronze cast A/ 56, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as 1879-
80); Rewald 1956, no. XIX, plates 30, 31 (unidenti-
fied bronze cast, as 1879-80); Minervino 1974,
no. S37; Millard 1976, pp. 8-9, figs. 23, 24 (wax
original, as 1878-80); RefF 1976, p. 239, fig. 158
(bronze cast A/ 56, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York); 1986 Florence, no. 56, repr. (bronze
cast S/56, Museu de Arte, Sao Paulo); 1987 Man-
chester, no. 69, fig. 108 (bronze cast, National Gal-
lery of Scotland, Edinburgh).
A. Orsay Set P, no. $6
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2101)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930;
entered the Louvre 193 1.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 37 of sculp-
tures; 1964 Paris, no. 103; 1969 Paris, no. 241; 1984-
85 Paris, no. 32, p. 189, fig. 154 p. 178.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. $6
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.373)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 10 1; 1945, New
York, Buchholz Gallery, 3 -27 January, Edgar Degas:
Bronzes, Drawings, Pastels, no. 13; 1977 New York,
no. 9 of sculptures.
227.
The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer
1879-81
Bronze, partly tinted, cotton skirt, satin hair
ribbon, wooden base
Height: 37V2 in. (95.2 cm)
Original: wax, cotton skirt, satin hair ribbon,
hair now covered with wax, wooden base.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon,
Upperville, Virginia. See figs. 158-160
Rewald XX
No work of sculpture by Degas suffered so
much in translation to bronze as did The
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer. The unusu-
ally complex combination of materials was
an evident difficulty. Whether contact be-
tween Degas and the Adrien Hebrard foundry
existed as far back as 1870, as stated by
Thiebault-Sisson, is open to question.1 But
in 1903 a proposal was considered, then
abandoned, to cast the work, and three other
sculptures actually were cast in plaster dur-
ing the artist's lifetime, probably under his
supervision.
Louisine Havemeyer' s second attempt to
purchase the wax Little Dancer in 19 18 gen-
erated correspondence that throws some
light on the otherwise confusing history of
the casting, generally believed to have taken
place in 1922 or 1923 but actually carried
out in 192 1. Unfortunately for Mrs. Have-
meyer, her attempted negotiations occurred
while Degas 's estate was being divided, with
all the complications attending such divi-
sions. The Little Dancer was in a lot jointly
owned by Jeanne Fevre, the artist's niece,
and her brother Gabriel. It was Rene de
Gas's plan to remove the waxes (not included
in the posthumous sales) from the artist's
studio and entrust them to Albert Bartho-
lome for cleaning and restoration. Mrs.
Havemeyer's agent was Durand-Ruel, but
she relied on Mary Cassatt to help her with
the negotiations because of Cassatt' s friend-
ship with Jeanne Fevre. Throughout the entire
episode, Cassatt attempted to prevent the
casting of the Little Dancer and advised
Jeanne Fevre to resist the idea, hoping that
Mrs. Havemeyer would buy what she called
a "unique piece."
The exact condition of the work in 19 17
remains problematic. As has been noted,
Mrs. Havemeyer claimed in her memoirs that
in 1903 she had seen the "remains" of the
sculpture, suggesting there had been exten-
sive damage. However, her memory was al-
most certainly colored by the subsequent
descriptions of the work in Paul Lafond's
monograph of 19 18-19, where it was
350
«7
claimed that at the time of the artist's death
the Little Dancer was a ruin and that "its
arms were broken off from the body and
lying pitifully at its feet."2 Despite Lafond's
closeness to the artist, there are reasons to
doubt his statement. However defective
Degas's armatures were, it would have been
virtually impossible for the arms to fall off.
It is clear, nevertheless, that the weight of
the arms caused a break at the shoulder level
and that both arms were partly detached but
held in place by the armature. As Charles
Millard has noted, this is visible in the earli-
est photographs of the sculpture (figs. 159,
160), and indeed the break in the left arm is
noticeable in the bronze cast.3
Rene de Gas's decision to turn over all of
the sculpture to Bartholome was certainly
made by early 19 18, and a letter from Mary
Cassatt of 9 February of that year shows
that she had advised Jeanne Fevre to oppose
the idea and "to take legal action, rather
than give in to it."4 By mid-March, photo-
graphs of the works had already been
taken — Vollard showed a set to Renoir,
who admired them very much — and Mary
Cassatt was still hoping that the waxes
would remain untouched.5 In early May
191 8, the matter was still not resolved. Ac-
cording to a letter of 6 May written by
Degas 's friend the sculptor Paul Paulin to
Paul Lafond immediately following the first
atelier sale, "Rene, the brother, is still dis-
posed toward making an important gift to
the State. Bartholome had some doubts
about the intentions of the niece. Bartho-
lome was entrusted with restoring the
sculptures, and asked for carte blanche.
Mile Fevre did not want to give it to him,
she didn't even want to hear speak of him.
That spoiled things, and there was a ques-
tion of litigation. . . ."6
Three days later, on 9 May 191 8, Mary
Cassatt informed Mrs, Havemeyer that the
sculptures would be cast and that she had a
letter from Jeanne Fevre "with the account of
how their hands were forced by the press,
under the instigation of a sculptor friend of
Degas who needs to wrap himself in Degas's
genius, not having any of his own."7 On 25
June she wrote again, adding a postscript to
the letter a day later: "Now as to the statue
George D.R. [Durand-Ruel] took on him-
self to write me that the heirs would not
sell, but it is not the case they are perfectly
willing to sell it to you as a unique piece,
there has been no objection as to not having
it reproduced, the statues are in a place of
safety and will not be cast until after the
war. The founder advised Mile Fevre to ac-
cept an offer of 100,000 fcs I think 80,000
might be accepted. You will have to think it
over, I only wish that I could see it again
and especially that you could. The sculpture
has made a great sensation. It is more like
Egyptian sculpture."8
In the weeks to follow, Vollard was con-
sulted about the purchase, and he thought
the price rather high.9 Then negotiations
came to a standstill, to be reopened a year
later.
Arrangements for casting the seventy-two
Degas sculptures, not including the Little
Dancer, were apparently made during 19 19,
when Albino Palazzolo, a highly skilled
caster (formerly at Hebrard's) who had cast
Rodin's Thinker, was called from Italy to
undertake the work.10 To what degree he
rather than Bartholome was responsible for
restoring and preparing the waxes is a ques-
tion that remains only partially answered.11
By November 19 19, negotiations for the
sale of the wax Little Dancer were open
again, and on 8 December Mary Cassatt
wrote to Mrs. Havemeyer: "As to the Degas
'danseuse' Hebrard who is to cast it says it is
in perfect condition and only needs cleaning
and a new skirt. As to the price it has not
yet been fixed but every time it is mentioned
it gets dearer. I think casting it will be diffi-
cult because the bodice is glued to the statue
and this may make it difficult."12 In another
351
letter of 8 December with a postscript dated
10 December, Mary Cassatt wrote that the
Fevres had finally "decided on the price for
the danseuse, 500,000 fcs!" In addition, she
noted: "Now they give you a month to get
an answer to me, and then if you do not ac-
cept the statue will be cast not in bronze but
in something as much like the original wax
as possible. As a unique thing and in the
original it is most interesting, but 25 copies
in . . . wax takes away the artistic value in
my opinion, they don't think of that. What
would Degas have thought of this?"13
In May 192 1, the wax Little Dancer reap-
peared in public for the first time since Degas
exhibited it in 188 1. 14 Palazzolo had already
taken a mold from it, and while an exhibi-
tion of the completed seventy-two bronzes
was in progress at Hebrard's, the first bronze
cast was already under discussion. On 4
June 192 1, Mary Cassatt wrote to Jeanne
Fevre: "Before leaving Paris last Thursday I
saw the exhibition of your uncle's bronzes.
M. Durand said that the large dancer has
just been cast and that the result surpassed
even M. Hebrard's expectations. He has not
yet decided how the skirt will be done —
whether it will be in muslin or bronze."15
With this knowledge in mind, Mrs. Have-
meyer abandoned the idea of buying the
wax and opened new negotiations for the
bronze in the latter part of 192 1, when a sec-
ond bronze was cast. On 6 January 1922,
Mary Cassatt, who had still not seen the
bronze, wrote again to Jeanne Fevre, telling
her that "Mrs. Havemeyer had acquired the
first cast of the large dancer and the Durand-
Ruels had the second! I have not been able
to see the statue enough to judge the repro-
duction, but I heard from others that it was
admirable."16
In the casting, the most conspicuously
disturbing aspects of the original wax were
subdued: the translucent quality of the sur-
face was lost, and the fabric was reduced to
the skirt and the hair ribbon — almost al-
ways pink rather than the original green.
Jeanne Fevre made the ballet skirts worn by
some of the bronze Little Dancers, and at
least one exemplar, that owned by the late
Henry Mcllhenny (now in the Philadelphia
Museum of Art), was sold with a replace-
ment skirt. Nevertheless, the careful patina
duplicated with considerable effect the hue
of the wax, the bodice, and the slippers.
The exact number of bronze casts of the
Little Dancer issued by Hebrard is unknown,
but it has been generally assumed, as in the
case of the other bronzes, that the edition
was intended to number twenty-two: twenty
for sale, one for Hebrard, and one for the
Degas heirs. However, as Mary Cassatt
mentioned in a letter of December 19 18 and
another to Durand-Ruel in January 1920,
twenty-five casts were proposed.17 Some
two decades ago, not long after the redis-
covery of the original waxes in storage at
Hebrard's, two previously unknown plaster
casts of the Little Dancer, patinated in imita-
tion of the original wax, were also uncov-
ered. Even more recently, another set of
bronzes, marked MODELE and containing
yet another exemplar of the Little Dancer,
was found in storage at Hebrard's. That set,
now in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasa-
dena, is generally closest to the original waxes
and, indeed, most of the individual pieces
retain the defects of armature — not visible in
the Little Dancer — still apparent in the waxes
but corrected in the edition of bronzes issued
by Hebrard for sale. The Pasadena bronzes
clearly served in Hebrard's foundry as the
model for the patina used in the other bronzes
as they were issued over the years.18 The
two plaster exemplars, which remain un-
derstudied, are now in the Mellon collection
and in the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha.
Exactly where they fit in the sequence of
casts remains unclear.
1. Francois Thiebault-Sisson, "A propos d'une ex-
position: Degas, ou l'homme qui sait," Le Temps,
19 April 1924.
2. Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 66.
3. Millard 1976, p. 32 n. 29.
4. Letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse, 9 February
1918, to Paul Durand-Ruel, cited in Venturi
1939, II, p. 136.
5. One of the photographs (fig. 160), published in
Lemoisne 19 19, p. 112, shows the fissure around
the left arm.
6. Letter from Paul Paulin to Paul Lafond, 6 May
19 1 8, published in Sutton and Adhemar 1987,
p. 180.
7. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse,
9 May 19 18, to Louisine Havemeyer, Archives,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
8. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse,
25 June 19 1 8, to Louisine Havemeyer, Archives,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
9. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse,
4 August 19 1 8, to Louisine Havemeyer, Archives,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
10. Millard 1976, p. 3 1 n. 27.
11. Correspondence suggests that Bartholome had
something to do with the waxes, though he did
not prepare them for casting; that task was un-
dertaken by Palazzolo. For Palazzolo 's role, see
Jean Adhemar, "Before the Degas Bronzes," Art
News, 54:7, November 1955, pp. 34-35, 70. For
a thorough discussion of the entire question, see
Millard 1976, pp. 30-31 nn. 23-28.
12. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Paris, 8
December 19 19, to Louisine Havemeyer, Ar-
chives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. It is curious that in an undated telegram
preserved in an envelope with letters dated 14
November 1919 and 8 December 19 19, Mary
Cassatt informed Mrs. Havemeyer: "Statue Bad
Condition" (Archives, The Metropolitan Muse-
um of Art, New York).
13. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Paris, 8
December 19 19, to Louisine Havemeyer, Archives,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
14. See Thiebault-Sisson, op. cit. , where it is stated
that the wax was exhibited at the Orangerie and,
hence, not at Hebrard's, as is usually believed.
15. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Mesnil-
Beaufresne, 4 June [1921], to Jeanne Fevre,
Brame archives, Paris. The year of the letter can
be inferred from the reference to the exhibition
held by Hebrard in May-June 192 1. In the same
letter, Mary Cassatt refers to Hebrard's project of
casting a set of Degas sculptures in terra-cotta to
be given to the Musee du Petit Palais. No such
set is known to exist.
16. Unpublished letter from Mary Cassatt, Grasse,
6 January [1922], to Jeanne Fevre, Brame archives,
Paris. The year of the letter can be established
with the help of letters in the same collection dat-
ing from 23 December [1921] and 21 January
[1922], all of which discuss the forthcoming
Degas exhibition due to open in New York on
26 January — actually held at the Grolier Club
26 January-28 February 1922.
17. Cited in Venturi 1939, II, p. 138.
18. Palazzolo remembered that the casting of all the
sets of bronzes was completed only in about
1932. See Jean Adhemar, "Before the Degas
Bronzes," Art News, 54:7, November 1955, p. 70.
selected references: Goetschy 1880, p. 2; Henry
Havard, "L'exposition des artistes independants," Le
Steele, 3 April 1881, p. 2; Gustave Goetschy, "Expo-
sition des artistes independants," La Justice, 4 April
188 1, p. 3, and Le Voltaire, 5 April 188 1, p. 2; Au-
guste Daligny, "Les independants: sixieme exposi-
tion," Le Journal des Arts, 8 April 1881, p. 1; Jules
Claretie, "La vie a Paris: les artistes independants,"
Le Temps, 5 April 1881, p. 3; C. E. [Charles Ephrus-
si], "Exposition des artistes independants," La
Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosite, 16 April 1881,
pp. 126-27; Elie de Mont, "L'exposition du Boule-
vard des Capucines," La Civilisation, 21 April 1881,
pp. 1-2; Bertall [Charles-Albert d'Arnoux], "Expo-
sition des peintres intransigeants et nihilistes," Paris-
Journal, 22 April 188 1, pp. 1-2; Paul de Charry, "Les
independants," Le Pays, 22 April 1881, p. 3; Mantz
1881, p. 3; Villard 1881, p. 2; Henry Trianon, "Sixieme
exposition de peinture par un groupe d'artistes," Le
Constitutionnel, 24 April 1881, pp. 2-3; Claretie 1881,
pp. 150-51; Comtesse Louise, "Lettres familieres sur
Tart," La France Nouvelle, 1-2 May 1881, pp. 2-3;
[Charles Whibley?], "Modern Men: Degas," National
Observer, 31 October 1891, pp. 603-04 (reprinted in
Flint 1984, pp. 277-78); Paul Gsell, "Edgar Degas,
statuaire," La Renaissance de I'Art Frangais, I, Decem-
ber 191 8, pp. 374, 376 (erroneously as exhibited in
1884), repr. p. 375 (original wax); Lafond 1918-19,
II, pp. 64-66; Lemoisne 19 19, pp. m-13, repr.
p. 112; Blanche 19 19, p. 54; Thiebault-Sisson 192 1;
Meier-Graefe 1923, p. 60 (erroneously as exhibited in
1874); Bazin 193 1, figs. 70 p. 294, 71 (detail) p. 295;
Rewald 1944, no. XX, reprs. pp. 60-61, 68-69 (de-
tails), pp. 63-65 (bronze cast, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York), 66 (original wax); Rewald
1956, no. XX, plates 24-29 (unidentified bronze
cast); Havemeyer 1961, pp. 254-55; Millard 1976,
pp. 8-9, 27-29, 119-26, passim, pi. (color) facing
p. 62 (original wax); RefF 1976, pp. 239-48, figs. 157
(color), 162 (detail) (bronze cast, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York); 1979 Edinburgh, no. 78,
repr. (bronze cast, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury collec-
tion, University of East Anglia, Norwich); McMuUen
1984, pp. 327, 329, 333-36, 338-40, 343-44, 347;
Lois Relin, "La 'Danseuse de quatorze ans' de Degas,
son tutu et sa perruque," Gazette des Beaux- Arts,
CIV: 1390, November 1984, pp. I73~74> fig. 1 (orig-
inal wax); 1984-85 Paris, fig. 155 p. 180 (color,
bronze cast, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), fig. 157 p. 183
(color, plaster cast, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha);
1984-85 Washington, D.C., pp. 65-83, no. 18, repr.
(color) p. 64 (original wax), p. 134 (bronze cast
HER-D, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond);
352
1986 Florence, pp. 57-61, no. 73, repr. (color, bronze
cast, Museu de Arte, Sao Paulo); Sutton 1986, p. 187,
pi. 169 p. 186 (bronze cast, Norton Simon Museum,
Pasadena); Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 242-43, 256,
pi. 166 (color, bronze cast, The Metropolitan Muse-
um of Art, New York); 1987 Manchester, pp. 80-86,
no. 72, fig. no (bronze cast, Robert and Lisa Sains-
bury collection, University of East Anglia, Norwich).
A. Orsay cast
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2132)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930;
entered the Louvre 193 1 .
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 73 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 242; 1986 Paris, no. 87, repr.
B. Metropolitan cast
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.370)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 1922; her bequest to
the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1977 New York, no. 10 of sculptures;
198 1, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 22 February-
29 April, The Romantics to Rodin, no. 105, repr.
228.
Dancer Leaving Her
Dressing Room
c. 1879
Pastel and gouache on wove paper, with strip of
laid paper added at top
203/8 X n7/s in. (52 X 30 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 644
There are relatively few works by Degas on
the theme of the dancer in her dressing room
preparing to go on stage, each apparently
dating from the late 1870s. In a very fine
etching (RS50) of c. 1879-80 — another
known version of which was enhanced with
pastel (BR97, private collection, New York) —
as well as in a pastel (fig. 116), the dancer is
shown in front of a mirror, arranging her
hair. Two other pastels include a dresser
putting the last touches on the dancer's cos-
tume in the presence of a third person, the
dancer's protector. In one of these (fig. 163),
the action takes place in the foreground,
whereas in the other (L529, Oskar Reinhart
Collection, Winterthur), exhibited by Degas
in the spring of 1879, the ballerina is seen in
the distance through a half-open door.
228
According to Lillian Browse, Dancer
Leaving Her Dressing Room, another varia-
tion on the same theme, depicts a dancer
looking at herself in the mirror.1 However,
it quite obviously represents a dancer who,
having completed her toilette, is about to
leave her dressing room and pauses indeci-
sively at the door, as though either to gather
up her skirt before crossing the threshold or
to cast one last glance at her costume. The
refined interaction of lines and the ambigui-
ties present in the composition, no doubt
the reason for Browse's interpretation, are
explained in part by the lighting. Emanating
from an invisible source inside the dressing
room, a soft light bathes the scene and out-
lines the body of the dancer, ashen by con-
trast in the gaslight. In the foreground, the
Fig. 163. Dancer in Her Dressing
Room (L497), c. 1880. Pastel,
23V4X i73/4 in. (59 X 45 cm).
Private collection
diagonal shadow of the left wall repeats the
bottom edge of the door, while the contour
of the dancer's shadow on the right takes on
the form of the dresser in black in the back-
ground. This interplay is also pursued in the
colors, more limited in range than one might
first believe. The blue green of the dancer's
skirt is picked up in the more muted and
subtle coloring of the shadows, the orange
ochre of the door reappears in the floral or-
naments, and the red spangles on the skirt
echo the only garish element, the scarf
wrapped around the dresser's neck. An area
reworked in black pastel above the dancer's
right shoulder, in which Browse believed
she detected a third person, may in fact con-
ceal an initial attempt at the silhouette of a
male figure.2
The pastel, at one time in Henri Rouart's
collection, was one of the fifteen works by
Degas reproduced in lithographic form by
George William Thornley in 1888-89. Le-
moisne dated it c. 1881.3 Browse suggested
a slightly earlier date, c. 1878-79. 4 The fact
that the pastel was purchased without the
involvement of Durand-Ruel would suggest
that it was acquired by Rouart before Durand-
Ruel resumed relations with Degas at the
end of 1880.
1. Browse [1949], no. 62.
2. Ibid.
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 644.
4. Browse [1949], no. 62.
provenance: Acquired by Henri Rouart probably be-
fore December 1880 (Rouart sale, Galerie Manzi-
Joyant, Paris, 16-18 December 1912, no. 73, as
"Danseuse sortant de sa loge," bought in by the
Rouart family, for Fr 31,000); Ernest Rouart, son of
Henri Rouart, Paris; Mme Eugene Marin (nee Helene
Rouart), sister of Ernest Rouart, Paris. With Arthur
Tooth and Sons, Ltd., London, 1939. With M.
Knoedler and Co. , New York; acquired by Edward
G. Robinson, Beverly Hills, before 1941; Gladys
Lloyd Robinson and Edward G. Robinson, until
1957; acquired in 1957 through M. Knoedler and Co.
by Stavros Niarchos, Paris; private collection.
exhibitions: 1939, London, Arthur Tooth and Sons,
Ltd., 8 June-i July, "La Probite de VArt, " Drawings,
Pastels and Watercolours, no. 52; 194 1, Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, July-i August, Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. Robinson, no. 9; 1953, New
York, Museum of Modern Art, March-14 April/
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 10 May-
14 June, Forty Paintings from the Edward G. Robinson
Collection, no. 9; 1956-57, Los Angeles County Mu-
seum of Art, 11 September-11 November/ San Fran-
cisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 30
November 1956- 13 January 1957, The Gladys Lloyd
Robinson and Edward G. Robinson Collection, no. 12;
1957-58, New York, Knoedler Gallery, 3 December
1957-18 January 195 8 /Ottawa, National Gallery of
Canada, 5 February-2 March/ Boston, Museum of
Fine Arts, 15 March-20 April, The Niarchos Collec-
tion, no. 11, repr.; 1958, London, Tate Gallery, 23
May-29june, The Niarchos Collection, no. 12, repr.;
1959, Kunsthaus Zurich, 15 January-i March,
Sammlung S. Niarchos, no. 12.
selected references: Thornley 1 8 89; Alexandre
1912, p. 28, repr. p. 23; Charles Louis Borgmeyer,
The Master Impressionists, Chicago: The Fine Arts
Press, 19 13, repr. p. 81; Dell 19 13, p. 295; Frantz
1913, p. 185; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 644 (as
"Danseuse sortant de sa loge," c. 1881); Browse
[1949], no. 62 (as "La loge de danseuse," c. 1878-
79); Minervino 1974, no. 774.
229.
The Green Dancer (Dancers on
the Stage)
c. 1880
Pastel and gouache on heavy wove paper
26 x 14J/4 in. (66 X 36 cm)
Signed in black chalk lower left: Degas
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano,
Switzerland
Lemoisne 572
As Eunice Lipton has pointed out, both in
this work and in Dancer with a Bouquet Bowing
(cat. no. 162), there is a dichotomy between
the foreground of the composition (the per-
formance seen by the audience) and the back-
ground of dancers in offstage poses visible
only from the wings.1 Yet there is a pro-
nounced difference between the two pastels.
Here the downward-plunging view is in-
tended to suggest a view from a box near
the proscenium arch, an angle of sight the
artist had experimented with in less mysti-
fying fashion as early as 1876-77 in Ballet
(The Star) (cat. no. 163).
The dramatic possibilities of such a view
were fully exploited, nevertheless, only in
this pastel. In the background, behind stage
flats, dancers in orange and red are restlessly
waiting for their cue to come on stage but
are contained within a rigorous horizontal
frieze. In the foreground, a fragment of the
performance is visible — a frantic rush of
dancers in green thrown along a steep diag-
onal and suggesting a good deal more than
is shown. In the center, a ballerina in ara-
besque flings her limbs wildly at improbable
angles; next to her is the leg of another
dancer, the rest of her body left to the imag-
ination; and in the lower foreground, a cos-
tume, without a body, disappears from the
field of vision in a flutter of gauze and se-
quins. This is Degas 's most flamboyant in-
terpretation of movement on the stage, as
well as his most challenging attempt at pro-
jecting the viewer into the midst of a
performance.
The evolution of the composition can be
traced to The Star and the variations on it
that were executed probably about 1877.
The earliest of these, a gouache or distem-
per Dancer Bowing (L490, Rothschild collec-
tion, Paris) was conceived like The Star but
differs in the pose of the dancer, who per-
forms an arabesque with a bouquet in her
right hand. The dancer was prepared with
some care in three studies — one for the en-
tire figure (IV:28i), one for the head with
part of the left arm (IV:283.b), and one for
the upper part of the body on a sheet con-
taining other studies of dancers as well
(IV:269).
The pose must have fascinated Degas, be-
cause he followed it up in another series of
studies in which the dancer remains essen-
tially the same but with her head shown in
different positions. A separate study of the
head in three positions (fig. 164), now in the
Louvre, appears to have served in the prepa-
ration of the drawings. The first of these
was probably a drawing, also in the Louvre
(fig. 165), showing the dancer with her
head turned toward the left. There are vari-
ous revisions to the figure, indicating con-
siderable search for the right movement,
and in the margins are two additional stud-
ies of the right arm as well as one of the
head, shown in a more pronounced profile
view that corresponds to one of the heads in
the other Louvre sheet. The drawing was
followed by a study of the dancer looking
down (111:276), used for Arabesque (L418,
Musee d'Orsay), and yet another with the
dancer looking to the right (III: 182).
The Green Dancer was prepared with the
aid of two of the sheets from this stock of
Fig. 164. Three Studies of a Dancer's Head (L593), c. 1879-80. Pastel, 7V9 X 223/s in. (18 X 56.8 cm).
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF4037)
354
Fig. 165. Dancer with a Bouquet (111:398),
c. 1879-80. Charcoal with white highlights,
24 X i8Vs in. (60.9 X 46. 1 cm). Cabinet des
Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris
(RF4649)
drawings — the Louvre's dancer (fig. 165)
and one of the studies (IV:269) connected
with the Rothschild Dancer Bowing. The latter
contained a clearer description of the dancer's
left arm as wejl as a figure used for the
dancer in the left background of the Thyssen
pastel.
The work has been dated 1877-79 by Gdtz
Adriani, c. 1879 by Lemoisne and Denys
Sutton, and as late as 1884-88 by Lillian
Browse. The appearance among the back-
ground dancers of a figure with her left hand
on her shoulder, clearly adapted from a
study of Marie van Goethem (fig. 239) used
for The Singer in Green (cat. no. 263), places
the pastel in the period in which Degas
worked on The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer (cat. no. 227), probably about 1880.
The pastel appears to have been much ad-
mired in the 1880s, and Max Klinger wrote
enthusiastically about it in 1883. 2 Douglas
Cooper and Ronald Pickvance have noted
that The Green Dancer belonged to Walter
Sickert and was exhibited twice in En-
gland— in 1888 and 1898. Pickvance, who
has cited some of the reviews of 1888, has
suggested that in the later 1890s the pastel
changed hands and became the property of
Ellen Sickert' s sister, Mrs. Fisher-Unwin,
whose name appears as the lender to the ex-
hibition of 1 898. 3 However, Ellen Sickert is
recorded in the Durand-Ruel archives as the
owner in 1902, and it is possible that Mrs.
Fisher-Unwin simply handled the loan of
the work on behalf of her sister.
1. Lipton 1986, pp. 95-96.
2. See Max Klinger in Von Courbet bis Cezanne:
Franzbsische Malerei 1848-1886 (exhibition cata-
logue), Berlin (G.D.R.): Nationalgalerie, 1982,
p. 146.
3. 1979 Edinburgh, no. 29.
229
355
provenance: Walter Sickert, London; given to his
second wife, Ellen Cobden-Sickert, London; left in
care of her sister, Mrs. T. Fisher-Unwin, London,
by summer 1898; bought from Mrs. Cobden-Sickert
by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 5 March 1902, for Fr 20,084.55
(stock no. 7005, as "Danseuse verte"); sold to Lucien
Sauphar, Paris, 24 April 1902, for Fr 30,000, With
Bernheim-Jeune et Cie, Paris; bought by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 2 May 1908, for Fr 20,000 (stock no. 8658);
bought by Charles Barret-Decap, Paris, 13 June 1908,
for Fr 25,000; Reid and Lefevre Gallery, London, by
1928; William A. Cargill, Bridge of Weir (Cargill
sale, Sotheby's, London, n June 1963, no. 15, repr.);
bought by Arthur Tooth and Sons, Ltd. , London;
Norton Simon, Pasadena (Simon sale, Sotheby Parke
Bemet, New York, 6 May 1971, no. 30, repr.). Baron
Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, Lugano.
exhibitions: 1888, London, New English Art Club,
Spring Exhibition, no. 18 (as "Danseuse verte"); 1898
London, no. 144, repr. (as "Dancers"), lent by Mrs.
Unwin; 1903, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune et Fils, April,
Exposition d'oeuvres de I'ecole impressionniste, no. 15 (as
"Danseuses vertes"), lent by Lucien Sauphar; 1928,
Glasgow/London, Alex. Reid and Lefevre Ltd. , Works
by Degas, no. 6, repr.; 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 28, repr.;
1979 Edinburgh, no. 29, pi. 5; 1984 Tubingen,
no. 107, repr. (color); 1984-86, Tokyo, The National
Museum of Modern Art, 9 May-8 July/Kumamoto
Prefectural Museum, 20 July-26 August/ London,
Royal Academy of Arts, 12 October- 19 December/
Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 27
January-24 March 1985 /Diisseldorf, Stadtische
Kunsthalle, 20 April-16 June/ Florence, Palazzo Pitti,
5 July-29 September/ Paris, Musee d'Art Moderne
de la Ville de Paris, 23 October 1985-5 January 1986/
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 10 February-6 April/
Barcelona, Palacio de la Vierreina, 7 May-17 August,
Modem Masters from the Thyssen-Bomemisza Collection,
no. 8, repr. (color).
selected references: Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 150;
Albert Andre, Degas: pastels et dessins, Paris: Braun,
1934, pi. 19; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 572 (as
c. 1879); Browse [1949], no. 168 (as c. 1884-86);
Cooper 1954, p. 62; Ronald Pickvance, "A Newly
Discovered Drawing by Degas of George Moore,"
Burlington Magazine, CV:723, June 1963, p. 280
n. 31; Minervino 1974, no. 731; Reff 1976, p. 178,
pi. 125 (as c. 1879); Thomson 1979, p. 677, pi. 96;
Lipton 1986, pp. 95-96, 105, 109, 115, fig. 59 pp. 96,
109; Sutton 1986, pi. 179, p. 172 (color) p. 189 (as
1879).
230.
At the Ballet
c. 1880-81
Pastel on paper
2i5/s X i87/s in. (55 X 48 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Private collection, France
Withdrawn from exhibition
Lemoisne 577
Nowhere in the formal expression of De-
gas's ideas are his departures from conven-
tion more evident than in his handling of
foregrounds. These always convey a sense
of immediacy, or of the unexpected, and in-
variably place the viewer in relation to the
subject. It might be argued that this formal
question exerted an almost tyrannical hold
on Degas, but the results of his experiments
are never less than provocative. The origins
of this pastel can be traced to one such ex-
periment, a pastel in the Rhode Island
School of Design (fig. 137), generally dated
about 1878, in which Degas added by rather
elaborate means a woman holding a fan in
the foreground of a ballet scene. The
formula was used again in a lithograph
(RS37) but was developed only later, proba-
bly about 1880.
The immediate forerunner of At the Ballet
is a charcoal-and-pastel study (fig. 166) of a
woman in a box at the Opera holding a fan
and opera glasses. She is seen from above
her left shoulder as though the viewer were
standing next to her, Richard Thomson has
noted. 1 The drawing is in effect a giant fore-
ground, with a small opening at the upper
left corner showing lightly sketched dancers
performing on the stage. This extreme if
compelling solution to the compositional
experiment was amended in At the Ballet,
where only the woman's hands are retained,
the balustrade of the loge is lowered, and
the ballet on the stage is given a larger share
of the composition. The effect of the hands
divested of a body is even more powerful,
particularly that of the flexed right hand as
it emerges from behind the speckled red-and-
blue feather fan. The dancers, seen from the
stage box, were composed with the aid of
two large drawings that are sometimes con-
nected with those posed for by Marie van
Goethem (fig. 167; L579). It has been said
that an interest in photography may have
been responsible for the very specific sensi-
bility expressed in this pastel, but it is diffi-
cult to imagine photography of the period
being even remotely as ingenious.2
Datable about 1880-81, At the Ballet was
followed by two other variations on the
subject prepared with the aid of alternative
studies of the hand holding the opera glasses
Fig. 166. At the Theater, Woman with a Fan (L580),
c. 1880. Charcoal and pastel, 283/sX i87/s in.
(72 X 48 cm). Private collection
Fig. 167. Dancers on the Stage (L578), c. 1880.
Charcoal and pastel, 18 Vs X 235/s in. (46 X 60 cm).
Location unknown
(IV:i34.a, Bern; IV:i34.b). One, in the John-
son Collection at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art (L828), includes the profile of the
woman. The other (L829, Armand Hammer
collection) is of more eccentric design. It re-
veals the figure more completely and implies
the presence of a second woman, invisible
except for a hand holding opera glasses.
1. 1987 Manchester, p. 77.
2. For the link with photography, see La douce France/
Det ljuva Frankrike (exhibition catalogue), Stock-
holm: Nationalmuseum, 1964, no. 29.
provenance: Una, 39 avenue de l'Opera, Paris;
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 13 December 1892,
for Fr 3,000 (stock no. 2533, as "Au theatre"); depos-
ited with Charles Destree, Hamburg, 15 December
1892; returned to Durand-Ruel, Paris, 7 January
1893; private collection of Joseph Durand-Ruel, Paris;
private collection.
exhibitions: 1905 London, no. 55; 1913, Sao Paulo,
Exposition d'art francais de Sao Paulo, no. 914; 1925,
Paris, Galerie Rosenberg, 15 January-7 February, Les
grandes influences au XIX siecle d'lngres d Cezanne,
356
357
no. 15; 1939-40 Buenos Aires, no. 43; 1940-41 San
Francisco, no. 33, repr.; 1943, New York, Durand-
Ruel Galleries, 1-3 1 March, Pastels by Degas, no. 1;
1947, New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, 10-29 No-
vember, Degas, no. 14; 1964, Stockholm, National-
museum, 7 August-11 October, La douce France /Det
ljuva Frankrike, Mastarmdlingar jran tre sekler ur collec-
tions Wildenstein, Durand-Ruel, Bemheim-Jeune, no. 29,
repr.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, II, repr. be-
fore p. 37; Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 577 (as 1880);
Minervino 1974, no. 765; 1984 Tubingen, under
no. 159; 1984-85 Boston, under no. 37; Boggs 1985,
pp. 15-16, fig. 8; 1987 Manchester, p. 77, fig. 103.
231.
The Apple Pickers
1881-82
Bronze
17V4 X i83/4 in. (45. 1 X 47.6 cm)
Original: red wax on wood. National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C. Collection of Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon
Rewald I
Despite its unique status as the only surviving
relief by Degas, this work attracted little at-
tention until relatively recently. In the
1970s, Theodore RefT and Charles Millard
discussed the work in the context of a larger,
now lost, clay relief known only from a
somewhat inaccurate account given by Bar-
tholome to Lemoisne shortly after Degas' s
death. According to Lemoisne, Bartholome
remembered "having seen him make, very
early in his career, before 1870, a large bas-
relief in clay, absolutely charming, represent-
ing, half life-size, young girls picking apples.
But the artist did nothing to preserve his
work, which later on literally crumbled to
dust."1 Independently from Lemoisne, Vol-
lard reported Renoir as having said, "Why,
Degas is the greatest living sculptor! You
should have seen a bas-relief of his . . . he
just let it crumble to pieces ... it was as
beautiful as an antique."2
A connection between this work and the
lost relief was established as early as 192 1
when the founder Hebrard, probably at Bar-
tholomews instigation, named the bronze "La
cueillette des pommes" (The Apple Picker).3
In 1944, when John Rewald catalogued the
wax relief, he placed it earliest in the sequence
of sculptures by Degas and, following Bar-
tholomews account, dated it c. 1865, though
he concluded it was probably "a replica on a
smaller scale" of the lost work.4 Subsequent-
ly, Michele Beaulieu also cited Bartholome
as a reason for dating it before 1870, but
considered the possibility that the wax relief
may have been a sketch for the larger work.5
In 1970, in the first extensive discussion
of the subject, Theodore RefT redated the
lost relief 1 881. 6 He demonstrated that the
artist had used as one of his models his cousin
Lucie Degas, who visited France in 188 1,
and linked the work to drawings and to notes,
measurements, and sketches in Degas's note-
books of the period (see fig. 168). 7 Further-
more, he proposed that several studies of a
young boy climbing a tree are connected to
a figure which, though absent from the wax
relief, may have appeared in the larger work.
RefFs interpretation was further developed
by Charles Millard, who followed his sug-
gestions for a hypothetical reconstruction of
the lost relief more consistent with Bartho-
lomews description. Noting that the subject
of the wax version was "sufficiently unclear
to make it doubtful that anyone seeing it
would think of children picking apples," he
concluded that it was executed several years
after the clay relief, certainly not before
1890, as a record of the lost work, but that
it incorporated only some of the features of
the original. In addition, he speculated that
the wax relief may have been altered at some
point by the replacement of a section at the
far left.
A hitherto unnoticed contemporary ac-
count of the relief, perhaps the large version,
appears in an undated letter from Jacques-
Emile Blanche to an unnamed friend, prob-
ably Henri Fantin-Latour, written on 8 De-
cember 1 88 1, immediately after a visit to
Degas's studio: "I had just returned from
the exhibition of the Courbet sale, where I
met Degas. He told me he found it difficult
to leave those pictures, which are, nonethe-
less, a rebuke to his own art, which he has
spent his life perfecting and distilling. . . .
He then talked on brilliantly for a while,
after which he led me into his studio, where
he showed me a new sculpture he had made.
In it, a young girl, half reclining in a coffin,
is eating fruit. To one side is a mourner's
bench for the child's family — for this is a
tomb."8
From the description there can scarcely be
any doubt that the relief was conceived as a
funerary decoration rather than a rural genre
piece, and it may be inferred that it was in-
complete when Blanche saw it, containing
only the central figure sitting on (rather
than in) the sarcophagus and the bench to
the right, apparently without the seated
girls. The work may have been connected
with the recent death of Marie Fevre, the
daughter of the artist's sister Marguerite,
noted in a letter written by Therese Morbilli
a day after her arrival in Paris with Lucie
Degas in June 188 1.9 One of Degas's note-
books contains notes on the artist's family
tomb at the Montmartre cemetery that
might have been made in connection with
the project.10
Another notebook contains, along with
studies RefF has associated with the relief,
the curious proposal to carry out "in aqua-
tint a series on mourning (different blacks,
black veils of deep mourning floating about
the face, black gloves, mourning carriages,
equipment and paraphernalia of undertaking
establishments, coaches similar to Venetian
gondolas)."11
Given its proposed destination, the com-
position is a very odd one, with its stress on
life continuing joyfully around the grave of a
dead girl. In that context, one may perhaps
explain it as symbolic of the concept of res-
urrection, with the girl eating fruit a per-
sonification of the deceased Marie Fevre. It
is known that around the time Degas worked
on the relief, he was interested in obtaining
photographs of sculpture by Andrea and
Luca della Robbia — the medallions from the
Ospedale degli Innocenti, and the Cantoria
in the Opera dell'Duomo, Florence.12 Yet,
except for the format, superficially like a
panel from the Cantoria, there is little in
Degas's relief to connect it to such prece-
dents. Rather, it appears to continue into
modern times the spirit of the Etruscan fu-
nerary sculpture Degas studied and drew at
the Louvre.
1. Lemoisne 1919, p. no.
2. Ambroise Vollard, Renoir: An Intimate Record,
New York: A. A. Knopf, 1925, p. 87.
3. A.-A. Hebrard, Exposition des sculptures de Degas,
1919, no. 72.
4. Rewald 1944, no. 1.
Fig. 168. Notebook study for The Apple
Pickers, 1881. Pencil, 61/2X41/4in. (16.4 X
10.7 cm). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
Dc327d, Carnet 2, p. 25 (RefT 1985,
Notebook 34)
358
5. Beaulieu 1969, p. 369.
6. Theodore Reff, "Degas' Sculpture, 18 80-1 8 84,"
Art Quarterly, XXXIII: 3, Autumn 1970, pp. 278-
88; Reff 1976, pp. 249-56.
7. For related drawings (all cited in Reff 1976,
pp. 251-54), see Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN,
Carnet 9, pp. 212-13, I9°. ^6, 184), Notebook
34 (BN, Carnet 2, pp. 15, 21, 25, 29, 37, 43, 45);
IV: 1 56; and BR 100, which — as pointed out by
Reff — may be connected to an unexecuted
painting.
8. Unpublished letter, Archives, Musee du Louvre,
Paris. It is dated only "Thursday evening," but
can be dated 8 December 1881 because of the ref-
erence to the exhibition of the first Courbet sale,
which took place that day.
9. Undated letter from Therese Morbilli, Paris, to
Edmondo Morbilli, Naples [June 188 1], published
in part in Boggs 1963, p. 276. Because of a refer-
ence to the sale of a painting for Fr 5,000, most
likely The Dance Class (cat. no. 219), delivered at
that price to Durand-Ruel on 18 June 188 1, the
letter can be dated 19 June 188 1. It says: "We ar-
rived yesterday morning. . . . Marguerite ... is
extremely unhappy over the death of her Marie."
Simone Celestine Marguerite Marie Fevre, an
unrecorded child, died at age five and was buried
on 29 November 1880 in the Degas family tomb;
archives, Montmartre cemetery.
10. Reff 1985, Notebook 32 (BN, Carnet 5, p. 4).
11. Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet 9, p. 206).
12. For Degas's notes on the photographs, see Reff
1985, Notebook 34 (BN, Carnet 2, p. 6).
selected references: Rewald 1944, no. I, repr. p. 33
(bronze cast A/ 37, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, as 1865-81); Rewald 1956, pp. 14,
141, no. I, pi. 1 (unidentified bronze cast, as 1865-
81); Beaulieu 1969, p. 369 (as before 1870); Miner-
vino 1974, no. S72; Millard 1976, pp. 4, 15-18, 24,
65-66, 81-82, 90-92, fig. 38 (bronze cast A/37, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New 'York, as c. 188 1 -
82/83); Reff 1976, pp. 249-56, fig. 163 p. 249 (bronze
cast A/ 37, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, as 1881); Reff 1985, Notebook 30 (BN, Carnet
9, pp. 212-13, I9°» 186, 184), Notebook 34 (BN,
Carnet 2, pp. 1, 15, 21, 25, 29, 223); 1986 Florence,
no. 37, repr. (bronze cast S/37, Museu de Arte, Sao
Paulo).
A. Orsay Set P, no. 37
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2136)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930;
entered the Louvre 193 1.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 72 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 225; 1984-85 Paris, no. 80,
p. 207, fig. 205 p. 203.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 37
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.422)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A.-A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 28 of bronzes;
1977 New York, no. 11 of sculptures.
359
Ill
1881-1890
Gary Tinterow
The 1 8 80s: Synthesis and
Change
The author wishes to thank Anne M. P. Norton,
Susan Alyson Stein, and Guy Bauman for their help
with this essay.
1. "The 'Impressionists,'" The Standard, London,
13 July 1882, p. 3.
2. Letter from Caillebotte to Pissarro, 24 January
188 1, cited in Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte: sa vie et
son oeuvre, Paris: La Bibliotheque des Arts, 1978,
no. 22, p. 245.
3. Degas's statement to the young Alexis Rouart,
cited in Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 1.
At the beginning of the 1880s, the extent of Degas's fame was such that a London
newspaper heralded him as "the chief of the [Impressionist] school."1 He was in fact a
significant force in the Societe Anonyme des Artistes that sponsored the Impressionist
exhibitions in Paris, and he used these exhibitions brilliantly as a platform for himself.
At the 188 1 exhibition he asserted the power of his wit, the acuity of what Douglas
Druick has termed his "scientific Realism" (see p. 197), and the vigor of his art with his
sensational Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (figs. 158-160). He was worldly and influen-
tial, and in constant contact with a large number of artists, so much so that Degas's col-
leagues were bothered by his politicking. Caillebotte, for one, complained in a letter to
Pissarro that Degas spent the day "holding forth at the [Cafe de la] Nouvelle-Athenes
or in society. "2
At the end of the 1880s, his Societe Anonyme des Artistes disbanded, Degas had
virtually fulfilled the wish that he had pronounced for himself, "to be illustrious and
unknown."3 He had long since abandoned the Salon, had refused to exhibit in the art
pavilion at the 1889 World's Fair, and had repeatedly declined to participate in either the
Paris exhibitions of the Artistes Independants or the important annual exhibitions in
Brussels organized by Les XX. Because Degas after 1886 simply would not contribute
to group exhibitions, the display of just two or three of his works in a dealer's gallery
became an event noted by most of the art journals in Paris. Confident of his talent and
secure in his stature, Degas had withdrawn by the end of the 1880s to a much smaller
world of close friends, his self-chosen surrogate family of writers, artists, and collectors, in
order better to indulge his passions: the incessant making of works of art, constant at-
tendance at the Opera, the rereading of favorite books in order to extract new mean-
ings, and the dogged pursuit of paintings, drawings, and prints to add to his collection.
Any division of time is arbitrary, but the units used to measure it often take on
genuine significance. The 18 80s — or more particularly the nine years between the sixth
Impressionist exhibition in 188 1 and the famous tilbury trip in Burgundy in 1890 that
gave birth to the landscape monotypes — were for Degas a momentous decade, a palpa-
ble period of time. The boundaries are well marked. He began the period as an artist in
his prime, a man in his late forties with a capacity for work and a stepped-up produc-
tion of finished works of art that was outdistanced only by the enormous debt with
which his father and brothers had encumbered him. He ended the decade as an affluent
confirmed bachelor moving into a three-floor apartment that was enormous but neces-
sary for his growing collection of works by French masters old and new: Ingres and
Delacroix, Corot and Courbet, Gauguin and Cezanne. In the early 1880s, Degas was
eager to sell as much as he could, mostly through Durand-Ruel; in the late 1880s, he
sold only selectively, to a large group of dealers — Boussod et Valadon, Bernheim-Jeune,
Hector Brame, and Ambroise Vollard, in addition to Durand-Ruel — all of whom
fought competitively and paid dearly for the privilege of buying from him. At the be-
ginning of the decade, Degas was the favored artist of Edmond Duranty, the Naturalist
critic who was not only a spokesman in the 1870s for many of Degas's aesthetic views
but also a vigorous proponent of his art. By the end of the decade, Symbolist critics
such as Felix Feneon and G. -Albert Aurier were writing about his work enthusiastically.
To suggest that in nine years Degas had relinquished his position as a conspicuous
presence in the Paris art world in order to slip into comfortable obscurity, had passed
363
from serious indebtedness to affluence, and had converted from Naturalism to Symbol-
ism is to oversimplify the complex changes that in fact occurred gradually, without
giving any evidence of the roots or explaining the causes. But it is undeniable that in
the 1 8 80s Degas remade his life and his art through a great number of conscious deci-
sions— some active, others passive — coincidentally just at the time when other artists of
his generation, most notably Monet and Renoir, were also self-consciously attempting to
redefine their art as well. Within the confines of this short essay, one can only trace very
broadly the order of events against the background of Degas's milieu. But to identify
some of the most significant changes in Degas's art in the 1880s, to discuss the patterns
of sale and exhibition of his work, and to suggest the depth and spread of his influence
seem nonetheless to be important steps toward a new appraisal of the period.
The first person to grapple with Degas's art of the 1880s and to attach a measure of im-
portance to its proper ordering was Paul-Andre Lemoisne, the author of a massive
four-volume catalogue of Degas's work that includes nearly 1,500 paintings and pastels.
The enormous body of documentation that he assembled has been the basis of all studies
of Degas since the publication of the catalogue just after the Second World War. His ac-
complishment is all the more impressive when one considers the difficulty in ordering
works that are not dated by the artist. Degas's work in the 18 80s is especially problem-
atic in this regard. Of the more than four hundred works that Lemoisne assigned to the
period, only twenty-one are inscribed with dates. (Three of these inscribed dates escaped
Lemoisne's notice, whereas the inscription on another work, L815, is probably incor-
rect; see Chronology III, 1885.) Three additional dated paintings and pastels have come
to light since the publication of Lemoisne's catalogue, and there are as well one dated
lithograph and one dated drawing from the 18 80s. (All works dated by Degas in the
1 8 80s are noted in the Chronology.)
The lack of dated works is a large obstacle, but the problem of establishing a chro-
nology for the period has been compounded by Lemoisne's seeming inability to discern
subtle currents of change in Degas's art and practice. By ignoring these currents, he
proposed a confused chronology that today is untenable. He saw the 1880s as the high
point of Degas's work, but for him it was a plateau with little relief to the terrain. He
wrote: "The years between 1878 and 1893 deserve special attention because they repre-
sent the apogee of Degas's career, the period in which he creates, easily and powerfully,
a magnificent series of masterpieces. However, the manner in which Degas conceived
his art did not change: the subjects that interest him are more or less identical, with the
addition only of the milliners and the nudes. Although the originality of his groupings
and his mise-en-page are more marked, his method of composition is for all that still the
same."4
Degas's art was of course evolving, just as quickly as it had at any point in his ca-
reer, but the evolution was largely unrecognized by Lemoisne. The result in his cat-
alogue is chaos. Many of the jockey scenes, for example, are placed near the beginning
of the decade, whether they were brilliant in color and animated in composition, such
as the Clark Art Institute's Before the Race (cat. no. 236, dated correctly c. 1882 by Le-
moisne), or muted brown in tonality and elegiac in mood, such as the pastel in the Hill-
Stead Museum in Farmington which bears the inscribed date "86" (L596, dated by
Lemoisne c. 1880). Because, for example, Three Jockeys (cat. no. 352) repeats the com-
position of a highly finished pastel that would appear to date from c. 1883 (L762, dated
by Lemoisne 1883-90), Lemoisne gives the same date to both, even though the handling
and palette of Three Jockeys is manifestly close to that of the pastels, such as Dancers
(cat. no. 359), executed at the very end of Degas's career, about 1900.
Hundreds of works of the 1880s were assigned dates by Lemoisne that are contra-
dicted by the evidence of dealers' stock books, early exhibition and auction catalogues,
and the letters or diaries of Degas's contemporaries. Granted, little of this documentary
information was available to Lemoisne when he assembled his catalogue in the 1930s
and 1940s. But the more serious flaw in his catalogue derives from his misunderstanding
of the central feature of Degas's method in the 1880s — his habit of repeating successful
4. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 109.
5. One indication of the problems posed by Le-
moisne's dates is that some two dozen works
originally intended for this section of the cata-
logue have in the course of writing been redated
out of the decade.
6. All works that Degas is known to have sold or
exhibited in this period are indicated in Chronol-
ogy III.
7. "Exposition des impressionnistes," La Petite Re-
publique Frangaise, 10 April 1877, p. 2 (translation
1986 Washington, D.C., p. 217).
8. F.-C. de Syene [Arsene Houssaye], "Salon de
1879," V Artiste, May 1879, p. 292.
364
compositions over a period of years (or decades), with differing palettes, differing kinds
of handling and degrees of finish, and differing relationships between figures and the
surrounding space. Lemoisne notes the obvious repetition of subjects and motifs, and
groups similar compositions together, but he interprets the later variants, which often
exhibit looser drawing and a sketchier finish, as studies preparatory to the earliest work.
Lemoisne thus stands the chronology of Degas's work on its head.5 The most egregious
error of Lemoisne's dating is his suggestion that Fallen Jockey (cat. no. 351) is a
study made in the mid- 18 60s for The Steeplechase (fig. 316), which Degas exhibited in
the Salon of 1866. In fact, Fallen Jockey is a great synthetic statement of the 1890s exhib-
iting all the features that are today considered characteristic of the artist's late work.
Fascinating patterns and correspondences emerge if, ignoring Lemoisne, one con-
structs a skeletal chronology of the dated works of the 18 80s and fleshes it out with the
approximately 150 works that are firmly datable by their known dates of sale, descrip-
tions in dated correspondence, or public exhibition in the period.6 The most important
discovery resulting from this exercise is that the modalities of Degas's approach to style
appear much more consistent than Lemoisne's catalogue suggests. Although the
changes in his art viewed over any length of time are dramatic, the shifts no longer
seem capricious. Working very much like Picasso at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, Degas seems continually to have found for himself interesting pictorial problems,
which he then resolved in numerous solutions, each equally viable. Once an idea was
exhausted he would leave it, only to return years later to the same format, or composi-
tion, or figural group, with new paints on his palette and changed ideas in his head, to
produce wholly new variations on old themes.
In the early 18 80s, through about 1884, Degas was still working very much along
the course that he had set for himself upon returning from New Orleans in 1873. His
compositions were packed with accessories and figures — whether dancers, racehorses,
or milliners — and generally they included at least one figure brought startlingly close to
the picture plane and therefore cropped. The vantage point was generally very high,
looking down with a japonisant bird's-eye view. Degas's angle was shockingly novel,
and theatrical. His pictures were always clever and often humorous. Remarks about
paintings made in the 1870s apply equally to works, such as the milliners, of the early
1880s: "So many little masterpieces of clever and accurate satire,"7 to quote a critic of
1877, or "Parisian wit and Impressionist veracity set off by a fanciful Japanese touch,"8
to quote a critic of 1879. His use of color was local and intense: the dancers' ribbons, the
jockeys' silks, the milliners' feathers were all bright in hue — cardinal red, sky blue, ca-
nary yellow, pistachio green — yet despite their strong color, rarely did they suffuse the
work with a dominant tonality. Degas's preference for pastel grew stronger, and by
about 1882 he had given up the dangerously unstable mixtures of distemper, gouache,
and dry pigments that were prevalent in the experimental years of the 1870s. His inno-
vative approach notwithstanding, throughout the 1870s and into the early 1880s he re-
spected the physical integrity of what he described. Flesh was always flesh-colored,
light was northern and cool. His humans all have faces, with features brilliantly con-
ceived to convey with a single expression generations of breeding, whether high or —
more typically — low.
By the early 1880s, most of the subjects that Degas had established in the 1870s
were common currency. Milliners, laundresses, dancers, and cafe-concert singers appeared
widely in popular illustration and in the novels of the Naturalist writers. Artists like
Jean-Frangois Raffaelli and Jean-Louis Forain collaborated with writers like Edmond de
Goncourt, Zola, and Huysmans on books such as Croquis parisiens, published in 1880,
or Les types de Paris, published in 1889, in which characters remarkably close to the in-
habitants of Degas's world are interpreted for an audience broader than Degas's. Images
of young working women — depicted by artists since the seventeenth century as poten-
tially available for sexual favors — were exploited by Degas in a fashion that is almost
ironic: he diffused the sexuality of the sensational imagery to render it barely percepti-
ble. To quote the critic Geffroy on the milliners, Degas "retained this taste for the sur-
prises of the street, for encounters at corners and at half-open doors, [in his pictures] of
365
Fig. 170. Edouard Manet, Woman Bathing, c. 1878-79. Pastel, 2i3Ax ij^A in.
(55X45 cm). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
dark and brittle milliners who adjust their hats with a grace learned in the outlying dis-
tricts . . . pictures [nonetheless] of grand, simplified gestures, in rich and matte colors,
of overwhelming sumptuousness."9 In the early 1880s, Degas continued to investigate
the human race as a scientific Realist, but he colored the evidence with a panoply of
luxurious color, and suffused the results with charm.
Toward the mid-i88os, Degas markedly shifted the course of his art. He simplified
his compositions, made the depicted space more shallow, brought his viewpoint down
to near eye-level, and focused his attention on a single figure or figural group. He con-
centrated on human form with a point of view that he had ignored since the 1860s,
when he had copied the Italian masters extensively. Humor and anecdote, with the no-
table exception of a work like The Morning Bath (cat. no. 270), is conspicuously absent.
It is almost as if Degas, clarifying his art, heeded the remarks made by Armand Silvestre
apropos the most classical, if not classicizing, of Degas' s entries to the fourth Impres-
sionist exhibition, the relief-like Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town (fig. 336), because it
was this aspect of his art that he emphasized at mid-decade: "The considered mastery in
this picture, whose power is indefinable ... is the most eloquent protest against the
confusion of colors and complication of effects that is destroying contemporary paint-
ing. It is a simple, correct, and clear alphabet thrown into the studio of the calligraphers
whose arabesques have made reading unbearable."10
Degas's new classicizing style is most evident in the series of large pastel nudes. In
them, the figure dominates. Indeed the compositions are so cropped that there is room
for little else. Compared to the pastels of milliners of 1882, the colors are muted even in
the most colorful of the series, such as After the Bath (fig. 171; cat. no. 253), and Nude
Woman Having Her Hair Combed (cat. no. 274). The technique is straightforward and
9. Gustave Geffroy, La vie artistique, Paris: E. Dentu,
1894, p. 161.
10. Armand Silvestre, "Le monde des arts: les inde-
pendants — les aquarellistes," La Vie Modeme,
24 April 1879, p. 38.
11. Adam 1886, p. 545.
366
simple: most of the pastels of the period are worked on store-bought academy boards,
as opposed to the assemblages of pieced paper common to the 1870s and early 18 80s.
The more brusquely worked nudes, such as the bather in the Burrell Collection in Glas-
gow (fig. 183) and the 1885 Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub in New York (cat. no. 269),
are almost monochromatic. Paul Adam, reviewing the nudes exhibited in the 1886 Im-
pressionist exhibition, noted that Degas "uses bituminous tones monotonously," but
added that "very beautiful drawing predominates."11 It seems certain that Degas sup-
pressed his palette at mid-decade in order to focus attention on the strength of his line.
And his decision to do so was probably a reaction to the high-keyed palettes of Monet,
Renoir, and Pissarro at the time. Sickert wrote that he had "never forgotten some
words . . . [that] Degas let fall in 1885 about the direction that was being taken in
Fig. 171. After the Bath, c. 1883-84 (cat. no. 253)
367
painting at the time, and his attitude toward that direction. 'They are all exploiting the
possibilities of color. And I am always begging them to exploit the possibilities of draw-
ing. It is the richer field.' "12 Abandoning his scientific sensibility, in his nudes he distilled
and consolidated his art toward a new synthetic classicism based on line.
One issue regarding Degas's nudes that is often overlooked is their relation to the
work of Edouard Manet. Manet is the only artist with whom Degas maintained a truly
competitive relationship. They were both prickly about their artistic debts to one an-
other, yet there can be no doubt that each contributed equally to the other's aesthetic,
even if the balance did shift over the years. It is evident that in the 1870s, Manet based
his pastels of women bathing and his scenes of the cafe-concert on Degas's treatments of
these subjects shown in the 1877 Impressionist exhibition. On the other hand, the expe-
rience of seeing Manet's nudes in large scale (see fig. 170) may well have prompted De-
gas to move his scenes intimes out of the monotype format and onto large boards. Because
Degas was no longer an intimate of Manet's at the end of his life, he may not have seen
Manet's nudes until after the latter's death in 1883, either at the atelier sales or at the
home of Berthe Morisot and Eugene Manet. It thus seems significant that the earliest of
Degas's bathers to approach the size of Manet's probably date from 1883-84, such as
After the Bath or the pastel in the Burrell Collection dated 1884. Probably there was a
feeling of release included in Degas's remorse at the loss of his colleague, and perhaps
mixed in as well was a desire to take his own imagery back for himself. Certainly the
suite of nudes that Degas exhibited in the 1886 exhibition was a repudiation, conscious
or not, of Manet's aesthetic. GefFroy, writing in 1894, compared Degas's nudes to those
of earlier French painters, including Manet's Olympia, and concluded: "Degas had an-
other comprehension of life, a different concern for exactitude before nature. There is
certainly a woman there [in Degas's pictures], but a certain kind of woman, without the
expression of a face, without the wink of an eye, without the decor of the toilette, a wom-
an reduced to the gesticulation of her limbs, to the appearance of her body, a woman
considered as a female, expressed in her animality, as if it were a matter of a superior il-
lustration in a zoological textbook."13 For his part, Degas virtually confirmed Geffroy's
analysis when he reflected to Sickert: "Perhaps I looked on women too much as animals."14
Synthesis was the key word among those critics who could see past the provoca-
tive imagery of the so-called animalistic nudes Degas exhibited in 1886. Mirbeau spoke
for many when he observed that "there is wonderful power of synthesis and abstract
line in them such as no other artist of our time that I know of can produce."15 Huys-
mans singled out Degas's line and characterized it as "ample and fundamental."16 And
Feneon went to the heart of the matter by pinpointing the cumulative observations that
Degas synthesized in his drawing. "The line of this cruel and wise observer elucidates,
through difficult and wildly elliptical foreshortenings, the mechanics of movement. In a
moving being, [Degas's] line registers not only the essential gesture, but the smallest
and most distant myological repercussions. From this comes the definitive unity of his
drawing. It is an art of Realism, however it does proceed from a direct vision; once one
catches oneself watching, the native spontaneity of the observation is lost. Hence Degas
does not copy from nature. He accumulates a multitude of sketches, from which he takes
the irrefutable veracity that he confers on his work. Never have pictures shown less of
the painful image of the 'model' who has 'posed.'"17 It was the strong and almost inde-
pendent contours of Degas's nudes that impressed not just critics, but also the younger
generations of artists working in Paris at the time. Gauguin summed it up in an unchar-
acteristically simple statement: "Drawing had been lost, it needed to be rediscovered.
When I look at these nudes, I am moved to shout — it has indeed been rediscovered."18
Toward the end of the decade, Degas's style evolved further. But because his
works were infrequently exhibited between 1886 and 1891, and because he dated only
two works at the end of the 1880s — one in 1887 and one in 1890 — it is difficult to deter-
mine precisely when the shift occurred. Yet the signs of change are unmistakable. In
some genres, such as in his pictures of jockeys, he retained the clarity of his earlier style,
but reinvigorated it with a new enthusiasm for accuracy fueled by Muybridge's photo-
graphs (see "Degas and Muy bridge," p. 459). Similarly, in the pictures of dancers his
12. Walter Sickert, "Post-Impressionists," The Fort-
nightly Review, DXXIX, 2 January 191 1, p. 87.
13. Geffroy, op. cit., pp. 167-69.
14. Sickert 19 17, p. 185.
15. Mirbeau 1886, p. 1 (excerpted in 1986 Washing-
ton, D.C., p. 453). See also Mirbeau's article of
1884 in which he describes Degas's "violent and
cruel synthesism" (Octave Mirbeau, "Notes sur
Tart: Degas," La France, 15 November 1884, p. 2).
16. Huysmans 1889, p. 25.
17. Feneon 1886, p. 263.
18. Words reportedly written in 1903, one month
before Gauguin's death, recorded in "Degas von
Paul Gauguin," Kunst und Kunstler, X, 19 12,
p. 341 (translation 1984 Tubingen, p. 83).
19. Sickert 1917, p. 185.
20. Felix Feneon, "Calendrier de janvier," La Revue
Independante, February 1888; reprinted in Feneon
1970, I, p. 95.
21. Richard Kendall, "Degas's Colour," in Degas
1834-1917, Manchester: Manchester Polytechnic,
1985, pp. 23-24
22. G. -Albert Aurier, "Les symbolistes," Revue
Encyclopedique, 1 April 1892; reprinted in Aurier,
Oeuvres posthumes, Paris, 1893, pp. 293-309;
cited in John Rewald, Post-Impressionism: From
van Gogh to Gauguin, 3rd rev. ed., New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 1978, p. 483.
23. Maurice Denis, "L'epoque du symbolisme," Ga-
zette des Beaux-Arts, XI, 1934, pp. 175-76. (In-
stead of copying nature, Denis writes, Symbolist
art is to be constructed by two means: "the ob-
jective deformation, which depends on a purely
aesthetic and decorative conception, on technical
principles of color and of composition; and the
subjective deformation, which brings into play
the personal feeling of the artist, his soul, his
poetry. . . .")
24. Jeanniot 1933, p. 158.
368
line is more insistent, the color stronger, and the composition expressed with a resolu-
tion revealing the cumulative mastery of his means. But in the bathers, he pushed his
interests of mid-decade to new extremes, as if unfettered by any consideration other than
the exigencies of pictorial construction. His figures are now models posing frankly in the
studio, not women seen "through the keyhole"19 washing in their homes. Any sugges-
tion of anecdote or humor is gone, replaced by a more profound exploration of the ex-
pressive properties of form, line, color, and feeling.
The essential development in Degas's nudes of the late 1880s was the fusion of color
with drawing. With pastel he was able to apply color in a linear manner, not so much
to delineate form as to model it. In Nude Woman Combing Her Hair (cat. no. 285), for
example, the figure is modeled with thin overlapping strokes of lime green and apricot
orange — colors not usually associated with flesh — as opposed to the pale pink with
dark brown shadows that Degas used in his earlier nudes. In the nudes of the late 1880s,
the long strokes of color perform much the same function as did Seurat's dots and re-
sult in similar kinds of optical Mendings — although by this time Degas's colors were
acutely unnatural. Whereas most observers felt that Degas had subdued color to favor
line in the nudes exhibited in 1886, they found it hard to deny that color in works such
as Woman Stepping into a Bath (cat. no. 288) and Nude Woman Drying Herself (cat. no. 289)
now carried an importance equal to that of line and was applied in an equally indepen-
dent manner. A short notice in dense prose by Feneon in 1888 stressed (in contrast to
his review of the 1886 exhibition) the importance then accorded to Degas's mastery of
color. Some measure of Degas's enjoyment of paradox is revealed by Feneon's rhetori-
cal rejoinder! "But he rejects this prestige [of a colorist], and quickly adds: I want to be
only a draftsman."20
As Richard Kendall has shown, many of the most sophisticated, coloristically, of
the late pastels have a tonal substructure drawn by Degas the draftsman beneath their
brilliant surfaces finished by Degas the colorist.21 Such a procedure is unthinkable in the
work of an Impressionist like Monet or a committed colorist like Cezanne. Curiously,
it is not unlike the way Seurat would first work out his figures and compositions in
subtly shaded drawings in black and white before developing his paintings in color.
And it is exactly analogous to Degas's practice of first establishing tonal relationships in
his black-and-white monotypes before reworking them in colored pastel. Sometime in
the later 1880s, Degas adopted a similar method in his painting as well. The Nude Woman
Drying Herself m Brooklyn (cat. no. 255) is an example of a painting left unfinished by
Degas after he had laid in the tonal structure but before he had applied the color.
With his high-keyed, antinaturalistic palette and strong, abstracting line Degas ap-
proached Symbolism at the end of the decade. It is debatable whether he ever adopted
dream imagery in his later work. It is equally uncertain whether Degas's pictures em-
brace a central "Idea," which Gauguin and the theorist G.- Albert Aurier insisted was
critical for true Symbolist art — although Aurier did cite Degas's "expressive synthesis"
as proto-Symbolist.22 But at the very least it is true that he allowed his imagination an
increasingly large role in his work. A drawing such as that of the nude on horseback in
Rotterdam (cat. no. 282) was clearly made from memory, a memory refreshed perhaps
by his early drawings, all the more powerful because of it. Similarly, Dancers, Pink and
Green (cat. no. 293) is not a transcription of a real event in the wings of a theater, but
rather a translation in a new language from Degas's own work of the 1870s. Having
long forsaken his interest in depicting the world as he saw it, Degas sometime before
1890 set out to paint a world that he knew through experience. Following this method,
he developed an expressive style that conforms precisely to the Symbolist principles de-
fined by Gauguin's follower Maurice Denis, in which flat, decorative surfaces marked
by bold outlines are emphasized and worked in vivid colors rarely before seen — electric
blue, hot pink, chrome yellow, dark purple.23 Jeanniot recorded Degas's having said
that: "It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is much better to draw what one
remembers. A transformation results in which imagination collaborates with memory.
You will reproduce only what is striking, which is to say, only what is necessary. That
way, your memories and your fantasies are liberated from the tyranny of nature."24
369
Durand-Ruel, the principal dealer and for some time principal patron of the artists who
participated in the Impressionist exhibitions, purchased only three pictures of nude
bathers (out of several hundred) from Degas throughout the course of the 1880s. That
the dealer could virtually ignore the most important series of Degas's works during this
period raises an interesting question regarding the relationship between the artist's sub-
jects, his choice of style, and his market. As one might expect, Degas was highly sensi-
tive to market conditions, and yet, at the same time, he could be immune to commer-
cial influence. Throughout the 1880s (albeit less so at the end), Degas fabricated works
of art for quick sale, while working simultaneously on pictures so ambitious or difficult
that he could never have seriously entertained the hope of finding buyers for them.
Degas met Paul Durand-Ruel in the early 1870s, when the latter was shifting the
base of his stock from the work of the Barbizon school, still quite salable, to that of the
young urban Realists, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Tissot, and Degas. Durand-
Ruel first purchased pictures from Degas in January 1872. 25 That same year, as Michael
Pantazzi has shown, the artist complained that "Durand-Ruel takes everything I do, but
scarcely sells anything."26 Degas did not wait long before taking matters in his own
hands, arranging a complicated buy-back deal with the collector Jean-Baptiste Faure,
whereby Faure in 1874 depleted Durand-Ruel of his stock of Degas's pictures in return
for the promise of larger and "better" paintings to be delivered directly to Faure (see
"Degas and Faure," p. 221). Indeed the paintings finally delivered, thirteen years later,
such as Woman Ironing (cat. no. 256), were large and crammed with visual detail; but
because Degas felt obliged to live up to the commission, they appear to have been painted
with a heavy hand. And because they remained in Degas's studio too long, they are
overworked and lack the spontaneity of his independent work. The arrangement with
Faure is surprising because of Degas's active role (it ended, badly, in 1887, with recrimi-
nations on both sides), but it turns out to be just the first documented instance of
Degas's manipulative relations with his dealers and collectors.
Little is known of Durand-Ruel's involvement with Degas in the late 1870s. Finan-
cial setbacks for the gallery, and for the French nation, necessarily slowed activity, and
what transactions there were are now obscured by missing stock books. Starting with
December 1880, however, documentation is complete, revealing to a certain extent De-
gas's pattern of sale. Evidently, at least once a month, when he was in the city, Degas
would put together a package of works that he was ready to release, usually amounting
to about Fr 1,000 in value. Degas would summon Durand-Ruel, who seems generally
to have bought whatever he was offered.27 If Durand-Ruel hesitated, Degas became an-
noyed: "One delays coming to see the pastel, [therefore] I am sending it to you. You
will get another (of horses) and the little Course (in oils) with a background of moun-
tains. Please send me some money this afternoon. Try and give me half the sum each
time I send you something. Once my fortunes are restored I might well keep nothing
for you and so free myself completely from debt."28 Sometimes the package would be a
mixed lot, such as the large pastel, the pastel drawing, and the two fans (one being
cat. no. 211), sold on 12 April 1883. At other times Degas would sell a large suite of
works, such as the twelve drawings of dancers (probably among them cat. no. 222) sold
on 25 January 1882. Durand-Ruel automatically doubled the amount he paid Degas to
establish the retail price of the work, and this markup rarely varied. However, when
Durand-Ruel bought works by Degas from other dealers, or collectors, or at auction,
he altered the markup percentage to suit market conditions. Discounts were generally
not granted, for as a rule Durand-Ruel's "prix demande" in the 1880s was very close to
the sum received. But there was a fair amount of trading of other kinds. The gallery
would accept a work by one artist in exchange for a work by another artist, and it often
acted as an agent at auction for Degas and for Mary Cassatt — buying pictures or draw-
ings for them against future payment in cash or art. Occasionally in the 18 80s, Durand-
Ruel paid Degas half of the purchase price upon delivery, but usually he credited the
full amount to Degas's account, against which Degas made constant withdrawals. Guerin's
assertion that Degas used Durand-Ruel as a banker is substantiated by the unpublished
correspondence in the Durand-Ruel archives as well as by their account books. In the
25. See Chronology I, January 1872.
26. Letter from Degas to Tissot, [summer 1872],
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters
1947, no. 8, p. 35.
27. Total value in francs of recorded sales by Degas
to Durand-Ruel and to Boussod et Valadon:
Durand- Boussod et
Ruel Valadon Total
1881
9, 000
9,000
1882
14,650
14,650
1883
6,875
6,875
1884
6,880
6,880
1885
6,525
6,525
1886
5,600
5,600
1887
800
4,000
4,800
1888
4, 800
3,200
8,000
1889
i,350
2,400
3.750
1890
10,300
10,800
21,100
The figures for Durand-Ruel are taken from the
journal and the stock books. The totals noted in
the gallery's "grand livre" differ slightly. The
Boussod et Valadon figures derive from Rewald
1986.
28. Letter from Degas to Durand-Ruel, [13 August
1886], Lettres Degas 1945, XCVI bis, p. 123;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 106, p. 121.
29. Letter from Degas to Durand-Ruel, summer
1884, Lettres Degas 1945, LXVII, p. 94; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 76, p. 94.
30. Letter from Degas to Bracquemond, [April /May
1879], Lettres Degas 1945, XVI, p. 43; Degas
Letters, 1947, no. 25, p. 48.
3 1 . See the description of collectors of Degas's works
in Octave Mirbeau, "Notes sur Tart: Degas," La
France, 15 November 1884, p. 2, reprinted in
Gary Tinterow, "A Little-Known Article by Oc-
tave Mirbeau," Burlington Magazine, March 1988.
32. John House, "Impressionism and Its Contexts,"
in Impressionist and Post- Impressionist Masterpieces:
The Courtauld Collection, New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1987, pp. 18-19 n- !7, letter from
Monet to Durand-Ruel, 3 November 1884; re-
printed in Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: biographie
et catalogue raisonne, Lausanne /Paris: La Biblio-
theque des Arts, 1979, II, no. 527, p. 256.
370
first half of the 1880s, Degas withdrew on average Fr 485 three times a month or more.
He either sent individuals to Durand-Ruel for payment ("Cher Monsieur, my maid will
go and fetch a little money from you"29), or demanded that money be sent to him
wherever he happened to be — the Grand Hotel at Parame, for instance, where he
stayed in August 1885. Degas's account with Durand-Ruel was often overdrawn, and at
the end of the year he often had an outstanding balance. To cite but one year, in 1882 he
sold to Durand-Ruel art worth Fr 14,650, and received from him Fr 17,95° in c*sh. Degas
seems to have been on cordial terms with Durand-Ruel, but they were never friends.
Unlike Monet, who trusted Durand-Ruel as an adviser and relied on him to develop
marketing strategies, Degas kept him at a distance. He always called him "Monsieur."
Degas was conscious of commercial pressures as early as the late 1860s, when he
still aspired to success at the Salon. By the 18 80s, he seems clearly to have distinguished
between his commercial output — his fabricated "articles"30 — and the rest of his art. The
majority of works purchased by Durand-Ruel in the 18 80s were, not surprisingly, pic-
tures of racecourse scenes and dancers, Degas's "articles." Domestically scaled and highly
finished, they seemed to have been designed for the apartments and town houses of
Degas's "collectors" — rich merchants, industrialists, and the occasional artist, intellec-
tual, and aristocrat.31 Degas had ceased painting monumental pictures when he renounced
the Salon, after 1870; he did not work routinely on a large scale until the 1890s. The rel-
atively few large works that he began in the 1880s, such as the Brooklyn Nude Woman
Drying Herself (cat. no. 255), the Chicago Millinery Shop (cat. no. 235), and the London
portrait of Helene Rouart (fig. 192), remained in his studio for many years. Not until
he left his large apartment in 19 12 did he consider selling the Chicago millinery shop
picture, though it is highly unlikely that Durand-Ruel would have purchased it much
earlier.
John House has drawn attention to Durand-Ruel's attempts to influence the size
and level of finish of paintings by the Impressionists he represented. A letter of 1884 in
which Monet objected to Durand-Ruel's pressure outlines the issue precisely: "As far as
the finish is concerned, or rather the 'leche' [degree of polished execution] which the
public wants, I will never agree."32 There is no record suggesting that Durand-Ruel
sought to influence Degas similarly, but there is evidence that Degas obliged the expec-
tations of the market. Two examples of many may be cited. On 25 January 1882, Degas
sold twelve drawings to Durand-Ruel. They are all of a piece — drawn on colored pa-
pers, worked up with pastel and chalk, and conspicuously signed. They are sufficiently
spontaneous to give an indication of the creative process, yet sufficiently finished to be
pleasing in themselves. Clearly, drawings such as these, quite different from the work-
ing drawings of the same period found in Degas's studio at his death, gratified buyers;
ten of the twelve were sold in the course of the year. In 1885, Degas sold a number of
prints to Durand-Ruel — etchings, lithographs, and monotypes — which he had re-
worked with pastel in order to make them more substantial and thus more attractive
commercially, among them At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (cat. no. 265). These pictures,
being small, portable, jewellike, and yet affordable, were sent by Durand-Ruel to the
exhibition of material from his gallery that he organized in New York in 1886. Through-
out the early 1880s, there was a direct relationship between the purchase from Degas of
a number of like works — "articles" — and the planning of a promotional exhibition or
sale in London, Paris, Brussels, or New York.
Degas's commercial works can be distinguished from the rest of his oeuvre primar-
ily by their degree of finish. In the 18 80s he worked simultaneously in two styles — one
commercial, the other distinctly not. Several examples at mid-decade reveal this tend-
ency clearly, and one could argue that it persisted throughout the remainder of his ca-
reer. In 1884 and 1885, Degas made eight pastels of scenes from the farce Les Jumeaux de
Bergame, seven of which are identical in style, typified by Harlequin (fig. 237). Drawing
is precise, colors are intense, and the surface is richly worked to elicit a variety of tex-
tural effects. Over the years, Degas sold all but one of these pastels, and most of them
were quickly resold. In contrast, the one pastel in the series that Degas did not sell but
rather presented as a wedding present to his friend Hortense Valpinqon (cat. no. 260), is
37i
worked quite differently. The drawing is supple, forms are developed by the cumula-
tive effect of lines rather than by contour lines, and color is soft and suggestive rather
than declamatory. It is less finished, or "licked," but, to use Degas's description of the
freely painted Cotton Merchants in New Orleans (cat. no. 116), "better art."33
The series of nude bathers offers another instance of Degas's duality of style. The
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub in Paris (cat. no. 271), characteristic of Degas's most
polished art, is uniformly layered with pastel that was applied with precision. Forms are
smoothly modeled and details are carefully delineated. Dated 1886, Woman Bathing in a
Shallow Tub was sold immediately to Emile Boussod, even before it was shown in the
Impressionist exhibition that spring. The Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub in New York
(cat. no. 269), from the same series, is in a quite different style. The figure is ungainly
and angular, unlike the Paris nude which is beautifully soft and curved. Its only acces-
sory, the porcelain pitcher, serves to underscore the nude's blunt figure. The drawing in
the New York pastel is raw, and much of the paper is left exposed. The near monochromy
of the New York bather makes the subtle hues of the Paris bather seem rainbowlike in
comparison. It is not surprising then that the New York pastel, dated 1885, was not s°ld
by the time it was shown in the 1886 exhibition, and it is absolutely fitting that this
sketchiest, most difficult, and least commercial of the suite of nudes should have been
acquired by another artist, Mary Cassatt. She was sensitive to the pastel's special quali-
ties, and in letters to Louisine Havemeyer she continually deemed it superior to almost
any other nude by Degas (see cat. no. 269).
Durand-Ruel and Degas apparently had a special arrangement in the early 1880s,
for in more than one letter Degas announces that he is sending to the gallery collectors
who had sought to purchase works directly from him. Yet the arrangement could not
have been exclusive, since Degas sold at the same time to other dealers such as Alphonse
Portier, or a man named Clauzet, on rue de Chateaudun.34 By 1887 Durand-Ruel, once
again in precarious financial condition, could ill afford to patronize Degas, and his pur-
chases gradually diminished. More important, Durand-Ruel seems to have spurned Degas's
more avant-garde works, such as his nudes. Degas sold these to other dealers, including
Theo van Gogh, Vincent's brother, who about this time had set up his mezzanine gal-
lery at Boussod et Valadon and taken up the slack from Durand-Ruel. Van Gogh bought
not only from Degas but also invested heavily in Monet, for example, seriously threat-
ening Durand-Ruel's control of the Impressionist market. More significant to Degas's
reputation and influence than his financial dealings was the fact that van Gogh's gallery
became the meeting place of younger painters and critics, who had already begun to
perceive Durand-Ruel as slightly old guard. Since Degas did not exhibit his recent work
publicly between 1886 and 1891, his admirers congregated at such galleries as van Gogh's.
Degas's decision to withdraw from his highly visible and active role within the Parisian
artistic community came, ironically, during the years in which his influence on the
work of younger painters was most pervasive. Degas had always directly encouraged
his artist friends — Cassatt and Bartholome are the two most obvious beneficiaries in the
1880s — but he taught by example rather than by instruction. Unlike, say, Pissarro, De-
gas had no students. Although he never accepted the role or appellation of maitre, both
Gauguin and Seurat attested to the importance of his art for their own, and his influence
on Forain, Raffaelli, and the young Toulouse-Lautrec was paramount. His caustic humor
and acerbic remarks notwithstanding, Degas was (except with Manet) always generous
to the artists who borrowed freely from his bank of subjects and images, and extended
his support even to minor practitioners, such as De Nittis, Zandomeneghi, Boldini, and
Sickert. Degas went so far as to supply Sickert, in September 1885, with photographs
of his paintings (in pastel-colored mats and painted frames) to show to art students in
London.35 The gruff Degas may well have received more artists in his studio than is
commonly thought.
It is not possible here to track Degas's numerous sources of inspiration or to prop-
erly chart his pervasive influence. Yet the juxtaposition of merely a few pictures by Ce-
zanne, Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Seurat, and Renoir (figs. 172-177) suffices to convey
33. Letter from Degas to Tissot, 18 February 1873,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Degas Letters
1947, no. 6, p. 29.
34. Letter from Degas to Bracquemond, 13 May
1879, and letter from Degas to Durand-Ruel
[December 1885?], Lettres Degas 1945, XVIII
and LXXVIII, pp. 45, 102; Degas Letters 1947,
nos. 27, 87, pp. 50, 102.
35. Letter from Degas to Ludovic Halevy [Septem-
ber 1885], Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXV, p. 109;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 94, p. 108.
372
Fig. 172. Paul Cezanne, Three Bathers, c. 1874-75. Oil on
canvas, 85/s X 7V2 in. (22 X 19 cm). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Fig. 173. Women Combing Their Hair, c. 1875 (cat. no. 148)
Fig. 174. Puvis de Chavannes, Young Women by
the Seashore, 1879. Oil on canvas, %o¥a X 6o5/s in.
(205 X 154 cm). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Fig. 175. Nude Woman Combing Her Hair (L848),
c. 1884-86. Pastel, 2i5/gX20l/2 in. (55 X 52 cm).
The Hermitage Museum, Leningrad
Fig. 177. Auguste Renoir, Bathers, 1887. Oil on canvas, 45% X
667/s in. (115 X 170 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art
373
the nexus of artistic creation in Paris in the 1880s. These artists exploited common
sources, and mutual influence was rife. Renaissance and Baroque art, for example, was
invoked simultaneously by Renoir, Degas, and Seurat, albeit to quite differing effects.
Hitherto, it has been difficult to assess the interchange among artists accurately because
basic premises about Degas's chronology were false; Degas's contribution has gone largely
unrecognized, and Degas studies have, accordingly, lagged far behind those devoted to
his contemporaries. With a new chronology in place, Degas's development may be better
understood, revealing his pivotal role as a catalyst in the evolution of modernism.
Seeing his art with fresh eyes better enables us to appreciate Blanche's assertion that
Degas, who was his favorite artist, "bridged two epochs; he bound the past to the most
immediate present."36 Now, with hindsight, it can be said that during the 1880s Degas
anticipated many of the most important developments of the future as well. 36. Blanche 1919, p. 287.
374
Chronology HI
Note
The Chronology for this section is disproportionately longer than
those of the other sections because there is more known about De-
gas's activities in this decade than in any other. First, some forty
percent of Degas 's published correspondence dates from this peri-
od. Second, it was in these years that works by Degas found their
way to numerous exhibitions throughout Europe and in New York.
But more important, two new sources of information — one regard-
ing the marketing of his work and, concurrently, his finances, the
other regarding his habitual attendance at the Opera — have been
made available to the organizers of this exhibition.
The records of Degas's principal dealer in the 1880s, Durand-
Ruel, happen to be completely intact for this period, whereas, for
example, the books for the 1870s are incomplete. Since in the 1890s
Degas seems to have preferred to sell his recent work to Ambroise
Vollard (whose stock books for Degas have not been located) in ad-
dition to other dealers, the Durand-Ruel ledgers for the 1880s con-
stitute an unparalleled resource. They provide a highly detailed picture
of the selling of Degas's work: the precise dates when works of art
left the artist's hands, the intervals at which he preferred to sell, the
prices he realized, and the kinds of objects he sold (recent works
versus older works; pastels rather than paintings; pastelized mono-
types, etchings, and lithographs rather than drawings). The Durand-
Ruel accounts have been published here — for the first time so exten-
sively— thanks to the generosity of Caroline Durand-Ruel Godfroy,
who provided access to the archives, and as a result of the patience
and diligence of Henri Loyrette and Anne Roquebert, who transcribed
the information over many months. The matching of specific works
by Degas with the descriptions and inventory numbers recorded in
the ledgers for the 18 80s was largely accomplished, when possible,
by myself with Anne M. P. Norton and Susan Alyson Stein. Our
colleagues in Paris confirmed many of our hunches and made sug-
gestions, as did members of the Durand-Ruel staff. The Boussod et
Valadon stock books, first published by John Rewald in 1973 (and
revised in 1986), have been similarly exploited in this Chronology.
It was also Henri Loyrette who found in the Archives Nationales,
Paris, the registers of the Opera de Paris that season subscribers
signed in order to gain access to the stage and foyers during any
given performance. These records enable one to determine on
which nights Degas passed through to the stage, and although one
cannot deduce from that whether he stayed for the entire perform-
ance, or passed instead directly to the wings, and while one cannot
know when he attended performances without signing the register,
the records do indicate, at the least, precisely when Degas was in
Paris. The registers prior to 1885 are missing, but from 1885 on-
ward, Degas's known attendance at the Opera is here published in
full, also for the first time.
GT
1881
18 April
Mary Cassatt's father writes to his son Alexander that Degas is still
reworking The Steeplechase (fig. 316), which Alexander had hoped
to acquire. He reports that the painting requires no more than two
hours of work, yet "it is still postponed. However, [Degas] said to-
day that want of money would compel him to finish it at once."
(Degas never completed his revision of the painting.)
Mathews 1984, p. 161; also in Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 27.
18 June
Degas sells "Le foyer de la danse" (cat. no. 219) to Durand-Ruel for
Fr 5,000 (stock no. 11 15); it is resold immediately to Mary Cassatt's
brother for Fr 6,000. (This is the first sale to Durand-Ruel since the
preceding February, when Degas sold "Dans les coulisses, chan-
teuse guettant son entree" [L715] for Fr 600 [stock no. 800].)
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Degas's sister Therese Morbilli and her ward, Lucie de Gas, arrive
in Paris for an extended visit. The next day, in a letter to her hus-
band, Therese writes about her brother: "He has become a famous
man, you know. His pictures are greatly sought after. " In another
letter, of 4 July, she complains about financial difficulties: "I cannot
possibly borrow more money from Edgar. . . . Life is too difficult
around him. He earns money but never knows how much he has.
Marguerite has lent me 100 francs for day-to-day needs, as I didn't
have the courage to ask Edgar."
Guerrero de Balde archives, Naples; Boggs 1963, p. 276.
8 July
Degas sells "Femme dans une loge" (fig. 178) to Durand-Ruel for
Fr 500 (stock no. 924). (The work was previously exhibited in the
1880 Impressionist exhibition.)
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
28 August
Asks Durand-Ruel to call on him. Among other things, he wishes
to show him a "laundress" that he has just finished. (The reference
may be to L685 [cat. no. 256], L276 [cat. no. 258], or L846 [cat.
no. 325], though L846 seems much later and L685 presumably was
still unfinished in 188 1.)
Unpublished letter, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
13 October
Sells "Coin de salon" (unidentified) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 1,500
(stock no. 1923). Two days later he sells a pastel, "Femme faisant sa
toilette" (unidentified), for Fr 800 (stock no. 1926). (This marks the
first mention of a bather in the Durand-Ruel account books.)
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
11 November
Plans are under way for another group exhibition, to be held in
1882. Gauguin, who has found rooms for the exhibition, writes to
Pissarro: "I think that, if Degas doesn't throw a stick in the spokes,
this is a superb opportunity to hold our exhibition (in the light, day
and night)."
Lettres Gauguin 1984, no. 18, p. 23.
26 November
Eadweard Muybridge gives a demonstration of his photographic
proof of "true" animal motion at the studio of the painter Ernest
Meissonier. In attendance are many of the notable academic artists
of the day, including Bonnat, Cabanel, Detaille, and Gerome. De-
gas is not present. (The previous September, Muybridge gave a sim-
ilar demonstration to scientists gathered at the home of Etienne
Jules Marey. It is thought that Degas was aware in 1879 of the first
French publications relating the discoveries of Muybridge, but it
was not until after the publication of Animal Locomotion in 1887 that
he was able to assimilate fully the implications of Muybridge's
work into his own.)
See "Degas and Muybridge," p. 459.
8 December
Degas attends the public viewing before the first auction sale of the
contents of Courbet's studio, where he meets the painter Jacques-
Emile Blanche (1861-1942).
Unpublished letter from Blanche, probably to Fantin-Latour, Musee
d'Orsay, Paris.
1882
Dated works: The Little Milliners (fig. 207); At the Milliner's (cat.
no. 232); At the Milliner's (fig. 179).
25 January
Degas sells a dozen studies of dancers to Durand-Ruel for a total of
Fr 2,450 (stock nos. 2170-218 1). The group includes works such as
L865, L822, probably L821, and possibly L823 (cat. no. 222). The
375
1882
Fig. 178. The Box at the Opera (L584), 1880. Pastel, 26 X 20% in.
(66 X 53 cm). Private collection
next day, Degas sells two more works, both "Danseuses" (uniden-
tified, listed as "aq. pastel"), for Fr 500 apiece (stock nos. 2183,
2184); one may well have been L599 (cat. no. 225).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
28 January
Sells "Portrait de Mile X" (i.e., Mile Malo, fig. 107) to Durand-
Ruel for Fr 400 (stock no. 2164).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
i February
Crash of the Catholic bank Union Generale, with grave ramifica-
tions for Durand-Ruel.
Venturi 1939, I, p. 60.
i March
Opening of the 7tne Exposition des artistes independantes (the Impres-
sionist exhibition), at 251 rue Saint-Honore. Degas pays his dues as
a member of the Societe Anonyme des Artistes, but refuses to par-
ticipate in the exhibition. (According to Berthe Morisot's husband,
Eugene Manet, one newspaper decided that the exhibition was "de-
capitated" as a result of the absence of Degas and Mary Cassatt.
Cassatt subsequently explains to Eugene Manet that Degas had re-
moved himself because of hostility directed at him by Gauguin.1 In
a letter of 14 December 188 1 to Pissarro, Gauguin had threatened to
resign from the Societe to protest Degas *s promotion of his own
proteges [mostly Italians, like Federico Zandomeneghi and Giuseppe
De Nittis, but especially Jean-Frangois Raffaelli, who was French] at
the expense of those whom Gauguin deemed to be true Impression-
ists.2 Caillebotte had once written to Pissarro: "It is not possible to
have an exhibition with Degas. . . . Degas is . . . the only one who
put us on bad terms.")3
1. Morisot 1950, p. no; Morisot 1957, p. 112.
2. Rewald 1973, p. 465; see also Roskill 1970, p. 264.
3. Venturi 1939, I, p. 60.
6 March
Sells a drawing of a dancer to Durand-Ruel for Fr 600 (stock
no. 2247). One week later sells a pastel, "Sur la scene" (unidenti-
fied), for Fr 400 (stock no. 2258); Pissarro buys it from Durand-
Ruel in April for Fr 800.
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
16 March
Degas informs his cousin Lucie in Naples that he has found a young
girl "of your proportions" to substitute for her in a "bas-relief" for
which she has posed in Paris (cat. no, 231).
Raimondi 1958, pp. 276-77; Reff 1976, p. 250.
14 April
Sells "Danseuses, baisser du rideau" (L575; see fig. 103) to Durand-
Ruel for Fr 800 (stock no. 2281).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
2 May
Degas writes to Henri Rouart about the opening of the Salon: "An
astomshing Whistler, excessively subde but of a quality! Chavannes,
noble, a bit of a rehash, has the bad taste to show himself perfectly
dressed and proud, in a large portrait of himself, done by Bonnat,
with a fat dedication on the sand where he and a massive table,
with a glass of water are posing (style Goncourt). Manet, stupid
and fine, knows a trick or two without impression, deceptive Span-
ish, painter; ... in a word you will see. Poor Bartholome is ruffled
and is asking naively to have his two works back."
Lettres Degas 1945, XXXIII, pp. 62-63; Degas Letters 1947, no. 42, p. 65.
3 June
Sells "Les modistes" (fig. 207) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 2,500 (stock
no. 2421).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
1$ June
Degas gives a small housewarming party for himself at his apart-
ment at 21 rue Pigalle, "9 o'clock promptly"; the attire is "redin-
gote" rather than the more formal "habit." His housekeeper, Sabine
Neyt, has died, perhaps before the move. Zoe Closier is hired as the
new housekeeper.
Lettres Degas 1945, XCII, p. 120 (incorrectly dated 1886 by Guerin; Degas
refers in this letter to Thursday, 15 June, which in the 18 80s occurred only
in 1882). Unpublished invitation from Degas to Durand-Ruel, Durand-
Ruel archives, Paris ("We will be few. Don't mention it to anyone"); Mc-
Mullen 1984, pp. 373, 407.
27 June
From Naples, Edmondo Morbilli writes to his wife, Therese
(Edgar's sister), in Paris: "As for Rene's desire to have me come to
Paris, in the hope that I could reconcile him with Edgar, please tell
him not to be sorry that I cannot and do not want to come, for Ed-
gar has displayed a complete lack of understanding, with the result
that I despair of ever convincing him through serious arguments! It
is only because I consider him very stubborn that I can let you go
ahead and see him again without hard feelings. If I had taken him
seriously, I would have had to ask you to break off all relations with
him, even though he's your brother. Edgar is probably doing some
good painting, I don't dispute that, but as to the rest, we must al-
ways think of him as a child, so as not to be angry with him."
Unpublished letter, Bozzi collection (not Bozzi Archives), Naples; see
Chronology II, 13 April 1878.
summer
Exhibition organized by Durand-Ruel at White's Gallery, 13 King
Street, London. Included are four works by Degas: "At the Milliner's"
(cat. no. 233), "Jockeys and Horses in Action" (unidentified), "La
loge" (fig. 178), and "Dancers" (either L652, Mellon collection,
Upperville, Va., or L575, private collection, Boston).
The Standard, London, 13 July 1882, p. 3; see also Cooper 1954, p. 23.
376
1882-1883
IS July
Sells two more large pastels to Durand-Ruel: "Dame essayant un
chapeau" (cat. no. 232) and "Chapeaux nature morte" (fig. 179) —
the former for Fr 2,000, the latter for Fr 800 (stock nos. 2508,
2509).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
end of July
Visits the Halevys at Etretat. Writes to Blanche that "the weather is
fine, but more Monet than my eyes can stand."
Lettres Degas 1945, XXXIX, p. 67; Degas Letters 1947, no. 48, p. 70; see
also Reff 1985, Notebook 35 (BN, Carnet 4, p. A).
$ August
From Etretat, writes to his close friend Albert Bartholome (1 848-1928)
that Blanche has sent him the review in the London Standard about
the Durand-Ruel exhibition, "where I was flattered in a few courte-
ous and pinched lines."
Lettres Degas 1945, XL, p. 69; Degas Letters 1947, no. 49, p. 71.
9 September
Degas is in Switzerland, near Geneva, at the Hotel Beausejour,
Veyrier. (Annotations in a notebook indicate that he also visits Ge-
neva, Zurich, and Ouchy.)
Lettres Degas 1945, XLI, p. 69; Degas Letters 1947, no. 50, p. 71; Reff 1985,
Notebook 35 (BN, no. 4, pp. 103, 105, 107).
November
Death of Mary Cassatt's sister Lydia, who is thought to have posed
for the seated figure in At the Louvre (cat. no. 206).
Fig. 179. At the Milliner's (L683), dated 1882. Pastel, 255/8x i95/8 in.
(65 x 50 cm). Private collection
jo December
Sells "Le depart" (cat. no. 236) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 2,500 (stock
no. 2648). When Henry Lerolle and his wife buy the painting in
January 1883, they initiate a lifelong friendship with Degas.
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris; Lettres Degas 1945,
LH, pp. 77-78; Degas Letters 1947, no. 61, pp. 78-79.
29 December
Sells "Femmes regardant la mer" (L879) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 1,200
(stock no. 2669).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
1883
Dated work (August 1883): Hortense Valpingon (cat. no. 243).
Refuses to have a one-man show at Durand-Ruel (unlike Pissarro,
Monet, Renoir, and Sisley).
Rewald 196 1, p. 604.
14 February
Sells "Course de gentlemen" (cat. no. 42) to Durand-Ruel for
Fr 5,200 (stock no. 2755).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
April
Exhibition at Dowdeswell and DowdeswehV, 133 New Bond
Street, London, organized by Durand-Ruel. On view and for sale
are seven works by Degas: "Courses de gentlemen" (cat. no. 42),
Fig. 180. Jockeys before the Race (L649), c. 1878-79. Essence,
42V2 X 29 Vs in. (108 X 74 cm). The Barber Institute of Fine
Arts, The University of Birmingham
377
1883
Fig. 181. Dancers (L617), c. 1876. Oil on canvas, 23 X 28V2 in. (58.4 X
72.4 cm). Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Conn.
£400; "Chapeaux" (fig. 179), £60; "Femme dans une loge" (fig. 178),
£50; "Femmes appuyees sur une rampe" (L879), £120; "La danseuse"
(L574), £50; "Les danseuses" (unidentified), £50; and "Le depart
jockeys" (fig. 180), £140. The reviews are favorable; the London
Academy calls Degas "the chief painter of the Impressionist school."1
Pissarro comments in a letter to Durand-Ruel: "Degas finds himself
chief of the Impressionists; if he only knew! Anathema!"2
1. The Academy, London, 28 April 1883, p. 300; see also Cooper 1954, p. 25.
2. Lettres Pissarro 1980, p. 200; see also Venturi 1939, II, pp. 11-12.
12 April
Sells a pastel, "La conversation" (L774, Staatliche Museen zu Ber-
lin), to Durand-Ruel for Fr 1,000 (stock no. 2800); a drawing,
"Croquis de trois femmes" (fig. 149), for Fr 300 (stock no. 2801);
and two fans (one of them BR73), for Fr 75 each (stock nos. 2802,
2803).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris; Gerstein 1982,
pp. 105-18.
30 April
Death of Manet, the former leader of Degas' s generation of paint-
ers. Degas writes to Bartholome just before the end: "Manet is done
for. . . . Some newspapers, they say, have already taken care to an-
nounce his approaching end to him. His family will I hope have
read them before he did."
Lettres Degas 1945, XLIV, p. 71; Degas Letters 1947, no. 53, p. 73.
p May
Pissarro commends Huysmans's L'art moderne to his son Lucien:
"You will also be very pleased to find in reading the book that you
are not alone in your enthusiasm for Degas, who is without a doubt
the greatest artist of the period."
Lettres Pissarro 1980, no. 145, pp. 203-04; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 31.
23 May
Sells three fans, all entitled "Scene d'opera: danseuses," to Durand-
Ruel for Fr 75 each (stock nos. 2823-2825). (One is certainly L567;
the other two may be L556 [Kornfeld collection, Bern] and L564.)
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
August
At Menil-Hubert with the Valpincons, Degas makes studies for a
portrait of Hortense (see cat. no. 243).
16 October
Increasingly conscious of the loss of friends through death, Degas
writes to Henri Rouart in Venice: "On Saturday we buried Alfred
Niaudet [a cousin of Mme Ludovic Halevy with whom Rouart,
Halevy, and Degas had been at school]. Do you remember the gui-
tar soiree at the house, nearly a year and a half ago? I was counting
up the friends present; we were twenty-seven. Now four have gone.
The Miles Cassatt were to have come, one of them [now] is dead."
Lettres Degas 1945, XLV, pp. 71-72; Degas Letters 1947, no. 54, p. 73.
3 December
"The Ballet" (fig. 181) is included in the Pedestal Fund Art Loan
Exhibition in New York, lent by Erwin Davis (see fig. 182).
4 December
Degas writes to Lerolle, encouraging him to go hear his latest infat-
uation, the chanteuse Theresa, at the Alcazar. In jest, he proposes
her for a role in Gluck's Orfee et Euridice.
Lettres Degas 1945, XL VIII, p. 75; Degas Letters 1947, no. 57, p. 76; see
cat. nos. 175, 263.
Fig. 182. Anonymous, "The Opening of the Art
Loan Exhibition in Aid of the Bartholdi Pedestal
Fund at the Academy of Design Last Monday"
(detail). Engraving. The Daily Graphic, New
York, 10 December 1883
378
1884
1884
Dated works: Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (fig. 183); Mme Henri
Rouart (L766 bis, pastel, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe) ; Jockeys
(L767); Before the Race (fig. 291); Nude Woman Drying Herself (fig. 195);
Program for the Soiree Artistique (RS54, lithograph).
Huysmans publishes A rehours. Conceived as a rejection of his ear-
lier Naturalist tenets, it comes to be seen as a manifesto of the new
Symbolist spirit. In it Huysmans lavishes praise on the work of
Moreau and Redon.
January
Degas resumes selling to Durand-Ruel after a hiatus of eight months.
On 3 January, he sells a pastel of a jockey for Fr 500 (stock no. 3149)
and four drawings of dancers for Fr 75 each (stock nos. 3 150-3 153;
Durand-Ruel returns three of them to the artist). On 27 January, he
sells two drawings of dancers for Fr 100 and Fr 200 respectively
(stock nos. 3188, 3189). On 29 January, he sells a pastel of a dancer
(possibly L616, Shoenberg collection, Saint Louis, or L821) for
Fr 300 (stock no. 3 191).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Having always been disappointed by Manet's search for official
honors, Degas complains that his retrospective exhibition should be
held "anywhere but in those official galleries" of the Ecole des
Beaux- Arts.
Jacques-Emile Blanche, Manet, Paris: F. Rieder et Cie, 1924, p. 57.
In settling Edouard Manet's estate, Berthe Morisot and Eugene
Manet give Degas Manet's Departure of the Folkestone Boat (fig. 184).
He writes to them: "You wanted to give me a great pleasure and
you have succeeded in doing so. May I also tell you that I deeply
feel the many delicate meanings conveyed in your gift."
Morisot 1950, p. 121; Morisot 1957, p. 123.
8 January
Degas informs Mme de Fleury, the sister of Mme Bartholome, of a
portrait he has completed of M. and Mme Bartholome in street
clothes. (The portrait cannot be identified with certainty, although
it may be Conversation, cat. no. 327, which the artist could have re-
painted much later.)
Lettres Degas 1945, L, p. 76; Degas Letters 1947, no. 59, p. 77.
4-$ February
Degas has Durand-Ruel bid for him on three works by Manet at
the sale of the contents of Manet's studio: Leaving the Bath, 1860-61,
ink (RWII, no. 362, private collection, London); Portrait of H. Vignaux,
c. 1874, ink (RWII, no. 472, Baltimore Museum of Art); The Barri-
cade, lithograph. Degas pays Fr 147 for the three works.
16 February
Sells two drawings (possibly L579, L586 bis) to Durand-Ruel for a
total of Fr 800 (stock nos. 2974, 2975).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
6 March
Sells two unidentified pastels of dancers to Durand-Ruel for Fr 300
each (stock nos. 3219, 3220).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
9 April
Sells "Chevaux de courses" (L767, private collection) to Durand-
Ruel for Fr 2,500 (stock no. 3231).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
31 May
Sells "Chanteuse" (unidentified, listed as "dessin rehausse") to
Durand-Ruel for Fr 80 (stock no. 3264).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
30 June
Sells a painting, "Chevaux de courses" (unidentified), to Durand-
Ruel for Fr 700 (stock no. 3284).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
16 August
Degas is at Menil-Hubert visiting the Valpincons. In a letter to Bar-
tholome he writes, listless and depressed: "Is it the country, is it the
weight of my fifty years that makes me as heavy and as disgusted
as I am? They think I am jolly because I smile stupidly, in a re-
signed way. I am reading Don Quixote. Ah! happy man and what a
beautiful death. . . . Ah! where are the times when I thought myself
strong. When I was full of logic, full of plans. I am sliding rapidly
down the slope and rolling I know not where, wrapped in many
bad pastels, as if they were packing paper."
Lettres Degas 1945, LIII, pp. 78-79; Degas Letters 1947, no. 62, pp. 80-81.
August- October
Intending to stay at Menil-Hubert for the usual two or three weeks,
Degas continually delays his return home. He makes short trips to
Paris and other places, but does not go back to his studio until late
October. He works on a life-size bust of Hortense Valpingon, to which
he eventually adds arms and legs. Owing to negligent, improvised
preparations, it disintegrates almost immediately. An attempt to
cast it in plaster fails.
Millard 1976, pp. 12-13.
Fig. 184. Edouard Manet, The Departure of the Folkestone Boat, 1869. Oil
on canvas, 243/4X $9^/4 in. (63 X 101 cm). Oskar Reinhart Collection,
"Am Romerholz," Winterthur
379
1884-1885
2i August
Death of Giuseppe De Nittis in Paris. Announcing the news to
Ludovic Halevy, Degas writes of "this strange and intelligent friend."
He attends the funeral in Paris and returns to Menil-Hubert. (De
Nittis was much influenced by Degas, but closer in sensibility to
the more fashionable Tissot. Degas painted his wife [L302, Portland
Art Museum, Oregon] and son [L508].)
Lettres Degas 1945, LVI, p. 82; Degas Letters 1947, no. 65, p. 83.
early autumn
From Menil-Hubert, Degas in his usual financial difficulties writes
optimistically to Durand-Ruel: "Ah well! I shall stuff you with my
products this winter and you for your part will stuff me with money.
It is much too irritating and humiliating to run after every five
franc piece as I do." Durand-Ruel is himself still suffering from a
serious slump.
Lettres Degas 1945, LXVII, p. 94; Degas Letters 1947, no. 76, p. 94.
21 October
From Menil-Hubert, Degas posts a letter of condolence to De Nittis's
widow — "How can one bear such a thing?" He informs her that he
is finally returning to Paris, and explains his motive in sculpting a
portrait bust of Hortense Valpincon: "As one grows old, one tries
to give back to people the good they have done to you, and to love
them in turn. ... I wanted to leave in [Paul Valpincon' s] house
something from me that would touch him and that would always
remain in the family."
Pittaluga and Piceni 1963, p. 370.
late October
Visits the Halevys at Dieppe, staying at rue de la Greve.
Lettres Degas 1945, LXVIII, p. 95; Degas Letters 1947, no. 77, p. 95.
29 November
Resumes selling to Durand-Ruel after a hiatus of six months. Sells
"Danseuse et arlequin" (L1033) for Fr 200 (stock no. 586); Lerolle
acquires it on Christmas eve for Fr 400.
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
13 December
Sells "Danseuses devant la rampe" (unidentified, listed as "tableau
pastel," probably cat. no. 259) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 600 (stock
no. 593).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
14 December-3 1 January
Two paintings are lent by M. Cotinaud to an exhibition, Le sport
dans Van, at Galerie Georges Petit, Paris: "Depart de course de
Gentlemen-Riders" (cat. no. 42) and "Start" (unidentified).
Annotated exhibition catalogue, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
1885
Dated works: Mile Sallandry (fig. 185); Mile Becat at the Cafe des
Ambassadeurs (cat. no. 264); At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (cat. no. 265);
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (cat. no. 269); Nude Woman Pulling
On Her Chemise (fig. 186); Harlequin (fig. 237). After the Bath (L815,
pastel, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena) is inscribed "85," but
the picture appears to be much later and so the inscription is proba-
bly unreliable.
Death of Michel Musson (1812-1885), one of Degas's maternal un-
cles. (He is the most prominent figure in Portraits in an Office, cat.
no. 115. His daughter Estelle married and divorced the painter's
brother Rene. Two years before his death Michel adopted the two
surviving children of that marriage, both of whom retained the name
Musson. He died where he had always lived, in New Orleans.)
Rewald 1946, pp. 124-25.
Fig. 185. Mile Sallandry (L813), dated 1885. Pastel, 29V2 X
235/8 in. (75 X 60 cm). Private collection
Fig. 186. Nude Woman Pulling On Her Chemise (BR113),
dated 1885. Pastel, 31V2 X ioVs in. (80X51.2 cm).
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
380
1885
shortly before 5 January
Degas writes to Manet's putative son Leon Leenhoff. Wanting to
share in a tribute to Manet, he agrees to attend the banquet at Pere
Lathuille's to mark the anniversary of Manet's retrospective exhibi-
tion held at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts the year before.
Unpublished letter, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
Degas taunts Durand-Ruel by telling him that he is selling a group
of drawings to the dealer Clauzet, rue de Chateaudun, but asks Du-
rand-Ruel for more money nonetheless. (The previous year, Degas
had asked the dealer Alphonse Portier [1 841-1902] to collect a
pastel — presumably a work sold to him by the artist.)
Lettres Degas 1945, LXX, LXXIX, pp. 97, 103; Degas Letters 1947, nos. 79,
88, pp. 97, 103.
27 January
Sells "Arlequin et danseuse" (pastel) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 500
(stock no. 616). (This is almost certainly L817 [fig. 237] or possibly
L771, both completed during the winter of 1884-85; see cat. no. 260.)
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
21 February
Degas attends a performance of Donizetti's La Favorite at the
Opera.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13 (see headnote, Chronology III).
26 February
Sells "Danseuses" (pastel, unidentified) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 1,000
(stock no. 645).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
6 March- is April
Delacroix exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
March-April
At the Opera: Rigoletto, 2 March; Le Tribut de Zamora, 16 March;
L'AJricaine, 21 March; Rigoletto and Coppelia, 27 March; fragments
of Rigoletto, Coppelia, La Korrigane, and Guillaume Tell, 1 April;
Rigoletto and La Korrigane, 8 April; Faust, 13 April; Hamlet, 24 April.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
27 April
Sells three pastels to Durand-Ruel: "Tete de femme" (unidentified)
for Fr 800, "Course" (possibly L850) for Fr 600, and "Chevaux"
(unidentified) for Fr 600 (stock nos. 663-665).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
9 May
At the Opera: Faust.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
18-30 May
Sales at the Hotel Drouot of the collection of Comte de la Beraudi-
ere. Degas buys a small painting by Ingres, Oedipus and the Sphinx
(fig. 187), for Fr 500.
Annotated sale catalogue, Frick Art Reference Library, New York.
30 May
Sells two pastels of bathers entitled "Femme a sa toilette" to Durand-
Ruel: L883 (private collection, New York) for Fr 600, and another
(unidentified) for Fr 400 (stock nos. 682, 683). (These are the last
nudes to be purchased by Durand-Ruel in the 18 80s.)
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
spring
Eugene Manet complains to his wife Berthe Morisot, "Degas has a
seat at the Opera, gets high prices, and does not think of settling
his debts to Faure and Ephrussi."
Morisot 1950, p. in; Morisot 1957, p. 113.
In an undated letter to Pissarro, Gauguin once again airs his resent-
ment of Degas, fueled essentially by disagreement over the relative
merits of certain younger painters (for example, Raffaelli versus
GuiUaumin): "Degas's conduct becomes more and more absurd. . . .
You may well believe me, Degas has greatly harmed our move-
ment. . . . You will see that Degas is going to end his days more
unhappy than the others, wounded in his vanity for not being the
first and only one."
Lettres Gauguin 1984, no. 79, pp. 106-07; Rewald 1973, p. 493.
May-June
At the Opera: L'AJricaine, 4 May; Faust, 9 May; Rigoletto and Cop-
pelia, 11 and 20 May; Rigoletto and La Farandole, 3 June; Coppelia
and La Favorite, 5 June; probably attends the dress rehearsal of
Reyer's opera Sigurd; Sigurd, 15, 22, and 26 June.
Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXII, p. 106; Degas Letters 1947, no. 91, p. 105;
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
June
Durand-Ruel exhibits Impressionist works in Brussels, at the Hotel
du Grand Miroir. Three pastels by Degas are included, "Tete de
femme" and two "Chevaux de courses" (all unidentified); all three,
apparently, are sold in Brussels, since their return to Paris was not
recorded.
Deposit book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
7-10 June
Monet writes to Durand-Ruel about a Degas he hopes to buy from
the dealer Portier (almost certainly a pastel of a bather, fig. 145). He
evidently plans to exchange a work of his for the Degas, and asks
Durand-Ruel for advice and permission.
Venturi 1939, I, p. 292.
19 June
Sells "Danseuses" (L716 bis, private collection, Paris) to Durand-
Ruel for Fr 1,000 (stock no. 692).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Fig. 187. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Oedipus and the Sphinx,
c. 1826-28. Oil on canvas, 67/sX $V% in. (17.5 X 13.7 cm). The National
Gallery, London
381
1885
Fig. 188. Fan: Ballet Scene from the Opera "Sigurd" (L595), 1885. Pastel on
silk, n5/sX 233/s in. (29.5 X 59.4 cm). Private collection, New York
27 June
Sells three pastelized prints to Durand-Ruel: "Blanchisseuses" (no
doubt a proof of RS48) for Fr 100; "Danseuses" (sold Sotheby's,
New York, 9 May 1979, lot 114, a proof of the seventh state of
RS47) for Fr 75; and "Chanteuse" (cat. no. 265) for Fr 50 (stock
nos. 697-699). All three are sent by Durand-Ruel to the 1886 exhi-
bition in New York.
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
July-August
At the Opera: Sigurd, 1 July; Les Huguenots, 3 July; Sigurd, 15 and
27 July; Sigurd, 10 and 14 August; Les Huguenots, 17 August; Sigurd,
19 August; L'Ajricaine, 21 August.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
summer
This is probably when Degas makes drawings from Act II, Scene 1,
of Sigurd, set against dolmens in an Icelandic forest (see fig. 188). In
his devotion to the diva Rose Caron, he attends nearly all the per-
formances of Sigurd. In September he writes to Bartholome: "Di-
vine Mme Caron, I compared her, speaking to her in person, with
the figures [in the paintings] of Puvis de Chavannes, which were
unknown to her. The rhythm, the rhythm . . ."To Halevy he writes
of her expressive arms: "If you see them again you will cry out:
'Rachel, Rachel' [the great actress of Delacroix's epoch]."
Reff 1985, Notebook 36 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
pp. i7ff); Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXIV, LXXXV, pp. 108-10; Degas
Letters 1947, nos. 93, 94, pp. 107-09.
20 August
Sells "L'orchestre" (cat. no. 103) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 800 (stock
no. 732), the last sale to him for a year.
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
22 August-12 September
Degas visits the Halevys at Dieppe. While there, he becomes
friendly with the young English painter Walter Sickert, whom
Whistler had already sent to Degas in Paris on another occasion.
(Sickert later remembered Degas "always humming with enthusi-
asm airs from the Sigurd of Reyer.") Working in Blanche's studio,
Degas records in a group portrait in pastel the intersection in Di-
eppe of six friends: Albert Cave, Ludovic and Daniel Halevy,
Henri Gervex, Blanche, and Sickert (see figs. 189, 190).
Sickert 19 17, p. 184.
During the course of this stay, the photographer Barnes captures
Degas 's parodic staging of Ingres 's Apotheosis of Homer, in which
Degas casts himself as Homer (fig. 191).
Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXVI, p. 112; Degas Letters 1947, no. 95, p. no.
late August
Degas stops at Parame near Saint-Malo as part of an excursion to
Mont Saint-Michel. Perhaps he sees a performance of Les Jumeaux
Fig. 189. Barnes (Dieppe), Friends at Dieppe, 1885.
Photograph, modern print from a glass negative
in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. From left to
right, last two rows: Marie Lemoinne, Ludovic
Halevy, Walter Sickert, Jacques-Emile Blanche,
two unidentified women, and Albert Cave; also
standing (at left) Rose Lemoinne and (at right)
Catherine Lemoinne, Daniel Halevy (?), and
Degas; seated, Elie Halevy, two unidentified
women, and Mme Blanche (?), the painter's mother
1885
Fig. 190. Six Friends at Dieppe (L824), 1885. Pastel,
45V4 X 28 in. (115 X 71 cm). Museum of Art, Rhode
Island School of Design, Providence. Left to right, top
to bottom: Walter Sickert, Daniel Halevy, Ludovic
HaleVy, Jacques-Emile Blanche, Henri Gervex, and
Albert Cave
de Bergame, produced at the Casino de Parame in 1885 (see cat.
no. 260). In a letter to Durand-Ruel from Parame, he asks for money
to be sent to him and instructs his dealer as to where a "simple white
frame" can be found in his studio to be used on a jockey picture.
(Degas and Pissarro, among the Impressionists, were the most com-
mitted to the novel use of plain white or pastel-colored frames.)
Lettres Degas 1945, LXXVII, LXXX, pp. 101, 104-05; Degas Letters
1947, nos. 86, 89, pp. 101, 103-04.
September
Gauguin too is in Dieppe in September; he encounters Degas and is
deliberately disagreeable.
Roskill 1970, p. 264.
September- December
At the Opera: Guillaume Tell, 12 and 18 September; Sigurd, 19 Sep-
tember; Coppelia and La Favorite, 21 September; Sigurd, 23 and 28
September; Hamlet, 30 September; Guillaume Tell, 3 October; La
Favorite and La Korrigane, 7 October; Guillaume Tell, 12 October;
La Juive, 14 and 17 October; Sigurd, 23 October; Guillaume Tell, 26
October; La Juive, 2 November; Les Huguenots, 4 November; Robert
le Diable, 9 November; La Juive, 13 November; Sigurd, 16 Novem-
ber; Rigoletto and Coppelia, 20 November; La Juive, 23 November;
Sigurd, 25 November; Le Cid, 30 November; La Juive, 7 December;
Le Cid, 14 December; La Favorite and La Korrigane, 16 December;
Le Cid, 25 December; Robert le Diable, 26 December.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
early December
Gauguin, writing to his wife, gives some indication of the improv-
ing demand for Degas's work: "Sell rather the drawing by Degas;
... he alone [of the artists Gauguin collected] sells well." (He refers
most probably to Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper [L699], which Degas
had given to Gauguin in exchange for the latter's Still Life with
Mandolin.)
Lettres Gauguin 1984, no. 90, p. 118; unpublished note by Degas, private
collection.
Fig. 191. Barnes (Dieppe), Apotheosis of Degas,
1885. Photograph, modern print from a glass
negative in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
A parody of Ingres 's Apotheosis of Homer, in
the Musee du Louvre, Paris
383
1886
1886
Dated works: Jockeys (L596, pastel, Hill-Stead Museum, Farming-
ton, Conn.); Mile Salle (L868, pastel, private collection); Study of
Helene Rouart (L866, pastel, Los Angeles County Museum of Art);
Helene Rouart (L870, pastel, private collection); Helene Rouart (L870
bis, pastel, private collection; Helene Rouart (L871, pastel, private
collection); Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (cat. no. 271). (For the
portrait in oil of Helene Rouart, see fig. 192.)
Jean Moreas publishes Manifeste du symbolisme, a declaration of inde-
pendence from Realism and Naturalism.
Octave Mirbeau publishes the novel La calvaire, in which the char-
acter of an artist, Eugene Lirat, is based on Degas.
by $ January
After a stopover in Geneva to see his brother Achille, Degas is in
Naples to negotiate the sale of his share of the Neapolitan property
to his cousin Lucie (fig. 193), soon to come of age.
Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXIX, XC, pp. 1 14-19; Degas Letters 1947, nos. 98,
99, pp. 113-17.
7 January
Degas writes to Bartholome from Naples: "I wish I were already
back. Here I am nothing more than an embarrassing Frenchman."
Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXVIII, p. 113; Degas Letters 1947, no. 97, p. 112.
Fig. 192. Helene Rouart (L869), 1886. Oil on canvas, 633/sX471/4 in.
(161 x 120 cm). The National Gallery, London
30 January
Back in Paris, attends Sigurd at the Opera.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
February- March
At the Opera: Robert le Diable, 3 February; Le Cid, 5 February; La
Favorite and Les Jumeaux de Bergame, 12 February; Sigurd, 15 Febru-
ary; Faust, 7 March; Les Huguenots, 10 March; Sigurd, 15 March; Les
Huguenots, 29 March; Robert le Diable, 3 1 March.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
March
Plans advance for the Impressionist exhibition, despite Degas's ob-
stinate insistence on the inclusion of his friends and the rejection of
others. Pissarro writes to his son Lucien about Degas's reaction to
Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande fatte (fig. 194),
which the young artist intended to exhibit. "Degas is a hundred
times more loyal. I told Degas that Seurat's painting was very in-
teresting. *I would have noted that myself, Pissarro, except that the
painting is so big!' Very well — if Degas sees nothing in it so much
the worse for him."
Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 101; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 74.
5 March
In a letter to his son Lucien, Pissarro vents his frustration with De-
gas, who is insisting that the upcoming Impressionist exhibition be
held from 15 May to 15 June, "The exhibition is completely blocked.
. . . We shall try to get Degas to agree to showing in April, if not
we will show without him. . , . Degas doesn't care, he doesn't
have to sell, he will always have Miss Cassatt and not a few exhibi-
tors outside our group, artists like Lepic."
Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 97; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 71.
April
Zola publishes VOeuvre, which appeared previously in installments
in Gil Bias. In it, Zola paints an unflattering portrait of a modern
painter who fails to realize his ambitions; the character is a compos-
ite of several Impressionist painters. Four years later, Daniel Halevy
asks Degas if he has read UOeuvre; he replies that he has not, and
calls Zola's method puerile.
Halevy i960, p. 47; Halevy 1964, p. 41.
April-May
Twenty-three works by Degas are exhibited in New York in an ex-
hibition entitled Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris,
shown first at the American Art Galleries (10 April) and later at the
National Academy of Design (25 May). Durand-Ruel has organized
the exhibition, his first in America, as a promotional effort, yet the
artists he represents prefer to keep their best work for the upcom-
ing Impressionist exhibition in Paris. Among the important works
included are The Dance Class (cat. no. 219), lent by Alexander
Cassatt, and one of the two versions of The Ballet from "Robert le
Diable" (L294 or L391; see cat. nos. 103, 159), but the majority of
the works by Degas are smaller items such as pastelized etchings
and monotypes, and colored drawings such as Dancer with Red
Stockings (cat. no. 261). The critical reception varies greatly. Some
works are sold from the exhibition.
Venturi 1939, I, pp. 77-78; The Critic, New York, 17 April 1886, pp. 195-
96; The Mail and Express, New York, 21 April 1886, p. 3; The Tribune,
New York, 26 April 1886, p. 3.
At the Opera: Sigurd, 5 April; VAfricaine, 7, 12, and 16 April;
Sigurd, 28 April; VAfricaine, 5 May; Le Cid, 7 May; VAfricaine, 8
May; Guillaume Tell, 10 May; Rigoletto and Coppelia, 14 May; Henri
VIII, 17 May; Sigurd, 21 May; La Juive, 26 May.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
IS May
Opening of the 8me Exposition de peinture (the last Impressionist ex-
hibition), at 1 rue Laffitte, in which Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on
the Island of La Grande-Jatte (fig. 194) is the greatest novelty. As be-
384
i886
Fig. 193. Montalba (Naples), Lucie Degas at Nineteen, 1886.
Photograph, vintage print. Private collection, Naples
fore, only artists who did not exhibit at the Salon could participate
in the Impressionist exhibition. Monet, Renoir, Caillebotte, and
Sisley disqualify and decline to exhibit.
Degas evidently exhibits only ten of the fifteen works he has listed
in the catalogue. The listed works are: "Femme essay ant un cha-
peau chez sa modiste" (cat. no. 232); "Petites modistes" (fig. 207);
"Portrait" (Portrait of Zacharian, L831, private collection); "Ebauche
de portraits" (not shown, possibly Six Friends at Dieppe, fig. 190);
"Tetes de femme" (not shown, undoubtedly the Mile Salle, L868,
private collection); and a group of ten untitled nudes under the
heading "Suite de nus de femmes se baignant, se lavant, se sechant,
s'essuyant, se peignant ou se faisant peigner." Seven of the ten nudes
are identifiable in the various reviews: Woman Bathing in a Shallow
Tub (fig. 183); Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (cat. no. 269); The
Morning Bath (cat. no. 270); Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (cat.
no. 271); Nude Woman Drying Herself (fig. 195); Nude Woman
Pulling On Her Chemise (fig. 186); and a pastel of bathers, out of
doors, with a dog (very likely L1075, private collection; L1075 closely
resembles the pastel described in reviews, but modern photographs
seem to indicate that it is a work that was substantially revised by
Degas, perhaps around 1900, and so the identification remains spec-
ulative until further examination is possible).
The milliners are praised for their color, drawing, and handling,
but the nudes create a sensation. Almost every review focuses on
the bathers, overshadowing even Seurat's spectacular entry. The
frank ugliness of some of the nudes and the squalor of their sur-
roundings are appalling to some critics, exciting to others. The no-
tion of Degas's misogyny is formulated for the first time by the
critics of this exhibition.
1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 430-34* 45^-54, 495~9<5; see also Thomson
1986.
summer
Sometime after the closing of the Impressionist exhibition, Degas
and Cassatt exchange pictures: Degas gives Cassatt his Woman Bath-
ing in a Shallow Tub (cat. no. 269) and Cassatt gives Degas her
"Study" now known as Girl Arranging Her Hair (fig. 297). (Both
pictures were included in the group exhibition at 1 rue Laffitte.)
Degas prominently displays the Cassatt in his sitting room, where
it is to be seen in photographs taken in the 1890s (see fig. 196).
Vollard 1924, pp. 42-43; letter from Cassatt to Louisine Havemeyer, 12
December 19 17, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Mathews 1984, pp. 329-30.
June-August
At the Opera: Henri VIII, 9 June; La Favorite and La Korrigane, 25
June; Sigurd, 26 July; Guillaume Tell, 2 August; La Juive, 23 August.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
13 August
Degas sends a pastel to Durand-Ruel, because the dealer has de-
layed fetching it from the artist's studio. The Durand-Ruel stock
books show the purchase in August and September of two race-
course scenes in pastel and another in oil, for Fr 800, Fr 800, and
Fr 2,500 (stock nos. 830, 851, 867). These are the first sales to
Durand-Ruel after a hiatus of one year. Degas reprimands his dealer
rudely for not paying quickly enough: "Please send me some mo-
ney this afternoon. Try to give me half the sum each time I send you
something. Once my fortunes have been restored, I might well
keep nothing for you and so free myself completely from debt. At
the moment I am horribly embarrassed. It is for that reason that I
was anxious to sell this particular pastel to someone other than you,
so as to be able to keep all the money."
Lettres Degas 1945, XCVI bis, p. 123; Degas Letters 1947, no. 106, p. 121.
Fig. 194. Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande-
Jatte, 1884-86. Oil on canvas, 81V2X 121V4 in. (207X308 cm). The Art
Institute of Chicago
385
1886-1887
Fig. 195. Nude Woman Drying Herself (BR82), dated 1884. Pastel, i95/sX
i95/8 in. (50 X 50 cm). The Hermitage Museum, Leningrad
September-October
At the Opera: Guillaume Tell, 10 September; Faust, 1 October; Guil-
laume Tell, 6 October; La Favorite and Les Deux Pigeons, 18 Octo-
ber; he Freischutz and Les Deux Pigeons, 22 October; Rigoletto and
Les Deux Pigeons, 29 October.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
20 October
Sells a "Danseuse" (possibly L735, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 500 (stock no. 882). On 30
October he sells another "Danseuse" (listed as "tableau") for Fr 500
(stock no. 887).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
2$ October
Vincent van Gogh notes "a very nice Degas" at the gallery where
his brother works, Boussod et Valadon, 19 boulevard Montmartre.
(The Boussod et Valadon ledgers show no trace of a Degas in the
gallery at this time, but it is possible that some of the accounts on
the advanced artists represented by Theo were kept apart from
those of the main gallery.)
Rewald 1986, p. 13.
November
At the Opera: Faust, 2 November; Le Freischutz and Les Deux Pi-
geons, 12 November; Faust, 19 November; La Juive, 22 November.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
Having split with Seurat and Signac, Gauguin turns to Degas for
collegial support. Pissarro writes to his son Lucien that "Gauguin
has become intimate with Degas once more, and goes to see him all
the time — isn't this seesaw of interests strange?"
Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 111; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 81; see also Roskill
1970, p. 264.
11 November
Sells "Danseuses sous un arbre" (L486, Norton Simon Museum,
Pasadena) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 500 (stock no. 890). Henry Lerolle
buys it on 22 November (see fig. 216).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
December
At the Opera: L'Ajricaine, 8 December; Patrie, 20 and 29 December.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
1887
Dated work (the last work but one that Degas dated in the 18 80s):
Portrait of a Woman (Rosita Mauri?) (cat. no. 277).
Death of Bartholomews wife Perie, Bartholome abandons painting
and dedicates himself to sculpture, in which endeavor he is greatly
encouraged by Degas.
Publication of Animal Locomotion by Eadweard Muybridge; Degas
presumably obtains a copy.
See "Degas and Muybridge," p. 459.
2 January
Degas writes an irritated letter to Faure: "I received the other day
on an open telegram your request for a reply to your last letter. It is
getting more and more embarrassing for me to be in your debt. ... It
was necessary to put aside everything of M, Faure's in order to
make others that would enable me to live. I can only work for you
in my spare moments, and they are rare. . . . Accept, my dear M.
Faure, my sincere regards."
Lettres Degas 1945, XCVII, pp. 123-24; Degas Letters 1947, no. 107,
pp. 121-22; see "Degas and Faure," p. 221.
2$ January
Pissarro is considering selling a Degas pastel in his possession in or-
der to raise desperately needed cash, but is reluctant to do so lest
Degas take offense and retaliate. However, when Paul Signac tells
him it could be worth Fr 1,000 he decides to see the dealer Portier.
Later, in conversation with Pissarro, Portier states his conviction
that because Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and others will contribute to
the Exposition Internationale at Galerie Georges Petit rather than to
their own group shows, Degas's Societe Anonyme des Artistes will
be finished. (In fact, the 1886 exhibition of the Societe was the
last.)
Lettres Pissarro 1950, pp. 132, 139-40; Pissarro Letters 1980, pp. 98, 103-04.
31 January
Degas sells "Convalescente" (cat. no. 114) to Durand-Ruel for
Fr 800 (stock no. 919). (This is the only sale to the dealer this year.)
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
February— May
At the Opera: Patrie, 14 February; Sigurd, 16 February; Rigoletto and
Les Deux Pigeons, 2 March; Les Huguenots, 12 March [?]; Sigurd,
14 March; A'ida, 16 and 30 March; Sigurd, 3 April; A'ida, 27 April;
La Favorite and Les Deux Pigeons, 29 April; Faust, 9 May; Sigurd,
20 May; Le Prophete, 25 May.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
S-6 May
Two "pastels of racehorses and jockeys by Degas" are on view at
Moore's Art Gallery, New York (nos. 96 [unidentified] and 97
[BR111, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh]). They are auc-
tioned, and one sells for $400. (Durand-Ruel had organized the sale
in an attempt to improve the American market for his pictures. The
results were mixed — the works by Degas sold cheaply, while land-
scapes by Monet fetched over $1,000 apiece.)
Montezuma, "My Notebook," Art Notebook 17, June 1887, p. 2; New York
Times, 7 May 1887, p. 5.
386
1887-1888
July
At the Opera: Le Prophete, 8 and 25 July.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
22 July
First recorded purchase of a Degas by Theo van Gogh for Galerie
Boussod et Valadon: "Femme accoudee pres d'un pot de fleurs"
(cat. no. 60), bought directly from the artist for Fr 4,000. (Over the
next three years, van Gogh will acquire several dozen paintings and
pastels by Degas, either directly from the artist or from other deal-
ers, collectors, and auctioneers.)
Rewald 1986, p. 89.
August- December
At the Opera: Le Cid, 5 August; Robert le Diable, 17 August; A'ida,
26 August and 12 September; Rigoletto and Les Deux Pigeons, 21
September; Guillaume Tell, 23 September; Les Huguenots, 26 Sep-
tember; Aida, 5 October; Le Prophete, 12 October; Aida, 17 Octo-
ber; Don Juan, 26 and 31 October; Faust, 4 November; Don Juan, 11
and 16 November; Rigoletto and Coppelia, 9 and 23 December.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
1888
According to Theo van Gogh's address book, Degas moves from
21 rue Pigalle to 18 rue de Boulogne (now rue Ballu) sometime be-
tween 1888 and 1890 (see 29 April 1890).
Ronald de Leeuw and Fieke Pabst, "Le carnet d'adresses de Theo van Gogh,"
in Van Gogh d Paris (exhibition catalogue), Paris: Reunion des Musees Na-
tionaux, 1988, p. 356, no. 64.
Durand-Ruel, whose business has recovered from the financial
disasters of 1882-84, opens a gallery in New York.
Venturi 1939, I, p. 82.
January
Works by Degas are shown at Galerie Boussod et Valadon in a
small show arranged by Theo van Gogh. Among them are: The
Splinter (L1089, private collection); The Bath (fig. 197); Woman
Leaving Her Bath (cat. no. 250); Nude Woman Kneeling (L1008); and
The Tub (fig. 247). On view at Durand-Ruel this month: "Rampe
de danseuses" (cat. no. 259); "Le baisser du rideau" (L575; see
fig. 103); and a pastel of a dancer vertiginously balanced in an ara-
besque penchee (either L591, or L735, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York).
Felix Feneon, "Calendrier de janvier," La Revue Independante, February
1888; reprinted in Feneon 1970, I, pp. 95-96.
28 March
At the Opera: Aida.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
April
"Le foyer de la danse" (cat. no. 107) is shown at the Glasgow Inter-
national Exhibition.
Four lithographs by the engraver George William Thornley after
works by Degas, three "danseuses" and one "femme a la toilette"
(all unidentified), are shown at Galerie Boussod et Valadon. Feneon
writes an appreciative review in the May issue of La Revue Indepen-
dante. (Thornley executed fifteen lithographs in colored ink after
Degas. The full portfolio was published in April 1889.)
Felix Feneon, "Calendrier d'avril," La Revue Independante, May 1888; re-
printed in Feneon 1970, I, p. 111; see also Reed and Shapiro 1984-85,
pp. lvii, lxxi n. 11.
18 April
For the first time since January 1887 Degas sells a work to Durand-
Ruel, "La mere de la danseuse," for Fr 1,500 (stock no. 1584). Du-
rand-Ruel sells it on 8 June to Paul-Arthur Cheramy. (This work is
not readily identified; it does not appear to be one of the versions of
The Mante Family [L971, private collection; L972, Philadelphia Mu-
seum of Art].)
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Fig. 196. Elie Halevy and Mme Ludovic
Halevy in Degas' s Living Room, c. 1896-
97. Photograph, modern print from a
glass negative in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris. On the wall is Mary
Cassatt, Girl Arranging Her Hair
(fig- 297)
387
1888
April-June
At the Opera: Henri VIII, 30 April; Sigurd, 1 and 13 June.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
6 June
At the Pertuiset sale, Degas buys Manet's The Ham (RWI, no. 351,
Glasgow Art Gallery) and A Pear (RWI, no. 355).
8 June
Sells a painting, "Courses" (cat. no. 237), to Theo van Gogh for
Fr 2,000.
Rewald 1986, p. 89.
9july
Sells "Quatre chevaux de course" (L446) to Theo van Gogh for
Fr 1,200. (Degas is working passionately on his sculpted horses. He
writes to Bartholome: "I have not done enough horses.")
Rewald 1986, p. 89. Lettres Degas 1945, C, p. 127; Degas Letters 1947,
no. in, p. 124.
10 July
Pissarro writes to his son Lucien: "Monet's recent paintings did not
impress me. . . . Degas is even more severe; he considers these
paintings to have been made to sell. Besides, he always maintains
that Monet made nothing but beautiful decorations."
Lettres Pissarro 1950, pp. 171-72; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 127.
August
Vincent van Gogh writes to Emile Bernard about the virility of De-
gas's art: "Degas's painting is vigorously masculine and impersonal
precisely because he has accepted the idea of being personally nothing
but a little notary with a horror of sexual sprees. He looks at the
human animals who are stronger than he is and are screwing and
screwing, and he paints them well, precisely because he himself has
no pretentions about screwing."
Lettres de Vincent van Gogh d Emile Bernard (edited by Ambroise Vollard),
Paris, 1911, no. ix, p. 102; The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Green-
wich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 2nd edition, 1959, III, p. 509
(translation revised).
6 August
Degas sells "Danseuses" (possibly L783, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
Copenhagen) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 500 (stock no. 1699). On 20
Fig. 198. Dancers Climbing the Stairs (L894), 1888. Oil on canvas, i53/sX35% in. (39X90 cm). Musee d'Orsay, Paris
388
Fig. 197. The Bath (L1010), c. 1883-86. Pastel, 15 X 11 in. (38X28 cm).
Location unknown
1888
Fig. 199- Anonymous, Charles Haas, Mme Entile Straus, Albert Cave,
M. Emile Straus, c. 1888. Photograph. Location unknown
August, he sells two more paintings, "Danseuses montant l'esca-
lier" (fig. 198) for Fr 2,000 and "Danseuse" (unidentified, listed as
"tableau") for Fr 500 (stock nos. 2 112, 2 113).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
8 August
At the Opera: A'tda.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
August
Degas is in Cauterets. He has arrived there via Pau, where he joined
Paul Lafond before going to Lourdes and then to Cauterets. It is his
first "cure" at Cauterets, conveniently situated near Pau, where La-
fond and their friend Alphonse Cherfils live. (Lafond is the curator
of the museum at Pau, which earlier had purchased Portraits in an
Office (New Orleans), cat. no. 115; he was one of the first to write a
book on Degas after his death. Cherfils was a collector; his son
Christian dedicated a volume of poems entitled Coeurs to Degas the
following year.)
Degas is amused by meeting the rich and famous at Cauterets, and
sends reports back to entertain his friends. Among his distractions
is a Pulchinello theater set up on the esplanade.
Lettres Degas 1945, CIH, CIV, CV, pp. 129-31; Degas Letters 1947, nos. 114,
115, 116, pp. 126-28.
28 August
From Cauterets Degas writes to Thornley with concerns regarding
the reproductions Thornley has been making of his work. Degas
wishes to take Thornley 's drawing after At the Milliner's (cat. no. 233)
to the house of Henri Rouart in order to correct the drawing in
front of the original. Degas cautions him: "You were in too much
of a hurry, my dear Mr. Thornley. Matters of art must be done at
leisure." (See fig. 200.)
Lettres Degas 1945, CXXI, p. 153 (incorrectly as 28 April); Degas Letters
1947, no. 133, p. 147.
summer
Four Thornley lithographs after works by Degas and one drawing
by Degas are included in an exhibition at the Nederlandsche Ets-
club, Amsterdam. The five works are listed in the catalogue as having
been lent by Boussod et Valadon. On 4 September Pissarro writes
to his son Lucien: "Theo van Gogh told me that my etchings, De-
gas's drawings, your woodcuts and the Seurat have created a sensa-
tion at The Hague." (He was mistaken about the city.)
Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, pp. lviii, lxxi n. 16; Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 175;
Pissarro Letters 1980, pp. 130, 388 (Additional Notes, c).
JO August
From Cauterets, Degas writes to Mallarme saying he has quite
neglected Mary Cassatt, so much so that he no longer has her
address.
Unpublished letter, Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet, Paris,
MVL32832.
September-October
At the Opera: Faust, 21 September; La Favorite and La Korrigane,
22 October.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
22 October
Sells "Jockey" (fig. 201) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 300 (stock no. 2159);
it is purchased by Mary Cassatt for her brother Alexander on 1 8
December 1889.
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
November
At the Opera: Faust, 9 November; Romeo et Juliette, 28 November.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
Fig. 200. George William Thornley, At the Milliner's, after Degas, 1888.
Lithograph, blue ink on off-white paper, 93/s X io3/4 in. (23.4 x 27. 1 cm).
The Art Institute of Chicago
389
1888
Fig. 201. The Jockey (Liooi), 1888. Pastel, i23Ax igVs in. (32.4X48.8 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art
13 November
Theo van Gogh writes to Gauguin: "Degas is so enthusiastic about
your works that he is speaking about them to a lot of people, and
he is going to buy the canvas representing a spring landscape."
(The Gauguin in question may have been Two Breton Girts in a
Meadow [W249], although the identification has been disputed. De-
gas's admiration for Gauguin's work endured despite the younger
artist's obdurate behavior.)
Paul Gauguin: 45 lettres a Vincent, Theo et Jo van Gogh (edited by Douglas
Cooper), [The Hague/Lausanne], 1983, no. 8 n. 1, p. 67; The Complete
Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Greenwich, Conn. : New York Graphic Society,
2nd edition, 1959, III, T3a, p. 534.
November
In a letter to the artist Emile Schuffeneker, Gauguin asks that his
etchings by Degas be sent to him at Aries. (He evidently kept them
with him for the remainder of his life, for he painted one of them,
The Little Dressing Room [RS41], in the background of his 1901 Still
Life with Sunflowers [fig. 202]).
Lettres Gauguin 1984, no. 180, p. 281.
winter 1888-89
Degas writes eight sonnets that take as their subjects some of the
people and things that preoccupied him in his painting: horses,
dancers, singers. Their tone varies from the playful to the magiste-
rial. Some are titled, such as "Pur sang" (Thoroughbred); others carry
dedications that reveal the artist's intention, such as those dedicated
to the dancer Mile Sanlaville, the singer Rose Caron, and the parrot
belonging to Mary Cassatt. The sonnets remain unpublished until
19 18, but manuscript copies evidently circulate among the artist's
friends. Mallarme mentions them in a letter of 17 February 1889 to
Berthe Morisot: "His own poetry is taking up his attention, for — and
this will be the notable event of this winter — he is on his fourth
sonnet. In reality, he is no longer of this world; one is perturbed be-
fore his obsession with a new art in which he is really quite proficient."
Mallarme goes on to cite the works by Degas on view at Boussod
et Valadon: "This does not prevent him from exhibiting, on the
boulevard Montmartre, next to the incomparable landscapes of
Monet, marvelous works — dancing girls, bathing women, and
jockeys." (For the sonnet dedicated to Mile Sanlaville, see cat.
no. 262.)
Lafond 1918-19, pp. 127-38; Degas Sonnets 1946; Morisot 1950, p. 145;
Morisot 1957, p. 147.
3 December
At the Opera: Romeo et Juliette.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
Fig. 202. Paul Gauguin, Still Life with Sunflowers, 1901. Oil on canvas,
30^4 x 255/8 in. (76.8 X 65. 1 cm). Jointly owned by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, and Joanne Toor Cummings
390
1888-1889
Fig. 203. Conte Giuseppe Primoli, Degas Leaving a Public Urinal, 1889.
Photograph, modern print from a glass negative in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris
8 December
Degas writes to the Belgian critic Octave Maus, who has asked him
to exhibit with Les XX in Brussels; he declines the request, and
will do so again the following year.
Lettres Degas 1945, CVI, p. 132; Degas Letters 1947, no. 117, p. 129.
1889
Huysmans's Certains is published, with a long chapter on the nudes
exhibited by Degas at the 1886 Impressionist exhibition.
4 January
At the Opera: Romeo et Juliette.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
23 January-14 February
Two lithographs by Degas are shown in Durand-Ruel's Exposition
des peintres-graveurs. In his preface to the catalogue, Philippe Burty
praises the "renaissance of black and white."
Venturi 1939, I, p. 83.
10 March
The artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916) writes in his journal: "But
Degas is an artist. He is one, very exultant and free. Coming from
Delacroix (of course without his lyricism and his passion!) what a
science of juxtaposed tones, exalted, wanted, premeditated, for im-
pressive aims! He is a Realist. Perhaps he will be dated by Nana. It
is Naturalism, Impressionism, the first stage of the new style. But
this proud man will be credited for having all his life held out for
liberty. . . . His name, more than his oeuvre, is a synonym of char-
acter, it is about him that the principle of independence will always
be discussed. . . . Degas would have the right to have his name in-
scribed high on the temple. Respect here, absolute respect. "
Odilon Redon, A soi-meme: journal (1867-1915), Paris: H. Floury, 1922,
pp. 92-93; To Myself: Notes on Life, Art and Artists, New York: George
Braziller, 1986, pp. 79-80.
$ April
Degas sells two works to Durand-Ruel: "Danseuse bleue" for Fr 500
and "Danseuse rouge" for Fr 250 (both unidentified; stock nos. 2308,
2309).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
April
At the Opera: Romeo et Juliette, 10 April; La Favorite and La Korri-
gane, 29 April.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
13 April
G.-Albert Aurier (under the pseudonym Luc Le Flaneur) mentions
in Le moderniste that works by Degas are on view at Boussod et Va-
ladon: "dancers, jockeys, races, exquisite feminine movements."
On 11 May, he writes again that at Theo van Gogh's (Boussod et
Valadon) there are "some little dancers, some naughtiness in the
wings, some jockeys and some horses."
Luc Le Flaneur, "Enquete des choses d'art," Le Moderniste, 13 April-n May
1889, in Van Gogh: A Retrospective (edited by Susan Alyson Stein), New
York: Hugh Lanter Levin Associates, 1986, pp. 176-78.
16 April
Degas sells "Danseuses, contrebasses" (unidentified painting, listed
as 22 X 16 cm) to Theo van Gogh for Fr 600.
Rewald 1986, p. 89.
spring
Exposition Internationale in Paris; construction of the Eiffel Tower
is completed. Degas refuses to exhibit in the fine arts pavilion.
Jeanniot 1933, p. 174.
May
Sells two pictures to Theo van Gogh: "Deux danseuses" (unidenti-
fied, listed as 22 X 16 cm) on 14 May for Fr 1,200 and "Danseuse
bleue et contrebasse" (unidentified) on 23 May for Fr 600.
Rewald 1986, p. 89.
25 May
The pioneering collection of Henry Hill of Brighton is sold at
Christie's, London. Included in it are six works of the 1870s by
Degas, nos. 26-31: "A *Pas de deux'" (mistitled, cat. no. 106), 43 gns,
1 s.; "Maitre de Ballet" (cat. no. 129), 56 gns, 14 s.; "A Rehearsal"
(cat. no. 128), 63 gns; "A Rehearsal" (cat. no. 124), 69 gns, 6 s.; "A
Rehearsal" (L362, private collection), 61 gns, 19 s.; and "Ballet Girls"
(L425, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London), 64 gns, 1 s.
Christie's, London, 25 May 1889, "Modern Pictures of Henry Hill, Esq.";
Pickvance 1963, p. 266.
13 June
Writes to Bartholome that he is working on his sculpture The Tub
(cat. no. 287).
Lettres Degas 1945, CVIII, p. 135; Degas Letters 1947, no. 119, p. 132 (the
reference is incorrectly related by Guerin to The Little Fourteen-Year-Old
Dancer, cat. no. 227).
26 June
At the Opera: La Tempete.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
10 July
Degas 's sister Marguerite Fevre and her family sail from Le Havre
for Buenos Aires. Degas writes to Lafond the following month:
"They expect to be happier there than here, and from the bottom of
my heart, I hope they will be. "
Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 163.
391
1889-1890
Fig. 204. Giovanni Boldini, Edgar Degas, 1883. Black crayon, n^X 8 in.
(29 X 20 cm). Private collection
Thanks the Italian photographer Conte Giuseppe Primoli (185 1-
1927) for his instantaneous photograph of the top-hatted Degas
leaving a public urinal (fig. 203). He points out that "if it were not
for the person going in, I would have been caught buttoning my
trousers like a fool, and the whole world would be laughing."
Lamberto Vitali, Un fotografo fin de siecle: il conte Primoli, Turin: Einaudi,
1968, p. 78.
2 August
At the Opera: La Tempete and Henri VIII.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
29 August
From Cauterets, Degas writes to the fashionable Italian portrait
painter Giovanni Boldini (1845-193 1) concerning their planned trip
to Spain. Jokingly he wonders whether Boldini will travel incognito.
He suggests that they meet in Bayonne, "and set off immediately
for Spain without any wait in Bonnat's country." (See fig. 204.)
Lettres Degas 1945, CXI, CXH, pp. 139-41; Degas Letters 1947, nos. 122,
123, pp. 134-36 (letters given in reverse chronology by Guerin).
early September
From Pont-Aven, Gauguin writes to Bernard: "You know how I es-
teem the work of Degas, and yet I feel that there is something he
lacks — a heart that is moved." (On 17 January 1886, Degas had
written to Bartholome from Naples: "Even this heart of mine has
something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink
satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.")
Lettres de Gauguin d sa femme et d ses amis {edited by Maurice Malingue), Paris:
Editions Bernard Grasset, 1946, LXXXVII, p. 166; Paul Gauguin, Letters
to His Wife and Friends (translated by Henry J. Stenning), Cleveland/New
York: World Publishing, 1949, no. 87, p. 124 (translation revised); Lettres
Degas 1945, XC, p. 118; Degas Letters 1947, no. 99, p. 116.
8 September
In the company of Boldini, Degas reaches Madrid. He notes the
price of the journey in his notebook. He writes to Bartholome in-
viting him to join them. Having arrived at 6:30 a.m., he is at the
Prado by 9:00, and plans to see a bullfight the same day. He intends
to tour Andalusia and "set foot in Morocco."
Reff 1985, Notebook 37 (BN, Carnet 6, p. A); Lettres Degas 1945, CXIV,
pp. 143-44; Degas Letters 1947, no. 125, pp. 138-39.
18 September
Degas is in Tangiers. He writes to Bartholome, recalling that "De-
lacroix passed here," and adds that he will return to Paris via Cadiz
and Granada.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXV, p. 145; Degas Letters 1947, no. 126, p. 140.
30 October-11 November
Some early works by Gauguin, as well as paintings and drawings
from his personal collection (by Degas, Guillaumin, Manet, Cas-
satt, Forain, Cezanne, Pissarro, Sisley, and Angrand), are shown by
the Copenhagen Art Society, Scandinavian and French Impressionists
(no catalogue).
Merete Bodelsen, "Gauguin, the Collector," Burlington Magazine,
CXIL810, September 1970, p. 602.
November-December
At the Opera: Romeo et Juliette, 2 November; Le Prophete, 20 No-
vember; La Tempete and Lucie de Lammermoor, 14 December.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
17 December
Sells three drawings to Durand-Ruel, all of dancers, at Fr 300,
Fr 200, and Fr 100 respectively (stock nos. 2589-2591).
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
1890
Dated work (July 1890): Gabrielle Diot (fig. 205).
This is apparently the year in which Degas writes his charming let-
ter to Lepic requesting a dog that he could offer to Mary Cassatt.
"It is a young [male] dog that she needs, so that he may love her."
(This letter is one of the few evidences of a continuing warm rela-
tionship between Degas and Cassatt.)
Lettres Degas 1945, CXIX, p. 151; Degas Letters 1947, no. 131, p. 145.
17 January
Degas sells "Danseuse avant l'exercice" (unidentified, listed as
62 X 48 cm) to Theo van Gogh for Fr 1,050. (It appears that Theo
brought his sister Wil along with him to Degas's studio. Theo wrote
to his brother: "[Degas] trotted out quite a number of his things in
order to find out which of them she liked best. She understood
those nude women very well." Vincent then wrote Wil to tell her
how lucky she was to have visited Degas in his home.)
Rewald 1986, pp. 52-90; Verzamelde Brieven van Vincent Van Gogh, Amster-
dam/Antwerp: Wereldbibliotheek, 1954, p. 286 (letter T28, dated 9 Febru-
ary 1890); p. 180 (letter W20, mid-February 1890); The Complete Letters of
Vincent van Gogh, Greenwich, Conn. : New York Graphic Society, 2nd edi-
tion, 1959, III, pp. 467, 564 (letter T28, dated 9 February 1890; letter W20,
mid-February 1890).
31 January
Sells two portraits to Durand-Ruel: "Portrait de femme" (L923) for
Fr 1,600 and "Portrait d'homme" (unidentified) for Fr 400 (stock
nos. 2630, 2631).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
392
1890
8 March
Sells four paintings, none of them recent (for example, L133, "Por-
trait de M. Roman"), to Theo van Gogh for a total of Fr 5,000.
Rewald 1986, p. 90.
by 18 March
In a letter to Monet, Degas agrees to subscribe Fr 100 toward the
purchase of Manet's Olympia for its eventual exhibition in the Louvre.
Degas Letters 1947, no. 127, p. 141.
March
At the Opera: Ascanio, 21 and 26 March.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
26-28 March
Auction sale in Paris of Baron Louis-Auguste Schwiter's collection.
(According to an unpublished note by Degas, Delacroix's portrait
of Schwiter [fig. 206] was acquired at this sale by the dealer Mon-
taignac, who sold it to Degas in June 1895, in exchange for three
pastels that the artist appraised at Fr 12,000.)
Unpublished note by Degas, private collection.
29 April
Degas writes to Bartholome that he has just spent his first night in
his new apartment, presumably 18 rue de Boulogne. He adds that
he has visited the Japanese exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
which opened on 25 April, and that on Saturday he dined with Mary
Cassatt at the Fleurys', the family of Bartholomews late wife, Perie.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXX, pp. 151-52; Degas Letters 1947, no. 132,
pp. 145-46.
Fig. 205. Gabrielle Diot (L1009), dated 1890. Pastel, 24 X ijYs in.
(61 X 44 cm). Art market, Hamburg
April-May
At the Opera: Ascanio, 30 April; Salammbo (with Rose Caron), 4 May.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
g May
Sells "Ancien portrait d'homme assis tenant son chapeau" (L102,
c. 1861-65, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyons) to Theo van Gogh for
Fr 2,000.
Rewald 1986, p. 90.
May
Goes to Brussels, perhaps among other reasons to see Rose Caron
again in Salammbo.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXX, pp. 151-52; Degas Letters 1947, no. 132,
pp. 145-46.
June
At the Opera: Coppelia and Zaire, 2 June; Le Rive and Zaire, 9 June.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
10 June
Sells "Etude d'anglaise" and "Etude de femme" to Theo van Gogh
for Fr 1,000 each (each listed as 40 X 32 cm, possibly L951 bis and
L952).
Rewald 1986, p. 90.
2 July
Sells "Danseuses, orchestre" (unidentified) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 500
(stock no. 570). On 16 July, he sells "Trois danseuses" (L1208) for
Fr 800 (stock no. 596). On 17 July, he sells "Danseuses repetition"
(unidentified) for Fr 1,500 (stock no. 597).
Journal and stock book, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
Fig. 206. Eugene Delacroix, Baron Schwiter, 1826-30. Oil on
canvas, 85% x 56V2 in. (218 x 143.5 cm). The National Gallery,
London
393
1890
29 July
Vincent van Gogh dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. (There is
no record of Degas's reaction to the news. At some point, probably
in the 1890s, he acquired from Vollard van Gogh's Two Sunflowers
[1887, F376, Kunstmuseum Bern] in exchange for "deux petits cro-
quis de danseuses," as well as an 1887 Still Life [F382, The Art In-
stitute of Chicago] and a drawing.)
Paul Gauguin: 4$ lettres a Vincent, Theo et Jo van Gogh (edited by Douglas
Cooper), [The Hague /Lausanne], 1983, no. 34, p. 253 n.; unpublished
note by Degas, private collection.
August
Degas is at Cauterets for his health. At nearby Pau he sees Lafond and
spends three days with Cherfils before going on to see his brother
Achille in Geneva.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXXIV, CXXV, pp. 154-57; Degas Letters 1947,
nos. 136, 137, pp. 148-51.
20 August
Sells "Tete de femme, etude" (L370) to Durand-Ruel for Fr 500
(stock no. 649).
Journal, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
3 September-18 October
"Avant le depart," a pastel, is lent by Durand-Ruel, New York, to
the Interstate Industrial Exposition in Chicago (no. 95).
IS September
At the Opera: UAfikaine.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
12 October
Theo van Gogh is hospitalized at the sanatorium run by Dr. Blanche,
the father of Jacques-Emile Blanche. Now that his association with
Boussod et Valadon is terminated, he can no longer purchase works
from Degas. He dies in Utrecht on 25 January 1891. For a short
time, Maurice Joyant attempts to maintain the gallery's ties with
advanced painters — staging, for example, a Morisot retrospective
in 1892 — but before his departure in 1893, Joyant succeeds in buying
only two works by Degas, neither directly from the artist.
Rewald 1986, pp. 73-90.
394
232
232.
At the Milliner's
1882
Pastel on pale gray wove paper (industrial wrap-
ping paper, stamped on verso: old reliable
bolting expressly for milling); adhered to
silk bolting in 195 1
293/4X333/4 in. (75.6X85.7 cm)
Signed and dated in black chalk upper right:
1882/Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.38)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 682
This work is perhaps the best known of the
group of pastels in the milliner series. Du-
rand-Ruel bought it from the artist in July
1882, presumably not long after it was com-
pleted, and sold it three months later to a
client of the gallery, Mme Angello, who
consented to lend it to the eighth Impres-
sionist exhibition, in 1886, where it was joined
by The Little Milliners (fig. 207). It was en-
thusiastically noted by most reviewers of the
exhibition, but curiously, it was not discussed
in any depth: Huysmans neglected it entirely,1
Octave Mirbeau mentioned only "two mil-
liners' interiors,"2 and Felix Feneon at the
end of his review cited "two pictures of mil-
liners in their shops."3 Of the French critics
of the 1886 exhibition, only Jean Ajalbert
departed from the majority, who spoke pri-
marily of the deeply saturated color and of
the simplicity of the background: "A woman
is trying on a hat before a mirror, which ob-
liquely conceals the milliner from view. She
has admired this hat for a long time in the
shopwindow, or envied it on another woman.
She forgets herself in scrutinizing her new
head; she imagines it with some alterations,
a ribbon, a pin. . . . What a natural pose,
what truth there is in this incomplete toi-
395
lette, hastily done in order to run to the
milliner's."4 George Moore referred to the
pastel in 1888 when he wrote of the "fat,
vulgar woman" of whom "you can tell ex-
actly what her position in life is."5 But
when the dealer Alexander Reid exhibited
the pastel in London in January 1892, and
when its new owner, the well-known Glas-
wegian collector T. G. Arthur, lent it later
that year to the Glasgow Institute of the
Fine Arts, it aroused much more interest; its
anecdotal qualities fascinated Anglo-Saxon
observers.
Seeing At the Milliner's again in London,
George Moore commented on it at greater
length,6 and an anonymous contributor to
the Glasgow Herald was moved to write a
subtle appreciation:
It is subdued in colour, is in every way
unobtrusive, and yet it asserts itself with
quiet persistence. How do we explain
this? Something of it is due to the novelty
of the grouping. The lady trying on a hat
in front of the cheval mirror is not a
grande dame, incapable of raising her arms
to her head, but an energetic woman who
relies on her own "fixing" and her own
judgment; the modiste . . . remains tim-
idly in the background. The artist, in fact,
cuts her off behind the upright looking-
glass, and concentrates attention on the
purposeful purchaser, whose sturdy form
is accentuated against a terracotta back-
ground. It is all delightfully unstudied,
which means, of course, that what seems
to be a "snap shot" is the result of felicity
afore-thought.7
This critic, like Aj albert, thus identified
the two most striking features of the pic-
ture: the extraordinary slicing of both the
composition and the shopgirl by the cheval
glass, and the unusual attire of the client
trying on a hat. Even though Degas by 1882
had often exploited the expressive possibili-
ties of the eccentric cropping of a figure, the
shopgirl blocked by her mirror — treatment
cruel or comic, depending on one's point of
view — still seemed novel, and it is note-
worthy that the critic for the Glasgow Herald
associated the cropping with a "snap shot"
aesthetic.
Commentators have since been unani-
mous in their interpretation of the subordi-
nated shopgirl: she is shown by Degas to be
no more important than the mirror, reduced
to the status of a two-handed hat stand. The
role of the client, however, has been subject
to a wide range of readings. From Moore's
fat and vulgar woman to Lemoisne's view
that the picture is "nothing other than a
charming portrait,"8 a disagreement seems
to derive from the woman's incongruous
style of clothing. Her olive-brown street
dress is baggy in the jacket, wrinkled at the
skirt, and topped with a cape sufficiently
loose and unfitted to remind the viewer that
she is not wearing the kind of sumptuous
costume that one would expect in a painting
by James Tissot or Alfred Stevens. Yet only
women of bourgeois households, kept
women, or upper-class ladies could afford
the considerable investment that a trip to the
milliner's entailed, however "hasty" a trip it
was (to follow Ajalbert's interpretation). The
answer to the question of the client's status
may in fact lie with the identity of the mod-
el, a female artist of substantial means who
evidently favored fancy hats.
Mary Cassatt, who arranged for the pas-
tel to be sold to Louisine Havemeyer, told
Mrs. Havemeyer that she had posed for the
picture.9 About 1882, Cassatt also served as
the model for another pastel, At the Milliner's,
now at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York (fig. 208). When asked by Mrs. Have-
meyer whether she often posed for Degas,
she admitted to doing so "only once in a
while when he finds the movement diffi-
cult, and the model cannot seem to get his
idea."10 It was probably for the sake of dis-
cretion and propriety that she sought to mini-
Fig. 209. Mary Cassatt, Self-Portrait, c. 1878.
Gouache, 23V2 X 17V6 in. (59.8 X 44.5 cm).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
mize her role in his work. Cassatt in fact
was closely associated with Degas during
the late 1870s and early 1880s, frequently
accompanying him on his daily rounds as he
gathered material for his pictures of every-
day life.
Even if the features are those of Cassatt, it
still is not certain that the client in At the
Milliner's is portrayed in Cassatt's own
clothes. Degas may well have invented a
costume for his friend, just as he may have
also for Ellen Andree in In a Cafe (The Ab-
sinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172). In Cassatt's
own Self-Portrait in gouache, probably made
about 1878 (fig. 209), she wears a bonnet
much like the one in this picture, but her
day dress is extravagant in comparison to
the brown frock seen here. Thus we cannot
know for certain whether Degas meant to
reveal through her costume something about
Cassatt's personality, so that the picture
would assume the status of a portrait, or
whether he intended rather to represent a
fictive character, for whom Cassatt simply
served as a convenient model.
1. Huysmans 1889, pp. 22-25.
2. Mirbeau 1886, p. 1.
3. Feneon 1886, p. 264.
4. Ajalbert 1886, p. 386.
5. George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, Lon-
don: S. Sonnenschein, 1888 (1959 edition, p. 45;
reprinted in Flint 1984, p. 66).
6. Moore 1892, pp. 19-20.
7. The Glasgow Herald, 20 February 1892, p. 4.
8. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 123.
9. Havemeyer 196 1, p. 258.
10. Ibid.
provenance: Sold by the artist to Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 15-16 July 1882, for Fr 2,000 (stock no. 2508);
acquired by Mme Angello, 45 rue Ampere, Paris,
Fig. 207. The Little Milliners (L681), dated 1882. Pastel, Fig. 208. At the Milliner's (L693), c. 1882.
19 X 27 in. (48.3 X 68.6 cm). The Nelson- Atkins Museum Pastel, 263/s X 263/s in. (67 X 67 cm). The
of Art, Kansas City Museum of Modern Art, New York
396
10-12 October 1882, for Fr 3,500 or Fr 4,000; Mme
Angello, Paris, 1882 until at least summer 1886.
With Alexander Reid, London and Glasgow, by late
1 891; acquired by T. G. Arthur, Glasgow, January
1892, for £800; with Martin et Camentron, 32 rue
Rodier, Paris, by at least 1895; deposited by Camen-
tron with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 13-19 March 1895
(deposit no. 8637); acquired by Durand-Ruel, Paris,
27-28 May 1895, for Fr 15,000 (stock no. 3317); ac-
quired by Durand-Ruel, New York, 12 January 1899
(stock no. 2097); acquired by H,- O. Havemeyer,
New York, 24 January 1899; H. O. Havemeyer,
1 899-1907; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York,
1907-29; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1886 Paris, no. 14 (as "Femme essay ant
un chapeau chez sa modiste,*' pastel), lent by Mme
A.; 1891-92, London, Mr. Collie's Rooms, 39B Old
Bond Street, December 1891-January 1892, A Small
Collection of Pictures by Degas and Others, no. 19, lent
by Alexander Reid; 1892, Glasgow, La Societe des
Beaux-Arts (Alexander Reid's gallery, an expanded
version of the exhibition at Mr. Collie's Rooms), Feb-
ruary (no catalogue); 1892, Glasgow Institute of the
Fine Arts, 31st Exhibition of Works of Modern Artists,
no. 562, lent by T. G. Arthur; 1930 New York,
no. 145; 1949 New York, no. 60, repr. p. 44; 1974-
75, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
12 December 1974-10 February 1975, The H. O.
Havemeyers: Collectors of Impressionist Art, no. 10;
1977 New York, no. 34 of works on paper.
selected references: Ajalbert 1886, p. 386; Jules
Christophe, "Chronique: rue Laffitte, no. i," Journal
des Artistes, 13 June 1886, p. 193; Rodolphe Darzens,
"Chronique artistique: exposition des impression-
nistes," La Pleiade, May 1886, p. 91; Feneon 1886,
p. 264; Henry Fevre, "L'exposition des impression-
nistes," La Revue de Demain, May-June 1886, p. 154;
Marcel Fouquier, "Les impressionnistes," Le XIXe
Siecle, 16 May 1886, p. 2; Geffroy 1886, p. 2; Hermel
1886, p. 2; Labruyere, "Les impressionnistes," Le Cri
du Peuple, 17 May 1886, p. 2; Mirbeau 1886, p. 1;
Jules Vidal, "Les impressionnistes," Lutece, 29 May
1886, p. 1; George Moore, Confessions of a Young
Man, London: S. Sonnenschein, 1888 (1959 edition,
p. 45; reprinted in Flint 1984, p. 66); Moore 1890,
p. 424; The Glasgow Herald, 20 February 1892, p. 4;
D. S. MacColl, "Degas and Monticelli," The Spectator,
2 January 1892 (reprinted in Confessions of a Keeper,
New York: MacMillan Co., 193 1, pp. 130-31);
Moore 1892, p. 19; Hourticq 1912, repr. p. 109; La-
fond 1918-19, II, p. 46, repr. after p. 44; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 127, repr. p. 126; Burroughs 1932, p. 142 n. 6;
Rewald 1946, repr. p. 391; Lemoisne [1946-49], I,
p. 123, repr. (detail) facing p. 148, II, no. 682; S. Lane
Faison, Jr., "Edouard Manet: The Milliner," Bulletin
of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, XV: 4,
August 1957, n.p., repr.; Havemeyer 1961, pp. 257-
58; Rewald 1961, repr. p. 524; Ronald Pickvance, "A
Newly Discovered Drawing by Degas of George
Moore," Burlington Magazine, CV:723, June 1963,
p. 280 n. 31; Ronald Pickvance, A Man of Influence:
Alex Reid, 1854-1928, Edinburgh: Scottish Arts
Council, 1967, p. 10; New York, Metropolitan,
1967, pp. 81-82, repr.; 1967 Saint Louis, p. 170; Re-
wald 1973, p. 524 repr.; Minervino 1974, no. 586;
Alice Bellony-Rewald, The Lost World of the Impres-
sionists, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1976,
repr. p. 207; Reff 1976, pp. 168-70, 322 n. 92, fig. 119
(color) p. 169; Reff 1977, p. 39, fig. 70 (color) p. 38;
Meyer Schapiro, Modem Art, New York, 1978,
pp. 239-40, fig. 2 p. 245; 1979 Edinburgh, p. 63,
under no. 72; Moffett 1979, pp. 10, 12, pi. 15 (color);
Theodore Reff, "Degas, Lautrec and Japanese Art,"
in Japonisme in Art: An International Symposium,
Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1980, pp. 198-
200, repr. p. 198; S[amuel] Varnedoe, "Of Surface
Similarities, Deeper Disparities, First Photographs,
and the Function of Form: Photography and Painting
after 1839," Arts Magazine, LVI, September 198 1,
pp. 1 14-15, repr.; Novelene Ross, Manet's Bar at the
Folies Bergeres and the Myth of Popular Illustration, Ann
Arbor, 1982, p. 47; McMullen 1984, p. 377; 1984
Chicago, p. 133; 1984 Tubingen, p. 377, under
no. 141; Gruetzner 1985, pp. 36-37, 66, fig. 35;
Moffett 1985, pp. 76-77, repr. (color), 250-51; Lipton
1986, p. 155, fig. 97; Thomson 1986, p. 190; 1986
Washington, D.C., pp. 430-31. 443~44, fig- 6 p. 435;
Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 133, 255, pi. 94; Modem Eu-
rope (introduction by Gary Tinterow), New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987, pp. 7, 24,
pi. 10 (color).
233.
At the Milliner's
1882
Pastel on gray heavy wove paper
297/s X 3 33/s in. (75 . 9 X 84. 8 cm)
Signed lower right in black chalk: Degas
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano,
Switzerland
Lemoisne 729
The most splendid of Degas's milliner pic-
tures, this was the first of the series to be
shown in public, at a small exhibition orga-
nized by Durand-Ruel in London in July
1882.1 Although the exhibition, at 13 King
Street, St. James's, apparently received little
notice in the press, an anonymous critic did
write a perceptive appreciation: Degas's
"skill as a colourist and as one who can sug-
gest— we can hardly say who can elaborately
paint texture — is shown better in another
design, the astonishing picture of two fash-
ionable young women trying on bonnets in
a milliner's shop. Half of the design is occu-
pied by the milliner's table, on which lies a
store of her finery. Silk and feather, satin
and straw, are indicated swiftly, decisively,
with the most brilliant touch."2
Degas set off the two figures in this com-
position with a strong diagonal — the table
with its lush cornucopia of trimmed hats in
coral, blue, and white — much as in The
Milliner (cat. no. 234) and The Millinery
Shop (cat. no. 235). With an inventive twist,
he achieved the same effect by means of an
armchair in the picture now in the Museum
of Modern Art, New York (fig. 208), and
with a small sofa in a pastel in the Annen-
berg collection (fig. 210). Evidently Degas
based the series structurally on this steep di-
agonal repoussoir, thereby enabling him to
create, by jarring overlaps, a wedge-shaped
space in which the figures can operate. In
this work, however, the depth of space is
made more suggestive by the gilt-framed
mirror on the back wall that brings into view
a gleaming reflection of the daylight travers-
ing the store window. Although writers
have speculated that virtually every one of
the milliner pictures presupposes a view-
point through the shop window, it seems
likely that only two works, this pastel and
another At the Milliner's (fig. 179), 3 can justify
the assertion. Here Degas describes the hats,
rendered with "a finely sustained harmony
and energetic and lively drawing,"4 with
such tantalizing materiality that one is re-
minded that he proposed to the retailer Georges
Charpentier that he publish an edition of
Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames with genuine
samples of goods pasted in as illustrations.5
1. As noted by Ronald Pickvance (1979 Edinburgh,
p. 63). Douglas Cooper was one of the first to
stress the importance of this exhibition, in his in-
troduction to The Courtauld Collection (Cooper
1954, p. 23), noting a review in the London Stan-
dard of 13 July 1882. The review unquestionably
identifies this work, L729. It must have been sent
to London by Paul Durand-Ruel, presumably
soon after he bought it. However, there is no clear
reference to the purchase of this picture in the Du-
rand-Ruel stock books. Nor is there any mention
in the stock books of its having been sent to Lon-
don in 1882, while on the other hand there is a
clear entry when another pastel (L683, stock
no. 2509 [fig. 179]) was sent to Dowdeswell and
Dowdeswells' in London on 13 March 1883 (valued
at Fr 1,500) and returned to Paris on 27 July 1883.
It may be that Durand-Ruel borrowed L729 on
consignment from Degas, or perhaps Henri Rou-
art had already purchased it and lent it to Durand-
Ruel. Pickvance claimed that this work was "cer-
tainly the first pastel of milliners to have been
bought from Degas by his dealer Durand-Ruel"
(ibid.). In actual fact, the first milliner recorded in
the gallery's stock books is The Little Milliners
(fig. 207), bought from Degas on 5 June 1882.
The Little Milliners bore the Durand-Ruel stock
no. 2421, cost Fr 2,500, and was sold for Fr 3,000
on 10 July 1883 to Alexis Rouart, who lent it to
the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886.
2. The Standard, London, 13 July 1882, p. 3; reprinted
in 1886 New York (where the article is incorrectly
dated 1883).
Fig. 210. At the Milliner's (L827), 1882-84. Pas-
tel, 27V2X 27V2 in. (70 X 70 cm). Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Annenberg
397
3- George Moore first described this work in an arti-
cle in The Magazine of Art (XIII, 1890, p. 424).
4. Alexandre 19 12, p. 26.
5. Morisot 1950, p. 165; Morisot 1957, p. 167.
provenance: Possibly with Durand-Ruel, Paris,
1882. 1 Henri Rouart collection, Paris, by 1888, 2 until
19 12 (Rouart sale, Galerie Manzi-Joyant, Paris, 16-
18 December 1912, no. 70, repr., for Fr 82,000); ac-
quired by M. Chialiva, perhaps as agent for Ernest
Rouart, his son; Ernest Rouart, Paris, by 1924 until
at least 1937; Mme Ernest Rouart, his widow, Paris,
until the early 1950s; possibly with Sam Salz, New
York; Robert Lehman, New York, by 1953, until
1975; Lehman heirs, 1975-78; bought by Thomas
Gibson Fine Art Ltd., London, 1978; bought by the
present owner 1978.
1. Durand-Ruel organized the 1882 exhibition at
White's Gallery, London, but in neither the stock
books nor the journal is the purchase or transfer of
this work mentioned. See note 1 above.
2, Possibly acquired directly from the artist; see pre-
ceding footnote and note 1 above. A letter from
Degas to Thornley of 28 August 1888 cites Rouart
as the owner at this time (Lettres Degas 1945,
CXXI, p. 153; Degas Letters 1947, no. 133, p. 147,
mistakenly dated 28 April).
exhibitions: 1882, London, White's Gallery, 13 King
Street, St. James's, July (no catalogue known); 1924
Paris, no. 148, repr., lent by Ernest Rouart; 1934,
Paris, Chez Andre J. Seligmann, 17 November-9
December, Rehabilitation du sujet, no. 85, lent by Er-
nest Rouart; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. no, pi. XXII,
lent by Ernest Rouart, as engraved by Thornley;
1979 Edinburgh, no. 72, pi. 14 (color); 1984 Tubin-
gen, no. 141, repr. (color) p. 33; 1984-86, Tokyo,
The National Museum of Western Art, 9 May-8 July
1984/Kumamoto Prefectural Museum, 20 July-26
August 1984 /London, Royal Academy, 12 October-
19 December 1984 /Nuremberg, Germanisches
Nationalmuseum, 27january-24 March 1985/Dus-
seldorf, Stadtische Kunsthalle, 20 April- 16 June
1985/Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris,
23 October 1985-5 January 1986/Madrid, Biblioteca
Nacional, Salas Pablo Ruiz Picasso, 10 February-
6 April 1986/Barcelona, Palacio de la Vierreina,
7 May-17 August 1986, Modem Masters from the
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, no. 9, repr. (color).
selected references: Anon. [Frederick Wedmore?],
"The 'Impressionists,'" The Evening Standard, London,
13 July 1882, p. 3; Thornley 1889, repr.; Alexandre
1912, p. 26, repr. p. 18; Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 46,
repr. facing p. 46; Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. 76; Meier-
Graefe 1923, pi. LXXV; Jamot 1924, pi. 59 p. 151;
Lemoisne 1937, p. A, repr. p. B, as Rouart collec-
tion; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, pp. 123, 146, repr. (de-
tail) facing p. no, III, no. 729 (as c. 1883); Wilhelm
Hausenstein, Degas, Bern: Scherz Kunstbucher, 1948,
pi. 43; Fosca 1954, repr. (color) p. 79; Great Private
Collections (edited by Douglas Cooper), London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1963, repr. p. 83, as
Robert Lehman collection; Valery 1965, pi. 87;
Minervino 1974, no. 602; Erika Billeter, "Malerei und
Photographie-Begenung zweier Medien," du, 10,
1980, p. 49; Terrasse 198 1, no. 414, repr.; McMullen
1984, repr. p. 294; Lipton 1986, p. 155, fig. 98 p. 156.
234.
The Milliner
c. 1882
Pastel and charcoal on gray laid paper now
discolored to buff (watermark: michallet)
mounted on dark brown wove paper
i83/4 X 24^2 in. (47.6 X 62.2 cm)
Signed lower right (obscured): Degas;
re-signed in black chalk upper right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Purchase, Rogers Fund and Dikran
G. Kelekian Gift, 1922 (22.27.3)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 705
Humor is implicit in almost all of Degas's
representations of milliners, but in no other
work is the visual pun so straightforwardly
funny as in this pastel. Degas adopted for
his milliner a pug-nosed girl with high
cheekbones reminiscent of Marie van Goe-
them, the model for The Little Fourteen-Year-
Old Dancer (cat. no. 227), and placed her in
an exaggerated but nonetheless unselfcon-
scious pose of absorbed creativity. According
to Berthe Morisot, Degas once proclaimed
his "liveliest admiration for the intensely hu-
man quality of young shopgirls,"1 and by
that he may have meant an elemental char-
acter that other observers of his work —
such as Edmond de Goncourt — identified as
animal-like.2 But human or animal, this
particular young shopgirl is compared by
the artist with an inanimate hat stand in the
form of a dummy's head, and she emerges
234
the superior being. Degas took pains to de-
scribe carefully the dummy's head, and
seemed to delight especially in the bright
blue eyes of the unseeing stand staring fix-
edly at the hat it may soon wear.
This work, rarely reproduced and practi-
cally ignored in the literature on Degas, is
notably fresh and well preserved. Degas used
a fine sheet of heavy laid paper that survived
his manipulations without being cut up, ex-
tended, or pasted down, and applied a light
layer of pastel and chalk that retains the traces
of his deft and confident execution. The dra-
matic lighting of the young girl's face — it is
lit almost from below — shows that Degas's
interest in such effects, beginning in the late
1 860s, continued at least into the early 18 80s.
1. Valery 1965, p. 202; Valery i960, p. 84.
2. See Journal Goncourt 1956, II, p. 968 (entry for
Friday, 13 July 1874), where he characterizes
Degas's dancers as little monkey-girls.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Roger
Marx, Paris, until 19 13 (Marx sale, Drouot, Paris,
11-12 May 19 14, no. 122, repr., for Fr 12,000);
bought at that sale by Dikran Khan Kelekian, Paris
and New York, 1914-22 (Kelekian sale, American
Art Association, New "York, 30 January 1922, no. 125,
for $2,500); bought at that sale by the museum with
a partial gift of funds from the former owner, 1922.
exhibitions: 192 i, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 3 May-15 September, Loan Exhibi-
tion of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings,
no. 36 (as "La modiste"), lent anonymously, as for-
merly in the Roger Marx collection; 1977 New York,
no. 35 of works on paper.
selected references: Manson 1927, p. 49, pi. 65; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 705 (as c. 1882); Minervino
1974, no. 592; Lipton 1986, p. 153.
235-
The Millinery Shop
c. 1882-86
Oil on canvas
39*/8 X 43 Vz in. (100 X 1 10. 7 cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. and Mrs.
Lewis Lamed Coburn Memorial Collection
(1933.428)
Lemoisne 832
The Millinery Shop is the largest and proba-
bly the last of Degas's treatments of the
theme in the 1880s. Although he returned
to the subject again in the 1890s, borrowing
compositional strategies and gestures from
earlier pictures,1 the milliners dating from
the relatively short span of 1882 to about
1886 form an exceptionally cohesive unit of
work, of which this picture can be seen as
the terminus.
Simplifying radically the dense composi-
tions of the great pastels made about 1882,
with paired figures and numerous hats
crowded close to the picture plane (such as
L693 [fig. 208], L729 [cat. no. 233], L683
[fig. 179]), Degas took as his point of depar-
ture for this painting a single figure creating
a hat, much like the figure in the pastel The
Milliner (cat. no. 234), now in the Metro-
politan Museum. Degas was clearly fasci-
nated by the image of a woman linked to a
table at the fulcrum of her bent elbow and
explored it in several of the milliner pictures.
In one, The Conversation at the Milliner's, a
pastel of about 1882 (L774, Staatliche Mu-
seen zu Berlin), Degas placed three figures
leaning over tables, extending themselves
from their hips to their heads; in another
pastel, dating most probably from the mid-
18905, Two Women in Brown Dresses (L778),
the figures are bent so dramatically that
their heads nearly rest on the table's surface.
In the three preparatory works for the fig-
ure in The Millinery Shop (L834, L835,
L833; see figs. 211, 212), Degas reversed the
direction of the milliner from that in L705
(cat. no. 234), switched her identity from
shopgirl to client, and adjusted her posture
accordingly from an improper lean to a suit-
ably erect carriage.
Examinations at the Art Institute of Chi-
cago have revealed beneath the present fig-
ure indications that Degas had originally
painted a customer virtually identical to that
in a preparatory pastel, L834 (fig. 211). Hat-
ted and gloved, dispassionately inspecting a
detail of a hat, the figure fills the page of the
study in a manner consistent with the milli-
ner pictures of about 1882. However, Degas
departed from these studies in making the
painting. The format of the canvas provided
a more open and spacious composition than
the studies allowed, necessitating in turn ad-
justments such as the inordinate lengthening
of the woman's right arm. The most import-
ant change evident in the final painting of
the canvas seems to have developed in the
course of work on the last preparatory draw-
ing, L833 (fig. 212). In this drawing, Degas
inserted the hat and stand close to the figure's
head, crowding the composition unhappily.
The artist must have sensed a redundancy in
the hat on the stand next to the client's hat,
and then perhaps turned back to an earlier
study, L835, to scratch out the hat on her
head. In the final painting, the client has lost
her hat; she seems to have simultaneously
lost her status as a consumer and returned to
the role of hatmaker, surrounded by her at-
tributes— the hat displayed like a crown
above her head, and the bouquet of hats on
stands that beg for equal attention much as
do the flowers in Woman Leaning near a Vase
of Flowers (cat. no. 60).
There is, in fact, curiously little in the
way of clues to help the viewer ascertain the
role of the seated woman. Her dress, a sober
olive wool skirt with a tunic top and narrow
fur col militaire, conforms to the drab cloth-
ing the clients wear in other milliner pictures;
and she wears gloves, which no other shop-
girl does. But to a remarkable degree women
are defined by their hats in the milliner series,
and the absence of one on the seated woman's
head seems sufficient to establish her as a petite
tommerqante. Some writers have further
interpreted the figure's mouth to be pursed
around a pin she is about to place on the
hat,2 thus firmly establishing her activity;
indeed she may be wearing sewing gloves.
This painting is surpassed in size in the
1 8 80s only by Nude Woman Drying Herself
(cat. no. 255) and by the portrait Helene
Rouart in the National Gallery in London
(fig. 192), with which it shares a certain
similarity in handling, in addition to a com-
mon scale. Although the palettes differ,
Degas's technique of modeling in the faces
is close enough to suggest that the two pic-
tures were executed at approximately the
same time. Since four pastel studies for the
portrait of Helene Rouart are inscribed with
the date 1886 (see Chronology III), it seems
reasonable to conclude that the present pic-
ture was finished sometime in the winter of
1885-86.
1 . For example, Degas used the composition of this
painting as the basis for The Milliner (L1023) of
c. 1895, adding a second milliner, but otherwise
retaining a similar deep space and disposition of
table and hat stands. Other late milliners include
L1315 and its related works: L1316, Lino, L1319,
L1317, and L1318 (cat. no. 392).
2. 1984 Chicago, p. 131. Brettell suggests (p. 134)
that since the portrait of Diego Martelli (cat.
no. 201) of 1879 is identical in size to The Millinery
Shop, the two paintings may have been begun
simultaneously. It seems unlikely, however, that
the preparatory works (L834, L835, L833) were
made any earlier than the winter of 1881-82, and
it is difficult to imagine that Degas began work on
the painting much earlier than the drawings.
provenance: Sold by the artist to Durand-Ruel, Par-
is, for Fr 50,000 (as "L'atelier de la modiste," 100 X
no cm, stock no. 10253), 22 February 1913; sent to
Durand-Ruel, New York, 13 November 19 17, re-
ceived in New York 1 December 1917 (stock
no. 41 14), remaining until 1932; bought for either
$35,000 or $36,000 from Durand-Ruel Gallery, New
York, by Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn, Chicago, 19
January 1932;1 bequeathed to the museum in 1932;
accessioned in 1933.
1. The 1932 acquisition date given in the Durand-
Ruel stock books contradicts a signed loan receipt,
dated 23 January 1930, for the loan of a "Millinery
Shop, 1882" from Mrs. L. L. Coburn to the Art
Institute of Chicago (loan no. 773 0). The cata-
logue for the 1984 Chicago exhibition (no. 63,
p, 134) states that Mrs. Coburn acquired the work
in 1929.
exhibitions: (?)i886 New York, no. 69 (as "Mo-
diste");1 1932, The Art Institute of Chicago, Anti-
quarian Society, 6 April-9 October, Exhibition of the
Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection: Modem Paintings and
Water Colors, no. 9, p. 38, repr.; 1933 Chicago, no.
286, pi. 53; 1933 Northampton, no. 8, repr.; 1934,
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1 June-i November,
A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Draw-
ings, no. 202; 1934, Toledo Museum of Art, Novem-
ber, French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, no. 1;
!935-36» Springfield, Mass., Springfield Museum of
Art, December 1935-January 1936, French Painting:
Fig. 211. At the Milliner's (L834), c. 1882-86.
Pastel, i81/8X235/s in. (46x60 cm). Location
unknown
Fig. 212. At the Milliner's (L833), c. 1882-86.
Pastel, i91/4X251/4 in. (49X64 cm). Location
unknown
400
Cezanne to the Present, no. i; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 40,
repr.; 1941, Worcester, Mass., Worcester Art Museum,
22 February-16 March, The Art of the Third Republic:
French Painting 1870-1940, no. 4 repr. and repr. (color)
cover; 1947 Cleveland, no. 38, pi. XXX; 1950-51
Philadelphia, no. 74, repr.; 1974 Boston, no. 20, pi. II
(color); 1978 Richmond, no. 14; 1980, Albi, Musee
Toulouse-Lautrec, 27 June-3 1 August, Tresors impres-
sionnistes du Musee de Chicago, no. 8, repr.; 1984 Chi-
cago, no. 63, repr. (color).
1 . It is highly unlikely that this was the "Modiste"
exhibited in 1886 at the National Academy of De-
sign, New York, as suggested by Huth, and sub-
sequendy by Brettell and McCullagh (1984 Chicago,
no. 63). There is no mention of this work in the
Durand-Ruel stock books until 1913, and it was
they, rather than Degas himself, who arranged for
the loan of works to the 1886 exhibition in New
York. The "Modiste" exhibited in New York was
probably a drawing that cannot today be identified
with certainty; it was catalogued under "Works in
Pastel and Watercolor."
selected references: The Fine Arts, XIX, June 1932,
p. 23, repr.; Daniel Catton Rich, "Bequest of Mrs.
L. L. Coburn," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago,
XXVI:6, November 1932, repr. p. 69; Mongan
1938, pp. 297, 302, pi. II, A; Huth 1946, p. 239, fig. 8
p. 234 (identifies this work as among those included
in the 1886 National Academy of Design exhibition,
New York); Rewald 1946, repr. p. 390 (as possibly
having been exhibited at the eighth Impressionist
exhibition); Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 832 (as c.
1885); Rich 195 1, pp. 108-09, repr. (color); Chicago,
The Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art In-
stitute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection,
196 1, p. 121, repr. (color) p. 336; John Maxon, The
Art Institute of Chicago, New York: Harry N. Abrams,
IQ70, pp. 89-90, 280, repr. (color) p. 89; Minervino
1974, no. 635, pi. IL (color); Toulouse-Lautrec: Paint-
ings (exhibition catalogue by Charles F. Stuckey),
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1979, p. 309, fig. 2;
Keyser 198 1, pp. 99, 10 1, pi. XLV; Manet (exhibi-
tion catalogue), New York, The Metropolitan Muse-
um of Art, 1983, p. 486, fig. a; Lipton 1986, p. 153
fig. 95, p. 154, fig. 95 p. 162.
401
236, 237
Before the Race
Degas made racing pictures sporadically
during the 1860s and 1870s, but he stepped
up production noticeably in the 1880s. He
may have seen them as particularly market-
able, and that notion, combined with Du-
rand-Ruel's new solvency, appears to have
provided him with the incentive to begin
painting groups of closely related variants of
a given picture once he had found a success-
ful composition.
The Clark Art Institute's finely painted
oil on panel (cat. no. 236) appears to have
been the prototype for three other panels:
one in the collection of Mrs. John Hay
Whitney (cat. no. 237), one in the Walters
Art Gallery in Baltimore (fig. 213), and one
formerly in the collection of A. A. Pope at
the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington (L896
bis).1 The Hill-Stead panel is the most dis-
similar of the variants and was probably the
last to be made. The Clark and Walters panels
are identical in size and extremely close in
the disposition of figures, notwithstanding
the changes in cropping or the different
jockeys inserted for variety at the right of
each of the two pictures. But the similarities
stop there, for the two paintings are alto-
gether unlike in handling. Where the Clark
picture is a richly painted morgeau de peinture,
the Walters picture is drawn with thin veils
of paint barely masking the wooden support.
In the Clark picture, Degas painted with
particular pleasure the brightly colored racing
silks of the jockeys, using techniques he had
developed in the 1860s for reflective satins,
while in the Walters picture the silks are only
summarily indicated, with little distinction.
The panel in the Whitney collection is
composed somewhat differently. The fig-
ures are slightly smaller and the landscape
deeper; the scene, centered on the panel,
therefore appears less immediate. Yet the
handling is once again rich, fluid, and satis-
fying. The sheen of the horses' coats vies
for attention with the shimmering shirts
worn by the jockeys, the turf is rendered
with great tactility, and the landscape is noted
economically but convincingly. Owing to
the paper laid on the surface of the Whitney
panel, Degas could not introduce the effects
of translucency that he used in the landscape
of the Clark panel, and the palette of the
Whitney picture is tawnier and more re-
strained. The Clark panel was sold in 1882
and was probably painted in that year; the
Whitney panel was sold in 1888 and could
have been painted anytime between 1882
and 1888. The Walters panel, being slightly
more summary in execution, may have been
painted later, perhaps toward the end of the
decade.
Degas made outline drawings of the en-
tire composition, to scale, for the Walters,
Whitney, and Hill-Stead paintings (Vollard
1914, pi. LXXXIV [fig. 214], for BRno
[fig. 213]; III:i78.2 [fig. 215] for L679; and
111:230 for L896 bis). There are as well indi-
vidual studies for many of the figures and
horses.2 No compositional study for the
Clark painting is known today.
The Whitney panel figured among the
pictures by Degas that Theo van Gogh
bought for his gallery at Boussod et Vala-
don. Van Gogh acquired it in June 1888 and
sold it in August 1889. Degas sold the Clark
panel to Durand-Ruel in December 1882,
and they in turn sold it to the Salon painter
Henry Lerolle in January 1883. Degas was
astonished at Lerolle' s purchase, and flat-
Fig. 213. Before the Race (BRno), c. 1888-90.
Oil on panel, ioVs X i33/4 in. (26.4 X 34.9 cm).
Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore
Fig. 214. Before the Race, c. 1888-90. Pencil.
Location unknown. From Vollard 19 14,
pi. LXXXIV
Fig. 215. Jockeys at the Start (HI: 178.2), c. 1882-
88. Pencil, 13 X i95/s in. (33 X 50 cm). Location
unknown
402
*J7
tered. He wrote of it to Mme Bartholome:
"In agreement with his [Lerolle's] wife,
who is said to manage him, he has just, at a
moment like this, bought a little picture of
mine of horses, belonging to Durand-Ruel.
And he writes admiringly of it to me (style
Saint-Simon), wishes to entertain me with
his friends . . . [even though] most of the
legs of the horses in his fine picture (mine)
are rather badly placed."3 Lerolle continued
to buy pictures by Degas and maintained an
amicable relationship with the irascible
painter. When Renoir painted Lerolle's
daughters in 1897, he included the Clark
panel and a pastel of dancers (L486, Norton
Simon Museum, Pasadena) in the background
(fig. 216). On seeing the Renoir, Julie Manet
commented: "The background, with Degas's
little Dancers in pink with their plaits, and
the Races, is lovingly painted."4
1 . These were followed by an oil and two pastels in
which Degas reversed the principal figure of the
horse with the outstretched neck: L761 (oil), L762
(pastel), and L763 (cat. no. 352).
2. Drawings for L702 include IV:377 and 111:94.2 for
the horse with its head lowered, and III: 130. 2 and
III:i3i.i for the jockey seated on it. Drawings for
L679 include IV:202.b for the jockey and the horse
with its head lowered, and IV:2i7.a, IV:2i7.b, and
IV:244.b for the horse and jockey at the far right.
3. Lettres Degas 1945, LII, pp. 77-78; Degas Letters
1947, no. 61, pp. 79-80.
4. Quoted in Renoir (exhibition catalogue by John
House and Anne Distel), London and Boston:
Arts Council of Great Britain and the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, 1985, p. 266.
236.
Before the Race
1882
Oil on panel
10V2 x i23A in. (26.5 X 34.9 cm)
Signed lower right in black: Degas
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts (557)
Lemoisne 702
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 10-12 December 1882, for Fr 2,500 (stock
no. 2648, as "Le depart"); bought by Henry Lerolle,
10 January 1883, for Fr 3,000; Lerolle collection, Paris,
1 883 -1929; Mme Henry Lerolle, his widow, 1929
until at least 1936. With Hector Brame, Paris, 1937;
bought by Durand-Ruel, New York, 3 June 1937, for
Fr 30,000 (stock no. 5381, as "Chevaux de courses")1;
bought by Robert Sterling Clark, 6 or 15 June 1939;
Clark collection, New York, 1939-55; their gift to
the museum 1955.
1 . Jacques Seligmann is often listed as an owner at
this time; however, the Durand-Ruel stock books
indicate the direct transfer of this work from
Brame, to Durand-Ruel, to R. S. Clark (between
1937 and 1939).
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 45, repr. (as "Le depart
d'une course [La descente de mains]"), lent by Henry
Lerolle; 193 1 Paris, Rosenberg, no. 28 (as "Avant la
course," 1875), lent by Mme Henry Lerolle; 1933
Paris, no. 108 (as c. 1872-74), lent by Mme Lerolle;
1934, Paris, Chez Andre J. Seligmann, 17 November-
9 December, Rihabilitation du sujet, benefit for the
Foch Foundation, no, 84 (as "Les jockeys"), lent
by Mme Lerolle; 1936, London, New Burlington
Galleries, Anglo-French Art and Travel Society, 1-3 1
October, Masters of French Nineteenth Century Painting,
no. 68 (as 1885), from the collection of the late Henri
[sic] Lerolle; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 35, pi. XII
(as "Avant la course [La descente de main]," c. 1882,
bought by Lerolle in 1884 from Durand-Ruel, lent
by private collector); 1956, Williamstown, Mass.,
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 8 May-,
Exhibit 5: French Painting of the Nineteenth Century,
no. 99, repr.; 1959 Williamstown, no. 1, pi. XVI (as
c. 1882); 1968 New York, no. 10, repr. (as c. 1882);
1970 Williamstown, no. 6 (as c. 1878-80; p. 5 notes
that L702 appears in the background of Renoir's por-
trait of the Lerolle sisters [fig. 216]); 1987, Williams-
town, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 20
June-25 October, Degas in the Clark Collection (by
Rafael Fernandez and Alexandra R. Murphy), no. 52,
repr. (color) p. 67 and repr. (color, detail) p. 21.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 42, repr.
after p. 44; Jamot 1924, p. 140, pi. 30a (as c. 1872-
74); Lemoisne 1924, p. 96, repr. (as. c. 1874); Le-
moisne [1946-49], I, p. 121, II, no. 702 (as c. 1882);
Francois Daulte, "Des Renoirs et des chevaux," Con-
Fig. 216. Pierre Auguste Renoir, Yvonne and
Christine Lerolle at the Piano, 1897. Oil on can-
vas, 283/4X 36V4 in. (73 X92 cm). Musee de
T Orangerie, Paris
403
naissance des Arts, 103, September i960, pp. 32-33,
fig. 14 (color); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Insti-
tute, French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Wil-
liamstown, Mass., 1963, no. 34, repr.; List of Paint-
ings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Mass., 1972, p. 32, no. 557, repr. (as
c. 1882); Minervino 1974, no. 694; Dunlop 1979,
no. 171, p. 180, repr. (as 1882); William R.Johnston,
The Nineteenth Century Paintings in the Walters Art
Gallery, Baltimore, 1982, pp. 134-35 (compared
with BR 1 10 [fig. 213], with differences cited in the
cropping, color, etc.); List of Paintings in the Sterling
and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass. ,
1984, p. 12, fig. 255.
237.
Before the Race
1882-88
011 on paper, laid on cradled panel
12 x i83/4 in. (30.5 x 47.6 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Collection of Mrs. John Hay Whitney
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 679
provenance: Sold by the artist to Goupil-Boussod
et Valadon, Paris, 8 June 1888, for Fr 2,000; bought
by Paul Gallimard, Paris, for Fr 2,400, 5 August
1889; Gallimard collection, Paris, 1889 until some-
time before 1927 (according to Manson 1927). With
Reid and Lefevre, London, 1927; bought by M.
Knoedler and Co. , New \brk, 23 March 1927; bought
by John Hay Whitney, New York, May 1928; Whitney
collection, New York, 1928-82; to present owner.
exhibitions: 1903, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune et Fils,
April, Exposition d'oeuvres de Vecole impressionniste, no.
14, lent by Paul Gallimard; 1904, Brussels, La Libre
Esthetique, 25 February-29 March, Exposition des
peintres impressionnistes, no. 27; 1908, London, New
Gallery, January and February, Eighth Exhibition of the
International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers,
no. 69; 19 10, Brighton, Public Art Galleries, 10
June-3 1 August, Exhibition of the Work of Modern
French Artists, no. 11 1; 1912, Paris, L'Hotel de la
Revue "Les Arts," June-July, Exposition d'art modeme
(maison Manzi, Joyant et Cie), no. 114; 19 14, Co-
penhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, 15 May-30
June, Artfranqais du XIXe siecle, no. 69, lent by Paul
Gallimard; 1942, Art Association of Montreal, 5 Feb-
ruary-8 March, Loan Exhibition of Masterpieces of
Painting, no. 66, p. 47 (as "Chevaux de course,"
Whitney collection); 1960-61, London, Tate Gallery,
16 December i960- 21 January 1961, The John Hay
Whitney Collection, no. 18 (as "Avant la course,"
c. 1881-85); 1983, Washington, D.C., The National
Gallery of Art, 29 May-3 October, The John Hay
Whitney Collection, no. 12, p. 38, repr. p. 39 (as
"Before the Race," 1881-85).
selected references: Louis Vauxcelles, "Collection
de M. P. Gallimard," Les Arts, no. 81, September
1908, p. 2t, repr. p. 26 (as "Les courses"); Arsene
Alexandre, "Exposition d'art moderne a l'Hotel de la
Revue 'Les Arts,'" Les Arts, August 1912, repr. p. IV;
Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 679 (as c. 1881-85); Re-
wald 1973 GBA, Appendix I (a reprint of excerpts
from the ledger of Goupil-Boussod et Valadon ; iden-
tifies "Courses, 31 X47" as L679; revised in Rewald
1986, p. 89); Minervino 1974, no. 697; William R.
Johnston, The Nineteenth Century Paintings in the Wal-
ters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1982, p. 134 (discussed in
relation to L702 [cat. no. 236]).
238.
Study of a Jockey
c. 1882-84
Charcoal on blue-gray laid paper now discolored
to buff
i93/4 X i27/s in. (50 X 32. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1977.27)
Exhibited in Paris
Vente 111:98.2
Both this drawing and Study of a Nude on
Horseback (cat. no. 282) are studies made in
the artist's maturity based on poses estab-
lished early in his career. The figure of this
mounted jockey appeared as early as 1860-
62 in one of the artist's first racecourse
scenes, At the Races: The Start (fig. 51), and
was placed prominently in the foreground
of The Gentlemen's Race: Before the Start (cat.
no. 42), which Degas began in 1862 but con-
tinued to rework well into the 18 80s. It is
quite possible that he made this drawing in
the process of revising The Gentlemen's Race,
although more probably it was made in prep-
aration for the figure in two pastels of the
mid- 1 8 80s — L850 (private collection) and
L889 (fig. 217).
Perhaps one of the reasons Degas was
loathe to release The Gentlemen's Race to the
man who commissioned it, Jean-Baptiste
Faure, was that it represented to him an in-
valuable source in the manufacture of new
jockey scenes; drawings such as this one
could have been made from the early paint-
ing in order to serve as a repertory of poses
for future use. All the same, this incisive
work has none of the rotelike qualities of a
copy. By shifting the contours, moving the
arm, making the jockey's lean more acute,
and modifying the knee, Degas invested the
drawing with a particularly heightened
sense of observed detail.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 98.2
[as "Jockey (Profil)"], for Fr 800); acquired by Du-
rand-Ruel, Paris (stock no. 11453). Percy Moore
Turner, London, until no later than 1952; John N.
Bryson, by 1966, until 1976; his bequest to the
museum 1976.
exhibition s : 1967 Saint Louis, no. 102, repr. p. 160
(as "Jockey in Profile"), John Bryson collection; 1979
Edinburgh, no, 14, p. 16 repr.; 1982, New Bruns-
wick, N.J., Rutgers University, Jane Voorhees Zim-
merli Art Museum, 12 September-24 October 1982/
Cleveland Museum of Art, 16 November 1982-
Fig. 217. Before the Race (L889), c. 1882-84. Pastel, 25^/4 X2i5/s in. (64 X 55 cm). Museum of Art,
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
404
9 January 1983, Durer to Cezanne: Northern European
Drawings from the Ashmolean Museum, no. 109, p. 134,
repr. p. 135; 1983 London, no. 24, repr.; 1986, Ox-
ford, Ashmolean Museum, 11 March-20 April/
Manchester City Art Gallery, 30 April-i June/ Glas-
gow, Burrell Collection, 7 June— 13 July, Impressionist
Drawings fiom British Public and Private Collections,
no. 19, p. 60, pi. 33.
selected references: Paul- Andre Lemoisne, Degas et
son oeuvre, Paris: Editions d'Histoire d'Art, 1954,
p. 185, repr. between pp. 120 and 121 (as Percy Moore
Turner collection); Christopher Lloyd, "Nineteenth-
Century French Drawings in the Bryson Bequest to
the Ashmolean Museum," Master Drawings, XVI: 3,
Autumn 1978, pp. 285, 287 n. 6, pi. 35.
239.
Dancers in the Rehearsal Room,
with a Double Bass
c. 1882-85
Oil on canvas
i53/8X 351/4 in. (39 x89.5 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29. 100. 127)
Lemoisne 905
More than any other group in the artist's
oeuvre, the frieze-format rehearsals consti-
tute a genuine series. For over twenty years,
Degas elaborated — in a style gradually evolv-
ing from a precise rendering of observed de-
tail to an expressive notation of linear rhythm
and suffused color — a fixed set of dancers
placed in an oblong rehearsal room, who
appear, disappear, or are reproduced in re-
verse images of themselves in an unending
stream of contrapuntal variation. Nowhere
is Degas's system of additive invention more
evident than in this group. Although he
adopts a similar method in his pictures of
jockeys, it is only in the dance pictures that
one feels one enters a world totally inhabited
by creatures of one man's imagination — a
world not unlike that created by a powerful
novelist.
This painting is probably the second in
the series of over forty horizontal rehearsal
pictures. It was preceded by The Dance Les-
son, in the Mellon collection (fig. 218),
which can be dated 1879 on the basis of a
thumbnail sketch in a notebook Degas is
known to have used in 1 878-79. 1 The
sketch, which George Shackelford believes
to be a rapid notation taken from a compo-
sition already in progress,2 differs from the
Mellon painting in the number of figures,
the presence of a violin case on the floor,
and the curious placement of a bull's-eye
window on the long wall at the left. Other-
wise the essential features of the entire series
are present: the long wall that rushes precip-
itously back into space, providing a foil for
one, two, or three principal figures in front;
the pocket of space where the room widens,
with two tall French windows illuminating
a group of dancers limbering up before a re-
hearsal, or cooling off afterward; the chair;
and the bench, which was to become the lo-
cus for many of Degas's late dancers.
Whereas the Mellon picture bears the
traces of Degas's revising and rethinking of
a new compositional format, the Metropoli-
tan's picture shows few pentimenti and no
drastic changes: X-radiography and infrared
reflectography show a work that appears to
have been painted in virtually a single cam-
405
2|Q
paign with only minor revisions, despite
George Moore's assertion in 1892 that the
painting had recently been retouched by
Degas.3 The lithograph drawn after it in
1889 (fig. 219) shows the picture as it ap-
pears today.
Theodore Reff has proposed revising the
date of this picture to 1879 from Lemoisne's
date of 1887, citing as evidence the 1879 note-
book sketch for the Mellon picture. How-
ever, the Metropolitan's picture fits more
comfortably among the paintings that Degas
produced toward the mid-18 80s; its palette,
in particular, reveals affinities with other
works of the mid-i88os. The tawny tonality,
relieved occasionally by accents of bright
color, is close to that of Chicago's Millinery
Shop (cat. no. 235) and significantly removed
from the cool palettes of the Mellon picture
and The Dancing Lesson in the Clark Art In-
stitute (cat. no. 221), both of which do seem
to date from 1879-80. The Metropolitan's
picture is equally removed from both the
variant in Detroit (L900), which is later, and
the frieze-format painting of a rehearsal in
the National Gallery of Art (cat. no. 305)
that Degas sold in 1892. The drawings for
the Metropolitan's painting (cat. nos. 240,
242) seem to have been made between 1882
and 1885;4 they are similar in handling to
the milliners in pastel and their related
drawings of 1882.
A closely related oil sketch, perhaps made
as an independent work rather than as a
preparatory sketch, also exists (L902).
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 70).
2. 1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 86.
3. Moore 1892, p. 19.
4. The other drawings that Degas seems to have
made for this picture include L907, L906, 11:219,1,
111:357.1, L909, 11:351, III:i50. i, 111:254, 111:358.2,
III:358.i, 11:355, L911, and L912,
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. With
Alexander Reid, Glasgow, by 1891, until 1892; bought
by Arthur Kay, London, 1892, until 1893; with
Martin et Camentron, Paris, until May 1895; bought
by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 27-28 May 1895, for Fr 8,000
(stock no. 3318); transferred to Durand-Ruel, New
York, 20 November 1895 (stock no. 1445); arrived in
New York 4 December 1895; bought by E. F. Mil-
liken, 23 March 1896, for $6,000; Milliken collection,
New York, 1 896-1902 (Milliken sale, American Art
Association, New York, 14 February 1902, no. n [as
"Les coulisses*'], for $6,100); bought by Durand-Ruel,
New York, as agent for H. O. Havemeyer; H. O.
Havemeyer, New York, 1902-07; Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer, New York, 1907-29; her bequest to the
museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1891-92, London, Mr. Collie's Rooms,
39B Old Bond Street, December 1891-January 1892,
A Small Collection of Pictures by Degas and Others,
no. 20, lent by Alexander Reid; an expanded version
of the exhibition traveled to Glasgow, La Societe des
Beaux- Arts, February 1892 (no catalogue known);
1893, London, Grafton Galleries, February, First
Exhibition, Consisting of Paintings and Sculpture by British
and Foreign Artists of the Present Day, no. 301a (lent
anonymously by Arthur Kay); 1896-97, Pittsburgh,
Carnegie Art Galleries, 5 November 1 896-1 January
1897, Fbst Annual Exhibition, no. 86, lent by E. F.
Milliken; 1930 New York, no. 54; 1946, Newark
Museum, 9 April-15 May, 19th Century French and
American Paintings from the Collection of The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, no. 13; 1958-59, Pittsburgh, Museum
406
of Art, Carnegie Institute, 5 December 1958-8 Feb-
ruary 1959, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings from
Previous Internationals, 1896-19$$, no. 1, repr.; 196 1,
Corning, N.Y., Corning Museum of Glass, 15 July-
15 August, 300 Years of Ballet (no catalogue); 1963,
Little Rock, Arkansas Arts Center, 16 May-26 Octo-
ber, Five Centuries of European Painting, repr. p. 47;
Ronald Pickvance, A Man of Influence: Alex Reid,
1854-1928, Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, 1967,
no. 23, repr. p. 32; 1972, Munich, Haus der Kunst,
16 June-30 September, World Cultures and Modem
Art, no. 742; 1977 New York, no. 16 of paintings;
1978 New York, no. 40, repr. (color); 1978 Richmond,
no. 12; 1979 Edinburgh, no. 26, pi. 4 (color); 1984-
85 Washington, D.C., no. 30, repr. p. 90 (as c. 1885);
1987 Manchester, no. 75, fig. 116 (as c. 1879-85).
selected references: Moore 1 892, p. 19; Anon. [J. A.
Spender?], "Grafton Gallery," Westminster Gazette,
17 February 1893, p. 3 (reprinted in Flint 1984,
pp. 279-80); "The Grafton Gallery,*' Globe, 25 Feb-
ruary 1893, P- 3 (reprinted in Flint 1984, p. 280);
"The Grafton Gallery," Artist, XIV, 1 March 1893,
p. 86 (reprinted in Flint 1984, p. 282); Arthur Kay,
letter to the editor, Westminster Gazette, 29 March
1893 (reprinted in Arthur Kay, Treasure Trove in Art,
Edinburgh/London: Oliver and Boyd, 1939, pp. 28-
30, repr. facing p. 32); Havemeyer 193 1, p. 119;
Tietze-Conrat 1944, pp. 416-17, fig. 1 p. 414; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 905 (as 1887); Browse
[1949], pp. 67, 377-78, no. 118, repr; Havemeyer
1961, p. 259; Ronald Pickvance, "L'absinthe in En-
gland," Apollo, LXXVII:i5, May 1963, p. 396; New
York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 84-85, repr.; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 836; RefF 1976, pp. 21, 137, 151; Reff
1977, p. 39, fig. 71 (color); Moffett 1979, p. 12, pi. 18
(color); 1984 Chicago, pp. 62, 146, 149; 1984
Tubingen (1985 English edition, pp. 383, under
no. 162, 385, under no. 172); 1984-85 Boston, p. lix,
fig. 37 (the lithograph after the painting); 1984 Chi-
cago, pp. 62, 146, 149; 1984-85 Paris, fig. 134 (color)
p. 159; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, p. 80,
under no. 73; Reff 1985, I, pp. 21 n. 8, 151, Note-
book 31 (BN, Carnet 23, p. 70); Weitzenhoffer 1986,
p. 257.
Drawings for Ballet Pictures
cat. nos. 240-242
Unlike the stock figures Degas drew for his
ballet pictures of the 1870s (see, for exam-
ple, cat. nos. 127, 138), which he used and
reused in different contexts over a long period
of time, the drawings for the ballet pictures
of the 1880s seem to have been made ex-
pressly for each new picture, regardless of
how often the pose had been used before.
These drawings were often done on a rela-
tively large scale before being reduced for
inclusion in the meticulously painted can-
vases. Many of them therefore convey a
monumentality often lacking in the final
pictures, and also a freedom and certainty of
expression rarely matched in the paintings.
240
240.
Study of a Bow
c. 1882-85
Pastel and charcoal on blue-gray laid paper
9^4 X 11V4 in. (23. 5 X 30 cm)
Vente stamp lower left appearing vertically
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF30015)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 908 bis
Perched on the back of a dancer like an
enormous blue butterfly, this extravagant
bow was made as a preparatory study for
Dancers in the Rehearsal Room, with a Double
Bass (cat. no. 239). In his execution of the
principal figure of the painting, Degas fol-
lowed the design of the bow quite closely,
though he changed its color from pale blue
to yellow. The figure itself is related to many
other pastel studies of a seated dancer doubled
over to tie the laces of her slipper. Degas ev-
idently considered this pose one of his most
successful: he integrated it into a number of
pastels beginning about 1879 and included it
repeatedly in the horizontal pictures of re-
hearsals painted from then through the mid-
18808.1 He seems to have made a new pastel
study of the dancer for every painting; some
of these were gifts that he signed and dedi-
cated to friends. None, however, is as rav-
ishing as this brilliantly rendered study of
the bow.
After the artist's death, the drawing was
stamped with Degas's signature in such a
way that the left side became the bottom.
Consequently, the work has often been re-
produced in the wrong direction.
1. The pose appears in L'attente (L698, Norton Si-
mon Museum, Pasadena) and at about the same
time in L530 (fig. 236), L531, L658, L661, BR86,
and BR76. It is also included in several other hori-
zontal pictures of rehearsals: L900 (Detroit Insti-
tute of Arts), L941 (cat. no. 305), andLii07
(fig. 289). Related studies of the seated dancer in-
clude L599 bis, L600, L699, L826, L826 bis, L903,
L904, L906, L907, L908, L913, BR 90, and BR125.
There are as well a number of pastels and paintings
of the 1890s and early 1900s that include the pose,
most notably the Cleveland Frieze of Dancers
(Li 144), where the position is examined from four
viewpoints.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 403,
for Fr 280); bought by Marcel Guerin, Paris. Carle
Dreyfus, Paris, until 1952; his bequest to the Louvre
1952.
exhibitions: 1953, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
du Louvre, April-May, Collection Carle Dreyfus: le-
guee aux Musees Nationaux et au Musee des Arts Decor-
atifs, no. 98; 1962, Mexico City, Universidad Nacio-
nal Autonama de Mexico, Museo de Ciencias y Arte,
October-November, 100 Ahos de Dibujo Frances,
1 8 50-1950, no. 23; 1967-68, Paris, Orangerie des
Tuileries, 16 December 1967-March 1968, Vingt ans
d 'acquisitions au Musee du Louvre, 1947-1967, no. 460
(stating erroneously that Carle Dreyfus acquired this
work at the third atelier sale); 1969 Paris, no. 213;
1974, Paris, Musee dujeu de Paume, 8 July-29 Oc-
tober, Presentation temporaire (no catalogue); 1983,
Paris, Palais de Tokyo, 9 August-17 October, La
nature-morte et Vobjet de Delacroix a Picasso (no
catalogue).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 908 bis (as an 1887 study for L907); Paris, Louvre
and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, p. 80, no. 73 (as 1887).
407
241.
Nude Dancer with Her Head in
Her Hands
c. 1882-85
Pastel and charcoal on robin's-egg blue wove
paper, squared for transfer
19V2 X 12V& in. (49. 5 X 30.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF29. 346)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 615
Degas probably made this drawing and a
second one (fig. 220) in preparation for In a
Rehearsal Room, at the National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C. (cat. no. 305). Al-
though the dancer is not visible in the paint-
ing, a figure like her was originally placed
just to the left of the seated dancer pulling
on her stockings.1 Another figure in the
same pose appears in the Ballet Rehearsal at
the Yale University Art Gallery in New Ha-
ven (fig. 289), but drawings for that figure
(111:88. 1, III:i24. 1, and another at the Narodni
Muzej in Belgrade) make it clear that Degas
employed a different model for that picture,
even though the figures and their poses, dis-
position, and relative size conform almost pre-
cisely to the painting in Washington.
Degas achieves in his drawing a figure of
almost monumental stature, despite the un-
gainliness of the pose and the difficult twist
of the torso. In rendering the work, Degas
employed a variety of techniques that he
had recently perfected in his large-scale pas-
tels, from the softly highlighted stumping
in the face and hands, to the striated hatch-
ing of the torso and legs, to the emphatic,
repeated contour of the figure as a whole. In
the 1 8 80s, these contours became increasing-
ly important to Degas as he more frequently
constructed his pictures in his "additive"
mode, inserting preexisting figures, like
strongly outlined silhouettes, into a number
of predetermined compositions.
1 . See the discussion of the appearance, disappear-
ance, and reappearance of this figure in 1984-85
Washington, D.C, pp. 91-97.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 178,
for Fr 6,000); bought by Dr. Georges Viau, Paris;
Viau collection, 1918-42 (Viau sale, Drouot, Paris,
11 December 1942, no. 59, pi. VI, for Fr 300,000);
acquired at that sale by the Louvre.
exhibitions: 1932 London, no. 828 (969), pi. CC,
repr., lent by Dr. Georges Viau; 1936 Philadelphia,
no. 84, repr. p. 136, lent by Dr. Georges Viau; 1939
Paris, hors catalogue; 1964 Paris, no. 69, pi. XVIII;
1969 Paris, no. 223; 1974, Paris, Musee du Jeu de
Paume, 8 July-29 October, Presentation temporaire
(no catalogue).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 615
(as c. 1880-85); Minervino 1974, no. 874; 1984-85
Washington, D.C, p. 92, fig. 4.3 p. 95; Paris, Louvre
and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 71, p. 77, repr. p. 78.
Fig. 220. Studies of Two Dancers (IIL223),
c. 1882-85. Charcoal heightened with white,
iSVbX 235/s in. (46 X 60 cm). The High Museum
of Art, Atlanta
408
242.
Dancer Stretching
c. 1882-85
Pastel on pale blue-gray laid paper
i83/sX n3/4 in. (46.7X29.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (AP68.4)
Lemoisne 910
Dancer Stretching is the most extraordinary
of the drawings associated with the horizon-
tal or frieze-format rehearsals. Degas in-
cluded the figure in the Metropolitan's
Dancers in the Rehearsal Room, with a Double
Bass (cat. no. 239), although there she is
barely visible, having been placed in the far
corner of the room. With an almost per-
verse twist, the artist relegated to a second-
ary position one of his most expressive fig-
ures. Curiously, her pose does not recur in
any of his pictures. It is possible that Degas
had intended to place the figure in the fore-
ground of a composition, and then decided
against it, just as he had removed a dancer
with her head in her hands (cat. no. 241)
from the foreground of the rehearsal now in
the National Gallery of Art in Washington
(cat. no. 305).
The singular gesture of this dancer cannot
be traced in earlier pictures. She neither
yawns nor exclaims, but by pressing her
right hand to her forehead she expresses the
unmistakable pain and fatigue experienced
by dancers after long hours of rehearsal. De-
gas makes the sensation of pain all the more
acute through the dramatic use of chiaroscu-
ro, with the highlights in deeply saturated
color — electric blue in the bodice, orange
red in the hair, and purple in the skirt and
shadows.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 175,
for Fr 12,200); bought back at that sale by Rene de
Gas, the artist's brother, Paris, 1918-21; his estate
until 1927; by inheritance to Roland Nepveu De Gas,
Paris, 1927, until at least 1943. Hal Wallis, Los An-
geles, by 1958; L. A. Nicholls, England, until 1959
(sale, Sotheby's, "Collection of a Gentleman" [L. A.
Nicholls] London, 25 November 1959, no. 54, repr.,
for £8,400); bought at that sale by M. Knoedler and
Co., New York; bought by John D. Rockefeller III,
27 October i960; Rockefeller collection, New York,
1960-68; bought by Hirschl and Adler Galleries,
Inc., New York, 1968; acquired by the Kimbell
Foundation 1968.
exhibitions: 1943, Paris, Galerie Charpentier,
May-June, Scenes et figures parisiennes, no. 67 (label
on verso indicates R. Nepveu De Gas as lender);
1958 Los Angeles, no. 62, anonymous loan; 1967
Saint Louis, no. 130, p. 198, repr. p. 197, from a pri-
vate collection, New York; 1973, New York, Hirschl
and Adler Galleries, Inc. , 8 November-i December,
Retrospective of a Gallery, Twenty Years, no. 32, repr.
(color); 1978 New York, no. 41, repr. (color).
selected references: Lafond 19 18-19, II, repr. after
p. 34; Rouart 1945, repr. p. 75; Lemoisne [1946-49],
III, no. 910 (as 1887); Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Mu-
seum, Catalogue of the Collection, 1972, pp. 198-200,
repr. (color) p. 199; Minervino 1974, no. 835.
M3.
Hortense Valpinqon
August 1883
Black chalk on buff wove paper
13 x io3/4 in. (33 x 27.3 cm)
Inscribed lower right: Hortense/ Menil-Hubert/
aout 1883
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Walter C. Baker (1972. 118.205)
Hortense Valpincpn was among Degas 's
special joys during his visits to her parents*
country house at Menil-Hubert. Having
portrayed her as a child (see cat. no. 10 1),
he watched her mature and remained friends
with her until the end of his life. Even after
her father Paul's death, Hortense — then a
married woman with children of her own —
continued to invite Degas to stay with her
family in Normandy.
Degas's project for his visit in the sum-
mer of 1883 was a portrait of Hortense. He
executed this exquisite drawing, as pure as
an antique cameo or a Renaissance medal,1
in addition to several other works that the
sitter recalled: a pastel of Hortense seated
out of doors (possibly L857); another work
on paper (private collection, not in Lemoisne
or Brame and RefF); a pastel variant of this
drawing, L722 (fig. 221; see note 3); and
409
perhaps other works now lost. Fifty-three
years later, in 1936, Hortense described the
making of this drawing and several others
to an interviewer, who re-created the scene
in vivid detail:
His little friend having grown to young
womanhood, it was only natural that
Degas should want to capture the pretty
profile the purity of which delighted his
artist's eye. He sketched it on a blank page
with a sharp pencil [sic] stroke that dug
deeply into the paper. Drawing, Degas
used to say, is a way of feeling. He fol-
lowed the profile, outlined the forehead,
and began a second time — a first, half-
erased line tells us so — to draw the im-
perceptibly hooked bridge of the nose, its
delicate flare at the fine nostril, and the
resolutely bold chin. The slightly pro-
truding lower lip is holding back a smile
that is smoldering underneath, ready to
burst forth, while the limpid eyes are
somewhat sad. "Don't play the victim,"
Degas would tell the girl, who with her
stillness was becoming melancholy. With
the point of his pencil, he suggested the
texture of the mole at the corner of her
mouth, which led him to say as he watched
the glistening young face: "You are a sweet
young thing." He sketched the delicate
neck and tiny ear, and behind it the big
bun of hair. Arriving at the edge of the
paper, he found he could not get all the
hair in; the bun was truncated at the side
of the page. "How tedious, there's no
more paper," Degas grumbled. "I'll have
to start over again."
The bizarre mise-en-page was involun-
tary and involved no prior design by the
artist. On the contrary: there was no mise-
en-page at all.2
According to further remarks in this in-
terview, Degas kept the drawing in his bed-
room and gave it to Hortense only about
1907. Degas's maid Zoe is quoted by her as
saying at the time, "Take it, Madame, it still
looks like you."3
1. The comparison is made by Jean Sutherland
Boggs, in 1967 Saint Louis, p. 176.
2. Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 3.
3. Barazzetti 1936, 191, p. 1. From other remarks by
Hortense cited there, it is tempting to deduce that
the pastel L722 (fig. 221) was made in 1907, at the
time of the gift of the drawing. However, Boggs
believes that the style of execution indicates a date
in the 18 80s for the pastel as well.
Fig. 221. Hortense Valpincon (L722), 1883. Pencil
and pastel, ii3/b X 63/s in. (29 X 16 cm). Collec-
tion of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
provenance: The artist until c. 1907; his gift to Hor-
tense Valpincon (Mme Jacques Fourchy), c. 1907; M.
and Mme Jacques Fourchy, Paris, c. 1907 until at
least 1924; presumably by descent to Raymond Four-
chy, their son, Paris. Walter C. Baker, New York,
by i960 until 1972; his bequest to the museum 1972.
exhibitions: i960, New York, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, June- September, The Walter C. Baker
Collection of Drawings (no catalogue); 1967 Saint Louis,
no. 113, p. 176, lent by Walter C. Baker, New York;
1973-74 Paris, no. 33, repr.; 1977 New York, no. 38
of works on paper.
selected references: Barazzetti 1936, 190, p. 3, 191,
p. 1; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, p. 410, under no. 722;
Claus Virch, Master Drawings in the Collection of Walter
C. Baker, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, 1962, no. 104, pp. 58-59; Reff 1976, pp. 265-66,
fig. 180 p. 265.
410
Monotypes of Nudes
cat. nos. 244-252
Degas's monotypes have long been thought
to fall outside the ongoing current of his
work as a whole. When they finally emerged
from the obscurity of his portfolios to be
sold at the atelier sales in 19 18-19, their
strange, unfamiliar beauty caused a stir
among critics and connoisseurs, many of
whom were uncertain how they related to
his better-known prints, pastels, and paint-
ings. Arsene Alexandre wrote in 1918:
"There were, during Degas's lifetime, only
a few rare individuals, discerning people
who were not slaves to prevailing opinions,
who grasped the significance and appreciated
the original beauty of these distinctive
works. His monotypes represent one area of
his work in which he was most free, most
alive, and most reckless. He did not rely on
any precedent, even from among his other
works, and was not hampered by any rule."1
With hindsight, a perspective enhanced
by Eugenia Janis's comprehensive exhibition
of the monotypes at the Fogg Art Museum in
Cambridge, in 1968, these works no longer
appear completely isolated from the rest of
the artist's oeuvre; indeed, one can now
point to almost as many interconnections as
differences. A case in point is provided by
the dark-field monotypes of nude women
caught at intimate moments, reposing indo-
lently in unspecified interiors or intently
washing themselves (see cat. nos. 195-197,
244-252). These works seem to derive from
the brothel monotypes of 1876-77 (cat.
nos. 180-188); they relate as well to etchings
of about 1879, such as The Little Dressing
Room (RS41) and the remarkable Leaving
the Bath (RS42), of which Degas made
twenty-two different states (see cat. nos.
192-194); and ultimately they lead to the
large pastels of bathers that Degas worked
in the 1880s.
Despite the now obvious links with these
works in other mediums, the precise dating of
the dark-field monotypes has remained un-
certain. Most recent writers have assigned
them to the 18 80s on account of their affini-
ties with the pastels, following a general
tendency to associate all nudes with this
decade of production.2 However, there is
good reason to believe that not all of them
date from as late as the 18 80s. An important
element in sketching a chronology was the
inclusion in the 1877 Impressionist exhibi-
tion of two scenes of women bathing. At
least one of them, Woman Leaving Her Bath
(cat. no. 190), was a pastel over monotype.
It has been suggested by Michael Pantazzi
that the other work shown then, "Femme
prenant son tub le soir," was a pastel now in
the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
(fig. 145), and that it was drawn over a sec-
ond impression of The Tub (cat. no. 195), a
monotype now in the Fondation Jacques
Doucet, Paris.3 If the Doucet monotype
does indeed date from 1877 or earlier, then
it is arguable that monotypes drawn in a
similar style — typified by broad highlights
punctuating dark planes, and features occa-
sionally delineated with a wiry line — date
from about 1877 as well.4 Following this
hypothesis, one could construct a group of
bathers made before the 1880s that are dis-
tinguished by clearly articulated spatial rela-
tionships, by the kinds of incidental detail
that Degas was careful to include, and by a
mordant, comic touch in the drawing of the
nudes. This last characteristic would fall in
line with a general tendency toward carica-
ture in Degas's work of the late 1870s.
The monotypes of nudes in this section of
the catalogue are perceptibly different and do
not seem consistent with Degas's style of
the 1 870s. With the exception of Nude Woman
Wiping Her Feet (cat. no. 246), they do not
rely on humor for their effect. They repre-
sent instead, in Janis's words, "gigantic nudes
without faces, backlighted by a window, re-
clining under the fierce illumination of an
oil lamp or a fireplace, reading, emerging
from a bathtub or seated on the edge of a
bed . . . not personages but palpitatingly
expressive physical presences that block the
light or seem to absorb their dark, inky inte-
riors."5 This physicality brings them closer
to the large pastels of bathers. Unlike the
monotypes assigned to 1876-77, these mono-
types are more remarkable for their ambigu-
ity than for their descriptive passages. As
Janis suggests, "their strikingly modern lack
of anecdote makes it difficult to believe that
they coincide with Degas's urbane represen-
tations of modern life from the late 1870s
and early 1880s."6
In order to date these works convincingly,
the most important connection to be consid-
ered is the link between the dark-field
monotypes of nudes and the series of large
pastels of women bathing that Degas made
between 1884 and 1886, culminating in the
"suite de nus" shown at the 1886 Impres-
sionist exhibition. The women depicted in
the large pastels of bathers and in the mono-
types of nudes are all of a similar type. They
are single women — when a bed is visible it
is a single bed — and although men are never
present, in contrast to Admiration (cat. no.
186), their uninhibited nudity suggests
that they are available for sex. The figures
in the pastels and monotypes share a com-
mon scale and are all viewed at very close
range. Because Degas cropped the composi-
tions tightly around the figures, they appear
large in proportion to their surroundings,
occupying nearly all the available space.
Since several of the large pastels are dated
1884 and 1885, and others, though undated,
were exhibited in 1886, their dates are rela-
tively certain. How then are the monotypes
related to the large pastels? It is reasonable
to assume that they preceded them. For one
thing, there are very few preparatory draw-
ings for the pastels, which suggests that the
monotypes may in some manner have served
in their stead. It seems certain, as Janis has
written, that Degas initially used the mono-
type as a vehicle for composing an entire
sheet at once.7 Heretofore he had built up
compositions by assembling in a predeter-
mined, fictive space figures that he had first
developed in drawings. With monotype,
working with printer's ink on a zinc or cop-
per plate, Degas could compose in an organic
rather than additive manner and easily erase
or revise what he had done. When he printed
the monotype, he had the structure of his
image in place, as if he had made a photo-
graphic print which he could then tint with
colors. The experience of working in mono-
type seems to have been important to the
development of the larger pastels of bathers
because in both the nude figure was made
the primary element around which the space
and accessories have been fitted. This new,
synthetic approach became crucial to his
working method for the rest of his career.
The consistent style of the black-and-
white monotypes in this section8 suggests
that they were made over a relatively short
period of time, probably before the series of
large pastels was begun in 1884, but not as
early as 1876-77. As usual, Degas printed
more than one impression of each of these
monotypes in order to have a spare work
for coloring with pastel. But since he did
not immediately rework the second impres-
sions, their chronology is more compli-
cated. Some of these reworked monotypes,
such as Woman in a Bath Sponging Her Leg
(cat. no. 251), seem to have preceded the
large bathers (if the palette and handling are
reliable indicators) while others evidently
remained untouched in his portfolios much
longer. Woman Leaving Her Bath (cat. no. 250),
for example, was probably reworked about
1886-88, after many of the large pastels of
bathers had already been made and exhib-
ited. Thus the pastelized monotypes must
have been made before, during, and after
the series of large pastels of bathers. Inter-
estingly, Degas made each one of the ver-
sions in pastel more particular and concrete
in the description of every detail; in this re-
gard, they are close to the large pastels. Many
of these pastelized monotypes are ravishing
pictures, but in making them Degas sacri-
ficed the poetic suggestiveness of his work
in black and white in order to achieve the
prosaic specificity that he wanted.
411
1. Alexandre 191 8, pp. 18-19.
2. Janis dated all the monotypes of nudes to the 1880s
in her catalogue (Janis 1968), but later redated
them to 1877 (see Janis 1972).
3. See "The First Monotypes," p. 257.
4. See, for example, cat. nos. 196 and 197.
5. Eugenia Parry Janis, "The Monotypes," in 1984-
85 Paris, p. 399.
6. Ibid., p. 400.
7. Ibid.
8. With the possible exception of Nude Woman Reclin-
ing on a Chaise Longue (cat. no. 244), which has
characteristics of both the earlier and later nudes.
244.
Nude Woman Reclining on a
Chaise Longue
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on ivory heavy laid paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 7% X 16V4 in. (19.9 X 41.3 cm)
Sheet: 83/4 X 16V2 in. (22. 1 X 41.8 cm)
Inscribed in monotype upper left: Degas/a /Burty
The Art Institute of Chicago. Clarence Bucking-
ham Collection (1970.590)
Janis 137/Cachin 163
As Eugenia Janis has noted, the inscription
of this monotype to Philippe Burty was not
merely a gesture of friendship from the art-
ist to a great collector of prints, but homage
to a man who in the 1850s and 1860s had
been one of the chief propagandists for the
revival of etching in France.1 At the heart of
that revival was a renewed appreciation of
Rembrandt's tonal prints, and at the heart of
this stuririing nude is a tribute to Rembrandt's
etching Negress Lying Down (fig. 222).
Degas 's assimilation of Rembrandt's art
into his own extends from the 1857 Portrait of
Toumy (RS5; see "The Etched Self-Portrait of
1857," p. 71), where he portrayed his friend
244
in the style of Rembrandt's Self-Portrait at a
Window, to the Nude Woman Having Her
Hair Combed of the mid-i88os (cat. no. 274),
where he alludes to the Rembrandt Bathsheba
that his father's acquaintance La Caze had
bequeathed to the Louvre. Degas's apprecia-
tion of the Dutch master was thus a complex
matter, initiated in family experiences and in
the enthusiasms of a young art student, in-
fluenced by the rediscovery of Dutch paint-
ing by amateurs, critics, and art historians
(Burty and Tho re-Burger are but two), and
developed through the eyes of a mature artist
assessing the greatness of another. Here Degas
Fig. 222. Rembrandt, Negress Lying Down, 1658.
Etching, drypoint, and burin, second state. Plate
31/sX61/4 in. (8 X 15.8 cm); sheet ^AxeVs in.
(8.2 X 16 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago
Fig. 223. Nude Woman Reclining (L752), c. 1888.
Pastel over monotype, 13 X 16% in. (33 X 43 cm).
Private collection, New York
does not actually copy Rembrandt, but
rather takes Rembrandt's print as a kind of
challenge: to achieve, with a modern subject
(the contemporary courtesan), in a modern
idiom (the startling bird's-eye point of view,
the radical foreshortening), and in a newly
invented medium (the monotype), an analo-
gous image demonstrating an equal mastery
of the subtleties of chiaroscuro. It goes
without saying that Degas rose to his self-
imposed challenge and created here a tonal
work of infinite subtlety, from the globe of
the oil lamp, brightest at its center and
darkest at its chimney, to the ghostly reflec-
tions in the mirror above the daybed, to the
dim highlights caressing the indolent
bather's arm, breasts, belly, and thighs.
Degas used the second impression of this
monotype to create a wholly independent
work in pastel (fig. 223). He made it half
again as large, extending the composition
vertically to include the entire bath sheet
(only just visible in the right hand of the
bather in the monotype) and much of the
wall above the couch (he chose not to in-
clude a mirror). Richard Brettell aptly de-
scribes the difference between these two
works in terms of Degas's treatment of the
nude: the bather in the pastel is "leaner,
more defined, and harder than the model in
the monotype. The pastel is athletic, the
monotype sensual."2
1. Janis 1972, p. 61.
2. Richard Brettell in 1984 Chicago, p. 144.
provenance: Gift of the artist to Philippe Burty,
Paris, c. 1879-83. With Durand-Ruel, Paris. Gustave
Pellet, Paris, until 19 19; by descent to Maurice Ex-
steens, Paris, 19 19 until at least 1937. With Hector
Brame, Paris; with Paul Brame, Paris, 1958-60;
bought by Eberhard Kornfeld, Bern, October i960;
sold to Walter Neuerberg, Cologne, October or No-
vember i960, until 1970 (consigned by him for sale,
Klipstein und Kornfeld, Bern, Auction 108, May 1962,
no. 247, pi. 37, but withdrawn; sold, Kornfeld und
Klipstein, Bern, Auction 137, June 1970, no. 318,
pi. 24); bought at that sale for the museum by Mrs.
Kovler of Kovler Gallery, Chicago.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 208, lent by
Maurice Exsteens; 1948 Copenhagen, no. 76, from a
private collection; i960, Bern, Klipstein und Korn-
feld, 22 October-30 November, Choix d'une collection
privee: Sammlungen G.P. und M.E., no. 23, repr.; 1980
New York, no. 24, repr; 1984 Chicago, pp. 142-44,
no. 68, repr. (color).
selected references: Guerin 1924, p. 78 (as "La let-
tre"), repr. p. 80 (as "Femme a la lampe," Pellet collec-
tion); Rouart 1948, pi. 19 (as "Nu couche"); Pickvance
1966, p. 18, fig. 1 p. 17; Janis 1967, p. 80, fig. 40 p. 77;
Janis 1968, no, 137 (as c. 1885); Janis 1972, pp. 56-
57. 59-6i, fig. 8 p. 60; Nora 1973, PP- 28-30, fig. 4
p. 29; Cachin 1974, no. 163 (as c. 1885); Terrasse
1983, p. 33, fig- 6.
412
245
245.
Nude Woman Scratching Herself
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on cream-colored heavy
laid paper (sheet pasted to museum mount)
First of two impressions
Plate: io7/a X i^/s in. (27.6 X 37.8 cm)
Sheet: 14 X 201/8 in. (3 5. 5 X 5 1 cm)
Trustees of the British Museum
(1949-4-1 1-2425)
Janis 135/Cachin 164
This dark-field monotype sometimes known
as Le sommeil would seem to be a virtuosic
reprise of J 13 7 (cat. no. 244), only more
daring in its summary description of form,
more exaggerated in its anatomical ellisions,
and therefore more abstract in appearance
and mysterious in meaning. The figure, pil-
lows, and crumpled sheets — so many dips
and curves — were made by wiping away
the ink in an almost rhythmic fashion, as a
means of emphasizing similarities within the
image (the pillow on the right, for example,
and the arch of the figure's back, or the
double curve of the two pillows and the
shape of the nude's two breasts). Although
Degas gives us no clues regarding the loca-
tion of this scene or the identity of the figure,
we can only assume that the coarse gesture
of scratching and the uninhibited nudity were
meant to suggest a prostitute in a brothel.
The figure is closely related to the weary in-
habitants of the small brothel monotypes,
such as J72, J73, and J74, who lounge in
their quarters with equal ennui.
True to his habitual procedure, Degas
made the pastelized version of this work
(L753, J 136) — based on a weak second im-
pression of this monotype — more logical
and less evocative. In it, the bed and sheets
are clearly indicated, the alcove has been de-
fined, and the nude has been given a right
arm.
While the subject would tie this mono-
type to the work of the late 1870s, the rela-
tively large scale of the figure and its size in
relation to the depicted space argue for a date
closer to 1883. The pastelized version seems
to date from about 1883 as well.
Degas may also have pulled a counterproof
of this monotype, since this composition, in
reverse, seems to have been the basis of an
exceptional landscape by the artist (fig. 224)
in which he transformed the figure of a re-
cumbent nude into the hills and dales of a
verdant landscape near the sea.1
1 . The observation was made by Jean Sutherland
Boggs in conversation with the author. Richard
Thomson has suggested, less convincingly, that a
drawing for the Metropolitan Museum's Nude
Woman Having Her Hair Combed (cat. no. 274) un-
derlay the landscape (1987 Manchester, p. 111).
Fig. 224. Landscape (BR134), c. 1892. Pastel over
monotype, i8l/s X 21V2 in. (46 X 54.6 cm). Galerie
Jan Krugier, Geneva
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
no. 239, for Fr 940); bought at that sale by Gustave
Pellet, 1918, until 19 19; Campbell Dodgson, London
(former Keeper of the Department of Prints and
Drawings, British Museum), until 1949; his bequest
to the museum 1949.
exhibitions: 1985 London, no. 20, p. 54, repr. p. 55
(as c. 1883-85).
selected references: Guerin 1924, repr. p. 79 (as
Pellet collection); Janis 1967, p. 80, fig. 42 p. 77; Janis
1968, no. 135 (as c. 1883-85); Cachin 1974, no, 164,
repr. (as c. 1885); Keyser 1981, pp. 73-76, pi. XXXIV
(as c. 1885); Sutton 1986, p. 238, fig. 222 p. 235.
413
246.
Nude Woman Wiping Her Feet
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on cream-colored
heavy laid paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 173A X q3/s in. (45. 1 X 23.9 cm)
Sheet: 2i7/sX i43/s in. (55.5 X 36.5 cm)
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF4046B)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Janis 127/Cachin 158
"Do you know how we pose at Degas's?" a
model asked the critic Gustave Coquiot one
evening at a dance hall. "As women who
dump themselves in the tub and who wash
their hind ends."1 All the indignation and
surprise that gave birth to this remark is
epitomized by this monotype. It is a tour-
de-force of its kind, the most sensational
and comical of the bather monotypes. With
an impressive economy of means — just a
few wipes with his fingers and his cloth pad
and a few touches with something sharp —
Degas perpetrated an image that violated al-
most every taboo concerning decency and
privacy. The bather is seen not as she might
present herself to someone else, nor as she
might see herself reflected in a mirror; rather,
she is shown from a vantage point that could
only be obtained by a voyeur or a familiar.
As Degas was to remark to George Moore
about his bathers in general, "It's the human
animal taking care of its body . . . [seen] as
if you looked through a keyhole,"2 and this
human animal is caught in a cruelly unflat-
tering position. But it could also be said that
for all his sarcasm, Degas still had sympathy
for his subject and softened the assault with
a broadly comic approach.
Degas made two impressions of this
monotype. The second, fainter impression
was reworked with pastel, presumably at a
later date (fig. 225). Characteristically, he
made the setting in the pastel more specific
(adding a mirror over the bathtub and an
armchair behind the bather's head) and
made the pose of the figure more credible
anatomically (bending the legs of the bather
Fig. 225. Nude Woman Wiping Her
Feet (L836), c. 1884-86. Pastel over
monotype, ij^A X 9Y2 in. (45 X
24 cm). Private collection, Paris
at the knee and articulating her arms at the
elbow). And as with some of his other pas-
telized monotypes, by adding an anecdotal as-
pect that is fundamentally at odds with the
monumentality of the image, he deprived
the composition of much of its strength.
Degas first used a bending figure seen
from behind in an earlier monotype of a
brothel scene (J67, Musee Picasso, Paris).
He incorporated a similar figure in a num-
ber of pastels in and about 1885, one of
which is dated 1885 and was exhibited in
the 1886 Impressionist exhibition (fig. 186). 3
414
And he used the pose in a charcoal and pas-
tel drawing, L837, which was reproduced in
Vollard' s album of reproductions of draw-
ings by Degas.4
1. Coquiot 1924, p. 199.
2. George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, Lon-
don: S. Sonnenschein, 1888 (Montreal: McGill-
Queen's University Press, 1972, p. 318).
3. L1075, L1076 (ex Vollard collection), and L1077
(ex Vollard collection).
4. Vollard 1914, pi. LIX.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown; Comte
Isaac de Camondo, Paris, until 1908; his bequest to
the Louvre 1908; entered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 206 (as c. 1890).
selected references: Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914,
no. 230 (as c. 1890-1900); Lafond 1918-19, II, p. 72;
Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1922, no. 23o;Janis 1967,
p. 80, fig. 48 p. 78 (as c. 1885); Janis 1968, no. 127
(as c. 1880-85); Nora 1973, p. 28, fig, 1 p. 30; Ca-
chin 1974, no. 158, repr. (as c. 1882-85).
247.
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on buff heavy laid paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 12 3/s X 11 in. (31.3 X27.9 cm)
Sheet: 19V2 X 13^4 in. (49.4 x 24.9 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF16724)
Exhibited in Paris
Janis 156/Cachin 168
Leaning with her knee against the end of a
chaise longue, a young woman combs her
hair, holding it aloft against the light that
floods through the glass curtains of the win-
dow behind her. As the scene is drawn with
great precision, despite the difficulties im-
posed by the dark-field manner, Degas
seems to have sought to invest the work
with exceptional detail as a foil to the sha-
dowy composition. As a matter of course,
the contours and silhouettes were carefully
worked, but most extraordinary are details
such as the highlight delineating the bather's
left jaw, or the glint of light caught by her
earring, or the teeth of the comb and the
fingers of the hand that holds it.
Degas first broached the motif of a woman
combing her hair in a painting of about 1875
now in the Phillips Collection in Washing-
ton, Women Combing Their Hair (cat. no. 148),
and afterward returned to the subject re-
peatedly in the 18 80s and 1890s (see cat.
nos. 284, 285, 310). It allowed him to ex-
ploit two highly charged objects of sensual
desire: the female nude and luxuriant hair.
Extravagandy long undone hair had become,
by the mid-nineteenth century, synonymous
with sexuality in the nudes of most academic
painters and sculptors. In Clesinger's mar-
ble of 1847, Woman Bitten by a Snake (Musee
d'Orsay, Paris), and in Cabanel's painting of
1863, The Birth of Venus (fig. 251), the abun-
dant hair of the figures was just as impor-
tant to the eroticism of the works as the
breasts and hips of the models. Courbet
used hair as a potent symbol, so much so
that he was able to eroticize, for example,
his Portrait of Jo (The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York) simply by depicting Jo
Heffernan running her fingers through her
red hair — even though she is fully clothed.
Puvis de Chavannes, whose work Degas
admired almost as much as he did Courbet's,
painted many compositions of women ad-
justing huge manes of hair or having their
hair combed, and in these pictures, cool and
detached in sentiment, hair is used as an al-
most intellectual expression of sensuality.
With Degas, sexuality is typically more
veiled. Although this nude is chaste and
modest — she would not know that we are
watching — there can be no doubt that Degas
arranged her cascades of hair for our plea-
sure and further underscored her sexuality
by emphasizing her hips and marking her
mons veneris.
Degas pulled a second impression of this
monotype and reworked it with pastel (L799,
private collection). It conforms closely in
appearance to this work, with one excep-
tion: the end of the chaise longue was con-
verted to a pouf.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 19 18,
no. 247, for Fr 3,100); bought at that sale by Jeanne
Fevre, the artist's niece, Paris, 1918, until 1930 (sale,
Drouot, Paris, n December 1930, no. 65, as "La toi-
lette [La chevelure]"); bought at that sale by the So-
ciete des Amis du Louvre.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 210; 1969
Paris, no. 209; 1985 London, no. 17, repr.
selected references: Alexandre 1918, no. 171, repr.
p. 17; Guerin 1924, p. 78; Leymarie 1947, no. 39,
pi. XXXIX; Janis 1967, p. 79 n. 31; Janis 1968,
no. 156, repr. (as c. 1884); Nora 1973, p. 28; Cachin
1974, no. 168, repr. (as 1880-85).
247
415
248.
The Washbasin
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on pale buff heavy laid
paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 19X14 in. (48.2X35.3 cm)
Sheet: i23/s X io3A in. (3 1 . 5 X 27. 3 cm)
Atelier stamp on verso
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts (1962.39)
Janis 147/Cachin 156
This work, one of the most charming of the
dark-field monotypes of bathers, is specifi-
cally related to earlier, smaller format mono-
types in which prostitutes bathe while male
clients avidly observe their actions (see cat.
no. 186). But in line with the general devel-
opment of Degas's work in the 18 80s, the
figure here has assumed a larger place with-
in the composition and the anecdotal ele-
ment has been suppressed. We the viewers
now take the place of the onlooking clients,
and the artist focuses our attention not on a
comic scene but on the lovely, lithe back of
the bather — always a subject of interest to
Degas — and on the light that streams in
from the window at the left, bouncing off
the marble washstand and porcelain basin
and illuminating the perfume bottles be-
neath the mirror. As a subtlety, Degas has
indicated the barely perceptible reflection of
the bather's back in the mirror, and as a so-
ciological clue he has placed within view the
young woman's hairpiece.
It is not known whether Degas made a
second impression of this monotype, but he
did make a counterproof of it by pressing a
sheet of paper on its surface while the ink
was still wet. This explains both the pale-
ness of this print (it gave up much of its ink
to the counterproof) and the puzzling dou-
ble platemark at the margins (made by run-
ning this sheet through the press a second
time with its counterproof). Degas reworked
the counterproof with pastel (fig. 226) and
also made another pair of monotypes (J 149,
Fondation Jacques Doucet, Paris, and L1199,
J 1 50) based on the counterproof (a mirror
image of the present work). Pastels of a
woman adjusting her hair at her dressing ta-
ble, such as L983 (fig. 248), relate closely to
this constellation of images, all of which
seem to date to the mid- 18 80s. Degas used
them as inspiration for new works in the
1890s, such as L966 bis, and Mary Cassatt
may have thought of them in 189 1 when she
made her aquatints of a bather with her
peignoir gathered at her waist, looking like
a modern-day Venus de Milo.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente Estampes, 191 8,
no. 245, for Fr 835); bought at that sale by Ambroise
Vollard, Paris. Dr. Herbert Leon Michel, Chicago,
until 1962; bought from him by the museum in
1962.
exhibitions: 1965, Williamstown, Sterling and Fran-
cine Clark Art Institute, May, Exhibit 29: Curator's
Choice, no. 10, repr.; 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 36,
repr. (as c. 1880-85); 197° Williamstown, no. 53;
Fig. 226. The Washbasin (L966), c. 1884-86. Pas-
tel over monotype, 12V4 X io5/s in. (3 1 X 27 cm).
Private collection
1974 Boston, no. 105; 1981 San Jose, no. 54, repr.
n.p.; 1984, Williamstown, Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute, 7 April-28 May, Degas: Prints
and Drawings (no catalogue); 1987, Williamstown,
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 20 June-25
October, Degas in the Clark Collection (by Rafael Fer-
nandez and Alexandra R. Murphy), no. 55, p. 69 repr.
(as c. 1880-85).
selected REFERENCES: Janis 1968, no. 147 (as c.
1880-85); Cachin 1974, no. 156 (as c. 1882-85).
249.
Woman Leaving Her Bath
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on pale buff heavy laid
paper
First of two impressions
Plate: 11 X 14.V4 in. (28 X 37. 5 cm)
Inscribed in monotype lower right: Degas a son
ami Michel Levy [partially obscured with
blue ink]
Private collection
Janis 121/Cachin 161
In making this work, Degas first covered a
copper or zinc plate with heavy printer's
ink. He then wiped the plate with a rag,
vertically to indicate the window at the left,
and diagonally to create the bathtub at the
right. To make the bather, he manipulated
the ink with his fingers, adding ink for the
shadows, taking it away for the highlights.
With a pointed instrument, he scratched in
the faucets over the bathtub, defined the
chair and the robe, and formed the precise
contours of the bather's back, head, arms,
and hands. He carefully scratched in his sig-
nature and an inscription to a friend. Then,
satisfied with his shadowy scene, he placed
a sheet of ribbed paper over the plate, and ran
the sandwich through the press. He lifted
the paper off the plate, replaced it with an-
other sheet, and repeated the printing.
Degas saved the second printed sheet for
later work. It was a paler version (since
most of the ink was absorbed by the first
sheet), and was probably too faint to be leg-
ible on its own. Sometime later, about 1886-
88, he completely reworked this second
impression to make a picture in pastel (cat.
no. 250). In doing so, he was careful to cor-
rect the anatomy of the bather, lengthening
and straightening her torso and providing
elbows for her otherwise jointless, doughy
arms. Similarly, he made some of the fur-
nishings of the room more precise: the mir-
ror has a frame, the window its curtains.
Although it lacks the specificity of the pas-
tel and the allure of its strong coloring, the
monotype has a haunting, mysterious quali-
ty. The rich surface of this impression and
the dramatic contrast between its dense sha-
dows and brilliant highlights indicate that it
was generated in the first printing. It is a
self-sufficient work, created as a private im-
age of delectation and destined for a specific
individual. The bather is faceless, her figure
too imprecise to provoke an erotic response,
but perhaps the very notion of the violation
of privacy implicit in this image was suffi-
cient to convey a sexual charge. The recipi-
ent of this monotype, an artist named Henri
Michel-Levy, was the subject of a portrait
by Degas (L326, Calouste Gulbenkian Mu-
seum, Lisbon) notable for its air of brood-
ing, brutal sexuality — the man stares down
the observer while a lay figure, dressed in a
woman's street costume, lies crumpled at
his feet.
provenance: Gift of the artist to Henri Michel-Levy,
c. 1879-83. Cesar de Hauke, Paris, by 1958; Mrs.
Elsa Essberger, Hamburg, by at least 1968; by de-
scent to present owner.
exhibitions: 1958 Los Angeles, no. 96, repr. p. 85
(as c. 1880), lent by Cesar de Hauke, Paris; 1968
Cambridge, Mass., no. 32, repr., lent by Mrs. Elsa
Essberger, Hamburg.
selected references: Janis 1968, no. 121 (as c. 1880-
85); Janis 1972, PP- 56-57, 59, fig. 5 p- 57; Cachin
1974, no. 161 repr. (as c. 1882-85).
250.
Woman Leaving Her Bath
c. 1886-88
Pastel over monotype on buff laid paper
mounted on canvas
Second of two impressions
11X15 in. (28x38 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Gibson
Lemoisne 891
It is not known precisely when Degas made
the monotype (cat. no. 249) that served as
the base for this work, nor is it known
when he reworked it with pastel. What is
certain is that this pastel was exhibited at
Theo van Gogh's gallery at Boussod et Va-
ladon in January 1888 (see Chronology III),
where it was seen and described by Felix
Feneon:
The pertinacious and never vain efforts of
this cool visionary are dedicated to finding
the line that will reveal his figures unfor-
gettably and give them a life that is both
definitive and stamped with genuine mo-
dernity. He delights in shielding his work
from the comprehension of the passer-by
and concealing its austere, unblemished
beauty, imagining deceptive foreshorten-
ings that alter proportions and suppress
shapes; . . . already standing to leave the
bath, another [bather], with golden yel-
low hair, arms outstretched, takes hold of
a peignoir; the water, still splashing, re-
flects the red walls; at her groin, shadows
darken to green. 1
The work may have been consigned by
the artist directly to Theo van Gogh (al-
though it does not appear in the Boussod et
Valadon stock books), and it was probably
completed not long before it was exhibited
in 1888. The hot colors of the wall hangings
and the broad facture (the blue pastel shadows
in the peignoir may even have been worked
wet with a brush) support a date about 1886-
88. Furthermore, the stiff, straightened back
of this bather in pastel links the work to
Degas's nudes of the mid- 18 80s, in contrast
to the elastic and often lissome bodies of the
nudes in the monotypes of the 1870s and
early 18 80s. Presumably, the artist continued
to turn to his stock of monotypes for re-
working with pastel many years after he
had begun them.
Gauguin too saw this work when it was
exhibited in 1888. In addition to five works
by Degas,2 van Gogh displayed in his gallery
a painting by Gauguin, Two Bathers (Wil-
denstein 215; private collection, Buenos Aires),
that was painted in Brittany in 1887 and was
no doubt inspired by the nudes bathing out
of doors that Degas had exhibited at the 1886
Impressionist exhibition (BR113 [fig. 186],
and another pastel, reworked later, L1075).
Gauguin was a leading disciple of Degas' s in
the 1 880s, and each of them owned and
copied works by the other.3 The younger
artist, fiercely competitive, nevertheless
could only have been flattered by the juxta-
position of his bathers with Degas 's. At this
time the two artists, for different reasons
and with different results, were interested in
truncated figures and motifs and asymmet-
rical compositions. Both used inelegant pos-
tures and abrupt foreshortenings, making of
them something beautiful and bold. Gauguin,
for his part, copied this pastel in a notebook
(fig. 227)/
There is a drawing, L892, related to this
pastel. Since the figure in the study has the
same stiff, straight back parallel to the upper
edge of the picture as the figure in the pas-
tel, the drawing must relate to the finished
pastel rather than to the monotype under-
neath it. The style of the study is consistent
with Degas's work of 1886-88. Much later,
sometime in the late 1890s, Degas made a
bold and free charcoal drawing (fig. 228)
after the pastel or, more probably, of the
study; this drawing on tracing paper bears a
dedication to Mme Charpentier. It was not
catalogued by Lemoisne, nor did it figure in
the atelier sales.
G. W. Thornley made a colored litho-
graph after this pastel, which he published
in 1889.5
1. La Revue Independante, February 1888, reprinted in
Feneon 1970, I, pp. 95-96.
2. L1089, L876 (fig. 247), L1008, L1010 (fig. 197),
and the present work.
3. See RefF 1976, pp. 262-64.
4. There are sufficient discrepancies between Gau-
guin's copies and the original works by Degas to
suggest that Gauguin's notes were made from
memory. In particular, the figure in the copy of
L73 1 is reversed, and the drawings at the upper
417
ML J
Fig. 227. Paul Gauguin, Sheet of studies
after Degas, February 1888. Pencil on pa-
per, 6V4X4V4 in. (15.9 X 10.8 cm). Album
Brillant, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du
Louvre (Orsay), Paris (RF30273)
Fig. 228. Woman Leaving Her Bath, c. 1898.
Pastel and charcoal on paper, 17 X 20 in.
(43.2 X 50.8 cm). Location unknown.
Previously unpublished
and lower right are too summary to identify with
known works by Degas. The works copied are
L891, L1010 (fig. 197), L1008, L731, and the un-
identifiable work (which may be a reworking of
one of Gauguin's own poses of bathers, such as
the pose at the bottom left of Wildenstein 215, cited
above). Three of the identifiable works are known
to have been on view at Boussod et Valadon in
early 1888.
5. Thornley 1889,
provenance: With Goupil-Boussod et Valadon, Paris,
1888; subsequent whereabouts unknown. Georges
Bernheim, by 19 13; half share acquired, with Bern-
heim, by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 20 May 19 13 (stock
no. 10333). Dr. Georges Viau, Paris, before 1918.
With Galerie Barbazanges, Paris, 192 1; sent on de-
posit to Durand-Ruel, New York, 10-16 March 192 1
(deposit no. 12380); bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris,
29 March 1921, for Fr 2,500 (stock no. 4652);
bought by Mrs. G. D. [sic] Maguire, New York, 16
April 1930, for Fr 5,000; Mrs. Ruth Swift Maguire,
New York, 1930-49; Mrs. Ruth Dunbar Sherwood,
her daughter, 1949 until after i960; Tom Denton,
New Mexico; Gerald Peters, Santa Fe, N.M., until
1983; bought by Eugene V. Thaw, New York, late
1983; bought by present owner, 9 February 1984.
exhibitions: 1888, Paris, Boussod et Valadon, Janu-
ary (no catalogue known); 1937 New York, no. 6,
repr., lent by Mrs. R. S. Maguire; 1949 New York,
418
no. 76, lent by the estate of Mrs. Ruth Swift Maguire;
i960 New York, no. 68A, lent by Mrs. R. Dunbar
Sherwood; 1985, London, Thomas Gibson Fine Art
Ltd., 4 June-12 July, Paper, n.p., repr.
selected references: Felix Feneon, "Calendrier de
janvier," La Revue Independante, February 1888, re-
printed in Feneon 1970, I, pp. 95-96. Thornley
1889, repr.; Lafond 19 18-19, II, repr. following p. 52
(as G. Viau collection); Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 891 (as c. 1886- 90); Janis 1968, no. 122, repr. (as
1886-90); Minervino 1974, no. 931.
251.
Woman in a Bath Sponging Her Leg
c. 1883-84
Pastel over monotype on off-white laid paper
Second of two impressions
73/4 X i6Vb in. (19.7 X 41 cm)
Signed in brown chalk lower left: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF4043)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 728
To make this pastel, Degas took as his point
of departure a second, paler impression of a
monotype (fig. 229) that shows a hunched,
frog-faced, rubber-jointed woman taking a
daytime bath in a well-appointed room.
There is a mirror above the bath, and the
tub itself is fed through swan-neck faucets
that are served by interior plumbing — still
very much a luxury in 1880s Paris. The ani-
mal-like qualities that the artist gives to the
bather in the monotype link her to the
women in some of his brothel monotypes
(see cat. nos. 180-188); that affinity, coupled
with the fact that the setting is more elegant
than the woman occupying it, would seem
to indicate that this monotype too repre-
sents a brothel scene.
The pastel conveys a quite different im-
pression. The bather is younger, and she
holds her well-shaped head high above her
slim shoulders. Degas straightened her ex-
tended leg and corrected the position of her
left arm. The room is now more simply fur-
nished: the walls are hung with a nonde-
script wallpaper or chintz; there is no mirror;
and the tub, without faucets and in the mid-
dle of the room, has no plumbing. The
hoop-back chair has been replaced by a
mass-produced bentwood chair, and a simple
chest of drawers marks the corner. The en-
vironment here is less sophisticated, and the
woman in turn appears more honest: per-
haps she is a young working woman or a
model — certainly not the figure of ridicule
portrayed in the original monotype.
The monotype base was probably made
about 1879-83. The slightly comic atmo-
sphere ties it to the late 1870s, as does the
bird's-eye point of view. It is dedicated to a
friend of Degas's, a minor Neapolitan artist,
Federico Rosanno, whom Degas refers to in
letters thought to have been written in 1879
or 1880. 1 The present work, on the other
hand, probably dates to about 1883-84. Its
pleasantly soft and light tonalities, the pale
flesh color of the bather's skin, and the rather
straightforward approach to the simple fact
Fig. 229. Woman in a Bath Sponging Her Leg (J119), 1879-83. Monotype, 77/s X i67/s in. (20 X 42.9 cm).
Private collection
419
of a woman bathing relate it to a constellation
of works commonly dated to the mid- 1 8 80s,
many of which are pastelized monotypes.2
Lemoisne's claim that it was exhibited in
the 1886 Impressionist exhibition is unsub-
stantiated: not a single reviewer described it.3
1. Lettres Degas 1945, XVI, p. 43, XXII, p. 49; De-
gas Letters 1947, no. 25, p. 48, no. 31, p. 54. The
association was made by Janis (1968 Cambridge,
Mass., no. 31).
2. Examples include L730, L747, J144, J145, L966
(fig. 226), Li 199, L799, and L717 (cat. no. 253), in
addition to a closely related pastel L1010 (fig. 197).
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], III, p. 412.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown.
Bought from Guyotin, a commissaire-priseur, by
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 9 March 1893, for Fr 1,200
(stock no. 2693); sold to M. Manzini, 47 rue Tait-
bout, Paris, 13 March 1893, for Fr 2,600; bought on
the same day by Comte Isaac de Camondo (Ca-
mondo Notebook, Archives, Musee du Louvre,
Paris); Camondo collection, Paris, 1893 -1908; his
bequest to the Louvre 1908; entered the Louvre
1911; first exhibited 1914.
exhibitions: 1969 Paris, no. 202 (as c. 1883).
selected references: Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914,
p. 44, no. 224; Lafond 19 18-19, I. repr- p. 58; Meier-
Graefe 1920, pi. 74; Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1922,
p. 50, no. 224; Meier-Graefe 1923, pi. LXXIV; Paris,
Louvre, Pastels, 1930, no. 25; Lemoisne [1946-49],
III, no. 728 (as c. 1883); Paris, Louvre, Impression-
nistes, 1958, no. 92; Paris, Louvre, Peintures, 1959,
no. 641, pi. 222; Janis 1967, pp. 21 n. 10, 26 n. 28,
72 n. 6, 79, fig. 56 p. 29; Janis 1968, no, 120 (as
c. 1883); Janis 1972, p. 65; Paris, Louvre, Impres-
sionnistes, 1973, p. 143, repr. p. 32; Minervino 1974,
no. 889, pi. XL VII (color); Terrasse 1974, repr. p. 79;
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 56, p. 65
repr.
peignoir draped on the chair at the right and
pooling on the surface of the bathwater at
the left. While most of the dark-field bather
monotypes are distinguished by sharp con-
trasts of light and shade, here Degas master-
fully employs a middle tone, giving a sense
of three-dimensionality to the figure and the
furnishings that elsewhere appear relatively
flat.
Degas had used the pose of a stepping
bather in an early pastelized monotype
(L423, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena),
which in turn is very close to a black-and-
white monotype (cat. no. 191) as well as to
a pastelized monotype (cat, no. 190) that
was shown by the 1877 Impressionist exhi-
bition. Presumably all three works were
made by 1877, and they offer instructive
252
contrast to the present work, which must
be later. The earlier monotypes depict
rooms whose depth is defined by the sharp
diagonal line that Degas habitually used in
the late 1870s to structure space. The fur-
nishings and decor are precisely catalogued,
and the figures are small in relation to the
space they occupy. In contrast, the space
implied in the present work is not nearly as
deep and the diagonal thrust of the bath-
tub's rim is mitigated by the strong vertical
of the window. The furnishings are only
summarily indicated, and the figure as-
sumes a more important place. In other
monotypes of this later group (for example,
cat. no. 246), the figure swells in proportion
to the depicted space to assume monu-
mental and sometimes even grotesque pro-
1 1
252.
Woman Standing in Her Bath
c. 1879-83
Monotype in black ink on cream-colored heavy
laid paper, slightly discolored
First of two impressions
Plate: 15 X io5/s in. (38 X 27 cm)
Sheet: 2oysX i37/a in. (51.7X 35.3 cm)
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF4046)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Janis 125/Cachin 157
In this work Degas revels in light and its re-
flections, just as he exploits light in such
black-and-white lithographs as Mile Becat at
the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (cat. no. 176). But
where the light in Mile Becat is largely artifi-
cial, here it is direct sunlight that illuminates
the scene. Almost blinding in intensity as it
burns through the glass curtains, the light
softens as it fills the room, bouncing off the
420
portions. The pastelized versions of these
monotypes tend to give even greater promi-
nence to the figure. Since the pastel bathers
shown in the 1886 Impressionist exhibition
are all very large in comparison to the de-
picted space, monotypes such as the present
work most probably fall between the two
known termini, 1877 and 1886.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown; Comte
Isaac de Camondo, Paris, until 1908; his bequest to
the Louvre 1908; entered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 248 (as between 1890-
1900); 1969 Paris, no. 207 (as c. 1883); 1986, New
York, The Brooklyn Museum, 13 March-5 May/
Dallas Museum of Art, 1 June-3 August, From Courbet
to Cezanne, fig. 120.
selected references: Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914,
no. 229 (as c. 1 890-1900); Paris, Louvre, Camondo,
1922, no. 229; Guerin 1924, p. 78; Rouart 1948,
pi. 16; Janis 1967, p. 79; Janis 1968, no. 125 (as
c. 1880-85); Cachin 1974, no. 157, repr. (as c. 1882-
85).
253.
After the Bath
c. 1883-84
Pastel and wash (possibly over monotype) on
buff wove paper, extended with strip at
bottom
20V2 X i25/s in. (52 X 32 cm)
Signed in black chalk lower right: Degas
Durand-Ruel collection
Lemoisne 717
This work occupies a key position transi-
tional between the pastelized monotypes be-
gun in the mid- 18 70s and largely completed
by the early 1880s1 and the large-format
nudes that Degas began in the mid- 18 80s2
and continued working on for ten years. Its
size falls neatly between the average sizes of
the two groups, and its date probably lies
about midway between the two periods in
question. It may in fact have been the point
of departure for the entire series of large
nudes that culminated in the works shown
at the Impressionist exhibition of 1886.
The figure in this picture is probably the
first bather by Degas to stand more or less
upright and be fully visible to the observer.
The earlier nudes, worked in monotype,
tend to be crouching or stooping, bent over,
or immersed in a tub; the images are so
closely cropped that one feels the figures
would break out of the frame if they were to
fully extend themselves. This work also ap-
pears to be one of the first of the bathers to
be executed in a new, larger scale: the earlier
monotype bathers never exceeded forty-five
centimeters (about 18 in.) in either direction,
whereas this sheet is about one-and-a-half
times larger than the largest monotype
bather. It is not as imposing in size as the
bathers exhibited in 1886, but the figure
possesses a kind of integrity that could
properly be characterized as classical. The
figure, evidently studied from life (see cat.
no. 254), moves within a convincing and
well-defined space of medium depth that,
contrary to the monotypes, does not op-
press or circumscribe her but rather appears
to be agreeably generous. The pink-and-
green wall coverings seem to have been de-
signed to reflect her pink flesh color with its
green undertones, and the drapes seem to
have been parted expressly to reveal her
handsome, robust physique. The whole is
suffused with a clear light of sufficient
strength to render even the shadowed de-
tails quite legible.
This work may be more closely related to
the monotypes than was previously thought,
since the pose of the figure is almost identi-
cal to that in L719 (fig. 230), a pastel
thought to have a monotype base. Eugenia
Janis has suggested that the base Degas used
may have been a second impression of the
monotype J 12 5 (cat. no. 252), but she allows
that the number of discrepancies between
the two images is large enough to cast
doubt on her proposal.3 Indeed, it may be
that the present work shares a previously
unrecognized monotype base with the pastel
L719. Examination of photographs (the pre-
sent location of L719 is unknown) indicates
that the figures in the two works are vir-
tually the same size, and that in addition to
the strip of paper added at the bottom, the
present work may bear a plate mark, which
would have been necessitated by the conver-
sion of the squarish format of L719 to the
vertical format here. Future examination of
After the Bath may shed further light on the
interdependence of these works.
Other related works include the life draw-
ing (cat. no. 254) and additional sketches
noted in the entry for that work. Degas also
made another pastel, L718 (fig. 231), show-
ing the same figure sponging her leg in a
room with a similarly unmade bed at the
extreme left, only this time there is a shallow
tub and the slipper chair has been turned
around. Degas obviously delighted in the
utility of this figure, equally at home in or
out of a tub, shallow or deep, and poised
precariously, like many of his dancers, in
mid-movement.
1. Such as L422 (cat. no. 190) and L423, Norton
Simon Museum, Pasadena.
2. See, for example, cat. nos. 269 and 271.
3. Janis 1967, p. 79 n. 34.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Mme
Paul Aubry, 16 boulevard Maillot, Paris, until 1895;
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1 October 1895, for
Fr 4,500 (stock no. 3415); Durand-Ruel collection,
Paris, from 1895; Mme Georges Durand-Ruel collec-
tion, Neuilly-sur-Seine; by descent to M. and Mme
Charles Durand-Ruel, Paris, until 1986; to present
owner.
exhibitions: (?) 1903-04, Weimar;1 1905 London,
no. 52 (as "After the Bath," pastel, 1883), no lender
given; 1924 Paris, no. 145, pp. 77-78, repr. p. 79 (as
"Femme nue, debout dans son cabinet de toilette, se
frottant apres son bain," 1883), lent by Georges
Durand-Ruel; 1934, Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, 11
May- 1 6 June, Quelques oeuures importantes de Corot a
Van Gogh, no. 9 (as 1883); 1937 Paris, Orangerie,
no. 120, lent by Durand-Ruel; 1939-40 Buenos Aires,
no. 42, I, p. 60, II, repr. p. 46; 1940-41 San Francisco,
no. 32, repr. p. 82; 194 1, Worcester Art Museum,
22 February-16 March, The Art of the Third Republic:
French Painting 1870-1940, no. 5, repr.; 194 1, The
Art Institute of Chicago, 10 April- 20 May, Master-
pieces of French Art Lent by the Museums and Collectors
of France, no. 43 ; 1947, New York, Durand-Ruel
Galleries, 10-29 November, Degas, no. 20; i960 Paris,
no. 36, repr.; 1964, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum,
7 August-11 October, La douce France /Det Ljuua
Frankrike, no. 30, repr.; 1970, Kunstverein Hamburg,
28 November 1970-24 January 197 1, Franzbsische Im-
pressionisten: hommage d Durand-Ruel, no. 12, repr.;
1974, Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, ijJanuary-15
March, Cent ans d'impressionnisme: hommage a Paul
Durand-Ruel, 1874-1974, no. 17, repr.
1 . According to the Durand-Ruel deposit book, the
work was sent to an exhibition in Weimar, 3 De-
cember 1903-4 March 1904.
selected references: Pica 1907, p. 416, repr.; Moore
1907-08, p. 144, repr.; Grappe 1908, p. 12, repr.; Le-
moisne 1912, repr. facing p. 100; Jamot 1918, repr.
p. 163; Lafond 1918-19, II, repr. (color) facing p. 52;
Jamot 1924, pp. 107 n. 2, 152, pi. 64; Vollard 1924,
repr. facing p. 20; Grappe 1936, repr. p. 49; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 717 (as 1883); Minervino
1974, no. 895.
254.
Standing Bather
c. 1883-84
Charcoal, pastel, and watercolor on off-white
laid paper
i21/8X93/8in. (30.8X23.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund, 1918 (19. 5 1.3)
Brame and Reff 112
Degas brought this drawing — a preparatory
study for a larger pastel — to a higher degree
of finish than almost any other drawing of a
bather. He selected a fine sheet of paper,
tested his stick of charcoal at the right mar-
gin, and drew the outlines of the figure. He
began tentatively at the shoulders, and ini-
tially sketched them much wider, but as he
became sure of what he wanted, he drew a
strong contour along the desired profile. He
repeated the same procedure in defining the
421
253
255-
bather's right arm, but the rest of the figure
was completed with little revision. Degas
abandoned most of his studies of bathers at
just that stage of summary execution. In
this instance, however, he carried on, not
only adding touches of color to indicate the
environment — here it is bright sky-blue
pastel — but also making a pale gray wash,
perhaps with charcoal or a warm-gray
chalk, and meticulously painting in the
shadows. Over this he drew the broader
cross-hatching in charcoal and the rather
unexpected, largely imperceptible touches
of color. The hot shadow on the face is
readily visible, but the moss-green shadow
on the bather's back next to her left elbow,
the touches of pink on either side of the
small of her back, and the faint highlight on
the crest of her left shoulder are subtleties
that reveal more about Degas's fanatic sense
of observation than about the bather herself.
This drawing is closely related to several
pastels and a sculpture (RLIX) of a bather
holding an identical pose — raising the knee
in order to sponge it — but it is not entirely
certain for which of these the present draw-
ing served as a study. Brame and Reff have
catalogued it as a study for After the Bath (cat.
no. 253),1 but whereas there is some indi-
cation of a deep tub in this drawing, there is
no tub at all in that pastel. The composition
of L719 (fig. 230), with its deep tub, is clos-
est to the composition suggested by this
drawing, but that work seems to have been
completed about 1894, 2 whereas the draw-
ing conforms to Degas's technique around
1883-84. The bather in L718 (fig. 231) also
corresponds to the bather in this drawing,
but there is a shallow tub in that work rather
than the deep one seen here, and the style of
execution seems to indicate a date about 1890.
It is of course possible that Degas used this
drawing as the basis for all three pastels, but
since there are, in addition, other more sum-
mary sketches of figures in the same pose
(III:i35. 1, 111:135.3, 111:142.4, III:no.2,
11:172), it is difficult to determine the precise
relationship between these studies and the
finished works.
1. Brame and Reff 1984, p. 122.
2. The chronology of L719 is complicated by its
monotype base, which was probably made several
years earlier than the pastelized surface.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 222.2),
for Fr 2,700 (along with another drawing, 11:222. 1);
bought at that sale by the museum.
exhibitions: (?)i922 New York, no. 49 (as "Apres le
bain: femme s'essuyant le genou gauche"); 1977
New York, no. 40 of works on paper.
selected references: Burroughs 19 19, pp. 1 16-17;
Brame and Reff 1984, no. 112 (as 1883-86).
Nude Woman Drying Herself
c. 1884-92
Oil on canvas
59X843/sin. (150 X 214.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Carl H. DeSilver Fund (31.813)
Lemoisne 951
This outsized, probably unfinished, painting
is difficult to date conclusively for the same
reason that Degas's dark-field monotypes of
bathers resist definite dating: because Degas
never applied the superficial layer of color,
one cannot rely on the palette for clues. It
possesses the same sense of scale as the mono-
types, and indeed the composition happens
422
254
Fig. 230. Woman Sponging Her Knee
(L719), c. 1894. Pastel (over mono-
type?), 15 X 11 in. (38 X 28 cm).
Location unknown
Fig. 231.
(L718), c.
I2V4X97/8
unknown
Woman Sponging Her Knee
1890. Pastel and charcoal,
in. (31X25 cm). Location
to be a reversed variant of a dark-field
monotype (cat. no. 195) that Degas made
sometime in the late 1870s or early 1880s.
Like the monotype, it is monochrome and
its execution is summary. But unlike the
monotype, it was drawn nearly life-size on
an enormous canvas that enabled the artist
to realize the scale that was always implicit,
but never actually achieved, in the work on
paper.
This canvas is larger than all but two other
paintings by Degas, The Bellelli Family (cat.
no. 20) and The Daughter of Jephthah (cat.
no. 26), both of winch are early works un-
related in conception or ambition to this
Nude Woman Drying Herself. The size of this
picture, however, can be related to a general
tendency on Degas's part, beginning in the
mid- 1 8 80s, to work in oils on larger can-
vases— for example, the portrait of Helene
Rouart in the National Gallery, London
(fig. 192), or the Chicago Millinery Shop
(cat. no. 235). Taking that tendency into
account, this painting would date to about
1884-86; the subject is certainly consistent
with the artist's preoccupation with bathers
at this time. The strength of the forms and
the vigor of Degas's application of the pri-
mary layer of paint also lend support to a
date in the mid-18 80s, as do such character-
istics as the independence of the nude from
the environment and the energy with which
she rubs herself dry.
However, Nude Woman Drying Herself also
relates to a group of three other inordinately
large paintings of the 1890s (each measuring
59 x 71 in., or 151 X 180 cm): Four Dancers
(fig. 271), Fallen Jockey (cat. no. 351), and
Dancer with Bouquets (L1264, Chrysler
Museum, Norfolk, Va.). To this group, one
could also add the Cleveland Frieze of Dancers
(L1144, 2j5/s X 80 in., 70 X 200 cm), as well
as an enormous unfinished pastel of bathers
at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
(fig. 314, 633/4X76 in., 162 X 193 cm). Each
of these related works — all finished in the
second half of the 1890s — constitutes a syn-
thetic summary of Degas's most important
themes. This bather, with her tub, towel,
unmade bed, and bright window, has all the
makings of a quintessential bather, just as
the Basel Fallen Jockey (cat. no. 351) reflects,
in a most laconic fashion, Degas's final and
dark thoughts on the jockeys that had given
him so much pleasure as a young man. Al-
though it is entirely possible that these paint-
ings were conceived independently, together
they create a synoptic dictionary of Degas's
subjects. This, plus their common scale,
leads one to wonder whether they were in-
tended to form a decorative ensemble, des-
tined perhaps to hang on the walls of Degas's
studio or in some future museum dedicated to
his work and his collection of other masters.
423
While some may consider this painting
finished — a work executed en camateu — it is
more likely that it was abandoned at a pre-
paratory stage, perhaps because Degas found
that the imagery had achieved a kind of self-
sufficiency. If indeed it was abandoned, then
the work serves as an important document
of Degas's late painting technique. Here we
learn that the artist prepared his paintings
with an underdrawing in sepia paint, proba-
bly thinned with turpentine, that provided a
tonal armature for the composition, much in
the way that the monotypes served as a kind
of photographic negative for the subsequent
works in pastel. Degas's underpainting indi-
cates structural relationships by defining
areas of light and shade, extending in this
work even to subtleties such as the semi-
translucency of the towel under the bather's
left arm. Contours have been added with
the artist's lithe and fluent brush only in
such critical areas as the face, breast, and left
leg of the bather. Had the artist completed
the work, it might have resembled Four
Dancers (fig. 271), which seems to have a
similar tonal wash underneath the surface
layer of paint, and which displays the same
markedly calligraphic, somewhat detached
contours in the drawing of the face and limbs.
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris (deposit no. 10256, as "Femme au tub'*),
22 February 1913; Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 57,
for Fr 5,700); bought at that sale by Marcel Bing,
Paris. Yamanaka and Co. , New York; bought by the
museum 30 December 193 1.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 34; 1937,
New York, The Brooklyn Museum, October,
Leaders of American Impressionism, no. 2; 1944-45,
New York, The Brooklyn Museum, November 1944-
January 1945, European Paintings from the Museum
Collection (no catalogue); 1954 Detroit, no, 69.
selected references: Riviere 1922-23, I, pi. 43 (as
Marcel Bing collection, Paris); Lemoisne [1946-49],
III, no. 951 (as c. 1888); H. Wegener, "French Im-
pressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings in the
Brooklyn Museum," The Brooklyn Museum Bulletin,
XVI: 1, Fall 1954, p. 12; Minervino 1974, no. 934.
256.
Woman Ironing
Begun c. 1876, completed c. 1887
Oil on canvas
32X26 in. (81.3X66 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
(1972.74. 1)
Lemoisne 685
"If it is finished, I shall set to work on the
Laundress .'M Thus wrote Degas to his sorely
tested friend and patron Jean-Baptiste Faure
in June 1876, reporting on his intentions of
completing a promised racecourse picture
(see cat. no. 157). The Laundress to which
he referred was no doubt this painting of a
woman ironing that had been commissioned
by Faure, a singer at the Opera and perhaps
the most important patron of French paint-
ing of his day. Although the circumstances
regarding this commission are not fully
known (see "Degas and Faure," p. 221), one
can surmise that there is a direct relationship
424
20
between the genesis of this picture and
Faure' s purchase — at Degas' s request — of
the smaller Woman Ironing, in the Metropoli-
tan Museum in New York (cat. no. 122),
from Durand-Ruel in 1874. Degas regretted
the premature sale of several of his early
works and sought to have them back. Faure
obliged him by buying, among other pic-
tures, the little Woman Ironing, and turning
it over to the artist. Two years later Degas
exhibited that same Woman Ironing at the
1876 Impressionist exhibition, but otherwise
he kept it in his possession and out of view
until February 1892, when he sold it back to
Galerie Durand-Ruel. It was perhaps his
unwillingness to release the small Woman
Ironing that provoked the creation of this
larger version for Faure; the sale of the small
picture to Durand-Ruel in 1892 may also
have precipitated the creation of a third vari-
ant, now in Liverpool (cat. no. 325). In fact,
Degas may have traced from the New York
picture (or from a study now lost) the sil-
houette of the laundress to make a drawing
(fig. 117)2 that he squared, perhaps in order
to enlarge it one and a half times to make
the present painting.
Although Degas retained the basic com-
position of the New York painting in making
this second version, the underlying concep-
tion was changed markedly. The dramatic
chiaroscuro that was the raison d'etre for
the New York painting was almost entirely
abandoned. Here Degas lit the laundress
with light directed from the windows as
well as with light reflected from the work-
table. While she remains in half-shadow, her
flesh is naturalistically colored and her dress
carefully described, the dotted blue blouse
with rosy shadows serving as a foil to the
mauve apron. The room in which the laun-
dress works is much larger and airier than
425
in the early picture, and also more easily
understood: for example, Degas discrimi-
nated between the window at the right and
the narrow, glazed double door at the left,
whereas he deliberately left these areas
vague in the New York painting. The laun-
dry, no more than limp sheets of humid linen
in the New York picture, with an occasional
recognizable cuff, is here sorted out as a
crisp shirt, just ironed and folded, another
shirt in the works, and a panoply of colored
clothing — coral, ochre, and blued white —
hanging to dry on the line above. All these
carefully delineated accessories lessen the el-
emental impact of the New York picture — a
statement about a faceless woman working
monotonously in a damp and cramped en-
vironment— to produce here a charming
and somewhat anecdotal image (with a gen-
erous gesture the artist has given this laun-
dress an earring). Degas obviously enjoyed
the play of light filtering through translu-
cent cloth, and achieved it with the full ef-
fect of transparency gained by his technique
of scraping and glazing. Indeed the entire
painting, lovely as it is, seems somewhat
forced and even contrived, as if Degas had
been attempting to compensate for the great
delay in its delivery. Guerin wrote (and
there is no evidence to contradict him) that
this work was not given to Faure until
sometime after 1887, which is to say at least
twelve years after Faure entered into his ini-
tial agreement with the artist.3 This date ap-
pears to be consistent with the manner in
which it is painted — there are parallels both
in scale and in handling with The Millinery
Shop (cat. no. 235).
Degas also made for Faure another work
depicting a laundry scene, Women Ironing
(fig. 232). Like the present work, it was one
in a continuum of variations on a similar
theme that Degas was loathe to let leave his
studio (see cat. no. 257).
1. Lettres Degas 1945, XCV, p. 122; Degas Letters
1947, no. 104, p. 120. Anthea Callen recognizes in
this remark a reference to this picture, but she ac-
cepts Guerin's erroneous dating of the letter to
1886 (Callen 1971, p. 51). Degas refers in the let-
ter to a Saturday, 24 June; Michael Pantazzi, in
preparation for this catalogue, noted that that com-
bination of day and date occurred in 187 1, 1876,
1882, and 1893. Degas and Faure had not estab-
lished relations by 1871, and by 1893 Faure was al-
ready selling this painting. Thus 1876 and 1882 are
the only possible dates for this letter, and the ami-
cable tone of the letter suggests 1876.
2. The only other surviving drawing related to the
three versions of this laundress in silhouette is an
unpublished sketch in a French private collection.
Its small size and manner of execution suggest that
it was a copy of the New York painting that Degas
made in a notebook or on a scrap of paper. Michael
Pantazzi, however, thinks otherwise; see cat.
no. 122.
3. Lettres Degas 1945, V, pp. 31-32 n. 1; Degas Let-
ters 1947, p. 261, Annotations, Letter 10. Guerin
may have had access to Faure's papers, which no
longer exist. Apart from the misdating of some
letters and the omission of the New York Woman
Ironing from the list of works Faure had bought in
1874 in order to return them to the artist, Guerin's
account of the affairs between Degas and Faure
seems accurate and has withstood intensive exami-
nation in Callen 1971.
provenance: Commissioned from the artist by Jean-
Baptiste Faure in 1874, but not delivered until c. 1887;
Faure collection, Paris, c. 1887, until 1893; s°ld to
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 2-3 January 1893, for either Fr
5,000 or Fr 8,000 (stock no. 2564); bought by James
F. Sutton, 16 January 1893, for either Fr 15,000 or Fr
18,000 (sale, American Art Association, New York,
25-30 April 1895, no. 164, for $1,750); bought at
that sale by Durand-Ruel in partnership with Goupil-
Boussod et Valadon (Durand-Ruel stock no. 3326
[one-third]; Goupil-Boussod et Valadon stock
no. 23902 [two-thirds]); Durand-Ruel collection,
Paris, from 5 November 1898; Georges Durand-Ruel
collection, by 1924; Mme Georges Durand-Ruel col-
lection, Neuilly-sur-Seine, by 1932; Mme Jacques
Lefebure, her niece, Paris, until 1967; bought by
Wildenstein and Co., New York, 1967, and sold im-
mediately to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville,
Va.; their gift to the museum 1972.
exhibitions: 1905 London, no. 68 (as "The Ironer,"
1882); 1907-08 Manchester, no. 176; 1924 Paris, no. 68
(as "Repasseuse a contre-jour," 1882), lent by
Georges Durand-Ruel; 1932 London, no. 349 (456),
lent by Mme Durand-Ruel, Paris; 1934, Paris, Gale-
ries Durand-Ruel, Quelques oeuvres importantes de Corot
a Van Gogh, no. 8; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 39, repr.
p. 91, lent by Durand-Ruel, Paris and New 'Vbrk; 1937
New York, no. 10, repr.; 1937, Toronto, The Art
Gallery of Ontario, 15 October-15 November, Trends
in European Paintings from the XIHth to the XXth Cen-
tury, no. 37, repr.; 1940, New York, Durand-Ruel
Galleries, 27 March-13 April, The Four Great Impres-
sionists: Cezanne , Degas, Renoir, Manet, no. 7, lent by
Durand-Ruel, private collection; 1947, New York,
Durand-Ruel Galleries, 10-29 November, Degas,
no. 7, private collection; 1986, Naples, Museo di Ca-
podimonte, 4 December 1986-8 February 1987/Milan,
Pinacoteca di Brera, March-May, Capolavori impres-
sionisti dei musei americani, p. 40, no. 15, repr. (color)
p. 41.
selected references: Theodore Duret, "Degas," The
Art Journal, London, July 1894, xxxiii, repr. p. 204;
Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 95-96, pi. XL (as "Repasseuse a
contre-jour," 1882, Durand-Ruel collection); Lafond
1918-19, II, p. 48; Jamot 1924, p. 151, pi. 60; Grappe
1936, p. 45, repr. (Georges Durand-Ruel collection);
Mongan 1938, p. 301; John Rewald, "Depressionist
Days of the Impressionists: A Fortieth Anniversary,"
Art News, XLIII:20, 1-14 February 1945, repr. p. 13
(installation photograph from 1905 London, Grafton
Galleries exhibition); Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
no. 685 (as 1882, erroneously listed as "peinture a
l'essence sur carton"); Paul-Andre Lemoisne, Degas et
son oeuvre, Paris, 1954, pi. 6 (color) p. 129; New
\brk, Metropolitan, 1967, p. 78; Callen 1971, pp. 51-
52, 165, no. 198 (as "La repasseuse a contre-jour,"
1886-87, catalogued as Jean-Baptiste Faure acquisi-
tion, with subsequent provenance; listed incorrectly
as The Art Gallery of Ontario); Minervino 1974,
no. 597; John Walker, National Gallery of Art, Wash-
ington, New York, 1974, p. 487, fig. 785 (color);
National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illus-
trated Summary Catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1975,
p. 100, no. 2633, rePr- P- 101; Reff 1976, p. 83, fig. 57;
Reff 1977, p. 31, fig. 56 (color); Eunice Lipton, "The
Laundress in Late 19th Century French Culture:
Imagery, Ideology and Edgar Degas," Art History, 3,
1980, pp. 295-313, pi. 44; 1984-85 Paris, fig. 96
(color) p. 117; Lipton 1986, p. 141, fig. 87.
Women Ironing
c. 1884-86
Oil on unprimed canvas
30X3i7/8in. (76X81 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1985)
Lemoisne 785
The image of this pair of laundresses,
caught unawares like Degas's bathers, is as
durable in the artist's oeuvre as the silhouette
of a single laundress. He made four vari-
ations of this composition over a period of at
least a dozen years;1 and although the size
and format of the three versions in oil are
close,2 the approach to the subject and the
methods of handling are sufficiently varied
as to make them three wholly independent
pictures, each conveying a distinctive im-
pression and mood.
The present work, a variant painted in the
1 8 80s after a prototype of the 1870s (fig. 232),
exhibits characteristics of both periods of
Degas's work. The broad comedy of the
Fig. 232. Women Ironing (L686), c. 1876,
reworked c. 1887. Oil on canvas, 3iV8X
28% in. (79 X 73 cm). Private collection
Fig. 233. Women Ironing (L687), c. 1884-85.
Oil on canvas, 32V4 X 29V2 in. (82 X 75 cm).
Norton Simon Art Foundation, Pasadena
426
Fig. 234. Women Ironing (L786), c. 1891. Pastel,
23 Va X 29V8 in. (59 X 74 cm). Private collection
scene would seem to link it to work of the
mid- 1 8 70s, such as some of the brothel
monotypes, and the general placement of
the figures is reminiscent of genre scenes of
this period, such as In a Cafe (The Absinthe
Drinker) (cat. no. 172). However, other for-
mal elements point to a date around the
mid- 1 8 80s. The proximity of the figures to
the foreground is characteristic of works in
the series of milliners and bathers of about
1882-86. And Degas's evident interest in
rendering palpable the various textures he
describes — the flesh of the yawning laun-
dress's stout arm, the scratchy wool shawl
she wears (contrasted with the enameled
surface of the bowl of water), the starched
linen shirt that the other laundress is press-
ing— is equally characteristic of works of the
mid-i88os, especially the artist's pastels.
Certain descriptive passages in particular,
such as the folds of the shirt or the model-
ing of the flesh, are very close to analogous
passages in works dated by the artist 1885.
Regardless, however, of its precise relation-
ship to other works, what is certain is its
virtually unique place within Degas's hugely
varied technical practices: it may be the only
finished painting by the artist executed on
unprimed canvas (even more unusual is its
particularly coarse weave — Degas always
preferred fine linen). Doubtless the artist
sought a richly textured effect reminiscent
427
of his contemporaneous pastels, and he ac-
complished it here by dragging dry, pasty
paint across the rough fabric, resulting in a
lively, chalky surface that still retains its vi-
brant color since the work, like his pastels,
was never varnished.
The audacious gesture of the yawning
woman is perhaps the most striking element
of this picture. George Moore wrote: "It is
one thing to paint washerwomen amid dec-
orative shadows, as Teniers would have done,
and another thing to draw washerwomen
yawning over the ironing table in sharp out-
line upon a dark background. "3 In the same
article, Moore remarks how tellingly a single
gesture can epitomize a life, and in this in-
stance it is as true of the joyless activity of
the figure at right as it is of the comic figure
at left about to take a swig of wine. Paul
Jamot describes her as "a plump gossip
who ... is filling her distended cheek with
a yawn fit, as they say, to unhinge her jaw."
Noting her unconscious vulgarity, Jamot
traces Degas's cruel wit in "the somewhat
distorted face, the screwed-up eyes . . .
barely bigger than the two black holes of
the nostrils under her potato nose. "4
It is impossible to date the different ver-
sions of this composition with certainty.
However, the following hypothetical chro-
nology seems tenable. The canvas formerly
in the Durand-Ruel collection (fig. 232) was
probably the first to be painted: it was com-
missioned in 1874 by Jean-Baptiste Faure
(see "Degas and Faure,*' p. 221) and included
among the works exhibited in the 1876 Im-
pressionist exhibition (as no. 41). The critic
Alexandre Pothey saw it and described it in
a review: "Degas shows us two laundresses:
one presses on her iron with movement that
seems quite accurate; the other yawns and
stretches her arms. It is powerful and true,
like a Daumier."5 Nevertheless, Faure did
not yet own the painting in 1876: his name
did not appear as owner in the exhibition
catalogue, and in a letter dated by Guerin to
1877, Degas promised only then to finish
"les blanchisseuses" that he owed to Faure.6
Thus, either the artist intended to give
Faure another painting, or he wanted to alter
the painting he had exhibited in 1876 before
delivering it. And in fact Degas did rework
the painting (fig. 232), but probably not until
the middle of the 1880s: he removed the linen
hanging on a line behind the two workers
and the flue of the stove behind the laun-
dress on the right. It seems that Degas
painted out these details and repainted the
face of the yawning laundress before handing
the painting over to Faure sometime after
the latter's threat of a lawsuit in January 18 87. 7
Before doing so, it seems that he copied it in
the present painting, formerly in the Ca-
mondo collection and now in the Musee
d'Orsay. This second version, painted in the
style characteristic of the early and mid-
18805, retains some features of the primary
version that are no longer visible in the ear-
lier painting. While the two variants are
very similar in the presentation of the figures,
the pictures ultimately convey quite different
attitudes toward the subject. The high point
of view of the Durand-Ruel painting reduces
the proportions of the figures and thus makes
our perceptions more detached and less im-
mediate than with the Orsay painting. This
almost clinical objectification of the subject
is characteristic of Degas's approach in the
1870s, while the strong presence of the fig-
ures in the Orsay painting is equally charac-
teristic of Degas's work in the 1880s. Degas
went on to make a third version of the com-
position (fig. 234). The vigorous contours
and the summary modeling of this late variant
denote a work of the 1890s, perhaps around
the spring of 189 1, when Degas sold the
painting now in the Musee d' Orsay to
Durand-Ruel.
The version now in the Norton Simon
Museum (fig. 233) was the last of the works
to leave the studio (in 1902)8 and it is least
like the others. In some respects it is the
work most characteristic of the mid-i88os,
with its straightforward rather than oblique
viewpoint, its large-scale laundresses taking
up much of the depicted space, and its al-
most idealized — rather than caricatural —
figural style. Some of the passages, however,
seem inconsistent with Degas's style in the
1 8 80s (for example, the hatching or striation
over some of the contours), and since it re-
mained with the artist until late in his life, it
could have been retouched by him at almost
any point.
1. L785 (the present picture); L686 (fig. 232); L687
(fig. 233); L786 (fig. 234).
2. L786 (fig. 234), the picture in charcoal and pastel,
is smaller and more insistently horizontal.
3. Moore 1890, pp. 423-24. He refers either to this
work or to the related work, L686 (fig. 232).
4. Paul Jamot, "Degas," in La peinture au Musee du
Louvre, ecole francaise: XIXe siecle (troisieme partie),
Paris: L'lllustration, [1929], p. 71.
5. Alexandre] Pothey, "Chronique," La Presse, 31
March 1876. Hollis Clayson refers to this review,
without quoting from it, in 1986 Washington,
D.C., p. 158 n. 12. Ronald Pickvance is credited
with the identification of L686 (fig. 232) as the
picture seen in the 1876 exhibition, in the sale cat-
alogue for this painting: Christie's, London, 30 No-
vember 1987, lot no. 80.
6. Lettres Degas 1945, XIII, p. 41; Degas Letters
1947, no. 21, p. 46.
7. One might argue that the late delivery of the
Faure painting puts into question the date of the
Orsay painting, for if the latter was indeed com-
pleted by 1886, Degas should have been able to
give it to Faure to redeem his obligation, whereas
in fact he did not release it until 1891. However, it
is clear that it was Degas's practice to keep the
paintings destined for Faure separate from the rest
of his work. (See cat. nos. 157, 159.)
8. Sold by Degas to Durand-Ruel for Fr 15,000 on
18 October 1902 (stock no. 7184).
provenance: Acquired from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 7-9 March 1891, for Fr 4,000 (stock
no. 854, as "Les repasseuses"); bought by Paul Galli-
mard, Paris, 23 March 1891, for Fr 6,000; bought by
Michel Manzi, Paris, or with Galerie Manzi-Joyant,
1893; bought by Comte Isaac de Camondo, Novem-
ber 1893, for Fr 25,000 (Camondo notebook, Ar-
chives, Musee du Louvre, Paris); Camondo collec-
tion, Paris, 1893-1908; his bequest to the Louvre 1908;
entered the Louvre 191 1; first exhibited in 1914.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 42, pi. XXIV;
1945, Paris, Musee du Louvre, July, Chefs-d'oeuvre de
la peinture, no. 93 (c. 1884); 1946, Paris, Musee des
Arts Decoratifs, Les Goncourt et leur temps, no. 594
(as c. 1884); 1969 Paris, no. 31.
selected references: Moore 1890, pp. 423-24 (de-
scribes either this work or L686, fig. 232); Pica 1907,
pp. 404-18, repr. p. 417; Alexandre 1908, p. 32,
repr. p. 24; Grappe 1908, repr. p. 13; Lemoisne 1912,
p. 94, compared with L686; Jamot 1914, pp. 457-58;
Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914, no. 168; Lafond 19 18-
19, I, p. 10, repr. , II, p. 47; Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. 79;
Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1922, pp. 35-36, no. 168,
pi. XXXVII (as c. 1884); Meier-Graefe 1923,
pi. LXXIX; Paris, Louvre, Peintures, 1924, p. 76;
Henri Focillon, La peinture aux XIXe et XXe siecles:
du realisme a nos jours, Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1928,
repr. p. 187; Paul Jamot, La peinture au Musee du
Louvre: ecole francaise. XIXe siecle, Paris: L'lllustration
[1929], pp. 69-71, pi. 52 p. 73; Walker 1933, p. 179,
fig. 4 p. 175; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 785 (as
c. 1884); Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958,
pp. 49-50, no. 93; Paris, Louvre, Peintures, 1959,
p. 13, no. 642, pi. 223; Werner Hofmann, The Earthly
Paradise: Art in the Nineteenth Century, New York,
196 1, p. 425, pi. 174; Pool 1963, p. 43, pi. 41 (color);
Minervino 1974, no. 624, pi. XLVIII (color); Broude
1977, pp. 105, 106, fig. 23; Linda Nochlin, Realism,
New York, 1979, p. 157, repr. p. 156; Eunice Lipton,
"The Laundress in Late Nineteenth Century French
Culture: Imagery, Ideology and Edgar Degas," Art
History, III, September 1980, pi. 38; McMullen 1984,
repr. p. 375; 1984-85 Paris, fig. 37 (color) p. 37,
repr. (color, detail) p. 36; Lipton 1986, pp. 142-43,
repr. p. 143, fig. 89; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Peintures, 1986, III, p. 194.
258.
Woman Ironing
c. 1882-86
Oil on canvas
25V2 X 26V4 in. (64.8 X 66.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery,
Reading, Pennsylvania (76-45-1)
Lemoisne 276
Like most of the pictures of laundresses, this
little-known work seems to have roots in
the 1 8 70s. It shares the workaday mood and
monochrome veil of paint of the Woman
Ironing (L361, formerly Mme Jacques
Doucet collection) that Lemoisne dates to
1874 — only the watermelon-red shirt of the
428
2S8
Fig. 235. Woman Ironing (L277),
c. 1882-86. Pastel. Location
unknown
laundress relieves the drab olives and browns
of the painting. But the vigorous pastel that
served as a study for this painting (fig. 23 5) 1
could not date before 1882-86, when Degas
made similar studies for the pictures of mil-
liners (see, for example, the studies for The
Millinery Shop, cat. no. 235). And the trans-
formations that resulted when the ideas in
the study were transferred to canvas are
typical of Degas's strategies in the 1880s: the
figure is made more remote by the seemingly
endless table at which she works, and she is
further isolated from the viewer by the
sheets of hanging linen. While one tends to
associate the bird's-eye perspective and the
diagonalized space with Degas's work
around 1879, in fact these devices persisted
well into the 18 80s and can be found in all
the other series of this decade, such as the
milliners, the bathers, the dancers, and the
visits to the museum. However, there is a
new element here, and that is the artist's
willingness to attempt to extract sufficient
pictorial interest from one expressive figure,
as opposed to his preferred method in the
1870s of building compositions with, and
conveying meaning through, multiple figural
groups.
1 . There is a copy of this work in the Whitworth Art
Gallery, Manchester (0.40.1925), accepted as au-
thentic by Ronald Pickvance ("Drawings by De-
gas in English Public Collections: 2," Connoisseur,
CLVII: 633, November 1964, p. 162, repr. p. 163),
but rejected as a forgery by Richard Thomson
(French 19th Century Drawings in the Whitworth
Gallery, Manchester: University of Manchester,
1981, p. 13).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 6 [as
"Blanchisseuse repassant du linge"], for Fr 7,000);
bought by M. Pelle (Gustave Pellet?); Henry K.
Dick, Ithaca, N.Y., by 1949; Martha B. Dick, his
niece, Reading, Pa., by 1954 until 1976; her bequest
to the museum 1976.
exhibitions: 1949 New York, p. 47, no. 21 (as 1871),
repr. p. 20, lent by Henry K. Dick.
selected references: Guerin 193 1, P- l7'> Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 276 (as c. 1870-72); Callen 1971,
p. 169, no. 202A (in which this painting is errone-
ously proposed as one of the six paintings sold by
Durand-Ruel to Jean-Baptiste Faure on 5 March 1874,
for Fr 8,000, and subsequently returned to the artist);
Minervino 1974, no. 366.
429
259.
Dancers on the Stage
c. 1882-84
Pastel on laid paper, extended with strip at top
25V2 X 20 in. (64.8 X 50.8 cm)
Signed in brown chalk lower left: Degas
Dallas Museum of Art. Lent by Mrs. Frank
Bartholow
Lemoisne 720
No other dance scene by Degas is so dra-
matically packed with such a variety of fig-
ures and poses, nor does any other picture
evoke so convincingly the actuality of per-
formers seen from very close quarters. Al-
though Degas did not include a ballet patron
in this picture, his vantage point is that of
the privileged viewer who lurks among the
stage flats to keep an eye on his protegee.1
While there are no closely analogous ballet
works in Degas's oeuvre, there are parallels
to be drawn between this work and pictures
with different subjects. The crowding of the
composition is similar to the effect one finds
in some of the milliners, especially At the
Milliner's (cat. no. 233), and the modeling of
the figures, carefully executed and highly
finished, is also comparable. But curiously,
the closest analogy may be with Degas's
contemporaneous jockey scenes. The wedge-
shaped group of dancers here is organized
along the same lines as the mounted jockeys
in Before the Race (L757) of about 1883-85.
In both works, one senses that the figures
have been added one over the next, like so
many silhouettes, cut out and rearranged.
And common to both is the steep recession
that follows the diagonal axis.
The yellow harmony seen in this picture
occurs rarely in Degas's work, and it is un-
usual for him to outline contours in this par-
ticular brown chalk. Every indication suggests
that this is a virtually unique tour de force.
While other pastels of dancers on the stage
are arranged along a diagonal axis in a simi-
lar fashion, Degas had never before dared
such a profusion of drawn limbs: here there
are no fewer than eleven arms. Felix Feneon
remarked after seeing this work at Durand-
Ruel in January 1888: "This mass radiating
in a tangle of arms and legs is like an image
of an epileptic Hindu god."2
1 . The observation is George Shackelford's, in 1984-
85 Washington, D.C., p. 38.
2. Felix Feneon, "Calendrier de janvier," La Revue
Independante, February 1888, reprinted in Feneon
1970, I, p. 96.
provenance: (Possibly Durand-Ruel stock no. 593,
bought from the artist for Fr 600 on 13 December
1884, sold to Peter Coats for Fr 1200 on 25 April
1885). With Durand-Ruel, Paris, by 1888; Dr. Georges
Viau, Paris, by 1918. [?Wilhelm Hansen, Copenhagen].
With Winkel and Magnussen, Copenhagen. With
Galerie Barbazanges, Paris, until March 192 1; ac-
quired by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 12 March 192 1 (stock
no. 2378); transferred to Durand-Ruel, New York
(stock no. 4650) and sold to F. H. Ginn, 15 Decem-
ber 1925; Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Ginn, Cleveland,
1925 until at least 1936; Mr. and Mrs. William Powell
Jones, Gates Mills, Ohio, by 1947. Mr. and Mrs. Algur
Meadows, Dallas, by 1974 until 1982; by descent to
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Bartholow, Dallas.
exhibitions: 1888, Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Jan-
uary (no catalogue); 1936 Philadelphia, no. 42, repr.,
lent by Mr. and Mrs. Frank H. Ginn, Cleveland;
1947 Cleveland, no. 39, repr. frontispiece, lent by
Mr. and Mrs. William Powell Jones, Gates Mills,
Ohio; 1949 New York, no. 64, repr. p. 48, lent by
Mr. and Mrs. William Powell Jones; 1974, Dallas
Museum of Fine Arts, 5 June-7july, The Meadows
Collection, no number; 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 36, repr.
(color); 1978, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 24janu-
ary-26 February, Dallas Collects: Impressionist and
Early Modern Masters, no. 12, lent anonymously by
Mr. and Mrs. Algur Meadows; 1984-85 Washing-
ton, D.C., no. 8, repr. (color) frontispiece.
selected references: Felix Feneon, "Calendrier de
janvier," La Revue Independante, February 1888, re-
printed in Feneon 1970, I, p. 96; Lafond 191 8-19, II,
repr. facing p. 26 (as G. Viau collection); Hoppe
1922, pp. 51-52, repr. p. 53 (as Winkel and Mag-
nussen collection); Jamot 1924, pp. 62, 152; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 720 (as 1883); Browse
[1949], p. 374, no. in (as c. 1884-86); Rich 1951,
repr. p. 26; Browse 1967, p. 112, fig. 16 p. 114; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 796; Anne R. Bromberg, "Looking
at Art: France in the 19th Century,*' Dallas Museum of
Art Bulletin, Summer 1986, pp. n— 13, no. 10, repr.
p. 12.
430
260.
Harlequin
1884-85
Pastel on paper, extended with strip at right
18X31 in. (45.7X78.7 cm)
Signed and inscribed lower left: a mon amie
Hortense/ Degas
Hart Collection
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 818
One tends to think of Degas *s depictions of
the ballet as generic — rehearsals in unidenti-
fied spaces for nameless ballets, or fleeting
pauses behind unspecified decors — but there
are in fact a number of readily identifiable
ballets within Degas's oeuvre. Aside from
La Source (see cat. no. 77) and Robert le Di-
able (see cat. nos. 103, 159), the identifiable
ballets include La Farandole (see cat. no. 212),
the ballet from Sigurd (L594; L595; fig. 188),
the ballet from L'Ajricaine (L521), the ballet
Yedda (BR77), a ballet from Don Giovanni
(L527, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown),1
and possibly the ballet from Le Roi de Lahore
(see cat. no. 162). 2 The present pastel is
among a suite of seven works (plus a later
reprise and two studies)3 that call for identi-
fication on account of the careful description
of the costumes from the commedia delTarte.
The costume worn here and in each of the
other related works is that of Harlequin; it
appears just as it was defined by Riccoboni
in 173 1 : "pieces of red, blue, yellow, and
green . . . cut in triangles, and arranged
next to one another from head to toe; there
is a small hat that barely covers the shaven
head; little pumps without heels, and a flat
black mask without eyes, but with only two
quite small holes to see through."4
Lillian Browse identifies the ballet de-
picted here as Les Jumeaux de Bergame* a
farce about two brothers — both Harlequins
from Bergamo — who arrive in Paris and ac-
cidentally fall in love with the same woman.
Harlequin Senior is at first unaware of his
beloved's new suitor, but when he hears
someone serenading her outside her house,
he attacks the interloper, who turns out to
be his brother, Harlequin Junior. Naturally
there is another girl on hand, so that every-
one can marry at the finale. The original
play was written by Jean-Pierre Claris de
Florian in 1782; adapted as a ballet by
Charles Nuitter and Louis Merante with
music by Theodore de Lajarte, it premiered
in Paris on 26 January 1886. Degas appar-
ently did not attend the gala opening night,
but he did see a performance on 12 February
1886, when he signed the register at the
door through which he gained entry to the
stage and the foyers behind it. He also attend-
ed rehearsals. There is, as proof, a torn frag-
ment of a note in Degas's hand on statio-
nery of the Theatre National de 1' Opera,
dated 23 July 1885, in which the artist de-
scribes Merante rehearsing the dancers for
their roles.6 This could explain why one of the
pastels in the suite is dated 1885 (fig. 237) —
as evidently there were rehearsals well be-
fore the January premiere. However, a fur-
ther complication develops when one learns
that another pastel, L1033, was bought from
Degas by Durand-Ruel on 29 November
1884, and that another, BR 123, was bought
by them on 30 April 1885, from a different
dealer, St. Albin, who in turn must have
owned it for at least a few weeks before sell-
ing it. Thus, Degas seems to have executed
at least some of the Harlequin pastels in the
winter of 1884-85, many months before he
is known to have attended rehearsals.
It is possible that another production, also
called Les Jumeaux de Bergame, may have
been the inspiration for Degas's Harlequin
suite. In 1875, William Busnach wrote a
comic opera in one act closely following
Florian's play and set to music by Charles
Lecocq. In the eleventh scene of Busnach's
libretto there is a moment in which Harle-
quin Senior unwittingly beats his brother
with a bat — precisely what Degas describes
in the present pastel. (The brother is hud-
dled under what must be a cape; one of his
hands emerges from it pathetically.) The
operatic version of Les Jumeaux de Bergame
does not figure in the programs of either the
Opera or the Opera Comique between 1875
and 1889, but there were of course other
theaters where it could have been performed
and where Degas might have seen it. In the
summer of 1885, for example, a production
of either the opera or the new ballet was
mounted at the Casino de Parame on the
Normandy coast, where Degas is known to
have stopped (see Chronology III).
260
431
Regardless of which version he saw (both
had ballet scenes in them), the story clearly
caught the artist's fancy. No other staged
piece had given rise to as many pictures by
him as Les Jumeaux de Bergame, and it ap-
pears that it was the slapstick or vaudevil-
lian character of the work that appealed
most. In five of the seven pastels, Degas
shows Harlequin Senior behaving aggres-
sively with his stick, and to heighten the
irony of one brother threatening another, he
emphasized the hips of the women playing
Harlequin en travesti. Thus, what Degas ac-
tually depicts is a kind of charade in the
form of a farce about courtship and love; it
is only too fitting that the sardonic artist,
past fifty and morose about his own bache-
lorhood, should have given this pastel to his
beloved Hortense Valpincpn for her wed-
ding to Jacques Fourchy in 1885.
1. Identified by Alexandra R. Murphy as the "Trio
des masques" in the first act (Williamstown,
Clark, 1987, no. 56, p. 70).
2. Browse [1949], p. 56.
3. The others in the series are L771, L806, L817
(fig. 237), L1032 bis, L1033, and BR 123; sometime
in the 1890s, Degas took up the theme again for
Li in, which was preceded by two studies, L1112
and LH13. There is also a related sculpture,
RXLVIII (cat. no. 262).
4. L. Riccoboni, Histoire du theatre italien, Paris, 173 1,
quoted by Francois Moureau, "Theater Costumes
in the Work of Watteau," in Watteau: 1684-1721
(exhibition catalogue), Washington, D,C: Na-
tional Gallery of Art, 1984, p. 507.
5. Browse [1949], p. 58.
6. Marcel Guerin refers to this letter, without pub-
lishing it, in the French edition of the Degas Let-
ters (Lettres Degas 1945, p. 103 n. 2), but the ref-
erence is omitted in the English edition (Degas
Letters 1947, p. 103). Part of the note has been
torn away; the remaining portion reads as follows:
23 July 85 /at the Opera, in the Cupola, rehears-
al of the short ballet "Les Jumeaux de Ber-
gamme," by Florian, the music of M. de Lajarte,
the ballet master Merante.
Mile Sanlaville and Mile Alice Biot play the
two harlequins, Mile Bernay and Mile Gallay
the two women, Rosette — Bernay, and Ne-
rine — Gallay.
The two men are in green[?] breeches . . .
black stockings . . . shoes . . . where they will
dance.
To the left near a window the 2 violins, a
desk ... on the bench — facing the stage a large
mirror in front of which are two curtains that
are drawn when the dancers look at themselves
too often.
Merante rehearses the mimed scenes with the
4 actors. — then the dancers depart and then be-
gins the divertissement that follows the . . .
Merante made them act it out again . . .
(Unpublished note, private collection, Paris.)
provenance: Gift from the artist to Hortense Valpin-
cpn, 188 s, on the occasion of her marriage to Jacques
Fourchy; M. and Mme Jacques Fourchy, Paris, from
1885 until at least 1924; Raymond Fourchy, their son,
Paris, by 1937 until 198 1; consigned by his heirs for
sale, Sotheby's, London, 1 April 198 1, no. 8a, repr.;
bought at that sale by an agent for the present owner.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 151 (as "Scene de ballet
[Arlequin]," c. 1885), lent by Mme J. Fourchy; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 126, lent by Raymond Four-
chy; 1975, Paris, Galerie Schmit, 15 May-21 June,
Exposition Degas, no. 28, repr. (color), p. 57.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 818
(as 1885); Minervino 1974, no. 831.
26l.
Dancer with Red Stockings
c. 1884
Pastel on pink laid paper, now faded
29% X 23^8 in. (75.9 X 58.7 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York
(1971.65)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 760
When this pastel — seemingly a casual study
tossed off by the artist — was shown in New
York in 1886, several reviewers considered
the exhibition of such a patently unfinished
work a provocation. One writer, acknowl-
edging its merits, believed nevertheless that
such works should rather be exhibited
someplace "where only artists, students, or
critics would see them, for such persons on-
ly do they concern."1 Other critics appreci-
ated the realism of Degas's dancer studies
and sensed that the fragmentary nature of
261
432
some of the works contributed to the im-
pression of spontaneity and hence truthful-
ness. The art critic for the New York Mail
and Express was transported to the stage of a
French theater: "One is in zpays des cocotte[s],
and actresses; the genius of Degas, espe-
cially, revels dans les coulisses. Here are ballet
coryphees in every state of deshabille, danc-
ing, dressing, drawing on their stockings,
rapidly sketched in charcoal on variously
tinted papers, with a dab of occasional color,
doubtless la note qui chantel The utter home-
liness and want of grace of the models con-
sole us for the scanty memoranda the artist
gives of their charms."2
Degas seems to have excerpted the two
figures on this sheet from a pastel of about
1879-80 of dancers at rest (fig. 236). But, as
was usual for him at that period, he was not
content merely to reproduce poses he had
Fig. 236. Before the Ballet (L530), c. 1879-80.
Pastel, i95/s X 255/8 in. (50X65 cm). Private
collection
developed elsewhere. Instead, he once again
adopted a different point of view, as if mov-
ing around the models from above. The prin-
cipal figure in this work is oriented more
toward the viewer, even if her head is turned
away; we look down into her lap, so that
her spindly legs appear more splayed than in
the larger pastel. The second figure, with
arms crossed, is only loosely related to her
counterpart. In the earlier work, straddling
the bench and bent over, she appears to be
waiting patiently. Here, her back straightened
but her eyes downcast, she appears to be suf-
fering more from the cold than from boredom.
Both figures seem caught in a state of un-
dress, made overt by the glimpse of decol-
letage and made sexual by the sensational
red stockings. The figure at the right, in
particular, is seen in a transitional state: par-
tially clad in her street clothes, she still has
her dancing slippers on. Degas seems to
have delighted in this ambiguity or impreci-
sion, for he declined to make her costume
more specific, and even neglected to draw
the legs of the bench on which the dancers
presumably sit.
The light in this work is particularly well
observed. Rendered with a pale blue chalk,
it strikes just the edge of the cheek of the fig-
ure at the left, before falling on the figure at
the right, whose head is turned to receive it.
1. "The Impressionist Pictures: The Art Association
Galleries," The Studio: Journal of the Fine Arts,
no. 21, 17 April 1886, p. 249.
2. "The Impressionists: II," The Mail and Express,
New York, 21 April 1886, p. 3.
provenance: An entry in the Durand-Ruel stock
books indicates that Durand-Ruel, Paris, sent this
work to Durand-Ruel, New York, 19 February 1886;
it was returned (after the close of the 1886 New York
exhibition) to Durand-Ruel, Paris, 11 August 1886
(stock no. 451, as "Danseuse tirant son bas"). Possi-
bly with Boussod et Valadon, Paris (photo credit,
Alexandre 1918). Ernest Chausson, Paris, by 1918;
Mme Ernest Chausson, his widow, Paris, until 1936
(Chausson sale, Drouot, Paris, 5 June 1936, no. 6,
repr. [as "La danseuse aux bas rouges"], for Fr 30,000);
bought at that sale by M. Bacri; Lord Ivor Spencer
Churchill, London, by 1937; bought by Paul Rosen-
berg, New York, 25 November 1944; bought by
Charlotte Hyde (Mrs. Louis F. Hyde), 2 December
I944-
exhibitions: 1886 New York, no. 50 (as "Danseuse
Pulling on Her Tights"); 1935, Brussels, Palais des
Beaux- Arts, "L'impressionnisme" (no catalogue);
1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 134 (as "Danseuse aux bas
rouges," c. 1885), lent by Lord Ivor Churchill, Lon-
don; 1949 New York, no. 66 (as "Dancer with Red
Stockings," 1883), lent by Mrs. Louis F. Hyde.
selected references: "The Impressionists: II," The
Mail and Express, New York, 21 April 1886, p. 3; Ar-
sene Alexandre, "Essai sur Monsieur Degas," Les
Arts, 1918, no. 166, p. 8, repr. (as "Etude aux cray-
ons de couleurs," photo Goupil); Lafond 1918-19, II,
repr. (color) after p. 24 (as "Danseuses aux bas rouges,"
Mme Chausson collection); Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 760 (as c. 1883-85); Browse [1949], p. 407, pi 222
(as c. 1900); Minervino 1974, no. 806; James K. Kettle-
well, The Hyde Collection Catalogue, Glens Falls,
N.Y., 198 1, no. 75, p. 161, repr. (color) p. 160 (as
c. 1883-85).
262.
Dancer in the Role of Harlequin,
erroneously called Dancer
Rubbing Her Knee
1884-85
Bronze
Height: 12V4 in. (31. 1 cm)
Original: red-brown wax. Collection of Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
Rewald XL VIII
When this work was exhibited for the first
time, in 192 1 at Galerie Hebrard, it was in-
correctly titled Dancer Rubbing Her Knee.
Presumably the generic title was invented
because the founder who edited the bronzes,
Hebrard, was unaware of the relationship of
the original wax to Degas's series of seven
pastels depicting scenes from Les Jumeaux de
Bergame (see cat. no. 260). Since one of the
pastels was sold by Degas in late 1884, and
since the pastel to which this work directly
corresponds is dated 1885 (fig. 237), one can
safely assume that Degas modeled the origi-
nal wax over the course of the winter of
1884-85. 1 The close correlation with a dated
picture makes this sculpture one of the very
few that can be confidently assigned to a
specific period.
The dynamic twist of the pose and the
strength it suggests would place the work in
the mid- 1 8 80s even without the supporting
evidence of related pictures. Several writers,
including Charles Millard,2 have noticed
that a characteristic feature of Degas's sculp-
ture of the 1 8 80s is the appearance of move-
ment, which the artist sought to express
synthetically with ever-increasing accuracy.
Here Degas has captured the moment in
which a nimble female dancer in the male
role of Harlequin Senior, poised with her
feet planted in an exaggerated fourth posi-
tion, is about to pantomime "her" discovery
that the lout "she" has just attacked with a
baton is Harlequin Junior, "her" brother.
The contrapposto of the figure and the ex-
pectant lean forward are somehow sufficient
to convey the high drama of the moment.
Both the original wax and the subsequent
bronze cast exhibit the smooth, compact
surface of the artist's more finished works.
It seems, however, that Degas could not
leave alone even so successful a piece as this
figurine, for the back and right arm appear
to have been reworked, most probably at a
later date, and then left unfinished. The fig-
ure no longer has the baton it may once
have held — the founder, perhaps assisted by
Degas's friend Bartholome, made the object
look like a handkerchief or scarf Notwith-
Fig. 237. Harlequin (L817), dated 1885.
Pastel, 243/4 X 22 in. (63 X 56 cm). The Art
Institute of Chicago
433
262
standing the lack of detail in the face, the
large eye sockets, big cheeks, and smile
confer upon it an uncanny resemblance to
that of Mile Marie Sanlaville (see fig. 238),
the premiere danseuse who danced the role
of Harlequin Senior in the 1886 production
of the ballet Les Jumeaux de Bergame. Degas
obviously knew Sanlaville well; he dedi-
cated one of his eight sonnets to her:
Tout ce que le beau mot de pantomime dit
Et tout ce que la langue agile, mensongere,
Du ballet dit a ceux que percent le mystere
Des mouvements d'un corps eloquent et
sans bruit.
Qui s'entetent a voir en la femme qui fuit,
Incessante, fardee, arlequine, severe,
Glisser la trace de leur ame passagere,
Plus vive qu'une page admirable qu'on lit,
Tout, et le dessin plein de la grace savante,
Une danseuse Pa, lasse comme Atalante:
Tradition sereine, impenetrable aux fous.
Sous le bois meconnu, votre art infini
veille:
Par le doute et l'oubli d'un pas, je songe a
vous,
Et vous venez tirer d'un vieux faune
Poreille.3
1 . There is a sheet of two drawings related to this
sculpture (IV:75). The drawings show a dancer
from two different angles in precisely this same
pose, wearing Harlequin's pants but with a wom-
an's rounded hips.
2. Millard 1976, pp. 106-07.
3. Degas Sonnets 1946, no. 6, pp. 35-36.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 27; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 39A; Paris, Louvre,
Sculptures, 1933, p. 68, no. 1744, Orsay 39P; Re-
wald 1944, no. XL VIII (as 1882-95), Metropolitan
39A; Borel 1949, n.p., repr., wax; Rewald 1956,
no. XLVIII, Metropolitan 39A; Minervino 1974, no. S
27; 1976 London, no. 27; Millard 1976, pp. 24, 67-68,
71, 107, figs. 76, 80, wax (as 1885-90); 1986 Flor-
ence, no. 39, p. 192, fig. 39 p. 136.
434
Fig. 238. Rene Gilbert, Portrait of Mile
Sanlaville of the Opera, etching after his
pastel exhibited at the Salon of 1883. From
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXVII, 1883, facing
p. 466
A. Orsay Set P, no. 39
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2091)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family,
Paris, by the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 27; 1956,
Yverdon, Switzerland, Hotel de Ville, 4 August-17
September, 100 sculptures de peintres: Daumier a Picasso,
no number; 1969 Paris, no. 277; 1984-85 Paris, no. 36
p. 189, fig. 161 p. 184.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. jp
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29. 100.411)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard, Paris, by
Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer late August 1921; Have-
meyer collection, New York, 1921-29; her bequest
to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 64; 1925-27 New
York; 1930 New York, under Collection of Bronzes,
nos. 390-458; 1974 Dallas, no number, n.p. fig. 14;
1977 New York, no. 33 of sculptures.
263.
The Singer in Green
c. 1884
Pastel on light blue laid paper
233/4X 18V4 in. (60.3 x 46. 3 cm)
Signed in purple chalk lower right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, i960 (61.101.7)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 772
When this pastel was sold at public auction
in Paris in 1898, the catalogue included a re-
markable description: "Skinny and with the
graceful moves of a little monkey, she has
just sung her ribald verses and, with a ges-
ture that conceals an entreaty behind her
smile, is inviting applause. The harsh glare
of the footlights marks her protruding
shoulders and the working-class contours of
her face with shadows that are searching
and sometimes brutal: a joyful flower whose
special beauty cloaks the scent of poverty."1
With her small eyes, high cheeks, and low
brow, the young woman looks like Marie van
Goethem, the model for The Little Fourteen-
Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227), and also re-
sembles the girl in The Milliner (cat. no. 234).
Evidently these were the features that signi-
fied for the artist a working-class background,
whence came the performers of the popular
cafes-concerts. But Degas's depiction is more
than generic or class-bound, for the gesture
of the hand lightly tapping the shoulder,
carefully developed in a preparatory draw-
ing (fig. 239), is unmistakably the specific
trademark of Theresa (Emma Valadon, 1837-
19 1 3), the queen of the cafe-concert in the
1870s and 1880s and one of Degas's favorite
performers (see cat. no. 175). 2 By the time
this pastel was made, Theresa was already a
plump woman who wedged herself uncom-
fortably into her costumes,3 so that Degas
could not have meant to portray her specifi-
cally here. Yet as a souvenir portrait-carte of
1865 attests (fig. 240), Theresa once had the
thin waist and skinny arms of the figure in
The Singer in Green, and in Degas's synthe-
sis of an imaginary but quintessential singer
of the cafe-concert he drew heavily on the
special charms of the star of the Alcazar. On
4 December 1883, the artist wrote to his
friend Henry Lerolle urging him to "go right
away to hear Theresa at the Alcazar. . . .
She opens her big mouth and there emerges
the most natural, the most delicate, the
most vibrantly tender voice imaginable."4
This pastel is not mentioned in the Durand-
Ruel archives before 1898, when it was bought
at the Laurent sale.5 Since then it has been
called The Singer in Green — despite the ab-
sence of a pure green in the singer's costume.
The vivid, virtually acidic yellow, turquoise,
and orange are characteristic of the saturated
hues and complementary colors that artists
in Degas's circle began to experiment with
in the mid-i88os, and evocative as well of
the cheap confection in which the singer would
have appeared. The generalized setting seems
to refer to the parklike environs of the sum-
mer cafes-concerts; otherwise there are no
clues to the locale, as there are in The Song
of the Dog (cat. no. 175) or in Degas's etch-
ings and lithographs (see cat. nos. 264, 265)
As with The Milliner (cat. no, 234), Degas
worked on a fine sheet of paper and drew
Fig. 239. Cafe-concert Singer (111:393),
c. 1884. Charcoal and white chalk,
i87/sX i25/s in. (48 X 32 cm). Private
collection
Fig. 240. Etienne Carjat, Theresa, 1865.
Portrait-carte. Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris
435
surely, with little revision. Only the arms and
profile betray signs of reworking; otherwise
the technique is as dazzling in its confidence
as it is bold in color, and the work itself is
remarkably fresh.
1. The author of these remarks is unknown. "Cata-
logue de tableaux modernes, pastels et dessins par
Cheret, Dantan, Degas, Detaille et de Neuville,
Gauguin, Lebourg, Maurin, Sisley et Wilette;
sculptures par Rodin et Campagne dependant de
la collection de M. X . . . [Laurent]. Vente Hotel
Drouot, Salle 6, le jeudi 8 decembre 1898 a 3 h.,"
no. 4.
2. First identified by Michael Shapiro in "Degas and
the Siamese Twins of the Cafe-Concert: The Am-
bassadeurs and the Alcazar d'Ete," Gazette des
Beaux- Arts, XCV, April 1980, pp. 159-60.
3. Louisine Havemeyer describing Theresa as she ap-
pears in The Song of the Dog (cat. no. 175), in
Havemeyer 196 1, pp. 245-46.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, XL VIII, p. 75; Degas Letters
1947, no. 57, p. 76.
5. The work was not, as suggested in Huth 1946,
p. 239, exhibited in New York in 1886; entries in
the Durand-Ruel ledgers identify no. 57 of that ex-
hibition, "Chanteuse," as an etching (stock no. 699,
probably RS49 [see cat. nos. 178, 179]) that was
bought from Degas on 27 June 1885, the same day
as the pastelized etching "Blanchisseuse" (RS48),
which was also shown in the 1886 New York
exhibition.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Lau-
rent collection, Paris, until 1898 (sale, Drouot, Paris,
"Collection de M. X" [Laurent], 8 December 1898,
no. 4, for Fr 8,505); bought at that sale by Durand-
Ruel, Paris (stock no. 4874, as "La chanteuse verte"),
1 898-1906; sent on consignment to Paul Cassirer,
Berlin, 18 October-18 November 1901; bought from
Durand-Ruel by A. A. Hebrard, 3 February 1906,
for Fr 15,000. With Alexandre Berthier, Prince de
Wagram, Paris, until 1908; bought by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 15 May 1908, for Fr 18,861 (stock no. 8675);
bought by M. P. Riabouschinsky, 17 April 1909, for
Fr 20,000; Riabouschinsky collection, Moscow, 1909-
c. 19 18-19; probably nationalized with his collection
1918/19; State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, until
1925; Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, 1925-33;
bought by M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1933;
bought by Stephen C. Clark, New York, 1933-60;
his bequest to the museum i960.
exhibitions: 1899, Dresden, Kunst Salon Ernst Ar-
nold, spring, Fruhjahrs-Ausstellung, no. 7 (as "Sang-
erin"); 1903, Vienna, Secession, Entwicklung des lm-
pressionismus in Malerei u. Plastik, no. 52 (as "Im
Cafe-concert"); 1905 London, no. 69 (as "The Music
Hall Singer in Green," pastel), no lender listed; 1936,
New York, The Century Club, 1 1 January-10 Febru-
ary, French Masterpieces of the Nineteenth Century
(foreword by Augustus V. Tack), no. 16, repr., lent
by Stephen C. Clark; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 44, repr.,
lent anonymously; 1937 New York, no. 3, repr. p. 96;
1941 New York, no. 39, fig. 42; 1942, New York,
Paul Rosenberg and Co. , 4-29 May, Great French
Masters of the Nineteenth Century: Corot to Van Gogh,
no. 3, repr. p. 15; 1946, New York, The Century
Association, 6June-28 September, Paintings from
the Stephen C. Clark Collection, unnumbered check-
list; 1954, New York, M. Knoedler and Co., 12-30
January, A Collector's Taste: Selections from the Collec-
tion of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen C. Clark, no. 8, repr.;
!955. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 31 May-
5 September, Paintings from Private Collections, p. 8;
1958, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
summer, Paintings from Private Collections, no. 41;
1959. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
summer, Paintings from Private Collections, no. 29;
i960, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, 19
May-20 June, Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture Col-
lected by Yale Alumni, no. 188, repr. p. 182; i960,
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6July-
4 September, Paintings from Private Collections, no. 31;
1977 New Ysrk, no. 46 of works on paper, repr.
selected references: Georges Grappe, Edgar Degas,
Berlin [1909], p. 38; Hourticq 1912, repr. p. 104; Le-
moisne 1912, pp. 101-02, pi. XLIII; Lafond 1918-19,
I, repr. p. 7, II, p. 38; Iakov Tugendkhol'd, Edgar Degas,
Moscow, Z. I. Grzhebin, 1922, repr. p. 8;Jamot
1924, P- 153, pi- 66; Vollard 1924, repr. facing p. 84;
Ternovietz, "Le Musee d'Art Moderne de Moscou,"
V Amour de VArt, 6th year, 1925, repr. p. 464 (as the
Riabouschinsky collection); Moscow, Musee d'Art
Moderne, Catalogue illustre, 1928, p. 37, no. 128;
L. Reau, Catalogue de Vart jrancais dans les musees
russes, Paris, 1929, p. 102, no. 771; Arthur Symons,
From Toulouse-Lautrec to Rodin with Some Personal Im-
pressions, New York: Alfred H. King, 1930, p. 118;
Mongan 1938, pp. 296-97; Huth 1946, p. 239; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 772 (as 1884); Browse
[1949], p. 42; Fosca 1954, repr. (color) p. 71; Metro-
politan Museum Bulletin, XX, October 196 1, repr.
p. 43 (annual report); New York, Metropolitan, 1967,
pp. 82-83, repr. p. 82; Minervino 1974, no. 616;
Reff 1976, pp. 67, 69, 310 n. 87, fig. 41 (color) p. 66;
RefF 1977, repr. (color) cover; MofFett 1979, p. 12,
pi. 27 (color); Shapiro 1980, p. 160; Robert C. Wil-
liams, Russian Art and American Money, 1900-1940,
Cambridge, Mass., 1980, p. 34; McMullen 1984,
p. 363; 1984-85 Paris, fig. 89 (color) p. 109; MofFett
1985, pp. 11, 78, 82, 251, repr. (color and color de-
tail) pp. 78-79.
Etchings and Lithographs
Reworked with Pastel
cat. nos. 264-266
In 1885, perhaps in anticipation of an exhibi-
tion, Degas reworked with pastel a number
of black-and-white etchings and lithographs
that he had executed between 1877 and 1880.
The subjects of the prints he chose to rework,
with the exception of Mary Cassatt at the
Louvre: The Paintings Gallery (cat. no. 266),
were drawn from the world of the cafe-concert
and the theater: Actresses in Their Dressing
Rooms (BR97, private collection, New York),
Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (cat.
no. 264), Mile Becat (L372, art market, New
York),1 Two Performers at a Cafe-Concert
(L458), and At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (cat.
no. 265).
The prints stemmed from the period at
the end of the 1870s when Degas was con-
sumed with the possibilities of manufactur-
ing images — in monotype, lithography, and
etching, or often by combining several of
these media — and equally possessed with
the artistic potential inherent in dramatic ef-
fects of artificial lighting. A number of these
works seem to have been intended for his
unrealized journal Le Jour et la Nuit, to
which he and his friends Pissarro, Cassatt,
and Bracquemond would have contributed
black-and-white etchings of scenes taken
from daily occurrences in Paris and its envi-
rons. Degas was far more interested in
nightlife than in daytime scenes, and in
choosing theatrical subjects he availed him-
self of the places in Paris with the latest in
advanced methods of lighting.
Degas's representations of these scenes
exerted an enormous influence on the work
of Forain, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec, who
not only took up his subject matter but also
adopted his interest in artificial light. Seurat
in particular made a suite of drawings (one
of which is reproduced as fig. 241) that ap-
pear to have been inspired by Degas's litho-
graphs and monotypes of Mile Becat.
1 . It is possible that this pastel over lithograph was
the "Chanteuse en scene" that Degas exhibited hors
catalogue at the sixth Impressionist exhibition; if
so, it dates to 1881 rather than 1885. Huysmans
identified Becat and provided a fairly close de-
scription of the work: "singers on stage holding
out paws that twitch like those of the stupefied
Barbary apes in Saxony . . . and in the fore-
ground, like an enormous five, the neck of a
cello . . (Huysmans 1883, p. 225). This descrip-
tion could also apply to L404 (fig. 128) and L405,
but it seems unlikely that Degas would have ex-
hibited these two works again in 188 1 after having
included them in the 1877 Impressionist exhibition.
Huysmans mentioned "drawings and sketches,"
and thus could equally have described lithographs
such as RS26, RS30 (the basis for L372), or RS31
(cat. no. 176, the basis for BR 121, cat. no. 264).
264.
Mile Becat at the Cafe des
Ambassadeurs
1885
Lithograph reworked in pastel, on three pieces of
paper joined together
9 X 77/8 in. (23 X 20 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 85
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor
Thaw, New York
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Brame and Reff 121
This work, signed and dated by the artist
"85" but drawn over a lithograph of c. 1877-
78 (cat. no. 176), is virtually a compendium
of sources of light, both natural and artifi-
cial. Although barely visible, the moon is
present, breaking through the clouds just to
the left of its man-made surrogate, the large
globe of a streetlamp. At the far right and
437
Fig. 241. Georges Seurat, At the "Concert
Europeen/' c. 1887-88. Conte crayon and
gouache, 1 2V4 X q3/s in. (31.2X23.7 cm) .
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
far left, Degas included grapelike clusters of
gas lamps, linked by a string of lamps in the
shape of Japanese lanterns that had been in-
stalled at Les Ambassadeurs only in 1877.'
Prominent in the lithograph but suppressed
in this pastel is a large crystal chandelier re-
flected in the mirror behind the performer,
while dancing above her head are the bursts
of fireworks — pink and blue in the pastel,
but brilliant white in the lithograph — that
punctuated the end of an act.2 The performer,
Mile Emilie Becat, was famous for her ani-
mated, pantomime-like performances, and
Degas repeatedly sought, in notebook studies
and in the lithograph Mile Becat at the Cafe
des Ambassadeurs: Three Motifs (RS30), to
capture an essential gesture evocative of the
senseless ditties she had made famous: he
turbot et la crevette, La rose et Vhippopotame,
and Mimi-bout-en-train. For this pastel, Degas
enlarged the sheet of the lithograph, add-
ing strips of paper at the right and at the
bottom, and colored the forms with a sub-
dued pink-and-green harmony. He invented
a column at the far right, similar to the co-
lumns on the stage, but more important, he
replaced the top hats of the male observers
at the lower left corner and the almost in-
visible scrolls of the double basses at the right
of the lithograph with a group of female
spectators. In every other representation of
the cafe-concert, Degas depicted exclusively
or largely male audiences; he enjoyed, as did
Daumier before him, the juxtaposition of fe-
male performers with male observers. Yet
women evidently numbered significantly in
the audiences of the cafes-concerts: Daudet
described the visitors as "local shopkeepers
with their ladies and misses."3 And in the
world Degas depicted in the mid-i88os, few
men are to be seen.
Emile Bernard reinterpreted this work in
a painting of 1887, and in a black-and-white
lithograph (Josefowitz collection, Lausanne).
1. The Crisis of Impressionism: 1878-1882 (exhibition
catalogue, edited by Joel Isaacson), Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1979,
p. 92.
2. According to Flaubert's description in L} education
sentimentale of 1869, quoted in Reed and Shapiro
1984-85, p. 97-
3. Alphonse Daudet, Fromontjeune et Risler aine,
Paris: G. Charpentier, 1880, p. 368; quoted in
Shapiro 1980, p. 153.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Clauzet, rue
de Chateaudun, Paris; Mr. and Mrs. Walter Sickert,
London, by May 1891; Mrs. Fisher Unwin, Walter
Sickert's sister-in-law, London, by 1898; Mrs. Cobden-
Sickert, by 1908; with M. Knoedler and Co., New
York; Mrs. Ralph King, Cleveland, by 1947; Mr.
and Mrs. Robert K. Schafer, Mentor, Ohio, until
May 1982; bought by David Tunick, New York,
May 1982; bought by present owner October 1982.
exhibitions : 1898 London, no. 119, repr. (as "Cafe
chantant"), lent by Mrs. Fisher Unwin; 1908, Lon-
don, New Gallery, January-February, Eighth Exhibi-
tion of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and
Gravers, no. 87, lent by Mrs. Cobden-Sickert; 1947
Cleveland, no. 44, pi. XL VI (as "At the Music Hall/
Au cafe-chantant"), lent by Mrs. Ralph King, Cleve-
land; 1983 London, no. 26, repr. (color), (as "Aux Am-
bassadeurs: Mile Becat'*); 1984-85 Boston, no. 31b,
PP- 94-97 > repr. (color) p. 96 (as "Mile Becat at the
Cafe des Ambassadeurs"); 1985, New York, Pierpont
Morgan Library, 3 September-10 November 1985/
Richmond, Va. , Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 17
February-13 April 1986, Drawings from the Collection
of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Victor Thaw, Part II, no. 46,
pp. 68-69 repr. (color).
selected references: Lettres Pissarro 1950, p. 239,
Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 376, undated fragment of a
letter (May 1891, according to Brame and Reflf, and
Pickvance) from Lucien to Camille Pissarro, which
mentions seeing at Sickert's house, "the little Degas
lithograph retouched with pastels that we saw some
time ago at Clauzet's"; Brame and Reff 1984, no. 121
(as 1877-85).
438
Fig. 242. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril at
the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, 1894. Color lithograph,
sheet 235/sX i67/s in. (60X43 cm), image n7/sX
9V2 in. (30. 1 X 24.2 cm). The Art Institute of
Chicago
165
265.
At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
1885
Pastel over etching on buff laid paper
io7/s X iis/b in. (26. 5 X 29. 5 cm)
Signed and dated in pencil lower left: Degas /85
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF4041)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 814
Degas took the third state of an etching of
1879-80, the largest in his oeuvre, RS49
(see cat. nos. 178, 179), as the basis for this
pastel.1 The etching was based on a small
monotype, J31, and both relate to a litho-
graph, RS26, in which Degas glimpsed a
view from behind a singer standing under
the gold-and- white striped awning of the
Cafe des Ambassadeurs, here tinged with
shrimp-colored reflections from the per-
former's dress. In the etching, her figure is
cut at the knees by the latticework balus-
trade of the stage; in the pastel, the balus-
trade appears as a solid parapet. Otherwise,
Degas chose in this instance not to make
any substantial changes in the composition;
rather, he took the opportunity to clarify
forms that remained ambiguous in the etch-
ing. Thus the narrow tree trunk, climbing
not quite perpendicularly next to a stage
column and green with moss, is recogniz-
able in the pastel while obscure in the etch-
ing. Degas included in the pastel the back of
an armchair for the performer seated at the
left — in this detail bringing the pastel closer
to the monotype — and added a figure at the
right; both are women waiting their turn to
sing, seated in a formation known as "la cor-
beille." Degas further defined in this work
the globes of the gas lamps and added leaves
at the left, sapped of their color and made
pale blue by the strong stage lights, to sug-
gest a setting of a warm summer's evening; the
sky glows in phosphorescent blue and green.
Nine years later, Toulouse-Lautrec adopted
a similar composition for his color litho-
graph Jane Avril at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs
(fig. 242).2
1. Until 1967, it was assumed that this pastel had
been done over a monotype base, a more charac-
teristic procedure for Degas during the period
from the late 1870s to mid-i88os. See Janis 1967,
p. 71 n. 3.
2. First noted in Reed and Shapiro 1984-85, p. 79.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 27 June 1885, for Fr 50 (stock no. 699,
as "Chanteuse"); bought by an unidentified client
through Goupil-Boussod et Valadon, 21 January
1888, for Fr 100; Comte Isaac de Camondo, Paris,
c. 1 888-1908; his bequest to the Louvre 1908; entered
the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions: 1886 New York, no. 57 (as "Singer of
the Concert Cafe"); 1949 Paris, no. 102; 1956 Paris;
1969 Paris, no. 210.
selected references: Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1914,
no. 220; Lafond 19 18-19, U» rePr- between pp. 34
and 37; Meier-Graefe 1920, pi. 80; Paris, Louvre,
Camondo, 1922, no. 220; Meier-Graefe 1923, repr.
pi. LXXX; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 814 (as 1885);
Paris, Louvre, Pastels, 1930, no. 22; Janis 1967, p. 71
n. 3; Minervino 1974, no. 633; 1984-85 Boston,
p. 156, fig. 2 p. 154; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pas-
tels, 1985, no. 54, pp. 63-64, repr. p. 63.
439
266
266.
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre:
The Paintings Gallery
1885
Pastel over etching, aquatint, drypoint, and
crayon voltai'que, on tan wove paper
Plate: 12 X 5 in. (30. 5X12.7 cm)
Sheet: i23/s X 53/g in. (3 1 . 3 X 1 3 . 7 cm)
Signed and dated in black chalk lower left :
Degas/85
The Art Institute of Chicago. Bequest of
Kate L. Brewster (1949.515)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Lemoisne 583
Degas made fewer changes in working this
etching with pastel than he did with the
preceding prints in this group. It may well
be that in developing the twenty-three states
of the etching in 1879-80, Degas finally ex-
hausted his otherwise enormous resources
of invention (see cat. nos. 207, 208). While
he accented a brown ostrich feather on
Mary Cassatt 's hat in this pastel, and cre-
ated a fussier hat for her sister Lydia (seated
on the bench reading from the Louvre's
printed catalogue), almost every other detail
was simply colored in over a proof interme-
diate between the twelfth and thirteenth
states. The composition remains nonetheless
a tour-de-force of descriptive rendering,
from the marbleized pilaster, to the herring-
bone oak floor, faux-marbre wainscoting, and
gilt frames, not to mention the silk, satin,
lace, and feathers of the ladies' costumes —
effects all heightened by the additional col-
oring. One curious change that did occur
was in the working of Lydia' s dress: sharply
rendered in the etching, with a smartly
pleated skirt and a stylish metal button, here
it becomes strangely indistinct and nonde-
script. Perhaps some connection may be
made with the fact that Lydia had died three
years earlier, in November 1882.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Ivan
Shchukin (brother of Sergei Shchukin), Paris, until
1900; bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, 28 December
1900, for Fr 2, 200 (stock no. 6183, as "Au Louvre,"
pastel); Durand-Ruel collection, Paris, 1900-26; de-
posited with Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, 2 October
1923 (deposit no. 6183, as "Au Louvre," 1885, water-
color); bought by Galerie Durand-Ruel (reconstitu-
tion of stock), 26 April 1926 (stock no. 12490, as
"Au Louvre"); Kate L. Brewster, Chicago, until
1949; her bequest to the museum 1949.
exhibitions:1 1905 London, no. 49 (per Durand-Ruel
archives, Paris, as "Visitors in the Louvre Museum,"
1880); 1964, University of Chicago, Renaissance So-
ciety, 4 May-12 June, An Exhibition of Etchings by Ed-
gar Degas, no. 31; 1984 Chicago, no. 53, pp. 117-19,
repr. p. 117 and back cover (color).
1 . It is tempting to identify this work with no. 3 8
of the 1886 New York exhibition, but the Durand-
Ruel archives clearly indicate that the exhibited
work (stock no. 475) was a drawing, perhaps
BR 105 (cat. no. 204).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 583
(as 1880); Cachin 1974, no. 54 (erroneously described
as a "reproduction touched with pastel"); Minervino
1974, no. 576; Giese 1978, pp. 43, 44 n. 9, 47, fig. 6
p. 46; Thomson 1985, pp. 13-14, fig. 13 p. 58.
267.
The Visit to the Museum
c. 1885
Oil on canvas
32X293/4in. (81.3 X 75.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
(1985.64. 11)
Lemoisne 465
This painting and its variant in Boston
(fig. 243) are closely connected to the pastels,
lithographs, and etchings depicting a wom-
an traditionally identified as Mary Cassatt at
the Louvre,1 but they constitute nonetheless
a group apart. Except for the etching re-
worked with pastel (cat. no. 266), the works
on paper were all executed about 1879-80,
whereas the two paintings were done prob-
ably about 1885. The paintings are marked
by a greater freedom of handling: the Wash-
ington painting in particular has a richly ap-
plied surface that describes in a generalized
manner a great variety of materials and tex-
tures, such as the blurred gilt frames, the
light-softened forms of the indistinguishable
paintings they contain, the parquet floor,
and the crisp, lively, exquisitely rendered
silhouette of the female visitor. If legend has
revealed Mary Cassatt and her sister as the
protagonists of the works on paper, the wom-
an in this painting has escaped identification.
The fact that she stands in the Grande Gale-
rie of the Louvre is undeniable — the paired
pink scagliola columns are visible at the far
right — but Degas deliberately demurs on
the character of this female type. The English
painter Walter Sickert reported that Degas
had told him that with this painting "he
wanted to give the idea of that bored and re-
spectfully crushed and impressed absence of
all sensation that women experience in front
of paintings."2
Sickert came to know Degas well during
the summer of 1885. Although they had
met two years earlier, it was only then, in
Dieppe, that they cemented their friendship.
Sickert saw this picture one day when Degas
"was glazing a painting with a flow of var-
nish by means of a big flat brush. As he
brought out the background in a few unde-
cided strokes, suggesting frames on the wall,
he said with irrepressible merriment, 'II faut
que je donne avec ca un peu Tidee des Noces
de Cana.' [With this I must give a bit of the
idea of (Veronese's) The Marriage at Carta.]"3
This must have occurred in Degas's studio in
Fig. 243. The Visit to the Museum
(L464), c. 1885. Oil on canvas,
36Vs X 263A in. (91.8 X 68 cm).
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
440
44i
Paris, and since Sickert mentions a studio on
several floors, it could only be the studio on
rue Victor-Masse, where Degas moved in
1890. That he saw this painting rather than
the version in Boston seems certain since he
wrote that it represents a lady drifting in a
picture gallery, and in the Boston picture
there are two ladies.
One of the exhibits by Degas in the 1886
exhibition of modern French painting in
New York was entitled "Visit to the Muse-
um" (no. 38). Both this picture and the
Boston picture have been proposed in an ef-
fort to identify that catalogue number, but
the Durand-Ruel ledger "Tableaux remis en
depot" clearly indicates that the work sent
to New York for that exhibition was a
drawing, possibly BR 105 (cat. no. 204).
1. L532, L581, L582, L583, BR105, RS51, RS52 (see
cat. nos. 204, 206-208, 266, and figs. 114, 149).
2. Sickert 1917, p. 186.
3. Ibid.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 20,
for Fr 21,100); bought by M. Tiguel. Mme Fried-
mann, Paris; Mme Rene Dujarric de la Riviere, her
daughter, Boulogne, by i960 until 1972; bought by
Wildenstein and Co., New York, 1972; bought by
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, February 1973; Mellon
collection, Upperville, Va., 1973-85; their gift to the
museum 1985.
exhibitions : 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 73, p. 20, repr.
(as "La visite au musee"), no lender listed; i960 Par-
is, no. 19, repr. (as 1877-80), no lender listed (accord-
ing to label on reverse, lent by Mme Rene Dujarric
de la Riviere); 1978 Richmond, no. 10; 1986, Wash-
ington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 2oJuly-i9
October, Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from
the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, no num-
ber, n.p. pamphlet (introduction by J. Carter
Brown).
selected references t Sickert 1917, p. 186; Lemoisne
[1946-49], II, no. 465 (as c. 1877-80); Giese 1978,
p. 43, fig. 2 p. 44; 1984 Chicago, p. 118.
268
268.
Mary Cassatt
c. 1884
Oil on canvas
2814X23 Vein. (71.5 X 58.7 cm)
The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of the
Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation
and Regents' Major Acquisitions Fund,
Smithsonian Institution (NPG.84.34)
Lemoisne 796
After Mary Cassatt and Degas had collabo-
rated feverishly on their unrealized journal
Le Jour et la Nuit in 1879-80 and then aban-
doned that project, they still continued to
work together: in 1882, Cassatt took the
trouble to pose for several of Degas's milli-
nery scenes (see cat. no. 232), and Degas,
for his part, continued to encourage Cassatt
in her work. Sometime after the 1886 Im-
pressionist exhibition, he acquired one of her
strongest paintings, Girl Arranging Her Hair
(fig. 297). Degas accorded the picture a
place of honor in his apartment throughout
the 1890s (see fig. 196) — probably until he
had to move in 1913.1 Cassatt kept this por-
trait until the same year.
Considering the intensity of the friend-
ship between the two artists, it is surprising
to read of the absolute revulsion Cassatt had
for this painting toward the end of her life.
In letters written in 19 12 and 1913, when
she wanted to sell it, she criticized it in the
strongest possible terms: "I do not want to
leave it with my family as being [a picture]
of me. It has some qualities as art, but it is
so painful and represents me as such a re-
pugnant person, that I would not want it
known that I posed for it."2 What is it about
this portrait that could have provoked such
antipathy? Cassatt's biographer, Adelyn
Breeskin, suggested that "Degas may very
well have chosen this pose especially to
shock her sense of propriety; ... a lady
was not meant to sit forward, with elbows
on knees, conspicuously holding cards."3
Yet surely it was not simply the improper
posture of Cassatt in this painting that was
so disturbing to her, but rather the character
she was made to impersonate. For as Rich-
ard Thomson has observed, Degas may have
painted Cassatt here as a fortune-teller.4 In
Paris during the latter part of the nineteenth
century, fortune-tellers apparently were as
common as they were disreputable, and no
self-respecting bourgeoise would even admit
442
to receiving such a person in her home, let
alone impersonate one in an artist's studio.
Degas did not take pains to draw the tarot
cards carefully, and for this reason they have
sometimes been interpreted as photographs.
But to date only Thomson's reading of the
subject of the painting, made deeper by his
assertion that fortune-tellers were often pro-
curesses or prostitutes, begins to explain the
almost pathological aversion to the painting
by Cassatt late in life. What must have been
intended as a joke grew repellent as Cassatt's
attitude toward Degas hardened.
Since Cassatt's overriding concern while
selling the painting was to avoid recogni-
tion— she wanted it sold to a foreigner, and
with her name not attached to it — the like-
ness in the portrait must have been telling.
It would seem that Degas began the picture
as part of his series of portraits of individuals
seen in their own rooms, such as Michel-
Levy in his studio (L326, Calouste Gulbenkian
Museum, Lisbon), Duranty in his study,
and MartelH in his room (cat. nos. 201, 202).
Thus the setting may be Cassatt's own studio,
for the studded leather chairs do not appear
elsewhere in Degas's works. However, Degas
largely effaced these details, substituting a
bamboo ballroom chair for the broadbacked
chair on which Cassatt was seated, and in so
doing began to transform the painting from
a portrait to a genre piece far removed from
Cassatt's highborn sensibilities.
If the subject of this genre-portrait is in-
deed a "repugnant person," to use Cassatt's
words, why then did she keep the painting
for so long? Since Cassatt evidently destroyed
Degas's letters to her and since her letters to
him have not survived, there is little hope of
answering the question — or of bringing to
light even the most elementary facts about
their friendship and collaboration.
1. See Chronology III, summer 1886, and fig. 196.
2. Letters from Cassatt to Durand-Ruel, of late 19 12
and April 1913, in Venturi 1939, II, pp. 129-31.
According to Cassatt, this painting is not only un-
signed but unfinished.
3 . Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Cata-
logue of the Graphic Work, Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979, p. 15.
4. Thomson 1985, pp. 11-12. This interpretation was
first suggested in print by Marguerite Rebatet in
her caption for "La tireuse de cartes," in Degas,
Paris: Pierre Tisne, 1944, pi. 63.
provenance: Presumably a gift from the artist to
Mary Cassatt; Cassatt collection, Paris (?) c. 1884-
1913; bought by Ambroise Vollard, April 1913, until
at least 19 17. Wilhelm Hansen, Copenhagen, 19 18-
23 . Acquired, possibly through Galerie Barbazanges,
Paris, by Kojiro Matsukata, 1923; Matsukata collec-
tion, Paris, Kobe, and Tokyo, 1923-51; bought by
Wildenstein and Co. , New York, November 195 1 ;
bought by Andre Meyer, early 1952; Meyer collec-
tion, New York, 1952-80 (Meyer sale, Sotheby
Parke Bernet, New York, 22 October 1980, no. 24,
repr., for $800,000); acquired by Galerie Beyeler,
Basel; acquired by the museum 1984.
exhibitions: 1913, Berlin, Cassirer, November,
Degas /Cezanne, no. 5; 1917, Kunsthaus Zurich, 5
October-14 November, Franzdsische Kunst des XIX.
und XX. Jahrhunderts, no. 90, repr. (as "Portrait de
femme," Coll. A.V. [Ambroise Vollard]); 1920, Co-
penhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 27 March-19
April, Degas-Udstilling, no. 7 (as "Sittande dam"),
lent by Wilhelm Hansen; 1924 Paris, no. 58 (as "Miss
Cassatt assise, tenant des cartes'1), lent by Kojiro
Matsukata; i960 New York, no. 41, repr. (as "Por-
trait de Mary Cassatt," c. 1884), lent by Mr. and
Mrs. Andre Meyer; 1962, Washington, D.C., Na-
tional Gallery of Art, 9 June-8 July, Exhibition of the
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Andre Meyer, p. 20, repr.;
1966, New York, M. Knoedler and Co., 12-29 Janu-
ary, Impressionist Treasures from Private Collections in
New York, no. 6, repr.
selected REFERENCES: Jacques Vernay, "La triennale:
exposition d'art francos, " Les Arts, 154, April 19 16,
p. 28 repr. (as "Etude de femme"); Karl Madsen,
Malerisamlingen Ordrupgaard, Wilhelm Hansen's Sam-
ling, Copenhagen, 1918, p. 32, no. 70 (as "Siddende
Dame"); Lafond 19 18-19, II, P- l% Leo Swane, "De-
gas: Billederne pa Ordrupgaard," Kunstmuseets Aars-
skrift 1919, Copenhagen, 1920, repr. p. 73; Hoppe
1922, p. 33, repr. p. 31 (as "Sittande dam," Wilhelm
Hansen collection, Ordrupgaard); Venturi 1939, II,
pp. 129-31; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 796 (as
c. 1884); Boggs 1962, pp. 51, 112, pi. 113 (as c. 1880-
84); Adelyn D. Breeskin, Mary Cassatt: A Catalogue
Raisonne of the Oils, Pastels, Watercolors, and Drawings,
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1970,
p. 13, repr.; Rewald 1973, p. 516, repr.; Minervino
1974, no. 608; Nancy Hale, Mary Cassatt, Garden
City, N,Y: Doubleday, 1975, repr. between pp. 120
and 121; Broude 1977, pp. 102-03, 105, fig. 12 (de-
tail) p. 102; Giese 1978, p. 45, fig. 13 p. 49; Dunlop
1979. PP- 168-69; Thomson 1985, pp. 11-13, 16,
fig. 7 p- 55-
269.
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub
1885
Charcoal and pastel on pale green wove paper
now discolored to warm gray (adhered to silk
bolting in 195 1)
32X22 in. (81.5X56 cm)
Signed and dated in black chalk upper left:
Degas/ 85
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.41)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 816
"Degas's art is after all for the very few. I
cannot believe that many would care for the
nude I have. Those things are for painters
and connoisseurs."1 Mary Cassatt, who
wrote these words in 19 13 about this pastel,
often overestimated the public disdain —
which she perceived as omnipresent — for
modern art. Her opinion may have been
formed by her memory of the critical re-
sponse to this work when it was shown at
the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886.
Doubtless the common response was hostile
and rude, but even the more sophisticated
and otherwise sympathetic reviewers used
brutal language to describe the nudes in
general and this work in particular. Henry
Fevre's damning praise was typical: "M.
Degas lays bare for us, with the great,
sweeping shamelessness of the artist, the
bloated, doughy, modern flesh of the prosti-
tute. In the shady boudoirs of registered
houses, where ladies fill the utilitarian social
role of love's main sewers, fat, heavy-jowled
women wash themselves, brush themselves,
soak themselves, and wipe their backsides in
washbasins as big as troughs."2 Felix Feneon,
who applauded the realism of the nudes,
was careful to note the ungainliness of this
figure: "A bony spine becomes taut; fore-
arms, leaving the fruity, pearlike breast,
plunge straight down between the legs to
wet a washcloth in the tub water in which
the feet are soaking."3 Of the nudes that
were exhibited, this one's pose is perhaps
the most awkward and unconventional, which
suggests that the work as a whole may have
been intended as a deliberately anticlassical —
hence modern — statement.
Certainly the finish of the pastel is uncon-
ventional; it was worked in a manner that
contrasts markedly with the precision with
which the milliners were executed and with
the luxuriant color of the bathers as a group.
Degas seems to have drawn the figure first
in charcoal, and then made no attempt to
cover the contours. The paper, once pale
though now darkened to a medium gray,
supplied the predominant tone for the flesh;
Degas used his pale pink chalk sparingly,
and was only slightly more liberal with the
complementary pea-green pastel that pro-
vides the undertone. Otherwise, the work
seems relatively colorless. Only in the
working of the bath sheet thrown over the
armchair did the artist allow himself a rich
application of pigment, smudging and
stumping the white with blue reflections of
the cool northern light, and creating, with
an odd chestnut-colored chalk, shadows
that are almost sculptural in their effect. In
other areas, he turned the thin application of
pastel to particular advantage; he reserved
the uncolored paper to provide, for exam-
ple, the reflection of light on the water in
the tub, and used the paper's grainy texture
to modify the cobalt-blue shadow cast by
the bather's legs. Similarly, the paper itself
provided the mid-tone for the blue-and-
white pitcher in the lower right corner.
Degas studied the geometry for this tenu-
ously balanced pose in two highly animated
drawings, IV:288.a and 111:82.2 (fig. 244).
They describe the position of the bather al-
most in profile, although one of them is in
reverse.4 On one, IV:288.a, Degas drew lines
443
along the principal axes — from the head
through the arm to the knee, from the knee
to the rump, and from the knee to the left
foot — and concluded, in notes to himself
written on the sheet, that all three axes
should be equally long, each measuring forty-
seven centimeters (which is very close to
their length in the finished pastel). On the
other (fig. 244) — which, incidentally, looks
like a counterproof but was probably drawn
directly — he determined that the axes from
the head to the hip and the hip to the right
foot were to be forty-five centimeters long.
1. Mary Cassatt to Louisine Havemeyer, in an un-
dated letter, probably of April 1913 (on deposit at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
2. Henry Fevre, "L'exposition des impressionnistes,"
La Revue de Demain, May-June 1886, p. 154.
3. Feneon 1886, p. 262 (translation McMullen 1984,
P- 377)-
4. These two drawings, in addition to a third
(IV:288.b), all bear carefully noted measurements,
which may be a sign that Degas was working on a
sculpture. If he made such a sculpture, it presum-
ably disintegrated or was destroyed.
provenance: Acquired from the artist by Mary Cas-
satt,1 in exchange for her Girl Arranging Her Hair
(fig. 297) after the close of the eighth Impressionist
exhibition (1886), at which both works were shown;
Mary Cassatt, Paris, c. 1886-19 18/ 19; bought by
Louisine Havemeyer, along with two other works by
Degas, for a total of $20,000 (offer made in letter
from Mary Cassatt to Louisine Havemeyer, 28 De-
cember 19 17, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art2); owing to the war, deposited by Cassatt
with Durand-Ruel, Paris (no. 11925), from 8 March
191 8 until 9 May 1919 when it was shipped to New
York; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 1919-29;
her bequest to the museum 1929.
1 . According to Vollard, Degas proposed that Cas-
satt exchange her painting, then on exhibit at the
first Impressionist exhibition, for the best of his
"nudes." Obviously, Vollard confused the first
Impressionist exhibition with the last, but his
statement would otherwise appear to be correct
(Vollard 1924, pp. 42, 43).
2. Letter reprinted in Mathews 1984, p. 330 (the
other two works were L5 66 [cat. no. 209] and
L861).
exhibitions: 1886 Paris, one of nos. 19-28; 1921, New
York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3 May-
15 September, Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-
Impressionist Paintings, no. 32 (as "The Bather"), lent
anonymously; 1922 New York, no. 47 (as "Femme
au tub, s'essuyant"), no lender given; 1930 New York,
no. 146; 1977 New York, no. 42 of works on paper.
Fig. 244. Study of a Bather (111:82.2), c. 1885.
Colored crayons, 9 X ii3A in. (23 X 30 cm).
Location unknown
selected references: Feneon 1886, p. 262; Hermel
1886, p. 2; Mirbeau 1886, p. 1; Havemeyer 193 1,
p. 132; Burroughs 1932, p. 145 n. 16; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 816 (as 1885); New York, Metro-
politan, 1967, repr. p. 88; Minervino 1974, no. 911;
Moffett 1979, p. 13, pi. 29 (color); 1984-85 Paris,
fig. 123 (color) p. 145; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Pastels, 1985, p. 68, under no. 59; Thomson 1986,
pp. 187-88, fig. 1 p. 187; 1986 Washington, D.C.,
pp. 430-34, 443-44; Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 238,
255, pi- 158-
444
270.
The Morning Bath
1885-86
Pastel on buff wove paper affixed to original
pulpboard mount
263/8 x 20V2 in. (67 x 52. 1 cm)
Signed in blue chalk lower left : Degas
The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation
Lemoisne 877
"The chef d'oeuvre is the short-legged lump
of human flesh who, her back turned to us,
grips her flanks with both hands. The effect
is prodigious. Degas has done what Baude-
laire did — he has invented un frisson nou-
veau. Terrible, too terrible, is the eloquence
of these figures. Cynicism was one of the
great means of eloquence of the middle ages,
and from Degas' pencil flows the pessimism
of the early saint, and the scepticism of these
modern days."1 George Moore, who had
a penchant for exaggeration, struck the pre-
cise tone of what in fact was a unanimous
chorus of derision for the unlucky subject of
this pastel. This was the one bather most
discussed by the reviewers of the 1886 Im-
pressionist exhibition, apparently because of
the uncompromising realism of the banal
scene, with few concessions to beauty or taste.
That the work later acquired the subtitle
"La boulangere" (The Baker's Wife) is in-
dicative of the way in which the subject was
interpreted. Jean Aj albert, writing in 1886,
went so far as to dream of her minuscule
husband, and of the difficulty she would have
had first in squeezing her ample form into a
corset, and then in shoving the entire en-
semble onto a public bus.2
Shocking as the scene may have been to
viewers at the exhibition, the subject and
the setting were by no means new to Degas.
Eight or nine years earlier, he had executed
several monotypes of women bathing, two
of which he colored with pastel and exhibit-
ed in the 1877 Impressionist exhibition (see
cat. no. 190). Somewhat later, he made a
series of larger monotypes of bathers in
cramped bedrooms, their zinc tubs crowded
next to their beds, their washstands close by
(see, for example, cat. nos. 195, 246, 247,
249, 252). Those monotypes of bathers are
closely related to the monotypes of brothel
scenes; indeed, the interiors portrayed in the
two groups are almost indistinguishable
from one another. The setting and mood of
The Morning Bath seem to derive from one of
the bather monotypes (cat. no. 195), which
also exists in a pastelized version (fig. 145).
A drawing that Degas had made for that
monotype (fig. 144) may have served as the
point of departure for the figure here. Al-
though the position of the arms is different,
the carriage of the figure is the same; the
neatly observed shadow along the spine, the
distinctive dimple of the bather's buttocks,
and the position of the feet — even the high-
light on the top of the right foot — are com-
mon to both. Finally, both the drawing and
the present pastel were executed with
strong and elegant contours. Paul Adam
wrote: "The characteristic line of Ingres,
whose student Degas once was, is revealed
Fig. 245. Nude Woman Stretching (BR 15 7),
1890s. Pastel, 303/4X i93/4 in. (78.1 X 50.1 cm).
Private collection
445
to be pure, confident, and rare under the
pencil as it inscribes this fat bourgeoise
ready for bed."3
That Adam regards the figure as a woman
going to bed, while Ajalbert sees her as just
waking up typifies the difficulty of ascribing
specific contexts to Degas's bathers. While
most of the reviewers, for example, saw in
this nude a petite bourgeoise, perhaps a bak-
er's or butcher's wife,4 Feneon called her a
maritime, a slattern.5 Yet if she is a slat-
tern, she is a healthy one. Degas gave her a
glowing complexion, with none of the gray,
green, or yellow tints that cast a pall over
many of the other bathers. Her hands are
reddened — Mirbeau noted her "short,
chubby hand, ensconced in a layer of fat"6 —
but her gesture is robust. Huysmans re-
marked that "she stretches with the rather
masculine motion of a man who lifts the
tails of his jacket as he warms himself in
front of a chimney. "7 The winglike symme-
try of this gesture clearly attracted Degas:
he adapted it for other bathers (cat. no. 274),
for dancers (cat. nos. 307, 308), and for re-
lated sculptures (RXXI, RXXII, RXXIII,
RLII [cat. no. 309]). He also took it up
again for a late bather (fig. 245), though in
this last instance he made the pose more ex-
pressive— pulling the head back, arching
the spine, and bringing the hands higher.
The color in the late variant is hot and exotic:
the walls are turquoise, the chair deep gold,
and the rug ultramarine and dark red.
Degas worked this pastel in a typical
manner for the mid- 18 80s. It is drawn on
commercially prepared academy board
(pulpboard as opposed to the mosaics of
joined paper he preferred in the 1870s and
1890s). The principal features were blocked
in with chalk that he applied broadly and
then rubbed or stumped; details or highlights
were afterward made in the topmost layer,
with short, parallel strokes. Every inch of the
support is covered with a layer of pastel — in
contrast to Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub
(cat. no. 269) — and there are very few pen-
timenti: only the lost profile and the contour
of the left arm were subjected to revision.
1. [George Moore], The Bat, London, 25 May 1886,
P- 185.
2. Ajalbert 1886, p. 386.
3. Adam 1886, p. 545.
4. Both Moore and Huysmans, in the 1880s, referred
to this woman as a butcher's, not a baker's, wife
(une bouchere). Moore retailed the following story re-
garding the alleged model for this picture: "Degas
more than once drew a creature as short-legged
and as bulky, and the model he chose was the wife
of a butcher in rue La Rochefoucauld. The crea-
ture arrived in all her finery, the clothing she wore
when she went to Mass on Sunday, and her amaze-
ment and her disappointment are easily imagined
when Degas told her that he wanted her to pose
for him naked. She was accompanied by her hus-
band, and knowing her to be not exactly a Venus
de Milo, he tried to dissuade Degas. Degas assured
the butcher that the erotic sentiment was not
strong in him" (George Moore, Hail and Farewell,
I: Ave, London, 191 1, pp. 143-44; cited in Gruetz-
ner 1985, p. 34).
5. Feneon 1886, p. 262.
6. Mirbeau 1886, p. 2.
7. Huysmans 1889, p. 24.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Prob-
ably in the collection of J. and G. Bernheim-Jeune in
19 10, until at least 19 19 (sale, Drouot, Paris, Tableaux
modemes . . . provenant de la collection "L'art modeme"
[Lucerne], 20 June 1935, no. 7, repr. [as "Femme a
son lever"], for Fr 22,000); bought at that sale by M.
Clerc (per annotated sale catalogue); with Galerie
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris. David- Weill collection, Paris,
by 1947. Henry and Rose Pearlman collection, New
York, by 1966.
exhibitions: 1886 Paris, one of numbers 19-28; 1910,
Paris, Bernheim-Jeune, 17-28 May, Nus, no. 26 (as
"La boulangere"); 1974, New York, The Brooklyn
Museum, 22 May-29 September, An Exhibition of
Paintings, Water colors t Sculpture and Drawings from the
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pearlman and the Henry
and Rose Pearlman Foundation, no. 9, repr. (color) (as
c. 1886); 1986 Washington, D.C., no. 141, repr.
p. 454 (color); 1986, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 13 May-2 December, "Selections
from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pearlman"
(no catalogue).
selected references: Adam 1886, p. 545; Ajalbert
1886, p. 386; Feneon 1886, p. 262; Mirbeau 1886, p. 2;
[George Moore], The Bat, London, 25 May 1886,
p. 185; Huysmans 1889, p. 24; Vollard 19 14, repr. (col-
or); L'Art modeme et quelques aspects de Vart d'autrefois:
cent soixante-treize planches d'apres la collection privee de
MM. J. et G. Bernheim-Jeune, Paris: Bernheim-Jeune,
1919, I, pi. 52; Coquiot 1924, repr. p. 184; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 877 (as c. 1886); Pickvance 1966,
p. 19, fig. 7 p. 21; Minervino 1974, no. 925; Gruetzner
!985, pp. 34-35, fig. 34 p- 66; Christopher Lloyd
and Richard Thomson, Impressionist Drawings from
British Public and Private Collections, Oxford: Phaidon
Press /Art Council, 1986, p. 47, fig. 48 p. 46;
Thomson 1986, p. 189, fig. 5.
271.
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub
1886
Pastel on heavy wove paper
237/s X 325/s in. (60 X 83 cm)
Signed and dated in blue chalk lower right:
Degas/ 86
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF4046)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 872
This nude, a figure of fragile beauty, struck
by a soft, blond, early morning light, was
particularly well received at the 1886 Im-
pressionist exhibition. Huysmans character-
istically projected his own preconceived,
misogynistic interpretation onto the figure:
he called her "plump and well stuffed"1 and
emphasized the strain of her gesture (where-
as, in fact, one could as easily have high-
lighted the figure's integral and classical
qualities, harking back to the Louvre's
Crouching Aphrodite, said to be after Doidal-
sas). Geffroy, in a parallel vein, wrote that
Degas "has hidden nothing of her froglike
appearance, of the fullness of her breasts,
the heaviness of her lower parts, the twist-
ing of her legs, the length of her arms, the
stunning apparition of paunches, knees, and
feet unexpectedly foreshortened.'*2 But other
critics who mentioned this pastel stressed its
beauty and finesse. Mirbeau found in it "the
loveliness and power of a gothic statue."3
And Maurice Hermel, after characterizing
the bathers series as "anatomical problems
solved by an astonishing draftsman and ren-
dered poetic by a colorist of the first rank,"
wrote an enthusiastic appreciation deserving
of repetition: "The pose is admirably true to
life, the line of the back and curve of the
thigh superb, the left foot exquisite; the ro-
bust, supple contours express the fullness of
Fig. 246. Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub
(L1097), c. 1885-86, reworked i890s(?). Pastel,
28 X 27V8 in. (71 x 69 cm). Hiroshima Museum
of Art
446
the body; the streaking of the colors con-
veys all the nuances of the skin in light and
shadow; the accessories, washstand, drap-
eries, and reflections of water on metal are
all as masterfully executed as could be."4
The pastel is one of seven that Degas exe-
cuted in the mid- 1 8 80s of a woman in a
shallow tub: three works — L738 (fig. 293),
L765 (fig. 183), and L766 — depict a figure
sitting or kneeling in the tub, while four
others — L1097 (fig. 246)/ L876 (fig. 247),
L816 (cat. no. 269), and L872 (the present
work) — show her standing or squatting,
with one arm extended either for balance or
to sop up water with a sponge. Although
Degas never exhibited them together, the
last four can be seen as a subseries within the
larger group of bathers; a similar-looking
model was used for all four, and in them
she performs a similar activity. Placed in se-
quence (i.e., figs. 246, 247, cat. no. 269,
and the present work), the pastels look like
four consecutive frames of film: the camera
circles the bather while she gathers the last
drops of water in her sponge, and then comes
in for a close-up as she shifts her weight,
steadies herself with her left hand, and lifts
her right arm to squeeze the sponge out on
her shoulder. The utensils of the bather's
toilette — her attributes — come into focus
Fig. 247. Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub
(L876), c. 1885-86. Pastel, 271/2X271/2m.
(70 X 70 cm). Hill-Stead Museum,
Farmington, Conn.
with the close-up in the present work, and
the viewer can thus anticipate what will
happen next: having dried herself with the
peignoir at the upper left, she will brush her
hair, insert her hairpiece, and then put on a
Fig. 248. Woman before a Mirror (L983), c.
86. Pastel, 19V4 X 25^ in. (49 X 64 cm).
Hamburger Kunsthalle
1885-
447
hat that is presumably just outside our field
of vision. Degas in fact depicted this last,
anticipated scene in a pastel of about this date
(fig. 248).
Such sequential — almost calibrated — im-
agery is a distinctive feature of Degas's
work from the early and mid- 18 80s until
the end of his career. It relates to notes that
he jotted in a notebook about 1879-80: "do
some simple operations /like drawing a pro-
file that would not move, while moving
oneself, up /or down /same for a complete
figure/ a piece of furniture, a whole room/
.... In short, study from all perspectives a
figure or an object, anything at all."6 In ret-
rospect, with Cubism, Futurism, and other
analytical movements of modern art behind
us, Degas' s ambitions now seem common-
place, but in their time they were remarkably
advanced. Granted that the young Seurat
was working in an equally analytic fashion,
and that Monet would later exploit serial
imagery — nevertheless no French painter of
the epoch was as close to the full realization
of sequential images. On the international
scene, only photographers such as Marey
and Muybridge were working on parallel
projects, and they for scientific rather than
artistic reasons.
Muybridge's work on animals in motion
coincided closely with Degas's development
of a new grammar of representation, and al-
though Degas knew some examples of
Muybridge's early experiments, he could
not have seen the full corpus of Animal Loco^
motion, with its studies of the human figure,
until its publication in 1887 (see "Degas and
Muybridge," p. 459). Thus, this instance
seems to reflect a case of parallel develop-
ment— a "mysterious coincidence," to use
Baudelaire's description of his relationship
to Edgar Allan Poe — as opposed to the ex-
ample of the direct influence of Muybridge
on Degas's jockey studies of the late 1880s.
Observing this work, one teeters over the
bather, and this results in a dramatically in-
trusive viewpoint, different from that of
most of the other bather pastels of the mid-
18 80s. Degas uses the marble tabletop at the
right to crop the composition, just as he used
the door frame at the left of The Morning
Bath (cat. no. 270). Here, however, he ex-
ploits the perspectival distortion resulting
from his nearly overhead viewpoint to shift
the tabletop from its normal horizontal posi-
tion to a seemingly vertical one — a shift no
less striking than those effected by Cezanne
in his contemporaneous still lifes. And just
as Cezanne, in his paintings, established for-
mal relationships among disparate objects
through visual rhymes and color harmonies,
so Degas sets up his still life at the right: the
water pitcher and its handle echo the figure
of the nude and her arm; the smaller copper
pot nestles neatly beside the pitcher handle;
and the hairpiece, the little copper pot, the
nude's henna hair, and her sponge act as
common referents against which other col-
ors can be compared.
The cool tonality of this work is similar to
that of the Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub,
in the Metropolitan Museum (cat. no. 269),
although here Degas has covered the paper
support entirely with pastel. The hand and
foot in the tub are rendered with a particu-
larly exquisite refinement; one is reminded
that it was around this same period that Degas
redrew and repainted a hand and a foot in the
painting Mile Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source"
(cat. no. 77; see the later drawings L1108
and Li 109).
The pose of this bather derives from a
crouching figure in Semiramis Building Babylon
(cat. no. 29) and in a preparatory drawing
for that painting in the Louvre (cat. no. 31).
A comparison of the early drawing with this
pastel reveals that Degas lost none of the
purity of his line in the intervening twenty-
five years, but rather gained an extraordinary
ability to invest his figures with a lifelike
sense of movement.
1. Huysmans 1889, p. 24.
2. Geffroy 1886, p. 2.
3. Mirbeau 1886, p. 1.
4. Hermel 1886, p. 2.
5. The surface of L1097 has the appearance of a pastel
of the early 1890s, though the composition is one
of the mid- 1 8 80s; Degas may have reworked it later.
L1098, in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, ap-
pears to be considerably later than L1097, perhaps
as late as 1900.
6. Reff 1985 (BN, Carnet 9, Notebook 30, p. 65).
provenance: Probably acquired from the artist by
Emile Boussod (Galerie Goupil-Boussod et Valadon),
Paris, 1886. Bought by Comte Isaac de Camondo,
March or April 1895, for Fr 14,000 (Camondo note-
book, Archives, Musee du Louvre, Paris); Camondo
collection, Paris, 189 5-1908; his bequest to the Louvre
1908; entered the Louvre 191 1; first exhibited 1914.
exhibitions: 1886 Paris, perhaps no. 19 or no. 20,
lent by M. E.B. [Emile Boussod?]; 1924 Paris, no. 158;
1949 Paris, no. 103, repr.; 1956 Paris; 1969 Paris,
no. 211; 1975 Paris; 1983, Paris, Palais de Tokyo,
27 May-17 October, "La nature-morte et l'objet de
Delacroix a Picasso" (no catalogue).
selected references: Feneon 1886, p. 262; Geffroy
1886, p. 2, reprinted in [Octave Maus], "Les Vingtistes
Parisiens," L'Art Moderne, 6e annee, 26, 27 June 1886,
p. 202; Hermel 1886, p. 2; Mirbeau 1886, p. 1; Huys-
mans 1889, p. 24; Lemoisne 19 12, pp. 107-08, pi. XL VI;
Jamot 19 14, pp. 456-57; Paris, Louvre, Camondo,
1914, no. 222, pi. 52; Lafond 1918-19, I, repr. p. 54;
Emil Waldman, Die Kunst des Realismus und des Im-
pressionisms, Berlin, 1927, pp. 63, 97, repr. p. 477;
Paul Jamot, La peinture du Musee du Louvre: ecole jran-
caise, XIXe siede, Paris: V Illustration, 1929, p. 72, pi. 55
p. 77; Fosca 1930, VI, repr.; Huyghe 193 1, p. 275,
fig. 17; Grappe 1936, repr. p. 53; Lemoisne [1946-
49], III, no. 872 (as 1886); Leymarie 1947, no. 40,
pi. XL; Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art,
New York, 1952, repr. between pp. 120 and 121;
P. -A. Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, Paris, 1954, pi. 5
(color); Pickvance 1966, p. 19, fig. 6 p. 21; Paris,
Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1973, p. 143, repr. p. 32;
Minervino 1974, no. 920, pi. LIII (color); Alan Bow-
ness, Modern European Art, London (1972) 1977,
p. 84, no. 83, repr. (color); Broude 1977, p. 105, fig. 18
p. 106; A. Lefebure, Degas, Paris, 198 1, repr. (color)
p. 58; H. Adh^mar, et al., Chronologie impressionniste,
1863-1905, Paris, 198 1, no. 238, repr.; Pierre-Louis
Mathieu, "Huysmans: inventeur de l'impression-
nisme," L'Oeil, December 1983, p. 42, repr. (color)
p. 38; Franchise Cachin in 1983, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manet, p. 434, fig. a
p. 433; 1984 Chicago, p. 164 fig. 77-1; McMullen
1984, p. 275, repr. p. 277; 1984-85 Paris, p. 46,
fig. 125 (color) p. 148; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pas-
tels, 1985, p. 68 no. 59, repr.; Lipton 1986, p. 182,
fig. 123 p. 183; Thomson 1986, pp. 188-89, p- 188
fig. 2.
272, 273
Nude Woman Drying Her Foot
In both of these pastels, which are close in
size, Degas's principal interest lay in exam-
ining what could be done with a bather
doubled up, snaillike, drying her foot. The
bather's torso is pressed hard against her leg
in both works, her back rounded, and her
right arm extended parallel to her left leg.
Turning the Paris bather (cat. no. 273)
clockwise ninety degrees results in a figure
similar to the New York bather (cat. no. 272).
In other important respects, however, the
poses are quite different. The Paris bather is
stooped over in an embryonic position, as if
hugging herself, and she is all curves. The
New York bather has, seemingly, too many
limbs; they sprout from the center, making
her figure almost arachnoid.
The poses that Degas has wrought in these
pictures are so abstracted that one is remind-
ed of Ingres's sinuous but arbitrarily distorted
nudes. But where Ingres distorts anatomy
in order to heighten the erotic appeal, Degas
is relentlessly faithful to the imperfections of
the model. The nudes are neither sensuous
nor appealing. The flesh is not healthy, but
pasty. The strong contours in chestnut-col-
ored chalk emphasize the bilious tone of the
bather's complexion, which is relieved only
slightly by the pale pink chalk used for the
highlights. The bather in the New York
pastel is flabby, and her elbows and face are
red from exposure — a Zola-like clue point-
ing to a rough life. Such details, as well as
the close cropping of the figures within nar-
rowly confined rooms, convey a sense of the
mean and circumscribed lives these women
lead, whether or not they are prostitutes.1
In the Paris pastel, Degas seems further to
imply some sort of waiting presence in the
form of the open-armed armchair, which in
turn is contrasted with the small wooden
side chair on which she sits. He establishes a
448
171
272.
dialogue between the two chairs, leading us
to wonder, as well, whether a top-hatted
man is hidden behind the door frame at the
right.
The blue, yellow, and green harmonies in
the two pastels are typical of many of the
bathers, but the hues here are higher keyed.
Degas worked the Paris pastel more richly
than the New York work: the upholstered
chair is a particularly bright and dense gold,
a color picked up again in the signature at
the right.
Although Lemoisne and others have sug-
gested that one or both of these pastels were
included in the 1886 Impressionist exhibi-
tion, neither was described by any of the
critics in their reviews.
1. As Eunice Lipton argues (Lipton 1986, p. 169 and
passim).
Nude Woman Drying Her Foot
c. 1885-86
Pastel on buff wove paper affixed to original
pulpboard mount
19V4 X21V4 in. (50.2 X 54 cm)
Signed in blue chalk lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.36)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 875
provenance: Bought, probably from Galerie Goupil-
Boussod et Valadon,1 by Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer,
New York, by 1915, until 1929; her bequest to the
museum 1929.
1 . Label on verso indicates that the work passed
through Goupil et Cie (Boussod Valadon et Cie
Successeurs), Paris.
exhibitions: 191 5 New York, no. 37 (as "After the
Bath," 1887; annotated copy of this catalogue indi-
cates that the bather is "drying her foot"), no lender
given; 1922 New York, no. 48 (as "Apres le bain:
femme s'essuyant le pied gauche"); 1930 New York,
no. 148; 1977 New York, no. 47 of works on paper.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 128, repr.
p. 129; Burroughs 1932, p. 145 n. 17; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 875 (as 1886); New York, Metro-
politan, 1967, pp. 89-90, repr. p. 89; Minervino
1974, no. 926; 1986 Washington, D.C., pp. 430,
443; Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 255; 1987, Williamstown,
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 20 June-
25 October, Degas in the Clark Collection (by Rafael
Fernandez and Alexandra R. Murphy), fig. H, p. 13.
449
273
273-
Nude Woman Drying Her Foot
c. 1885-86
Pastel on buff heavy wove paper
2i3/sX 205/8 in. (54.3 X 52.4 cm)
Signed in yellow chalk lower right : Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF4045)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 874
provenance: Comte Isaac de Camondo collection,
Paris, until 1908; his bequest to the Louvre 1908; en-
tered the Louvre 191 1; first exhibited 1914.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 157; 1937 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 135; 1949 Paris, no. 104; 1956 Paris; 1969
Paris, no. 212.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 105-06,
pi. XLV;Jamot 1914, pp. 450-51, 457, repr. p. 451;
Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, no. 221, p. 43; La-
fond 1918-19, I, repr. p. 59; Meier-Graefe 1920, p. 83;
Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1922, no. 221, p. 49; Meier-
Graefe 1923, pi. LXXXII; Jamot 1924, pi. 71b p. 154;
Paul Jamot, La peinture au Musee du Louvre, Paris,
1929, III, repr. p. 72; Paris, Louvre, Pastels, 1930,
no. 23; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 874 (as 1886);
G. Carandente, "Edgar Degas," J maestri del colore,
144, Milan: Fratelli Fabbri Editori, 1966, pi. XVI
(color); Monnier 1969, p. 368; Minervino 1974,
no. 927; Terrasse 1974, pp. 60-61, fig. 3 (color); Par-
is, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 58, p. 67 repr.
450
274-
Nude Woman Having Her Hair
Combed
c. 1886-88
Pastel on light green wove paper, now discolored
to warm gray, affixed to original pulpboard
mount
29V8 X 237/s in. (74 X 60.6 cm)
Signed in orange chalk lower right: Degas;*
obscured by the artist and re-signed in black
chalk at left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.35)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 847
There can be little doubt that Degas intended
to exhibit this work at the eighth Impres-
sionist exhibition, in 1886. It is large in for-
mat, highly finished, and exquisitely worked,
and would seem to belong to the series of
bathers that created such a sensation at the
exhibition. Degas evidently anticipated its
inclusion, for he took pains to describe his
nudes in the catalogue as "women bathing,
washing themselves, drying themselves,
toweling themselves, combing their hair or
having it combed," and the present work is
the only pastel of the mid- 18 80s of a woman
having her hair combed. However, not one
of the reviewers of the exhibition (and they
were many) described a work even remotely
resembling this picture. Thus, just as Degas
listed The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer
(cat. no. 227) in the catalogue of the 1880
Impressionist exhibition and did not exhibit
it — the empty case serving as the butt of
many jokes — so too, apparently, did he de-
cide not to exhibit Nude Woman Having Her
Hair Combed,1 Either he was unable to finish
it before the exhibition opened2 — which is
easily understandable in view of the meticu-
lous, time-consuming technique of this partic-
ular work — or else he deliberately excluded
it, for reasons yet to be discovered.
The degree of finish in this work exceeds
that of nearly all the nudes of the mid-
1880s, with the exception of Nude Woman
Combing Her Hair (cat. no. 285). Degas be-
gan with the nude, the servant, and the
chaise longue, outlining the forms with
charcoal and chalk, and then filling them in
with broad planes of color that were stumped
or smeared greenish gold for the chaise and
a medium flesh color for the figure; the
peignoir was probably left in reserve. The
wall hangings, matching the upholstery of
the chaise, were also blocked in at this
point. Having established his zones of color
and general structure, Degas set to work on
each aspect of the composition with remark-
able enthusiasm. Whereas, for example, he
drew much of Woman Bathing in a Shallow
Tub (cat. no. 269) with only four chalks (the
tin tub is expressed with two blues, a white,
and a black), here he worked the wall hang-
ings and the chaise with three different tones
of olive-gold pastels, in addition to a dark
olive-green for shadows, black chalk or char-
coal for definition, and a contrasting orange
for texture, the last drawn mainly in parallel
strokes perpendicular to the direction in
which the underlying color had been applied.
Similarly, he worked the maid's coral-colored
bodice in contrasting tones, one coarsely ap-
plied over the other, and did the same for
the rug, beginning with a rose-red base
(now faded) over which he drew roughly
parallel green strokes, crossed perpendicu-
larly with strokes of turquoise and blue.3 The
bather's peignoir and the maid's apron were
worked differently: Degas steamed or soaked
his sticks of Prussian-blue pastel to make the
smudged shadows; over the shadows, he
used a brush to apply a thin wash made of
white pastel;4 he then reworked the surface
with coarser highlights in white and, finally,
added a few touches of bright blue in the
shadows.
The true tour de force, however, is the
nude. The figure — who resembles Marie
van Goethem, the model for The Little Four-
teen-Year-Old Dancer — is beautifully propor-
tioned, and supremely refined in execution.
Degas rendered it with countless strokes of
pastel, each subtly nuanced to bring the
body into relief. There is no known draw-
ing for the figure, and the numerous penti-
menti in the thighs, the feet, the right
shoulder, and the profile of the face suggest
that it was in large part developed directly
on the work, or at least substantially modi-
fied to accommodate the demands of the
Fig. 249. George William Thornley,
Nude Woman Having Her Hair Combed,
after Degas, 1888. Lithograph, red ink
on off-white paper, o3/4 X j% in. (23.8 X
19.6 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago
composition. Degas seems to have been es-
pecially concerned with the geometry of the
composition, for he created a structure un-
characteristic for the eighties. To be sure, he
included a strong diagonal element, the
chaise longue, which establishes the depth
of space for the scene. But in an unusual de-
parture from his normal practice, he con-
spicuously counterbalanced the diagonal line
of gold upholstery (extended at the left by
the wall covering) with the white peignoir
which, puddled at the feet of the bather,
drapes across the chaise and melds visually
with the white apron of the maid. Degas
thus created a symmetrical X-shaped com-
positional device and poised the nude pre-
cisely at the point of intersection of the two
diagonals. In so doing, he generated a shal-
low but persuasive space that flows convinc-
ingly around the bather, radiant in her pool
of white light.
The pose of the bather, seen in a three-
quarter view, seated amid drapery and
dreamily self-absorbed while being waited
upon by a servant, is reminiscent of Rem-
brandt's Bathsheba with King David's Letter
(fig. 250) at the Louvre. Even though the
present pastel was not exhibited in the 1886
Impressionist exhibition, the suite of bathers
as a whole elicited comparisons with the Rem-
brandt.5 It was common for reviewers to
cite artistic precedents — the obvious quota-
tions made by Manet in his work encouraged
the practice — and Rembrandt's painting
(given to the Louvre by La Caze, a friend of
Degas 's family) was one of the most famous
old-master nudes in Paris. As Ian Dunlop has
observed, Degas 's Nude Woman Having Her
Hair Combed "seems to have been conceived
in much the same light as the Rembrandt:
both nudes are absorbed in their thoughts
and appear to be oblivious of any onlooker
Fig. 250. Rembrandt, Bathsheba with King David's
Letter, 1654. Oil on canvas, 55% X $?/s in. (142 X
142 cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris
451
452
except their attendants, who go about their
business in unselfconscious fashion."6
Compared with Degas's other bathers of
the mid- 1 8 80s, the nude in this pastel is
portrayed in quite flattering terms. The re-
marks about animality and misogyny in
which the contemporary reviewers reveled
certainly do not apply here. Rather more
apt is Eunice Lipton's assertion that Degas's
bathers are essentially women portrayed as
they saw themselves, enjoying private mo-
ments of narcissistic pleasure.7 The woman
in this scene is enveloped in luxury and
comfort; there is no cheap zinc tub, no
tacky wallpaper, nor any other indicator of
a squalid brothel environment to undercut
the picture's beauty. Herein may lie a clue as
to why Degas did not exhibit this work
with the other bathers: the nude was too re-
fined, and the classical connotations were
too apparent to provide the "frisson nou-
veau"8 that Degas hoped to achieve with
this series.
1. Jamot (1924, pp. 153-54) and Lemoisne ([1946-
49], III, p. 488) speculated that it was included in
the 1886 exhibition, and most writers subsequently
concurred. Ronald Pickvance (in a letter of 1964 in
the archives of the Metropolitan Museum) sug-
gests that it was not exhibited. Richard Thomson
(1986, pp. 187-90) recently stated that it was not
exhibited, although the catalogue for the exhibi-
tion The New Painting (1986 Washington, D.C.,
p. 443) does not exclude the possibility.
2. Since G. W. Thornley reproduced the pastel in a
lithograph made in 1888 (fig. 249), it must have
been completed by that date. Indeed, it may have
already belonged to Boussod et Valadon, which
published Thornley's suite of lithographs and ex-
hibited them. There is a Boussod et Valadon label
affixed to the back of the pastel.
3. Theodore Reff attributes Degas's use of "cross-
hatched complementary colors" in this work to
the influence of Delacroix (Reff 1976, p. 310 n. 87).
While complementary color harmonies were a sig-
nificant aspect of Delacroix's technique, more im-
portant was his espousal of a modified Rubensian
colorism — something Degas did not adopt at the
time. In this pastel, every form is colored locally,
and the local color is as strictly observed as it
would be in a painting by Ingres — even if the col-
ors themselves are broken. For example, the blue
rug, though mixed with other colors, throws no
reflections on the gold chaise, and the maid's
white apron catches no color from either the adja-
cent chair or her blouse. Thus there is no interac-
tion among the different zones of color, and such
interaction was the key feature of Delacroix's ma-
ture technique.
4. This was observed by Peter Zegers and Anne
Maheux.
5. Geffroy 1886, p. 2.
6. Dunlop 1979, p. 190.
7. Eunice Lipton, "Degas' Bathers: The Case for Re-
alism," Arts Magazine, LIV:9, May 1980, p. 97.
The description of this pastel in the catalogue of
the 19 14 Roger Marx sale, p. 66, states that the
nude "gives herself up to the care of a servant
girl . . . who is combing her mistress's luxuriant
tresses."
8. The phrase is used by George Moore, writing
anonymously in The Bat (London), 25 May 1886,
p. 185.
provenance: Probably acquired from the artist by
Galerie Goupil-Boussod et Valadon (Theo van
Gogh), Paris, c. 1888; probably sold to M. Dupuis,
Paris, c. 1888-90 (Dupuis sale, Drouot, Paris, 10 June
1891, no. 13, for Fr 2,6oo)1; acquired at that sale by
Mayer (probably Salvador Meyer). Roger Marx,
Paris, after 1891, until 1913 (Marx sale, Galerie Manzi-
Joyant, Paris, 11-12 May 1914, lot no. 125, repr., for
Fr 101,000); bought by Joseph Durand-Ruel as agent
for Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer (on deposit with Durand-
Ruel, Paris [no. 11710], 19 May 1914); Mrs. H. O.
Havemeyer, New York, 1914-29; her bequest to the
museum 1929.
1 . The many omissions in the Boussod et Valadon
stock books (noted by Rewald 1973 GBA, p. 76,
and Rewald 1986, p. 78) make it impossible to con-
firm the earliest provenance of this work. Yet Re-
wald has established that all the modern pictures
included in the Hotel Drouot sale of 10 June 1891
came from the Dupuis estate; and Dupuis bought
almost exclusively from Theo van Gogh at Boussod
et Valadon.
exhibitions: 1909, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune et Cie, 3-15
May, Aquarelles et pastels de Cezanne, H.-R Cross, De-
gas, Jongkind, Camille Pissarro, K.-X. Roussel, Paul Sig-
nac, Vuillard, no. 48; 19 15 New York, no. 28; 1930
New York, no. 147; 1974-75, New York, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, 12 December 1974-10 Febru-
ary 1975, "The H. O. Havemeyers: Collectors of
Impressionist Art," no. 6; 1977 New York, no. 43 of
works on paper, repr.
selected references: Thornley 1889, repr.; Lafond
1918-19, I, repr. p. 23; Jamot 1924, pp. 153-54, pi. 69;
Huyghe 193 1, fig. 29 p. 279; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 130,
repr. p. 131; Burroughs 1932, p. 145 n. 15, repr.;
Mongan 1938, p. 302, pi. II. C; Rewald 1946, repr.
p. 393; Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 121, repr. facing
p. 120, III, no. 847 (as c. 1885); Cooper 1952, pp. 22-
23 (English edition), no. 22, repr. (color), pp. 23-24
(German edition), no. 22, repr.; Cabanne 1957, pp. 55,
119, pi. 127 (color); Havemeyer 1961, pp. 261-62;
Rewald 1961, repr. p. 525; Pool 1963, p. 44, pi. 45;
Denys Sutton, "The Discerning Eye of Louisine Ha-
vemeyer," Apollo, LXXXII, September 1965, p. 235,
pi. XXV (color) p. 233; Pickvance 1966, p. 21, pi. V
(color) p. 22; New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 86-
88, repr. p. 87; Theodore Reff, "The Technical As-
pects of Degas's Art," Metropolitan Museum Journal,
IV, 1971, p. 144, fig. 3 (detail) p. 145; Rewald 1973,
repr. p. 525; Rewald 1973 GBA, p. 76; Minervino
1974, no. 918, pi. LI (color); Reff 1976, pp. 33 n. 19,
274-76, 310 n. 87, pi. 186 (color) p. 275; Broude
1977, p- 95 n. 1; Charles S. Moffett and Elizabeth
Streicher, "Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer as Col-
lectors of Degas," Nineteenth Century, III, Spring
1977. pp. 23-25, repr.; Moffett 1979, p. 13, pi. 30
(color); Eunice Lipton, "Degas's Bathers: The Case
for Realism," Arts Magazine, LIV, May 1980, p. 97,
fig. 14; Keyser 198 1, p. 81; Shapiro 1982, p. 16,
fig. 12 p. 18; 1984-85 Boston, p. lxxi n. 14; 1984-85
Paris, repr. (color, detail) p. 7, fig. 45 (color) p. 49;
Gruetzner 1985, p. 36, fig. 36 p. 66; Moffett 1985,
pp. 80, 251, repr. (color) p. 81; Thomson 1985, p. 15,
fig. 36 p. 66; Lipton 1986, pp. 181-82, fig. 122 p. 181;
Rewald 1986, p. 78; Thomson 1986, pp. 187, 190;
Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 217-18, 255, pi. 152; 1987
Manchester, p. in, fig. 147 (inverted).
273-
Reclining Bather
1886-88
Pastel on buff wove paper
i87/s X 34V4 in. (48 X 87 cm)
Signed lower left in black pastel: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (Recuperation no. 50)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 854
This bather is perhaps the most expressive
of Degas's nudes of the mid-i88os, and is
the only bather of the period whose pose
suggests that there may have been some act
of violation. Presumably she is only resting
after her bath; perhaps she is lazily drying
herself on the peignoir draped on the floor.
Yet we wonder how she came to be lying in
that position, and cannot help noting that
the way in which she draws her left arm
over her face suggests a form of defense.
Had Degas simply placed her left arm be-
hind her head rather than in front of her
face, he would have arrived at a variation of
the time-tested pose of the gisante, the re-
clining nude who makes direct eye contact
with the viewer while displaying herself.
From the nudes of the great Venetians, to
Goya's Nude Maja, to Alexandre Cabanel's
1863 Birth of Venus (fig. 251), it was a pose
long familiar to artists. In this picture, Degas
shows both breasts — something rare in his
work — but the pose is not made any the
more inviting by it. This bather is too vul-
nerable-looking to be unabashedly erotic,
and because she is actively hiding her face,
she limits the observer's experience to fur-
tive voyeurism. She is not willingly exposing
herself or proffering her charms; therefore
we are embarrassed intruders. The ambiguity
of this work, compared to the conventional-
ity of a painting such as Cabanel's, attests (if
testimony is necessary) to Degas's relentless
search for new means of expression and his
refusal to rely on pat formulas.
When Degas did exploit a device from an-
other picture — whether his own or that of
an old master — he invested it with new
meaning. This pose, for example, seems to
derive from the supine figure of a vanquished
nude at the lower right of Scene of War in the
Middle Ages (cat. no. 45). When the drawing
for that figure (cat. no. 57) is reversed, the
position of the legs and feet fall more or less
into line with those of the pastel, and the
position of the arms is analogous if not iden-
tical. That androgynous nude, which appears
to have been posed for by a male model,
hides its face not in modesty but rather in a
desperate attempt to avoid being trampled
by a horse. The drawing in turn harks back
to the copy Degas made in 1855 of David's
453
*7S
Death of Joseph Bara (L8), which depicts the
last moments of a thirteen-year-old revolu-
tionary volunteer. Thus Degas transforms
the nature and meaning of a figure, even
while retaining certain essential characteris-
tics of pose and gesture.
So convincing is Degas' s realization of the
figure and his evocation of space that this
nude, along with several other bathers of
the mid- 1 8 80s, reminded Paul Jamot of
sculpture: "They have the solidity, the pre-
cision, the fullness, and the volume of
sculpture, and this too confirms an impres-
sion of seriousness, of gravity, remote from
aD frivolous ulterior motives."1 It is densely
worked yet subtly modeled, in a high-keyed
scheme of complementary colors: red and
green, blue and yellow. Sometime in the
mid-i890s, Degas made a new version of
this pastel (fig. 252) that is nearly identical
in pose — only the decor and the position of
one foot were changed — but more vibrant
in palette and more strident in the applica-
tion of the pastel.
This picture still retains its original green
painted frame presumably designed by Degas;
few such frames have survived.
1. Jamot 1924, p. 107.
provenance: Probably bought from the artist by
Galerie Goupil-Boussod et Valadon (Theo van
Gogh), Paris, c. 1888; probably bought by M. Du-
puis, Paris, c. 1888-90 (Dupuis sale, Drouot, Paris,
10 June 1891, no. 14, for Fr 1,600 [Fr 1,680.10 with
commission and taxes])1; bought by Durand-Ruel,
Paris (stock no. 1013); bought by Henry Lerolle, 20
avenue Duquesne, Paris, 28 July 1891, for Fr 2,500
(Fr 6,000 with a Courbet, "Femme nue torse"); Le-
rolle collection, Paris, 1 891-1929; Mme Henry Le-
rolle, his widow, until at least 1933. With Arthur
Tooth and Sons, Ltd., London, by 1938. Unknown
collection, France; confiscated during the Second
World War; recovered by the Commission de Recu-
peration Artistique, 19 December 1949 (no. 50); en-
tered the Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre,
23 December 1949.
1 . The many omissions in the Boussod et Valadon
stock books (noted by Rewald 1973 GBA, p. 76,
and Rewald 1986, p. 78) make it impossible to
confirm the earliest provenance of this work. Yet
Rewald has established that all modern pictures
included in the Hotel Drouot sale of 10 June 1891
came from the Dupuis estate; in turn, Dupuis
bought almost exclusively from Theo van Gogh,
at Boussod et Valadon.
454
exhibitions: 1933, Paris, Chez Andre J. Seligmann,
18 November-9 December, Exposition du pastel fran-
cais du XVIIe siecle a nos jours, no. 68, lent by H. Le-
rolle; 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 121, from a private
collection; 1938, London, Arthur Tooth and Sons,
Ltd., 3-26 November, Fourth Exhibition "Lafleche
d'or": Important Pictures from French Collections, no. 21,
repr. (as 1884); 1966, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins,
Musee du Louvre, May, Pastels et miniatures du XIXe
siecle, no. 39; 1969, Paris, Cabinet des Dessins, Mu-
see du Louvre, Pastels (no catalogue); 1974, Paris,
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, Pastels, Car-
tons, Miniatures, XVle-XIXe siecles (no catalogue);
1975 Paris; 1985 Paris, no. 90.
selected references.* Hourticq 1912, repr. p. no (as
Lerolle collection); Jamot 1924, pp. 107, 152-53,
pi. 65; Lemoisne 1937, repr. p. C; "Exhibitions of
Modern French Paintings," Burlington Magazine, De-
cember 1938, p. 282, pi. A (as with Messrs. Arthur
Tooth and Sons, Ltd., London); Lemoisne [1946-
49], III, no. 854 (as c. 1885); Valery 1965, fig. 72;
Minervino 1974, no. 916; 1984-85 Paris, p. 48,
fig. 47 (color) p. 53 (as exhibited at Boussod et Vala-
don in 1888); Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985,
no. 90, pp. 92-93, p. 92 repr.
276.
Portrait of a Woman (Mme
Bartholome?)
c. 1885-88
Bronze
Height: 45/s in. (11. 8 cm)
Original: undefinable matter, containing plaster,
olive-brown color. Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
Rewald XXIX
This small bust, exceptional even within the
great variety of Degas's surviving sculptures,
was catalogued at the 1922 Grolier Club ex-
hibition as a portrait of Mme Barthelemy
(meaning, no doubt, Mme Bartholome, the
first wife of Degas's great friend the sculp-
tor Albert Bartholome). That is how the
work was known until 1976, when Charles
Millard suggested that the woman portrayed
was Rose Caron, the singer greatly admired
by Degas (see cat. no. 326). 1 Millard linked
the bust to a passing reference Degas made
in a letter to Bartholome (dated by Millard
to 1892): "The moment I return I intend to
pounce upon Mme Caron. You should al-
ready reserve a place for her among your
precious bits of plaster."2 Since it was about
this time that Degas made his portrait head
of Mile Salle (RXXX and RXXXI), a dancer
at the Opera, and since the artist's infatua-
tion with Caron* s singing is known to have
been intense, Millard's attribution seemed
plausible. However, the resemblance to Caron
is slight: none of the many photographs of
Caron gives any indication of the high
cheekbones and prominent jaw that Degas
emphasized here. Furthermore, the date of
1892 is inconsistent with the style of the
bust. It is difficult to believe that Degas
would have worked on such a small scale in
1892, and the high level of finish puts it
much closer to Dancer in the Role of Harlequin
(cat. no. 262) of 1884-85 or the horses of
about 1888 than to the roughly finished
dancers or bathers of the early 1890s. Degas's
letter of 1892 could, however, refer to a por-
trait of Caron that no longer survives, per-
haps one of the seventy-five to one hundred
works found in the studio that were too
damaged to be cast in bronze.
Jean Sutherland Boggs has suggested that
the sitter is more probably Perie Bartholome.3
Indeed, the resemblance of this work to the
portrait-figure modeled by Bartholome in
1888 for his wife's tomb is striking (see
fig. 253). From the long nose and prominent
ears to the knot of hair and the frilled collar,
this bust bears such a remarkable similarity
to the figure on Bartholomews tomb of his
wife that the question of influence arises.
Degas may have wished to record Perie' s
features after her premature death in 1887
and perhaps he worked on his little sculpture
while Bartholome worked on his tomb, but
it is equally possible that Degas made the
portrait of Perie during her life and that
Bartholome took it as his model. One
should remember that Bartholome was a
painter until his wife's death and that it was
Degas who encouraged him to work in clay
276
Fig. 253. Albert Bartholome, Tomb of Perie
Bartholome, 1888-89. Bronze. Bouillant
cemetery, near Crepy-en-Valois
as a distraction from his grief. Certainly
Bartholome never again made a work as
original as his portrait of Perie, and this in
itself may be further confirmation of the in-
fluence of Degas.
In Degas's bust, the absence of the plinth
is a shockingly modern development. Even
a generation later, when Brancusi used a
hand to support the head in his versions of
the Portrait of Mile Pogany and Muse, he
nevertheless extended the neck to provide a
surrogate plinth.4 With the sole exception of
455
277
277.
Medardo Rosso, no sculptor contemporary
with Degas achieved the unstudied infor-
mality or unexpected novelty of this small
yet great work.
1. Millard 1976, pp. 11-12.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, CLXX V\ p. 196; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 188, p. 185 (translation revised).
3. In conversation with the author.
4. Millard 1976, p. 111.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 71; R. R. Tat-
lock, "Degas Sculptures," XLII, March 1923, p. 153;
Bazin 193 1, p. 301, fig. 74 p. 295; Havemeyer 193 1,
p. 223, Metropolitan 62 A; Paris, Louvre, Sculptures,
!933» P- 72» no- 1788, Orsay 62P; Rewald 1944,
no. XXIX (as 1882-95), Metropolitan 62A; Rewald
1956, no. XXIX, Metropolitan 62A; Michele Beaulieu,
"Une tranquille sensualite," Les Nouvelles Litteraires,
3 July 1969, p. 9; Minervino 1974, no. S 71; 1976
London, no. 71; Millard 1976, pp. 11-12, 108-09,
in, fig. I2i, wax (as 1892); 1986 Florence, repr.
p. 205, no. 62, fig. 62 p. 159; Paris, Orsay, Sculptures,
1986, p. 136.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 62
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2135)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family,
Paris, by the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, no. 71; 1969 Paris, no. 281;
1984-85 Paris, no. 85 p. 207, fig. 210 p. 204.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 62
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. LL O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.417)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard, Paris, by
Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer late August 192 1; her be-
quest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 39 (as a portrait of
Mme Barthelemy); 1925-27 New York; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1974 Dallas, n.p., fig. 20; 1977 New York, no. 57 of
sculptures; 1978 Richmond, no. 51.
Portrait of a Woman (Rosita
Mauri?)
1887
Pastel on wove paper, affixed to original
pulpboard mount
i93/4 X i^A in. (50 X 50 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas/ 1887
Private collection
Lemoisne 897
So strong is the personality conveyed in this
portrait, and so engaging the expression,
that writers have naturally long been eager
to identify the seated woman. The work
was catalogued simply as Femme assise in the
19 1 8 sale of Degas's atelier. Jean Sutherland
Boggs notes the resemblance between this
sitter and the figure known as "Mile S.,
premiere danseuse a V Opera" in another
456
pastel, L898.1 According to Lillian Browse,
"Mile S." may have been Mile Rita Sangalli,
an Italian dancer born in Milan in 1849,
who had left the Opera de Paris by 1887,
the year this pastel was made.2 Boggs, find-
ing Sangalli an unlikely possibility, men-
tions both Mile Salle and Mile Sanlaville as
candidates for this pastel and for L898.3 But
the most likely possibility is suggested by
the name inscribed in a modern hand on the
back of the cardboard support: Rosita Mauri.
Mauri made her debut at the Opera in Gou-
nod's Polyeucte in 1878. At that time she was
Fig. 254. Montalba (Naples), Rosita Mauri, c. 1880.
Portrait-carte (detail). Bibliotheque de TOpera,
Paris
perceived, according to Browse, as a new-
comer and a rival to the former star dancer
Leontine Beaugrand.4 In 1880, she created
the star role of Yvonette in La Korrigane,
which proved to be one of her most popular
roles, and in 1885 she starred in Les Deux
Pigeons. Degas saw both ballets many times
(see Chronology III), but Mauri is not men-
tioned in any of the surviving letters by De-
gas. Illustrations and photographs of the
1 8 80s show that Mauri had the wide-set
almond-shaped eyes and eyebrows of the
woman portrayed here, as well as the same
aquiline nose, high cheeks, and rounded jaw
(see fig. 254). But lacking in this portrait is
one of Mauri's most distinctive features, her
long black hair. A critic for Le Figaro wrote
in a review of Les Deux Pigeons: "By good
fortune, we find [Mauri] again in the second
act, with her magnificent black tresses flow-
ing over her shoulders, whose whiteness
emerges from a fire-colored bodice."5 Degas
did in fact paint a star ballerina who closely
resembles Mauri, dancing with long hair
(L469),6 but the identification of the dancer
in that work as well as in the present por-
trait must necessarily remain speculative.
Degas's technique in this work is typical
of his pastel portraits of the 18 80s. The face
is carefully worked up, with green shadows
beneath the skin tone and hatched white
highlights above, while the remainder of the
figure is only summarily depicted. In her
dress and hands, Degas relied for effect
more on the contours and flat-colored shapes
than on the precisely modeled relief such as
he achieved in her face. And these shapes
appear to have been deliberately chosen to
convey a sense of the sitter's personality, in
a manner somewhat analogous to that de-
scribed by Charles Henry's theory of the
Scientific Aesthetic of 1885, upon which
Seurat had relied so heavily. Degas has ex-
ploited every opportunity for an angle,
from the torque of the woman's torso to the
sharp bend of her elbow, from the cross-
over fastening of the dress to the pert aigrette
of her hat, positioned like an exclamation
point above her face. The dynamic twist of
the sitter's pose and her alert expression in-
dicate a lively and interested individual.
1. Boggs 1962, p. 130.
2. Browse [1949], pp. 57, 351.
3. Boggs 1962, p. 130; see also fig. 238.
4. Browse [1949], p. 57.
5. Quoted (in English translation) in Browse [1949],
pp. 62-63.
6. Browse rejects this identification (Browse [1949],
p. 358, note to no. 58), but the resemblance to
contemporary photographs of Mauri is striking.
See cat. no. 162; see also 1984 Chicago, p. 95, for
the identification of other works by Degas that
feature Mauri.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 169,
for Fr 7,600); bought at that sale by Simon Bauer,
Paris; bought indirectly by Paul Rosenberg and Co.,
New York, October 1973, until 1979 (Rosenberg
sale, Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1979, no. 2, for
£55,000); bought at that sale by Gallery Umeda,
Osaka; private collection, Osaka; Art Salon Takahata
Ltd., Osaka, until May 1983 (sale, Christie's, New
York, 17 May 1983, no. 9, repr.); bought at that sale
by present owner.
exhibitions: 1962, Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de
Bellas Artes, September-October, El impressionisme
fiances en las colecciones argentinas, p. 20; 1974 Boston,
no. 30 (as "Seated Woman [Rosita Maury?]," 1887),
lent by Paul Rosenberg and Co. ; 1978 New York,
no. 39, repr. (color) (as "Portrait de Rosita Maury,
premiere danseuse a TOpera," 1887), lent anony-
mously by Alexandre P. Rosenberg, Paul Rosenberg
and Co., New York.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 897; Boggs 1962, pp. 65-66, 130, pi. 129 (as
"Mile Salle or Mile Sanlaville [?] Seated"); Minervino
1974, no. 660.
278.
The Battle of Poitiers, after
Delacroix
c. 1885-89
Oil on canvas
21V2 X 255/8 in. (54. 5 x 65 cm)
Collection of Barbara and Peter Nathan, Zurich
Brame and RefF 83
Degas was a voracious copyist of the old
masters. His selection of works to copy was
wide-ranging and highly sophisticated.
While his lessons from the old masters were
concentrated during his early years in Italy,
he continued to copy — albeit sporadically —
later in life. Theodore Reff, who has studied
Degas's copies systematically, dates nearly
all the drawn copies to the period between
1853 and 1 86 1, and the copies in oil to the
later 1860s.1 There are, however, important
exceptions of copies made during Degas's
maturity, and they are exceptional not only
for their dates, which fall outside his years
of apprenticeship, but also for the kinds of
works copied: a copy after a painting by
Menzel (see figs. 112, 113), 2 painted in
1879; the present copy after Delacroix,
which Reff dates to 1880; a copy after Man-
tegna (BR 144), done in 1897; and another
after Delacroix, The Fanatics of Tangier
(BR 1 43), most probably executed in 1897 as
well. Thus, three of these four later copies
were made from nineteenth-century pictures,
whereas the overwhelming majority of De-
gas's earlier copies were taken from Italian
paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies: the copy after Mantegna falls neatly
into the pattern of the earlier copies.
Degas had copied a few works by Dela-
croix in his youth, and although the exten-
sive color notes with which he annotated
the copies demonstrate his interest in Dela-
croix's painting method, these early copies
were for the most part executed in crayon
or pencil.3 The single early copy after Dela-
croix in oil, The Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople, c. 1859-60 (BR35), reveals
how much Degas's approach to the older
painter changed in the twenty years be-
tween that copy and the present one. In the
1860s, Degas was first and foremost a
draftsman, and it was as a draftsman that he
looked at Delacroix. Despite the fidelity
with which he rendered Delacroix's harmony
of blue greens and reddish browns in The
Entry of the Crusaders, he was just as inter-
ested in capturing the nervous, flickering
brushwork as in conveying the tonal balance
of the picture. By the 18 80s, his use of color
had become more structural than descriptive,
and this altered the focus of his copying. In
The Battle of Poitiers, Degas completely sub-
457
jugates line to color, apparently in order to
better understand the role of color in estab-
lishing the composition. Against the morass
of fighting figures, punctuated by their bril-
liant scarlet robes, only the figure of King
John stands out, by virtue of his golden tunic.
Degas seems to have deliberately exaggerated
Delacroix's coloristic approach to pictorial
organization by simplifying the composition
and palette — eliminating, for example, the
greens of the landscape, and merely sug-
gesting Delacroix's battalions with a few
swaths of brown paint. He further imposed
his own vision on Delacroix's scene by
omitting the clues that articulate the land-
scape and create the sense of deep space, and
organized the composition instead in the
parallel bands that he had employed in the
landscapes of many of his jockey scenes.
It was Delacroix's sketch for The Battle of
Poitiers (fig. 255) that Degas copied (the
copy is identical in size), and not the enor-
mous definitive version commissioned for
the palace at Versailles. The sketch had been
purchased at auction in 1880 by an art dealer,
Hector Brame, who sometimes handled
works by Degas. It is possible, as Reff has
suggested, that Degas had access to the
work in Brame's gallery.4 However, it is
equally possible that Degas made his copy
while the sketch was publicly exhibited, ei-
ther at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts in 1885, or
at the Exposition Universelle of 1889; he
also may have seen it, though only briefly,
when it was auctioned at the Hotel Drouot
in 1880, or in 1889 when Durand-Ruel pur-
chased it. Since the gallery sold the sketch
that year to Henry Walters of Baltimore,
Degas 's copy could not have been made any
later. The fluent handling and the particular
palette of Degas' s copy point to a date later,
rather than earlier, in the 18 80s.
Degas's interest in and affinities with De-
lacroix were noticed as early as 1880, when
Huysmans stated that "no other painter af-
ter Delacroix — whom he has studied closely
and who is his true master — has understood
as M. Degas has the marriage and adultery
of colors."5 In the latter half of the 1890s,
Degas actively pursued works by Delacroix
for his own collection; when he died, he
owned 13 paintings and over 200 drawings,
watercolors, and pastels by the master, in
addition to lithographs and etchings. They
represented every aspect of his career, in-
cluding a sketch for The Battle of Nancy,
which is similar in composition to The Battle
of Poitiers. It is tempting to wonder why
Degas did not buy the Delacroix sketch for
himself when it was sold in 1889.
1. Reff 1963, pp. 24 iff; Reff 1964; "Addenda to De-
gas's Copies by Theodore Reff," Burlington Maga-
zine, CVII:747, June 1965, pp. 32off.; Reff 1971.
2. See Chronology II, March 1879, and figs. 112,
113-
3. Entombment, partial copy, Reff 1985, Notebook 13
(BN, Carnet 16, p. 53); Massacre at Chios, partial
copy, Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 36); Pieta,
partial copy, Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 35);
Mirabeau and Dreux Breze, Notebook 18 (BN,
Carnet 1, p. 53); Attila, drawing formerly in the
Fevre collection; Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret,
Notebook 16 (BN, Carnet 27, p. 20 A); Ovid
among the Scythians, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1,
p. 127). Color notes, references, and copies of sig-
natures: Notebook 12 (BN, Carnet 18, p. 109);
Notebook 14 (BN, Carnet 12, p. 1); Notebook 15
(BN, Carnet 26, p. 6); Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet
1, p. 53A); Notebook 19 (BN, Carnet 3, p. 15);
Notebook 27 (BN, Carnet 3, p. 43).
4. Reff 1976, p. 67.
5. Huysmans 1883, P- I20-
provenance: Atelier Degas (inventory no. 525, not
included in the atelier sales); Rene de Gas, his brother,
Paris, 1917-27 (Rene de Gas estate sale, Drouot, Pa-
ris, 10 November 1927, no. 78, for Fr 7,ooo);1 bought
at that sale by M. Aubry. Lucas Lichtenhahn, Basel,
until 1947; E. G. Biihrle, Zurich, 1947-56; E. G.
Buhrle Foundation Collection, Zurich, 1956-73;
bought by present owner 1973 .
1. "Revue des ventes: succession de Rene de Gas,"
Gazette de I'Hotel Drouot, XXXVI: 119, 12 No-
vember 1927, p. 1 .
exhibitions: 1949, Kunsthalle Basel (Offentliche
Kunstsammlung), 3 September-10 November,
Impressionisten, p. 20, no. 45, lent from a private
Swiss collection; 1951-52 Bern, no. 3, lent by
Sammlung Buhrle, Zurich; 1953, Kunsthaus Zurich,
January- April, Falsch oder Echt, no number; 1958,
Kunsthaus Zurich, 7 June-30 September, Sammlung
Emil G. Buhrle: Festschrift zu Ehren von Emil G. Buhrle
zur Eroffiiung des Kunsthaus-Neubaus und Katalog der
Sammlung Emil G. Buhrle, no. 154, p. 103.
278
Fig. 255. Eugene Delacroix, sketch for The Battle
of Poitiers, 1829-30. Oil on canvas, 2oV4X25V2 in.
(52.8 X 64.8 cm). Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore
selected references: Phoebe Pool, "Degas and Mo-
reau," Burlington Magazine, CV, June 1963, p. 255;
Reff 1963, p. 251; Gerhard Fries, "Degas et les mai-
tres," Art de France, Paris, IV, 1964, p. 353; Reff
1964, p. 255; Reff 1976, p. 67, fig. 39 p. 64; Reff
1977, fig. 62 (color); Lee Johnson, The Paintings of
Eugene Delacroix, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 198 1,
I, p. 137, no. 140; Brame and Reff 1984, no. 83 (as
c. 1880).
458
Degas and Muybridge
cat. nos. 279-282
In 1872, at the suggestion of Leland Stan-
ford of Palo Alto, the British photographer
Eadweard Muybridge began to devise
methods whereby the movement of the
horse could be analyzed by stop-action pho-
tography. 1 Advance and premature news of
this development was published in Paris
(without documentation) by Gaston Tissan-
dier in La Nature in 1874. Four years later,
Muybridge's techniques were sufficiently
refined and his body of work sufficiently ad-
vanced for Tissandier to publish plates of a
walking horse, a trotting horse, a cantering
horse, and a galloping horse in the 14 De-
cember 1878 number of La Nature. The re-
sponse of the scientific community and of
academic artists was quick ^nd, on the
whole, enthusiastic.2 L' Illustration followed
with an article devoted to Muybridge, and
Etienne Jules Marey, a physicist who had
conducted parallel experiments, almost im-
mediately altered his approach to accommo-
date Muybridge' s discoveries. Degas no
doubt followed these developments avidly,3
and may even have been aware of the illus-
trated lecture Muybridge gave at the studio
of the painter Ernest Meissonier in Novem-
ber 188 1 (see Chronology III). But there is
no indication of any immediate change in
Degas's approach to drawing horses; in-
deed, in reworking The Steeplechase (fig. 3 16)
in the early 18 80s and painting Fallen Jockey
(cat. no. 351) in the 1890s, he held fast to an
antiquated but expressive mode of depiction.
It is only after the publication of Muy-
bridge's Animal Locomotion in 1887 that one
finds clear evidence of Degas's interest. He
copied two frames of a plate in volume nine
of Animal Locomotion, "Annie G. in Canter,"
(see figs. 256, 257, and cat. no. 279). He
made at least six wax models of horses
(RVI, RIX, RXI, RXIII, RXIV, RXVII; see
cat. nos. 280, 281) that reflect Muybridge's
work; three of these illustrate the photogra-
pher's revolutionary observation that at a
gallop, the horse's four feet are off the
ground when they are tucked beneath the
animal rather than when they are extended.
He also made a highly finished pastel, The
Jockey, now in Philadelphia (fig. 201), 4 and
an unfinished pastel (L1002), both of which
derive from a photograph and reflect the
pose of one of his modeled horses (RVI).
Since the Philadelphia pastel was bought
from Degas by Durand-Ruel on 23 October
1888, one can determine that Degas had ac-
cess to Muybridge's 1887 edition of Animal
Locomotion quite soon after its publication.
That he was excited by this is made clear by
his remark in a letter of 1888 to Bartholome:
"I have not done enough horses."5 That he
was incorporating Muybridge's conclusions
in his work is made evident by the new,
highly sophisticated representation of move-
ment that he invested in poses he had already
developed in earlier paintings and pastels,
and perhaps even in other sculptures that
have not survived.
It was not for lack of imagination or from
an unwillingness to undertake personal study
that Degas used Muybridge's photographs.
His attentiveness to direct observation is
constantly borne out by his paintings, pas-
tels, notebooks, and sketches. One drawing
of the mid-i88os (IV:2i3.a, Museum Boy-
mans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam) bears De-
gas's notation that the "right foot comes off
the ground first," and in an earlier letter to
his patron Faure he used as an excuse for not
finishing a racecourse scene the need to see
personally some races, which he could not
attend owing to the end of the season.6 None-
theless, he found something useful in the
photographs, and seems to have employed
them in the same resourceful fashion^as he
did his trove of figure drawings that were
constantly exploited for new applications.
1 . See Anita Ventura Mozley, Eadweard Muybridge:
The Stanford Years (exhibition catalogue), Stanford
University Museum of Art, 1972; Van Deren
Coke, The Painter and the Photograph, Albuquer-
que: University of New Mexico, 1972; Scharf
1968; and Millard 1976, pp. 21-23, nn. 76-83. See
also Scharf s important article "Painting, Photog-
raphy, and the Image of Movement," Burlington
Magazine, CIV:7io, May 1962, pp. 186-95, as
well as Ettore Camesasca's "Degas, Muybridge e
Altri," in 1986 Florence.
2. Although inevitably there was conservative dis-
sent as well. Ernest Meissonier reputedly resisted
the photographs before converting to the role of
propagandist, and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts pub-
lished a hostile review of Muybridge's work in
1882 (Georges Gueroult, "Formes, couleurs et
mouvements," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXV,
1882, pp. 178-79).
3. He wrote in a notebook of c. 1878-79 to remind
himself of the magazine La Nature and jotted
down the address of the publisher (Reff 1985,
Notebook 31 [BN, Carnet 23, p. 81], cited in
Millard 1976, p. 21 n. 77). Paul Valery was proba-
bly the first to point out the relationship to
Muybridge (Valery 1946, pp. 64-66).
4. See Boggs 1985, pp. 19-23. Degas sold the work
for Fr 300 to Alexander Cassatt, with Mary Cas-
satt and Durand-Ruel as intermediaries.
5. Lettres Degas 1945, C, p. 127; Degas Letters 1947,
no. in, p. 124.
6. Lettres Degas 1945, XCV, p. 122; Degas Letters
1947, no. 104, p. 120, which dates to 1876, not
1886 as Guerin suggests. See cat. no. 256, n. 1.
279.
Horse with Jockey in Profile
c. 1887-90
Red chalk on off-white thin wove paper
uVsX i63/sin. (28.3 X 41.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
(FII22)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Vente III: 1 30.1
This spirited red-chalk drawing is one of
several that the artist is known to have made
after photographs by Eadweard Muybridge.1
In this instance, the artist misinterpreted
Muybridge's photographs and positioned
the front legs incorrectly. Degas pulled a
counterproof of it, presumably soon after it
was drawn, and reworked it with pastels
(IV: 3 3 5.0). The present drawing may well
have been strengthened by Degas after it
was transferred.
1. Aaron Scharf (1968) identified Muybridge's "An-
nie G. in Canter" (fig. 256) as the source for L665
(fig. 257), its counterproof L66 5 bis, and the present
drawing. Another drawing, 111:229, was adapted
from Muybridge's "Daisy Trotting," and appears
reversed as III: 196; drawings 111:244. a, IV:203.c,
and IV:2i9.a were taken from "Elberon Trotting."
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 130. 1,
for Fr 1,350); bought at that sale by Henry Fevre,
Paris, 1919-25 (sale, Drouot, Paris, collection X
[Henry Fevre], 22 June 1925, no. 40, repr., for
Fr 2,500); bought at that sale by H. Haim, Paris.
S. Meller, Paris. With Paul Cassirer, Berlin, until
1927; bought by Franz Koenigs, Haarlem, 1927, un-
til 1940; acquired, with the Koenigs collection, by
D. G. van Beuningen April 1940; his gift to the mu-
seum 1940.
exhibitions: 1946, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum,
February-March, Teekemngen van Fransche Meesters
van 1800-1900, no. 56; 1949-50, Paris /Brussels /Rot-
terdam, no. 198; 1951-52 Bern, no. 98 (as c. 1881-85);
1952, Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, 20 February-20
April, Musee Boymans de Rotterdam: dessins du XVe au
XIXe siecle, no. 135 (as 1881-85); J967 Saint Louis,
no. 107, repr. p. 167 (as 1887-90); 1969 Nottingham,
no. 24, pi. XIII; 1984 Tubingen, no. 152, repr. (as
1887-88).
selected references: "Degas," Arts and Decoration,
XL3, July 1919, repr. p. 114; Lemoisne [1946-49], II,
under 674 bis.; Jean Vallery-Radot, "Dessins de Pisa-
nello a Cezanne," Musee Boymans, Art et Style, 23,
1952, repr.; Rosenberg 1959, p. 114, fig. 217; Aaron
Scharf, "Painting, Photography and the Image of
Movement," Burlington Magazine, CIV:7io, May 1962,
p. 191, fig. 13 p. 195; C. C. van Rossum, Ruiter en
paard, Utrecht, 1962, pi. 20; Rotterdam, Boymans,
1968, pp. 68-69, no. 73, repr.
459
279
Fig. 256. Eadweard Muybridge, "Annie G. in
Canter. " Photograph from Animal Locomotion,
1887, IX, plate 621, nos. 5, 11
280.
Horse Balking, erroneously called
Horse Clearing an Obstacle
1888-90
Bronze
Height: n3A in. (28.4 cm)
Original: yellow wax; piece of wire showing in
the tail. Collection of Mr, and Mrs. Paul
Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
Rewald IX
Charles Millard has demonstrated that this
sculpture, originally modeled in wax, was
based on frames in a sequence of photo-
graphs by Muybridge of a horse jumping
(fig. 258). Millard has also suggested that,
far from being a three-dimensional replica of
the planar image presented by Muybridge,
it is a complex synthesis of movement inter-
woven with ever-finer suggestions of space
engaged by the figure. "It combines forward,
backward, rising, and twisting motions in
the closest approximation of a centripetal
spiralling movement possible with a four-
legged animal. *M Indeed, so intent was De-
gas on creating a strongly dynamic pose that
he altered the horse's position in such a way
as to sacrifice verisimilitude for expressive-
ness. The horse's front legs are positioned as
if to clear an obstacle, but the back legs are
spread apart and braced as if to rear. (Other
photographs by Muybridge of rearing horses
may have been used for the back legs; see,
for example, fig. 259.) A running horse
about to clear an obstacle would have to break
460
its gait before jumping in order to arrive at
the position indicated in this sculpture. So it
is a moment of hesitancy or balking that
Degas ultimately chose to depict, and not —
as was formerly thought — the motion of a
horse jumping. Several other of his sculpted
horses of the 1880s reveal a similar quality.
Horse with Head Lowered, Rearing Horse, and
Prancing Horse (RXII, RXIII [cat. no. 281],
RXVI) all depict frisky horses that are in a
sense misbehaving, and one may assume
that Degas found in their movements some-
thing more vivid than mere walking, run-
ning, or even jumping.
The surface of this work is moderately
well finished, but it seems that Degas's pri-
mary interest was in the horse's movement,
not the specifics of its anatomy. In contrast,
the animal in Rearing Horse is keenly de-
scribed. Degas made several drawings of
horses in similar poses (for example, IV:2i6.c
and IV:259.b, the latter probably a reworked
counterproof of the former). A horse in
such a pose appears in two horizontal paint-
ings, Racehorses (BR111, The Carnegie Mu-
seum of Art, Pittsburgh) and At the Races
(L503, E. G. Biihrle Foundation Collection,
Zurich), both of which probably date to
c. 1887-90. A mounted horse in an identical
pose is included as well in a pastel in the
Pushkin Fine Art Museum in Moscow,
Racehorses (L597), which Lemoisne dates to
c. 1880 but which surely belongs to the late
1 8 80s or early 1890s. In all these, the horse
is rearing rather than jumping a hurdle.
The original wax is supported from the
base to the lower neck of the horse by a
small rod. The armature is visible where it
extends from the end of the tail,
1. Millard 1976, p. 100. Millard chose two frames
from plate 640 in volume nine of Muybridge's
1887 corpus. However, Degas could have used
any number of frames from plates 636-646, and
may well have made a composite figure from
many of them.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 43; Janneau
1921, repr. p. 355; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 223, Metro-
politan 48 A; Paris, Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, p. 70,
no. 1760, Orsay 48P; Rewald 1944, no. IX (as 1865-
81), Metropolitan 48 A; John Rewald, "Degas Danc-
ers and Horses," Art News, XLIII:n, September
1944, repr. p. 22; Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes,
1947, p. 133, no. 298, Orsay 48P; Rewald 1956,
no. IX, Metropolitan 48 A; Beaulieu 1969, p. 372; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. S43; Tucker 1974, p. 152, figs. 145,
146; 1976 London, no. 43; Millard 1976, pp. 21, 23,
59, 100-02, fig. 66, wax (as 1881-90); 1986 Florence,
pp. 78, 197-98, repr. no. 48, fig. 48 p. 145; Paris,
Orsay, Sculptures, 1986, p. 133.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 48
Musee cTOrsay, Paris (RF2107)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family by
the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 43; 1969
Paris, no. 233; 1984-85 Paris, no. 93 p. 209, fig. 218
p. 212.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 48
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.424)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Acquired from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer late August 1921; her bequest to
the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 36; (?) 1923-25
New York; (?) 1925-27 New York; 1930 New York,
under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458; 1974
Dallas, no number, n.p., fig. 6; 1977 New York,
no. 20 of sculptures.
280
Fig. 258. Eadweard Muybridge, "Daisy,
the Leap." Photograph from Animal
Locomotion, 1887, IX, plate 640, no. 6
i . The drawings show rearing horses from different
aspects. For example, from behind: 111:98. i; a
tracing from it, III:oo.c; a counterproof of the trac-
ing, IV:375.a; IIL89.2; its counterproof, IV:375.b.
From the front: IV:2i4.b. A related horse appears
in the pastel L597 (Pushkin Fine Art Museum,
Moscow).
selected references: Lemoisne 19 19, p. 111, repr.
p. no, waxjjanneau 1921, repr. p. 355; 1921 Paris,
no. 44; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 4A;
Raymond Lecuyer, "Une exposition au Musee de
TOrangerie: Degas portraitiste et sculpteur," L'lllus-
tration, 4619, 12 September 193 1, repr. p. 40, Orsay
4P; Paris, Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, p. 70, no. 176 1,
Orsay 4P; Rewald 1944, no. XIII (as 1865-81), Met-
ropolitan 4A; Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1947,
p. 133, no. 299, Orsay 4P; Borel 1949, repr. n.p.;
2R1
Fig. 259. Eadweard Muybridge, "Rearing
Horse." Photograph from Animal Locomotion,
1887, IX, plate 652, no. C
28l.
Rearing Horse
1888-90
Bronze
Height: izVs in. (30.8 cm)
Original: red wax. Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia. See fig. 260
Rewald XIII
This sculpture has been assigned dates rang-
ing from the 1860s to the 1890s, but its
strong stylistic affinity with Horse Balking
(cat. no. 280) can be used to date the work
to the late 1880s, a period when the artist
was passionately engaged in making horse
sculptures.
Like Horse Balking, this work may have
been based on one of Muybridge' s photo-
graphs. In the same volume of Animal Loco-
motion in which Degas found pictures of
leaping horses, there is a page of horses en-
gaged in miscellaneous activities; one of the
photographs shows a dappled horse, un-
mounted, rearing as if in fright (fig. 259).
The position of the horse in that photograph
and in Degas's Rearing Horse are almost
identical. While Degas does not provide a
pretext for the action of the horse, the glar-
ing eyes set in a tensely drawn head and the
seemingly swift, well-integrated rise of the
body convincingly suggest fright. Indeed,
this horse's head is more finely rendered
and more expressively satisfying than any
other by Degas. The finish of the wax (and
consequently the bronze) is not as meticu-
lous as in some of the classically inspired
horses of the 1870s, such as Horse Walking
(RIV), but the slightly textured surface adds
to the work's naturalism (see fig. 260).
There are drawings of rearing horses dat-
ing from the mid- 1870s, and others as late
as about 1900, when Degas included a turn-
ing horse in a similar stance in Three Jockeys
(cat. no. 352).1
Fig. 260. Rearing Horse (RXIII), c. 1888-90. Red
wax, height i2V4in. (31 cm). Collection of Mr.
and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
462
Rewald 1956, no. XIII, Metropolitan 4A; Beaulieu
1969, p. 373; Minervino 1974, no. S44; 1976 Lon-
don, no. 44; Millard 1976, pp. 23, 100 (as 1881-90);
Boggs 1986, pp. 22-23; J986 Florence, p. 174, no. 4,
fig. 4 p. 103; Paris, Orsay, Sculptures, 1986, p. 133;
Rewald 1986 (revised introduction originally pub-
lished in Rewald 1944), p. 125, fig. 30 p. 124; Weitz-
enhoffer 1986, p. 241, fig. 164, Metropolitan 4A.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 4
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2108)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family by
the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 44; 1937 Pa-
ris, Orangerie, no. 229; 1969 Paris, no. 237, repr.;
1972, Paris, Musee Bourdelle, June- September, Cen-
taurs, chevaux et cavaliers, no. 253; 1973, Paris, Musee
Rodin, 15 March-30 April, Sculptures de peintres,
no. 45, repr.; 1984-85 Paris, no. 90, p. 208, fig. 215
p. 210.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 4
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.426)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Acquired from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer late August 192 1; her bequest to
the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 38 (Bronze no. 4
erroneously given as no. 41); (?) 1923-25 New York;
1930 New York, p. 39, under Collection of Bronzes,
nos. 300-458; 1974 Dallas, no number; 1974-75, New
York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 12 Decem-
ber 1974-10 February 1975, The H. O. Havemeyers:
Collectors of Impressionist Art, no. 8; 1975 New Orleans;
1977 New York, no. 21 of sculptures.
282.
Study of a Nude on Horseback
c. 1890
Charcoal on off-white laid paper
i2l/4 X 9V4 in. (3 1 x 24.9 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
(FII129)
Vente III: 13 1.2
This study of a nude on a horse holds a vir-
tually unique place among Degas' s later
drawings. There is only one other drawing
of a rider in which Degas placed such an
emphasis on the nude figure, an unpublished
study of about 1863-65 for Scene of War in
the Middle Ages (fig. 261), which may have
served as a point of departure for the pre-
sent drawing. And while the artist continu-
ally sought, from early drawings such as the
one of 1865 to his work in the 1890s, to cap-
ture every rhythm and inflection of a rider's
shoulders and back, nowhere else does he
define so carefully the precise foreshorten-
ing of the right arm, the forward tilt of the
back, the twist of the spine, or the extension
of the sinewy, lithe leg. Even though Degas
was already an accomplished draftsman in
the 1 860s, the extraordinary freedom and
assurance of this drawing in comparison to
the earlier one is striking.
For all its impressive sculptural impact,
this figure decidedly lacks the kind of anec-
dotal characterization that gives the Ashmo-
lean's drawing of a jockey (cat. no. 238) its
charm. As Jean Sutherland Boggs has
noted, Degas 's drawings of this period
show two somewhat contradictory influ-
ences: photography and sculpture.1 The ap-
pearance of a great many studies of nude
figures— primarily of dancers — toward the
end of the 1880s and well into the twentieth
century seems to coincide with the publica-
2Z2
Fig. 261. Nude on Horseback, study for
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no.
45), c. 1863-65. Charcoal, i4X87/sin.
(35.5X22.5 cm). Cabinet des Dessins,
Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris
tion of Muy bridge's photographic studies of
nudes, and this drawing in particular may
have been occasioned by the numerous
nudes on horseback in volume nine of Muy-
bridge's corpus.
Degas first used this pose, reversed, in
1865, in Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat.
no. 45), repeated it in Before the Race (fig. 87)
about 1873, inserted it in Racehorses at Long-
champ (cat. no. 96), and included it again
in Four Jockeys (L446) — reversing each time
the direction of the rider. But it is closest to
the horse and rider in a small painting of
about 1890, Jockey (L986), and a small paint-
ing in charcoal and oil on panel, Jockey Seen
from Behind (BR126, De Chollet collection).
Also about 1890, Degas reversed the figure
for inclusion in Four Jockeys (L762). A simi-
lar figure was included in Before the Start
(L761) and in Three Jockeys (cat. no. 352).
Drawings of the pose in the same direction
include IV:2i6.d (c. 1890) for the horse and
IV:224.e (c. 1890) for the clothed rider and
horse. Reversed drawings include III: 114. 2
(1870s), IV:237.c (1870s), and IV:245.b
(c. 1890). Dated to 1882-84 by Theodore
Reff,2 this nude study fits more securely in
the group of works made about 1890.
1. 1967 Saint Louis, pp. 162-64.
2. Theodore Reff, "An Exhibition of Drawings by
Degas," Art Quarterly, Fall- Winter 1967, p. 261.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 13 1.2,
repr., for Fr 750); bought at that sale by Dr. Georges
Viau, Paris. With Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 1928; bought
by Franz Koenigs, Haarlem, 1928, until 1940; ac-
quired, with the Koenigs collection, by D. G. van
Beuningen April 1940; his gift to the museum 1940.
exhibitions: 1946, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum,
February-March, Teekeningen van Fransche Meesters,
van 1800-1900, no. 62; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 106,
p. 166 repr. (as c. 1887-90); 1969 Nottingham, no. 25,
repr. cover (as c. 1887-90); 1984 Tubingen, no. 149,
repr. (as 1884-88).
selected references: Eugenia Parry Janis, "Degas
Drawings," Burlington Magazine, CIX, July 1967,
p. 413, fig. 45 p. 415; Theodore Reff, "An Exhibi-
tion of Drawings by Degas," Art Quarterly, Fall-
Winter 1967, p. 261 (relates this work to 111:107.3,
and suggests that both drawings date to 1882-84);
Rotterdam, Boymans, 1968, no. 82, repr.
283.
Landscape with Cows
c. 1888-92
Pastel (possibly over monotype) on off-white
laid paper
ioVa X i37/s in. (26 X 3 5. 5 cm)
Signed lower left in pencil: Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 633
This landscape, protected by two cows, one
brown and the other black, is remarkable
for its structural and seasonal clarity. As con-
vincing as the anatomy of the cows is the
fringed distant horizon or the hillock along
which the trees grow. The white sky, the
rhythm of the artist's strokes of fresh green
pastel through which the paper is visible, the
yearning of the trees, even the twitch of the
cow's tail fill the work with a sense of the ex-
pectations, if not also with some of the mel-
ancholy, of spring.
It is because there is some suggestion of a
light black monotype under the multilayer-
ed pastel that the cataloguer at Sotheby's in
1983 was led to assume that this work, like
other landscapes by Degas from the Have-
meyer collection in the same sale, had at
least its genesis at that famous session in
Jeanniot's studio at Dienay in 1890.1 In fact,
it may have been the first of the series that
led to the flatter, more abstract, more obvi-
ously imagined landscapes. Lemoisne, who
could never have seen it because it went in
the 1890s to the United States — a country
he never visited — dates it earlier and some-
what indecisively as 1880-90. Eugenia Janis
does not help us place the work, because
she correctly does not include it in her cata-
logue of the monotypes. We are therefore
left somewhat uncertain about its date. But
this fresh pastel surely reflects Degas's in-
cipient interest in landscape, an interest that
he would develop from 1890 in a more sub-
jective way. |SB
1. See "Landscape Monotypes," p. 502.
provenance: Bought by H. O. Havemeyer, New
York, from Galerie Durand-Ruel, 16 January 1894,
until 1907; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1907-29; Mr.
and Mrs. Horace Havemeyer, her son, New York,
1929-56; Mrs. Horace Havemeyer, New York, 1956-
82 (Havemeyer sale, Sotheby's, New York, 18 May
1983, no. 3, repr.); bought at that sale by present
owner.
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 388; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 633 (as 1880-90); Miner-
vino 1974, no. 647.
284, 285
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair
These pastels are two in a series of pictures
of women in various positions combing or
drying their hair — seated on the floor or in
a chair, or poised on the edge of the tub.
Common to all of them is an emphasis on
the gesture of the woman with upraised arms
arranging her hair.1 It is a gesture that first
appears in a relatively early scene of bathers,
Women Combing Their Hair (cat. no. 148), of
c. 1875, after which it is removed to the art-
ist's more private world of monotypes.2 It
reappears in the early 18 80s in pictures of
dancers, then in milliners,3 and again, about
1883, in the form of a corseted woman ar-
ranging her hair before her dressing table
464
(L749> private collection, Detroit). Degas
clearly regarded the works in this series as
forming part of his suite of nudes, since one
of the categories he included in the catalogue
of the 1886 Impressionist exhibition was
"women combing their hair" (although none
of the seven exhibited works — out of the
ten he listed in the catalogue — fell into this
category).
More specifically, these two pastels are
part of a group of three pictures — a primary
work and two nearly identical variants —
that Degas made in the mid-to-late 18 80s.
During this period, the artist often made
multiple versions of a given composition;
this group includes works in three different
sizes and formats. The first to be made (and
the smallest) was undoubtedly the work now
in Leningrad (fig. 175). In it, Degas selected
a square format, adopted a low viewpoint,
and ignored the possibility of a rapport be-
tween the figure and the armchair, which he
took up in the two variants. The emphasis is
on anatomy and structural clarity, and this,
combined with the naturalistic coloration of
the flesh, indicates a date of 1884-86. In the
second and largest of the pastels, now in the
Taubman collection (cat. no. 284), Degas
gives the figure generous space and views
her from above, adopting the vantage point
characteristic of pastels of bathers of 1886-
88, such as Nude Woman Having Her Hair
Combed (cat. no. 274). Like the woman having
her hair combed, the nude here is ample in
figure (the model is heavier than the one in
the Leningrad pastel) and the pink-and-white
tonality of her flesh radiates health. As in
many of the pastels of bathers of 1885-86,
the contours are strongly drawn. But here
Degas uses his line to make a beautiful, sen-
suous, and appealing nude, one that is rav-
ishing in a way that the nudes exhibited in
1886 are not.
Degas returned to the composition, about
1888, in the pastel now in New York (cat!
no. 285). In this third and last variant, he
deliberately set up a contrast to the earlier
nude in the Taubman collection (cat. no. 284),
his point of departure. First and foremost,
he developed a new technique for applying
pastel. While a number of late pastels are
thickly encrusted with pigment, no other
work by Degas was made in quite the same
way. The artist applied so many successive
layers that the pigment became burnished
by the very application of pastel, and the
underlying paper was rubbed so much that
its fibers were loosened and now project
from the surface like so many little hairs.
Degas began the work in his usual manner,
drawing the outline of the figure with dark
chalk or charcoal on a store-bought academy
board. He established the composition with
little revision — only the right arm and left
breast show signs of hesitation — since he
had the earlier nude as his guide. He seems
to have smudged a middle tone over most of
the sheet, a flesh color under the figure, and
pale green elsewhere. He then obliterated
this tone with insistent, repeated, parallel
strokes in audacious, antinatural chartreuses
and greens, the complementary colors that
are exactly opposite the predominant pinks
of the earlier nude.
Since the thirteenth century, artists had
been modeling forms with parallel strokes
of paint in three tones of the same color —
light, dark, and middle intensity — and Cen-
nini, about 1400, had prescribed in his artist's
handbook the use of green as a secondary
tone for flesh, already by then a time-honored
practice. In the late nineteenth century, no
one except Seurat had deliberately inverted
traditional technique to the extent that De-
gas did in this work — and only van Gogh
among the younger painters had achieved a
comparable method of modeling flesh not
with tone or shadow, but with arbitrarily
chosen color. It is nothing short of extraor-
dinary that Degas was able to juxtapose and
mix so many closely valued pastels without
obtaining a muddy or lackluster effect, and
it appears that he was able to do so only by
fixing the intervening layers with a sprayed
adhesive. Beyond this, he achieved vibrancy
and intensity through the use of complemen-
tary pairs — pink and chartreuse in the flesh,
orange and blue in the wall coverings, and
red and green in the upholstered chair and
rug. It seems certain that in this respect he
Fig. 262. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
Bather, called The Valpinqon Bather, 1808.
Oil on canvas, 57^/2 X 38% in. (146 X 97.5 cm).
Musee du Louvre, Paris
was following the example set by Seurat in
the immediately preceding years.
The advantage of the pose is that it af-
forded Degas the opportunity to focus on
the female back, an aspect of human archi-
tecture that fascinated him. He admired
dancers for their backs, preferred certain
models on account of their backs/ and dis-
played anatomical sophistication in these
works by discriminating among subtle
changes in the position of the shoulder
blades, spine, nape of the neck, and coccy-
geal region. And can it be coincidental that
these violin-shaped backs are reminiscent of
the nudes of the revered Ingres, whose Val-
pincon Bather (fig. 262) the young Degas
not only copied5 but personally obtained
from its owner (the father of his friend Paul)
for the retrospective exhibition of his work
that the old artist had arranged in 1855 at
the Exposition Universelle?
1. For example, L848 (fig. 175), L935, L936, L1003,
L1283, L1284, and L1306 (cat. no. 314).
2. J178, J184 (cat. no. 186), J185, J192, and, tangen-
tially, J156 (cat. no. 247) andji73.
3. Especially L709, L780, and L781 (Courtauld Insti-
tute, London).
4. Seejeanniot 1933, p. 155.
5. Reff 1985, Notebook 2 (BN, Carnet 20, p. 59).
284.
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair
1886-88
Pastel on paper mounted on cardboard
31X26 in. (78.7X66 cm)
Signed in brown chalk upper right: Degas
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. A. Alfred Taubman
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 849
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown; Mrs.
Ernest Chausson, Paris, widow of Degas' s friend the
composer (Chausson sale, Drouot, Paris, 5 June
1936, no. 7, for Fr 5,800); bought at that sale by
Durand-Ruel (stock no. N.Y. S3 13); bought by Mrs.
Herbert C. Morris, Philadelphia, 9 March 1945, for
$15,000. (Sale, Christie's, New York, 31 October
1978, no. 10, repr.); bought at that sale by present
owner.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 160, repr.; 193 1 Paris,
Rosenberg, no. 30; 1935, Brussels, Palais des Beaux-
Arts, June- September, L'impressionnisme, no. 15;
1936 Philadelphia, no. 45; 1947, Philadelphia Muse-
um of Art, May, Masterpieces of Philadelphia's Private
Collections (Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, XLII,
no. 2), no. 24, repr. p. 83.
selected references: Lafond 1918-19, I, p. 21, repr.;
Lemoisne 1924, p. 105, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-49},
III, no. 849 (as c. 1885); Minervino 1974, no. 914.
465
466
285.
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair
c. 1888-90
Pastel on light green wove paper now discolored
to warm gray, affixed to original pulpboard
mount
24V* X \W% in. (61 . 3 X 46 cm)
Signed in brown chalk lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nate B. Spingold, 1956
(56.231)
Exhibited in New York
Brame and Reff 115
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 27 February 1891, for Fr 2,000 (stock
no. 838); bought by Paul Gallimard, 3 March 1891.
Jos Hessel, Paris, 1894, until after 1937. Private col-
lection, Paris. With Sam Salz, New York, until 1950;
bought by Mr. and Mrs. Nate Spingold, New York,
30 April 1950, until 1956; their gift to the museum,
retaining life interest, 1956.
exhibitions: 1929, Paris, Galerie de la Renaissance,
15-31 January, Oeuvres des XIXe et XXe siecles,
no. 127, lent by Jos Hessel; 1937 Paris, Palais Natio-
nal, no. 3 10, lent by Jos Hessel; 1947, Paris, Galerie
Alfred Daber, 19 June— 11 July, Grands mattres du XIXe
siecle, no. 10; i960, New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 24 March-19 June, The Nate and
Frances Spingold Collection, unnumbered pamphlet;
1965, waltham, Mass., Dreitzer Gallery, Spingold
Theater, Brandeis University, 11-16 June, Nate B.
and Frances Spingold Collection (no catalogue); 1977
New York, no. 45 of works on paper.
selected REFERENCES: Tristan Bernard, "Jos Hessel,"
La Renaissance, XII: 1, January 1930, p. 19, repr.;
New \brk, Metropolitan, 1967, p. 89, repr.; Brame
and Reff 1984, no. 115 (as c. 1885).
286.
Nude Woman Drying Her Arm
c. 1887-89
Pastel and charcoal on off-white wove paper,
discolored at the edges
12 X 17V2 in. (30. 5 X 44. 5 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.553)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 794
This work is one in a large group of variants
that Degas presumably made sometime after
the 1886 Impressionist exhibition but before
the end of the decade. It is based on a coun-
terproof that was taken from a drawing in
the opposite direction (fig. 263), which in
turn derives from a drawing (L791) that De-
gas had squared, possibly for transfer to yet
another work. There is even a tracing of the
present work that Degas seems to have made
before he added the final pastel coloring to
this sheet (IV: 163). This system of reversing
images and producing copies is similar to the
process of making monotypes, only it is dry
(chalk and pastel) rather than wet (printer's
ink). Although the chronology of the mono-
types remains unclear, it is generally thought
that Degas abandoned his "dessins faits a
l'encre grasse et imprimes" early in the 1880s
and did not take them up again — with the
possible exception of the Nude Torso (J158) —
until the early 1890s, when he made his se-
ries of landscape monotypes. If so, it may be
that in the interim he used counterproofing
and tracing as substitutes for making mono-
types. Evidently, his desire to replicate and
multiply images did not abate when he put
his monotype plates away; there are, for ex-
ample, eighteen related variants of the pre-
sent work.1
Although Degas's pastelized monotypes
tend to be dense and richly colored, his
"impressions rehaussees" are often only
lightly touched. This particular work
amounts to little more than a colored draw-
ing, for the modeling is largely effected by
the fluid underdrawing in charcoal. Light
applications of pale violet and yellow pastel
(complementary colors) give the flesh its
hue, while the towel and peignoir on which
the bather sits are shaded by an aquamarine
chalk, meant no doubt to reflect the clear
light of day. Degas did allow himself dense
colors in the rug and wall coverings, but
otherwise the work is made as if it were an
exercise in eliciting the effects of transparen-
cy from an opaque medium with as little
color as possible.
1 . The variants range over a period of several years
and fall into four groups of closely related works,
with three additional loosely related works. First:
L793 (fig. 263); its counterproof, the present work,
L794; a tracing made from the latter, IV: 163; and a
related work, L795. Second: L791; its counter-
proof, IV: 3 64; and a related work, 11:385. Third:
L790; its counterproof, L795 bis; and its tracing,
1V355. Fourth: L794 bis; its counterproof, L789;
and three related works, 11:301, III: 192, and IV: 169.
Three additional works: 1:249, 11:363, and IV291.
286
468
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 25 November 1898, for Fr 2,000 (stock
no. 4828, as "Sortie du bain"); sold to E. F. Milli-
ken, New York, 19 July 1899, for Fr 5,000; bought
by James S. Inglis, New York, 1899, until 1908; his
estate 1908-10 (Inglis sale, American Art Associa-
tion, New York, 10 March 1910, no. 63, repr.);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel, New York, for
$2,500 (American Art Annual, VIII, 1910-11, p. 363),
as agent for Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer; Mrs. H. O.
Havemeyer, New York, 1910-29; her bequest to the
museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1930 New York, no. 150; 1977 New
York, no. 41 of works on paper.
selected references: Pica 1907, repr. p. 412; Meier-
Graefe 1923, pi. LXXXVIII; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 132;
Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 794 (as c. 1884); New
York, Metropolitan, 1967, p. 90 repr.; Minervino
1974, no. 902.
287.
The Tub
1888-89
Bronze
Height: &V2 in. (21.6 cm)
Original: brownish red wax figure in lead basin
covered with white plaster, the basin surrounded
by cloth resting on a wooden plank. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Collection of
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (1985.64.48).
See fig. 264
Rewald XXVII
In the letter to Bartholome that Guerin
dates to 1888, in which Degas wrote "I have
not done enough horses," he added: "The
women must wait in their basins."1 The art-
ist was referring most probably to the present
sculpture. In a progress report postmarked
13 June 1889, he mentioned the work again
to Bartholome: "I have worked the litde wax
a great deal. I made a base for it with rags
soaked in a more or less well-mixed plaster."2
Since, according to Charles Millard, the
base would have been among the finishing
touches,3 the sculpture must have been near
completion by the summer of 1889.
Singled out by Millard as the "most
wholly original" of all Degas's sculpted
works,4 The Tub occupies a position of im-
portance parallel to that of The Little Four-
teen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227). Like the
dancer, it is large in size, monumental in its
proportions, and suitable for exhibition —
though it was not seen outside the artist's
studio until after his death. Like the dancer,
a large part of its effect in the original de-
pends on its polychromy and on the inclu-
sion of materials foreign to sculpture; the lead
tub, the white plaster for the water, the dark
red wax for the flesh, and the real sponge
held in the bather's hand all contributed to
287
Fig. 264. The Tub (RXXVII), 1888-89. Brownish red wax figure in lead basin covered with
white plaster, the basin surrounded by cloth resting on a wooden plank, 9V2 X 16V2 in. (24 x 42 cm).
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
469
the realism of the piece (see fig. 264). (Un-
fortunately, this crucial aspect of the work
was misunderstood by the founder who, in
patinating the posthumous bronze casts,
chose not to imitate the variety of colors and
textures of the original work. As a result, it
is the least successful of the translations into
bronze.) Finally, as with the dancer, Degas
wished to shock the observer with the life-
like accuracy of the bather's anatomy and
with the convincing texture of the fleshlike
wax. Both works carry with them over-
tones of the Pygmalion myth, which had
recently been revived in the ballet Coppelia.
And in the doll-like nature of both there is
latent more than a little of the erotic and
voyeuristic appeal of Madame Tussaud's and
the Musee Grevin.
Of all Degas's surviving sculptures, The
Tub is the only work that begs to be seen di-
rectly from above. It is also the work most
integrated with its base. The function of bases
in general — their relationship to the sculp-
ture and to the viewer — had become an issue
in the Salons of the 1880s and 1890s. Rodin's
sinking of the base of his Eve into the floor
at the Salon of 1899 was symptomatic of the
wish of some avant-garde sculptors to elim-
inate an extraneous element and focus atten-
tion on the work itself. A different solution,
the integration of the figure with its base,
had been essayed by various sculptors
throughout the nineteenth century, using as
precedents classical Venuses reclining on a
couch and medieval funerary gisants. Giovanni
Dupre's Dead Abel (1842), Auguste Clesinger's
Woman Bitten by a Snake (1847), Alexandre
Schoenewerk's The Maid ofTarentum (1872),
and Augustin Pre'ault's Ophelia (1842-46) all
drew upon these historical sources and were
certainly known to Degas when he began
work on The Tub. Charles Millard argues
that Barye's Bear Playing in Its Trough (1833)
may have encouraged Degas in the develop-
ment of The Tub, and that a curious wax
figure by Gustave Moreau of the infant Moses
lying in his basket was "the most meaning-
ful of the modern sources."5 However* it
could also be said that the examples by Preault
and Clesinger, whose sensual figures are
played off against and circumscribed by the
supporting ground, defined for Degas the
challenge of finding in a modern, everyday
situation some pretext for a recumbent nude
bound in a logical manner to its base.
Regardless of the specific source, Degas's
solution was brilliant. The bather's pose,
delightful in its geometric complexity and
satisfying in its self-evident logic, is perfectly
natural. The figure is beautifully rendered,
with smooth skin pulled over an exagger-
atedly feminine body, and the face — so rarely
defined in Degas's sculptures — is almost
captivating.
There are no known studies by Degas for
the figure, but there is an undated drawing
by Zandomeneghi, published by Millard, of
a model holding an identical pose.6 Presum-
ably it was made after the sculpture.
1. Lettres Degas 1945, C, p. 127; Degas Letters 1947,
no. in, p. 124 (translation revised). Millard (1976,
p. 20 n. 72) does not believe that Degas was
thinking of this work when writing this sentence
because of his use of the plural, "les femmes."
However, given Degas's constant use of bons mots
and circumlocutious phrasing in his letters, it
seems an entirely natural way for him to refer to
this work.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, CVIII, p. 135; Degas Letters
1947, no. 119, p. 132 (translation revised). Guerin
(n. 3) incorrectly relates this letter to The Little
Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227).
3. Millard 1976, p. 10.
4. Ibid., p. 69.
5. Ibid., pp. 75, 80, figs. 93, 94.
6. Ibid., pp. 82-83 n. 5^, fig. 96.
selected references: Lemoisne 1919, p. 115, repr.
p. 109, wax; Royal Cortissoz, "Degas as He Was
Seen by His Model: Intimate Notes on the Artist
during His Last Phase," New York Tribune, 19 Octo-
ber 1919, repr. p. 1, wax (as "Seated Figure"); 1921
Paris, no. 56; Janneau 192 1, repr. p. 353; Bazin 193 1,
fig. 72, p. 295, wax; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 223, Met-
ropolitan 26A; Paris, Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, p. 71,
no. 1773, Orsay 26P; Alexandre 1935, repr. p. 172,
Orsay 26P; Rewald 1944, no. XXVII (as 1882-95),
Metropolitan 26A; Rewald 1956, no. XXVII, Metro-
politan 26A; Fred Licht, Sculpture 19th and 20th Centu-
ries, Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society,
1967, p. 322, no. 138, n.p. fig. 138; Jack Burnham,
Beyond Modem Sculpture: The Effects of Science and
Technology on the Sculpture of This Century, New York:
George Braziller, [1968], pp. 22-23, P- 22 fig- 2;
Beaulieu 1969, p. 380; Minervino 1974, no. S56;
1976 London, no. 56; Millard 1976, pp. 9-10, 20 n.
72, 24, 38, 63, 68, 69, 75, 80, 82-83 n. 56, 107-08,
114, fig. 92, wax (as 1889); RefF 1976, pp. 291-92,
p. 291 fig. 209, Metropolitan 26A; Rewald 1986 (re-
vised introduction originally published in Rewald
1944), p. 145, fig. 35 p. 144; 1986 Florence, repr.
p. 94, fig. 26 p. 125, p. 186, no. 26 repr., Paris,
Orsay, Sculptures, 1986, p. 134.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 26
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2120)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family by
the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 56; 1960-
61, Paris, Musee National d'Art Moderne, 4 No-
vember 1960-23 January 1961, Les sources du XXe sie-
cle: les arts en Europe, 1884-1914, no. 108 (as c. 1886);
1969 Paris, no. 289; 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 94; 1984-85
Paris, no. 86, p. 207, fig. 211 p. 205; 1986 Paris,
no. 219, p. 359, repr.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 26
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29. 100.419)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Acquired from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer late August 192 1; her bequest to
the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 32; 1925-27 New
York; 1930 New York, under Collection of Bronzes,
nos. 390-458; 1974 Dallas, no number, fig. 19; 1974
Boston, no. 50, fig. 6; 1975 New Orleans; 1977 New
York, no. 34 of sculptures.
288.
Woman Stepping into a Bath
c. 1890
Pastel and charcoal on blue laid paper mounted
at perimeter on backing board
22X18^2 in. (55.7X46.8 cm)
Signed in red chalk upper left: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.190)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 103 1 bis
Degas's fascination with the image of a fig-
ure stepping over an obstacle apparently
dates back to his student days, when he
planned a painting of the wife of King Can-
daules climbing into bed (BR8, c. 1855-56)
and copied a figure scrambling over a river-
bank from an engraving by Marcantonio
Raimondi after Michelangelo (fig. 265).
About 1860-62, he adopted the pose for an
exquisite nude study of a woman climbing
into a chariot (fig. 266), originally intended
for (but finally not included in) Semiramis
Building Babylon (cat. no. 29; see also cat.
no. 34). Some thirty years later, he worked
on a group of bathers who step into a deep
tub with the same effortful movement as
that of the figure from Marcantonio and the
climbing figure in Semiramis. The present
work is one of seven pastels in which this
wide-hipped and faceless woman appears,
but it towers above the others because of the
brilliant resolution that Degas has brought
to the pose and the high level of execution
with which it is realized.
In the constellation of works directly re-
lated to this pastel,1 and in an analogous
group of works that feature an unmade bed
in addition to the tub2 (culminating in the
Chicago Morning Bath, cat. no. 320), Degas
made the action of the figure much more ki-
netic. In those works, the woman actively
pushes with one leg, or balances with the
other; in each case, there is a sense of exten-
sion or strain as she turns in contrapposto.
Here, however, she lets her arms bear her
weight. This slight shift in the pose de-
creases the dynamism, but it allowed Degas
to splay the woman's figure laterally across
the sheet, not at all unlike the manner in
which Frans Snyders would extend, in an
470
Fig. 265. Male Bather (IV:84.b), copy after
Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving after
Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina, 1857. Pencil,
n3/4 X 77/s in. (30 X 20 cm). The Detroit
Institute of Arts
V/
Fig. 266. Nude Woman Seen from Behind,
Climbing into a Chariot, study for Semiramis
Building Babylon, c. 1860-62. Charcoal,
iil/4X61/s in. (28.5 x 15.5 cm). Cabinet des
Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Paris
(RF15486)
emblematic way, an animal across a hunting
scene by Rubens. Thus, despite the strong
diagonal of the tub and the receding plane of
the left-hand wall, the bather herself unifies
the composition, turning it into a single cohe-
sive whole. Degas omitted any descriptive
or narrative details — there is no wallpaper,
no picture on the wall, no maid — in order
to focus the viewer's attention squarely on
the monumental figure of the nude.
Also contributing to the cohesiveness of
the composition is Degas's pastel technique.
With his chalk he traversed every outline —
whether of the tub, the bather, or the join at
the corner of the room — in order to miti-
gate the disjuncture that the contours would
otherwise create. Reading from the top of
the composition to the bottom, the chest-
nut-colored wall at the left and the yellow
wall at the right are unified by the orange
chalk scrawled over both; the same orange
chalk is drawn over the bather's left shoul-
der, softening the contour, just as the purple
chalk that modifies the interior of the blue
zinc bathtub has been drawn over the top of
the bather's right thigh. In knitting the im-
age together, Degas relied on some interesting
coloristic ploys. For example, he colored the
bottom-left portion of the tub with purple
pastel over blue, while just to the right of the
bather's leg he reversed himself and drew
blue over purple. The dark green shadows
in the bather's hair and the lime green under-
tone of her skin also vary from the expected.
Degas probably began this work, which
is drawn on a fine piece of blue laid paper,
by outlining the figure in chalk and scum-
bling in a base color for the background. He
seems to have pulled a counterproof of the
drawing before working further on the sheet,
because a pastel — catalogued among the
"impressions rehaussees de couleurs" in the
fourth atelier sale (IV: 3 30, L1032) — reverses
the pose precisely. Although the size of this
work differs from that of the counterproof,
the internal measurements are identical.
471
Louisine Havemeyer purchased this pastel
of her own accord at the Hayashi sale in New
York in 1913. When Mrs. Havemeyer's good
friend and adviser Mary Cassatt learned of
the purchase, she approved, though grudg-
ingly: she preferred her bather (cat. no. 269)
to all others.3 Mrs. Havemeyer had announc-
ed her independence the year before by
buying, without consulting Cassatt, the
Rouart Dancers Practicing at the Barre (cat.
no. 165) for the highest sum any contempo-
rary work had ever fetched at auction. From
that moment, she relied solely on her own
judgment in evaluating works by Degas.
1. L1031 (private collection, New York), L717 (cat.
no. 253), L718 (fig. 231), L719 (fig. 230), BR112
(cat. no. 254), J125 (cat. no. 252), L731, L731 bis,
L732, L732 bis, L734.
2. L1028 (cat. no. 320), L1029 (cat. no. 337), and re-
lated studies: L1030, L1030 bis, L1030 ter, L1029 bis.
3. Letter from Mary Cassatt to Louisine Havemeyer,
n.d., Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York.
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Tada-
masa Hayashi collection and estate, Tokyo and Paris,
until 1913 (Hayashi sale, American Art Association,
New York, 8-9 January 1913, no. 85, repr. for $3,100);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel as agent for Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer; Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, New
York, 1913-29; her bequest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1930 New York, no. 152; 1977 New
York, no. 48 of works on paper.
selected references: "Der Kunstmarkt — von den
Auktionen," Der Cicerone, V, 19 13, p. 192; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 133; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1031 bis
(as c. 1890); Regina Shoolman and C. E. Slatkin, Six
Centuries of French Master Drawings in America, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1950, pp. 188-89,
pi. 106; Havemeyer 196 1, p. 261; New York, Metro-
politan, 1967, pp. 90-91, repr. p. 90; Minervino
1974, no. 947, pi. LII (color); Klaus Berger, Japonismus
in der Westlichen Malerei, 1860-1920, Munich: Prestel-
Verlag, 1980, p. 70, fig. 50; Moffett 1985, p. 80,
repr. (color) p. 251; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels,
1985, p. 92, under no. 89; Modem Europe (introduc-
tion by Gary Tinterow), New York: The Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art, 1987, p. 25, pi. 11 (color).
289.
Nude Woman Drying Herself
c. 1890
Pastel on paper
2i5/sX28 in. (55.5X70.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Henry P.
Mcllhenny Collection in memory of Frances P.
Mcllhenny (1986-26-16)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Lemoisne 886
Degas *s pictures of women drying them-
selves present us with the most energetic of
his bathers. The movement of the figures is
always vigorous, and the feeling of concen-
tration and self-absorption always intense.
The bather in this pastel, for example, wipes
her left hip with deliberation and noticeable
exertion. The impression of physical strain
derives from the emphasis placed on the
muscularity of the figure: Degas has carefully
lighted her left side in a way that brings out
the muscles of the upper arm and has twisted
the body so as to introduce folds in the flesh
under the left breast — folds that highlight
the sheet of muscles underneath.
The extraordinary sense of corporeality in
this pastel could well be the result of Degas's
contemporaneous work in sculpture. There
are two surviving waxes of figures in this
same pose, RLXIX (cat. no. 381) and
RLXXXI, and the latter is particularly close
to the pastel. There may also have been other
similar waxes, now lost: after having com-
pleted the inventory of Degas's atelier, Joseph
Durand-Ruel wrote in 19 19 that a large
number of the artist's waxes had fallen to
pieces and that "it is only the later ones that
now exist."1
472
This pastel seems to have been made at
the same time as Woman Stepping into a Bath
(cat. no. 288). Both pastels are manifestly
studio pieces, with no attempt made to dis-
guise the plain surroundings or rationalize
the settings. Both concentrate on a single
movement, and both are realized with veils
of pastel, one scumbled over the other, that
set up vibrant harmonies of golden orange,
lime green, and pink. The nude in each of
these works is made up of daringly raw
patches of yellow, white, pink, and green
that together create a more vivid impression
of human skin than do the flesh tones of the
more conventional nudes of the early 18 80s.
1 . Letter from Durand-Ruel to Royal Cortissoz, 7
June 1919, published by Cortissoz in "Degas as He
Was Seen by His Model: Intimate Notes on the
Artist during His Last Phase," New York Tribune,
19 October 19 19, section IV, p. 9.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 132,
for Ft 20,000); bought at that sale by Dr. Georges
Viau; Georges Viau, Paris, 1918-42 (Viau sale, Drou-
ot, Paris, 11 December 1942, no. 70, pi. XIII, for
Fr 650,000); bought at that sale by Etienne Bignou.
With A. Lenars et Cie, Paris, until May 1950; bought
by Reid and Lefevre, London, 1 May 1950; bought
by James Archdale, Birmingham, 15 December 1950,
until 1962; bought by Reid and Lefevre, London,
6 April 1962; bought by Henry P. Mcllhenny, 1962;
Mcllhenny collection, Philadelphia, 1962-86; his be-
quest to the museum 1986.
exhibitions: 1950, London, Lefevre Gallery, May-
June, Degas, no. 7, repr. p. 8; 1951-52 Bern, no. 43,
lent by James Archdale, Esq., Birmingham; 1952
Edinburgh, no. 23, pi. VIII, lent by J. Archdale,
Esq.; 1953, City of Birmingham Museum and Art
Gallery, July- September, Works of Art from Midland
Houses, no. 125; 1962, London, Lefevre Gallery, Feb-
ruary-March, XIX and XX Century French Paintings,
no. 7, repr. p. 9; 1962, San Francisco, The California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, ,15 June-3 1 July, The
Henry P, Mcllhenny Collection, no. 19, repr.; 1977,
Allentown, Pa., Allentown Art Museum, 1 May-
18 September, French Masterpieces of the 19th Century
from the Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection, p. 60, repr.
p. 61; 1979, Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie
Institute, 10 May-i July, French Masterpieces of the
19th Century from the Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection
(no catalogue); 1984, Atlanta, High Museum of Art,
25 May-30 September, The Henry P. Mcllhenny Col-
lection: Nineteenth Century French and English Master-
pieces, no. 23, p. 58, repr. (color) p. 59; 1985 Philadel-
phia; 1986, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 26 June-
31 August, "Masterpieces from the Henry P. Mc-
llhenny Collection" (no catalogue).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no.
886 (as c. 1886); Cooper 1952, pp. 12, 25, no. 25;
Minervino 1974, no, 924.
290, 291
Fourth Position Front, on the Left
Leg
While the majority of Degas's dance sculp-
tures capture fleeting moments of move-
ment or disequilibrium, this work is notable
for the perfect balance of the figure and the
dancer's seemingly effortless control over
her body. The graceful carriage and extraor-
dinary poise of the figure suggest links with
a number of comparable works — two figures
of the Spanish Dancer (RXLVII, RLXVI), two
figures of the Dancer Moving Forward, Arms
Raised (RXXIV, RXXVI), and Dancer Ready
to Dance, the Right Foot Forward (RXLVI).
These works presumably were made during
the mid-to-late 1880s, or at least after The
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227,
completed in 188 1) and before the Dressed
Dancer at Rest, Hands on Her Hips (cat. no. 309,
associated with pastels and paintings of 1894).
Degas made two other closely related
sculptures of a woman in this pose, RXLIII
and RXLIV. The order in which the three
works were made cannot be determined, but
290
473
they all appear to date from the same period.
The two others are practically identical in
size (22V2 in. or 57.4 cm high), and the
same model seems to have posed for both.
The present work is smaller by a third, and
the proportions of the figure are not the
same — Degas obviously used a different
model. It is uniformly more summary in
description than the two larger works, but
the dancer's attitude is more perfectly exe-
cuted: her back is absolutely straight, and
her right leg is precisely parallel to the floor.
In one variant (RXLIV), the dancer's right
leg is lifted slightly above the horizontal; in
the other variant (RXLIII), the dancer has
lost her balance — she is leaning backward
and her raised leg is far too high (perhaps
the result of an accident in the artist's studio,
or perhaps an intentional effect).
As handsome as the bronze casts of this
work are, comparison between the original
wax and the subsequent bronzes, first made
by Hebrard between 19 19 and 192 1, reveals
the inevitable differences in quality. In the
case of the present work, much of the tex-
ture of the original wax has been lost. Degas' s
habit of building form by applying succes-
sive layers of material left scaly surfaces, like
bark, on a number of his wax models, in-
cluding this one. In the bronze cast of this
work, the scalelike accretions, are much less
pronounced, and therefore one gets a poorer
sense of how the model was made. Hebrard
did attempt to simulate the color of the origi-
nal wax in the patina of the bronze, but
since the wax continued to oxidize, it is now
darker than the cast.
290.
Fourth Position Front, on the Left
Leg
c. 1883-88
Yellow-brown wax
Height: 16 in. (40.6 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2770)
Exhibited in Paris
Rewald LV
provenance: Atelier Degas; Degas's heirs to A. -A.
Hebrard, Paris, 19 19 until c. 1955; consigned by He-
brard with M. Knoedler and Co., New York; bought
by Paul Mellon 1956; his gift to the Louvre 1956.
exhibitions: 1955 New York, no. 53; 1969 Paris,
no. 270.
291.
Fourth Position Front, on the Left
Leg
c. 1883-88
Bronze
Original: yellow-brown wax. Musee d'Orsay,
Paris (RF2770). See cat. no. 290
Height: 16 in. (40.6 cm)
Rewald LV
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 9; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 6A; Paris, Louvre, Sculp-
tures, 1933, p. 67, no. 1726, Orsay 6P; Rewald 1944,
no. LV (as 1896-1911), Metropolitan 6 A; Rewald
1956, no. LV, Metropolitan 6A; Paris, Louvre, Im-
pressionnistes, 1958, p. 220, no. 440, wax; Pierre
Pradel, "Nouvelles acquisitions: quatre cires origi-
nales de Degas," La Revue des Arts, 7th year, Janu-
ary-February 1957, pp. 30-3 1, fig. 5 p. 31, wax;
Minervino 1974, no. S9; 1976 London, no. 9; Mil-
lard 1976, pp. 35, 106 (as after 1890); 1986 Florence,
p, 175, no. 6 repr., fig. 6 p. 105; Paris, Orsay, Sculp-
tures, 1986, p. 127.
A. Orsay Set Pf no. 6
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2073)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family by
the Louvre 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 9 of sculp-
tures, p. 132; 1984-85 Paris, no. 69 p. 196, fig. 194
p. 198.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 6
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.400)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer late August 192 1; her bequest to
the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 18; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1974 Dallas, no number; 1977 New York, no. 47 of
sculptures.
292.
Nude Dancer with Upraised Arms
c. 1890
Black chalk on buff wove paper
i27/s X 93/8 in. (32.7 X 23.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling, Statens
Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (8524)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Vente IV:i4i.b
This superb, spirited drawing is related to a
sheet of approximately the same date with
two dancers in a similar pose (111:374),
which in turn served as a study for an un-
finished pastel (L845). What interested Degas
in all three works was the curve of the arms
and the obscuring of half of the dancer's
face. The articulation of the joints at shoul-
der, elbow, and wrist obviously fascinated
him, and here especially he sought to make
the contour of the dancer's rib cage rhyme
with the contour of her left arm. The revi-
sions and repeated contours do not, as in
Renoir's drawings, betray an insecurity in
realizing the desired image, but rather reveal
his experimentation with a number of dif-
ferent possibilities from which he could
choose the definitive pose. The sense of con-
tinuous movement that results from this ex-
perimentation seems to coincide with Degas's
interest in Muybridge's photography — this
kind of drawing becomes quite common
only from the late 18 80s onward. It may
also reflect an awareness of Marey's chrono-
photographs, but since Degas seems not to
have borrowed identifiable motifs from
Marey, the extent of influence is more diffi-
cult to trace than in the case of Muybridge.
In choosing this specific pose for the
dancer, Degas (as he often did in the late
1880s) referred back to his early work. Just as
his Study of a Nude on Horseback (cat. no. 282)
refers to a similar study for Scene of War in
the Middle Ages (fig. 261, c. 1863-65), so does
this work refer to the figure with upraised
arms in Young Spartans (cat. no. 40, c. 1860-
62), and its preparatory drawings (one in
the Detroit Institute of Arts and another in
the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metro-
politan Museum). As Richard Thomson has
recently shown, Degas adapted the pose
from Ingres's Archangel Raphael of 1847,
which the young artist had copied as an ex-
ercise in 1855. 1
This drawing presents the same fluid and
almost calligraphic line as Study of a Nude on
Horseback, and conveys a similar impression
of corporeality — evidence that they were
probably both made at about the same time.
1. 1987 Manchester, pp. 35-37.
474
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente IV, 19 19, no. 141. b,
repr., for Fr 700); bought at that sale by Jens Thiis,
for the museum.
exhibitions: 1939, Copenhagen, Statens Museum
for Kunst, May, Franske Haandtegninger fra det 19. og
20. Aarhundrede, no. 25; 1948 Copenhagen, no. 116;
1967, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst,
2 June-10 September, Hommage a Van franqais (com-
piled by Hanne Finsen), no. 41, repr.; 1984 Tubingen,
no. 202 (as 1895-1900).
selected references: Kaj Borchsenius, Franske Teg-
ninger i Dansk Eje, Copenhagen, 1944, repr. p. 11;
Erik Fischer and Jorgen Sthyr, Seks Aarhundreders Eu-
ropaeisk Tegnekunst, Copenhagen, 1953, p. 102, repr.
293.
Dancers, Pink and Green
c. 1890
Oil on canvas
323/s X 293/4 in. (82.2 X 75.6 cm)
Signed lower right in red: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.42)
Lemoisne 10 13
This painting, together with a later version
in the Musee d'Orsay, Dancers in Blue (cat.
n°. 358), and a third variant, L880 (fig. 267),
is poised midway between Degas's horizontal
rehearsals begun around 1879 and the series
of dancers behind the stage flats of the late
1 890s. The dancers* poses derive indirectly
from the early rehearsals and relate specifi-
cally to an even earlier painting of about
1875, Three Dancers in the Wings (fig. 268),
and to a pastel of the late 1870s, Before the
Ballet (L500, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Wash-
ington, D.C.). At the same time, these pic-
tures announce the artist's new interest in
depicting close groups of figures repeating
similar poses, and they prefigure his new
and highly subjective treatment of color and
space.
The genesis of this composition followed
a now familiar course in Degas's oeuvre.
First he painted Three Dancers in the Wings
as part of a group of ballet scenes taken
from backstage,1 in a project parallel to his
series of illustrations for La famille Cardinal
(see "Degas, Halevy, and the Cardinals,"
p. 280). It was lightly and loosely painted, a
mere sketch in comparison to some of the
jewellike paintings of the mid-i870s; its pal-
ette is little more than a warm grisaille re-
lieved by a few touches of bright green. For
the dancers, Degas relied on his stock of
drawings on pink paper, such as Standing
Dancer Seen from Behind (cat. no. 137).
Then, some fifteen years afterward, he took
up the composition again in Dancers in the
Wings (fig. 267), a densely worked, hotly
colored painting of the same size. The hori-
zontal format suggested a narrative approach,
so in this later version he added the per-
forming dancers at the left. Thus, the artist
imparted a new twist to the story: during a
performance, while two dancers execute a
pas de deux at center stage, dancers waiting
in the wings risk missing their cues as they
dally with a top-hatted ballet patron.
At about the same time, around 1890, De-
gas painted Dancers, Pink and Green. Taking
the horizontal painting L880 as a basis, he
adapted the composition to a format that is
almost square. In so doing, he concentrated
attention on the activity of the waiting dancers,
perceived more as a block than as individu-
als— two interlocking pairs of superimposed
dancers, and a fifth dancer at the right
whose back and arm rhyme visually with
those of the adjacent figure. The performing
dancers have been removed to the background,
barely visible between the two pairs of danc-
ers in the foreground. But one essential nar-
rative element in the earlier pictures has
been retained: the slim and slightly ominous
shadowlike profile of a male patron. The in-
clusion of this figure adds a suggestion of
menace to an unguarded moment of waiting
and preparation.
Dancers, Pink and Green is another signifi-
cant example of Degas's attempt to imitate
in oil the complex multilayered pastel tech-
475
nique he developed in the 1880s. Although
he had in the 1870s deliberately compared
oil paint and pastel in the two versions of
The Rehearsal (cat. nos. 124, 125), the
mediums in those works were thinly and in-
conspicuously applied. Here, the paint film
is thick and pasty. Degas scumbled color
onto the canvas, and then in many areas,
such as in the scenery and in the flesh of the
dancers, reapplied a contrasting or comple-
mentary color: orange over blue, pink over
green. The second color was often dragged
across the surface with a fairly dry brush, so
that small areas of the contrasting ground
could remain visible. By working in this
manner, Degas inverted the normal effects
of oil paint, which are predicated on its abil-
ity to render deep color through the use of
glazes. For these works, he mixed his colors
with white to render them opaque like pas-
tels. By applying the colors thickly, and in
layers, he approximated pastel technique,
even going so far as to model some of the
paint with his fingers, just as he would ma-
nipulate his pastel. Degas was, of course,
not alone in creating such rich textural ef-
fects: concurrently, Monet and Pissarro
were both experimenting with similar
methods. Many of the avant-garde artists at
this time were at least conscious of the re-
newed interest in systematic color theories —
which Seurat was exploiting most fully —
and this interest may explain in part why
Degas reduced his palette in this picture to
just a few colors, expressed in complemen-
tary pairs.
The technique Degas employed in this
picture dictated more than the effects of
light, color, and texture; it determined the
space as well. By concentrating on the sur-
face of the picture (even to the extent of var-
nishing the painting selectively, where he
wanted more saturated color), he negated
the sense of deep space that one finds in the
works of the 1870s and early 1880s. The
composition here recedes in planes aligned
with the surface plane, and not along the
steep diagonal on which he had formerly
organized his pictures. Thus, even though
the composition of Dancers , Pink and Green
is punctuated by receding verticals — the
supports of the stage flats and the tree trunks
painted on them, which serve the same
function as the forest of columns in Dancers
Exercising (L924, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
Copenhagen) — the result is nevertheless a
compressed, planar space, woven in a tapes-
try-like tissue of vibrant color. Even the dis-
tant view at the right toward the stack of
balconies in the theater interior here reads as
a flat pattern of gold and red.
There is only one existing drawing (fig. 269)
that is related to this painting; it would ap-
pear to date from the early 1880s and was
used for the dancer at the left with her legs
in fourth position. On the same sheet is a
sketch for the dancer in the second rank
whose head is obscured in the painting.
The densely worked surface of this paint-
ing might lead one to conclude that it be-
trays several campaigns of work. Indeed,
owing to the close connection between the
composition and pictures of the 1870s, one
could speculate that it was begun then and
finished later, in the 1890s. However, exam-
inations with X-radiographs indicate the
contrary: Degas made no substantial revi-
sions to the painting, and although it seems
to have been worked in layers, they proba-
bly were applied consecutively during one
period of work, presumably sometime
about 1890.
1 . Other pictures in this group include Dancers Pre-
paring/or the Ballet (fig. 109), Dancers Backstage
(L1024, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C.), and Before the Ballet (L500, Corcoran Gal-
lery of Art, Washington, D.C.).
provenance: Earliest whereabouts unknown. Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York, by 1917, until 1929;
deposited by her with Durand-Ruel, New York, 8
January 1917, and returned 21 December 19 17 (de-
posit no. 7844); bequeathed by Mrs. H. O. Have-
meyer to the museum 1929,
exhibitions: 1928, New York, Durand-Ruel, 20
March-10 April, French Masterpieces of the Late XIX
Century, no. 7, lent anonymously; 1930 New York,
no. 55; 1952, Hempstead, N.Y., Hofstra College, 26
June-i September, Metropolitan Museum Masterpieces
(no catalogue); 1954, West Palm Beach, Fla., Norton
Gallery and School of Art, December 1954/ Coral
Gables, Fla. , Lowe Gallery, University of Miami,
January 195 5 /Columbia, S.C., Columbia Museum of
Art, February 1955, Take Care (no catalogue); i960,
Old Westbury, N.Y., Fourth Annual North Shore Arts
Festival, 13-22 May, Art of the Dance (no catalogue
[?]); I97^> Tokyo, National Museum, 10 August-i
October/Kyoto, Municipal Museum, 8 October-26
November, Treasured Masterpieces of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, no. 97; 1977 New York, no. 18 of
paintings; 1978 Richmond, no. 18; 1978 New York,
no. 45, repr. (color); 1986, Naples, Museo di Capo-
dimonte, 3 December 1986-8 February 1987/ Milan,
Pinacoteca di Brera, 4 March-3 May 1987, Capola-
vori impressionisti dei musei americani, no. 17, repr.
(color).
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 118 repr.;
Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1013 (as 1890); Browse
[1949], pp. 59, 396, no. 180, repr.; Havemeyer 1961,
p. 259; New York, Metropolitan, 1967, pp. 85-86,
repr. p. 86; Minervino 1974, no. 855; 1977, Paris,
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, La collection
Armand Hammer, n.p., under no. 42; Buerger 1978,
p. 21; Theodore RefF, "Edgar Degas and the Dance,"
Arts Magazine, LIIL3, November 1978, pp. 145-47,
fig. 2 p. 146; Moffett 1979, pp. 12-13, pi- 2^ (color);
Moffett 1985, pp. 82, 251, repr. (color) p. 83; Weitz-
enhoffer 1986, p. 255.
Fig. 269. Two Dancers (111:209.2), early
1880s. Charcoal, 18V&X 12V4 in. (46 X
31 cm). Private collection, New York
476
IV
1890-1912
Jean Sutherland Boggs
Fig. 270. Attributed to Albert Bartholome, Degas in His Studio, c. 1898. Photograph printed from a glass negative in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris
480
The Late Years: 1890-1912
The question of Degas's eyesight is to be thor-
oughly addressed in an article by Richard Kendall
scheduled for publication in Burlington Magazine
in the spring of 1988.
Boggs 1962, pp. 73-79.
Vollard 1936, pp. 235-36.
Michel 19 19, p. 464.
Moreau-Nelaton 193 1, p. 267.
L1421, Sao Paulo, Museu de Arte. See "The Sao
Paulo Bather," p. 600.
See "The Russian Dancers," p. 581.
In August 1904, Degas wrote to Paul Poujaud to
ask his advice about where he should go to re-
cover from gastrointestinal influenza and added,
"My tongue is still coated, my head hot and
heavy, my morale low. Gastrology is a mental
illness"; Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXVI, p. 237;
Degas Letters 1947, no. 257, p. 221,
Ambroise Vollard, Degas: An Intimate Portrait,
New York: Dover, 1986, p. 22.
McMullen 1984, pp. 402-66; Jean Sutherland
Boggs, "Edgar Degas in Old Age," for "Artists
and Old Age: A Symposium," Allen Memorial
Art Museum Bulletin, XXXV: 1-2, 1977-78,
pp. 57-67.
In making an assessment of the character of the late works of Edgar Degas, two elements
so important in evaluating his work in the 1870s and 18 80s are missing. We do not have
the evidence of his notebooks, which he seems to have stopped keeping about 1886.
And, because he essentially withdrew from exhibiting his work, we do not have the
same spirited reviews by critics to evaluate. This might appear to be balanced by the
survival of more correspondence from this period than from earlier years, but the letters
are often perfunctory; or by a greater number of personal accounts by his contempora-
ries, but these concentrate on the aging man rather than on the work of the artist. In
addition, the knowledge of his deteriorating eyesight has encouraged the incorrect as-
sumption that he gave up oil painting for pastel and two-dimensional work for model-
ing in wax.1 But Degas continued to paint, at least through 1896, and he drew until he
stopped working entirely.
One problem is that of establishing when the late work begins. This must be an ar-
bitrary choice. In writing a book twenty-five years ago on Degas's portraits, I chose the
year 1894, a perfectly sensible date when he had reached the age of sixty.2 For this exhi-
bition we have selected 1890, which also has its virtues, as the following commentaries
on the exhibited works will make clear. More surprising is the problem of deciding
when the late work ends. Obviously, because of Degas's failing eyesight, it did not ex-
tend until his death in 19 17. The dealer Ambroise Vollard, who is often inaccurate about
dates, records Degas as still drawing in 19 14. 3 We know from the evidence of Alice Michel
that he was working with difficulty in 19 10. 4 Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, a great collector
and connoisseur who bequeathed his magnificent collection to the Louvre, admired a
pastel that he described Degas as "fencing" with in 1907. 5 The last dated work is from
1903. 6 We know that Degas was still at the peak of his form in 1899. 7 Evidence sug-
gests that he was less active in the twentieth century and certainly must have stopped
work completely when he had to move his studio and living quarters from rue Victor-
Masse in 1912.
In thinking about the work of Degas in these late years, it is difficult to ignore the
intrusion of the spirit of the aging man; and one must confess his late work is unavoid-
ably serious, without any of the wit or humor of the 1870s. Nevertheless, it is a joy to
begin a consideration of it with 1890, knowing that Degas entered these years with a
certain abandon, seeing and hearing Rose Caron in Sigurd for the twenty-ninth recorded
time, and making the carefree trip by horse and carriage into Burgundy with his great
friend the sculptor Albert Bartholome. But in the twenty-seven years before he died,
there was a deterioration in body and mind and morale, only too well described in the
often grumpy letters and in the records of acquaintances and friends. It is endearing that
on occasion he admitted that his physical troubles could be emotional.8 It is also even
possible that, perhaps only for protection, he exaggerated his problems with his sight.
Vollard, after all, tells the story of Degas's excusing himself to an old friend because of
his blindness and then pulling out his watch to check the time.9 Because his aging into
what some have romantically described as a "blind Homer" has been thoroughly chron-
icled,10 I will not attempt here to deal with his life. Many of the details are in the Chro-
nology, and others can be found in the commentaries on individual works.
One fact about which there is general agreement by writers on the late work is
Degas's increasing indulgence in the abstract elements of his art. Color becomes more
intense and often seems to dominate his paintings and pastels. It is significant that as
481
late as 1899 Degas should have described the production of his Russian Dancers as an
"orgy of color."11 His love of color may also have explained his continuing passion for
the work of Delacroix, which he was buying. Waldemar George, writing about an ex-
hibition of the late work at Vollard's in 1936, remarked on "the most surprising results.
His tones — false, strident, clashing, breaking into shimmering fanfares . . . without
any concern for truth, plausibility, or credibility."12 Line also increased in vigor and ex-
pressive power. In reminding himself and others of what Ingres had said to him as a
youth about line, Degas kept alive his concept of line as a way of seeing form.13 George
also commented on his line working independently of his color: "a fat line, mobile,
supple, elastic, completely autonomous."14 In addition, the very texture of Degas's
work seems an immediate expression of the will of the man himself — often emphasized
by his working directly with his hands, leaving a fingerprint like a signature on his
monotypes, paintings, and sculpture. This concern might help us understand his pay-
ing what may have been his final tribute to Ingres when, in 1912, at the age of seventy-
eight, he visited the retrospective exhibition of the other artist's work and stroked the
canvases with his fingers.15 In this interest in and reliance on abstraction, there is a will-
fulness and a turning to what Degas himself described as "mystery" in art.16
In the first phase of the late work, from about 1890 through 1894, it seems as if this
sense of mystery is fed by visions of the Near East — Persian miniatures, and The Thou-
sand and One Nights, which Degas professed to read constantly and which he wanted to
buy in the new and expensive English edition.17 Even his admiration for Delacroix and
his memory of having in 1889 reached Tangiers, where Delacroix had passed,18 may have
encouraged his addiction to the Arabic tradition in art. He loved rugs, and said that one
of his pastels of a milliner's shop was inspired by an Oriental rug he had seen in a shop
on place Clichy.19 In his nudes, there is a sensuality — as in the caress of the line along
the buttocks of the lithograph Nude Woman Standing Drying Herself (cat. no. 294) — that
a European might find exotic. His tendency to indulge his nudes (cat. nos. 310-320)
with surroundings enriched by portable fabrics, sumptuous in pattern and color, but to
leave their bodies chastely unadorned makes them worthy of the admiration of a pasha.
Degas painted and drew these works with great restraint, as if a potentate's discriminating
taste could control their size and his indulgence in color and texture. These nudes often
arouse the most delicate frisson as they turn away from us, their hair heavy and their
slender necks vulnerably exposed.
Since Degas's landscape monotypes (cat. nos. 298-301) are small, exquisite, and
essentially artificial, it is logical that he should have produced them at this time, some-
times enhancing them with pastel.20 The very fact that Degas exhibited them in the
only one-man exhibition he authorized during his lifetime makes them in fact a mani-
festo in which he was announcing his intention of devoting his work to what one critic
described as the "delightfully fanciful"21 rather than to the measurable and "scientific."
But as Howard Lay points out, the landscape monotypes were consistent with the con-
clusions of Henri Bergson in 1889 and William James in 1890 about the nature of per-
ception.22
There are four ways in which the landscape monotypes are important, aside from
the fact that they are the creations of Degas's imagination rather than reproductions of
what he saw. One is their suggestion of a state of flux, which Degas explained by his
having seen landscapes from moving trains. Another is the unimportance of gravity and
equilibrium, which normally provide a sense of stability, A third is the elimination of
the human dimension by not including people and by not using a perspective that would
make us feel part of the created space — estranging us, in fact. The last significant point
about the landscape monotypes is their ambiguity. Often, there are allusions to sensa-
tions, such as atmosphere and sound, that obscure visual comprehension. And further-
more, there are instances — for example, in the monotype in the British Museum (cat.
no. 300) — where it is not clear whether the upper color field is sea or sky. Denis Rouart, a
grandson of Degas's great friend Henri Rouart and a painter and curator who wrote the
pioneering works on the techniques and monotypes of Degas, has suggested that in
these landscapes the artist "abandons all accidental precision and limits [himself] to evo-
11. Manet 1979, p. 238.
12. Waldemar George, "Oeuvres de vieillesse de
Degas," La Renaissance, 19th year, nos. 1-2,
January-February 1936, p. 4.
13. Halevy i960, pp. 57-59; Halevy 1964, p. 50.
14. George, op. cit., p. 3.
15. Halevy i960, p. 139; Halevy 1964, p. 107.
16. Halevy i960, p. 132; Halevy 1964, p. 103.
17. Lettres Degas 1945, Appendix III, p. 277; Halevy
1964, p. 65.
18. Lettres Degas 1945, CXV, to Bartholome, 18
November 1889, p. 145; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 126, p. 140.
19. Jeanniot 1933, p. 280.
20. See "Landscape Monotypes," p. 502.
21. R.G. in "Choses d'art," Mercure de France, V,
December 1892, p. 374.
22. Howard G. Lay, "Degas at Durand-Ruel 1892:
The Landscape Monotypes," The Print Collector's
Newsletter, IX: 5, November-December 1978,
pp. 145-46.
23. Denis Rouart, "Degas, pay sage en monotype,"
L'Oeil, 117, September 1964; 9 Monotypes by Degas,
New York: E. V. Thaw & Co., 1964, n.p.
24. See "Interiors, Menil-Hubert," p. 506.
25. See "Photography and Portraiture," p. 535.
26. Newhall 1956, pp. 124-26.
27. Eugenia Parry Janis in 1984-85 Paris, p. 473, de-
scribes them as Symbolist "oceans of unknowable
darkness."
28. See "After the Bath," p. 548.
29. See "The Dancer in the Amateur Photographer's
Studio," p. 568.
482
cation stripped of particularized meaning."23 In a sense, Degas asserts the significance of
the artist while leaving the spectator enchanted but vaguely uneasy.
Degas was capable of apparent contradictions. In the same year, 1892, in which he
was making many of the landscape monotypes, he was worried about applying princi-
ples of perspective in painting certain rooms at Menil-Hubert, the Normandy chateau
of his friends the Valpingons (see cat. nos. 302, 303). 24 Yet though he clearly defines
the boxlike spaces — painted with a solidity foreign to the translucent monotypes — he
excludes people here as well, from these rooms he clearly cherishes. In a painting in the
National Gallery of Art in Washington of dancers in a rehearsal room (cat. no. 305), the
room is as significant as the billiard room at Menil-Hubert, equally measured, equally
opaque. Although there are dancers present, they seem less important than the space,
except to explain Degas 's nostalgia for it. In these works, with their increasing sense of
melancholy and isolation, Degas was preparing, in a different way from in the monotypes,
for the direction of his work in the mid- 1890s.
"Exquisite" is a word that can be aptly applied to most of Degas' s works in the
early 1890s: exquisite in conception, in execution, in their allusions, in the relationships
they suggest with the art of some of his contemporaries such as Mallarme, exquisite in
their ability to give pleasure — and exquisite also in their capacity to probe gently but al-
most sadistically into loneliness and pain. By the midpoint in the decade, perhaps en-
couraged by the honest eye of the camera, Degas confronted loneliness and pain more
boldly, conveying both alienation and anguish in works — whether portraits or land-
scapes, dancers or bathers — of great visual and emotional power.
The key to Degas 's work from 1895 to 1900 is his interest in taking photographs or
having them taken for him.25 When he acquired his Kodak, he pestered his friends to
pose. He did not abdicate to this mechanical machine his role as an artist, collaborating
with his friend Tasset on developing, enlarging, and retouching his prints.26 He also
preferred to work indoors at night, when he would use lamps to provide a rich and dra-
matic chiaroscuro, producing prints one could describe as Rembrandtesque. He posed
his sitters as high-handedly as if he were a director in the theater or of films. By their
nature not as abstract as his paintings and drawings, these photographs nevertheless
seem to belong to the theater, having a strong sense of what would be effective on the
stage. Finally, whether he intended it or not, Degas produced composite photographs
through double exposures of a startling complexity and ambiguity.27
Among the photographs attributed to Degas is a bromide print, now in the Getty
Museum, of a nude (cat. no. 340) which is clearly related to three oil paintings that can
be dated fairly securely to 1896. 28 There is no evidence that the photograph was made
before rather than after the paintings. Nevertheless, the coincidence is so great it seems
certain that these three remarkable and expressive paintings — one gently sensual (fig. 310),
one a bather in a film of red paint (cat. no. 342) as vulnerable as the nudes on the scarlet
bed in Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus, one like a resurrection from a bathtub
tomb (cat. no. 341) — were all stimulated in their dramatic range by this small and poi-
gnant photograph.
Even more mysterious than the Getty photograph are three glass collodion nega-
tives of a dancer (cat. no. 357, and figs. 322, 323), found among the archival material
that the painter's brother Rene gave to the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1920. 29 Through
solarization, the glass plates have turned red-orange and green. The positions of the
dancers in at least three pastels (cat. no. 360, and figs. 325, 326), in a number of draw-
ings, and in the large painting Four Dancers in Washington (fig. 271) are certainly based
on these photographic plates.
Even the red orange and green of the tiny glass plates seem to have been carried
over to the Four Dancers; other hues are found, but oranges and greens predominate. In
addition to the possible photographic derivation of Four Dancers, there is another aspect
of the painting that is important in this middle phase of Degas's late work. It is un-
doubtedly a creation inspired by the theater, and Degas 's works of this period, which
were usually larger and bolder than those of the early 1890s, were normally theatrical,
as his portrait photographs most movingly were.
483
Fig. 271. Four Dancers (1,1267), c. 1896-98. Oil on canvas, 59X71 in. (150 X 180 cm). Chester Dale
Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Degas's works in the late 1890s possessed the artificiality as well as the scale and
carrying power of the theater. His colors became stronger and harsher, his handling
richer, and his line more brutal. His spaces are the unreal spaces of the stage, even when
they are the empty streets of Saint- Valery-sur-Somme (cat. nos. 354-356). His bodies
are energetic, but more frenetically so. It could have been because of the dancers of the
late 1 890s that Paul Valery was reminded, in writing Degas Danse Dessin, of a statement
by Stephane Mallarme: "A danseuse is not a woman dancing, because she is not a
woman and she does not dance."30 Degas's androgynous dancers rest, wait, rehearse,
acknowledge applause, but only rarely in this period do they perform. Their bodies
have lost the articulation that makes movement possible. When they do move, like the
Russian Dancers (see cat. nos. 367-371), it is as a group. Thrust into the glamorous world
of the theater, they sadly recall the aspirations of the young dancers in his earlier work.
After 1900, the excitement of Degas's color does not diminish. His line may even
increase in expressive force. The spaces continue to be theatrical and ambiguous, our
own equilibrium somewhat threatened. But the great change is in the bodies. These aging
figures struggle wearily with the fragility of their limbs and the weight of their torsos.
Although only shades of the bathers and dancers produced in the 1870s and 1880s, they
still possess a fierce will that makes them struggle against infirmities, never quite suc-
cumbing to the intensity of the color or line with which Degas suffused his drawings
and canvases.
The late work of Degas has always bothered critics, who have tended to avoid it
rather than to confront its meaning. It was easy, mistakenly, to ignore it as the work of
an increasingly senile artist — his deterioration obvious from his intolerant, anti-Semitic
stand on the Dreyfus Affair — or one whose failing eyesight could explain his distortion
of visual imagery. Degas's melancholy might have been acceptable had it been expressed as
charmingly passive, like the melancholy in most of the late paintings of his contempo-
rary Monet. Somehow, it was never understood why an artist who in his works some
twenty years earlier had placed so much emphasis on the individual in a social environ-
ment and on the possibility of human perfectibility, who had responded to vitality with
30. Valery 1965, p. 27; Valery 1960, p. 17. See also
Stephane Mallarme, Oeuvres completes, Paris:
Gallimard, 1945, p. 304.
31. Valery 1965, p. 165; Valery i960, p. 74 (transla-
tion revised).
32. Odilon Redon, A soi-meme, journal (1867-191$),
Paris: Jose Corti, 1979, p. 96.
33. Halevy 1960, p. 91.
484
animation and wit in works of discretion and understatement, should have raised his
painter's voice and spoken loudly in color and line about loneliness, anguish, frustra-
tion, and futility. But what was also not understood was that he spoke as well about
the effort, even in the dying, to exert the human will. And he spoke with his own will,
which, in spite of physical frailties, expressed itself cogently, boldly, valiantly.
The significance of Degas's convictions about the human will is contained in a story
about the younger painter Jean-Louis Forain trying to persuade him to install a telephone.
As Forain was talking, his telephone rang and he got up to answer it. Degas scoffed: "It
rings, and you have to run."31 Degas had never run — after a telephone or after any fash-
ion. As Redon had written in his journal in 1889, the life of Degas was a monument to
independence.32 Because of that independence, through his work he continues to call —
and it is we who respond to what Daniel Halevy described as "his implacable will."33
485
Chronology IV
Note
The author would like to thank her colleagues Henri Loyrette and
Gary Tinterow for having provided her with unpublished docu-
ments, and Michael Pantazzi for having perceptively guided her to
material that crossed his desk. John Stewart at the National Gallery
of Canada has given help with transcriptions.
1890
26 September
With Albert Bartholome, Degas begins a trip by horse and carriage
to the Jeanniots in Burgundy, where he makes his first landscape
monotypes.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXXVIII, p. 159; Degas Letters 1947, no. 140, p. 153;
Jeanniot 1933, p. 290; see "Landscape Monotypes," p. 502.
October
Degas is offended by the publication of personal details about his
family in an article by George Moore in the Magazine of Art and re-
fuses to see Moore again. Whistler (to whom Degas has had to
apologize for a cruel statement about him quoted by Moore) writes:
"That's what comes, my dear Degas, of letting those vile studio-
crawling journalists into our homes!"
Halevy 1964, pp. 58-59; Moore 1890, p. 422; "Letters from the Whistler
Collection" (edited by Margaret Macdonald and Joy Newton), Gazette des
Beaux- Arts, CVIII, December 1986, p. 209.
22 October
Goes to Sigurd, with Rose Caron (see cat. no. 326) as Brunehilde —
his twenty-ninth recorded attendance at this opera by Ernest Reyer,
which he will see and hear eight more times in 1890 and 1891. Caron
has returned to Paris after three years with the Theatre de la Mon-
naie in Brussels.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13 (see headnote to Chronology III); Eugene
de Soleniere, Rose Caron, Paris: Bibliotheque d'Art et de la Critique, 1896,
PP. 37, 39.
26 October
Writes an affectionate and self-analytical letter to Evariste de Valernes
in Carpentras.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLVII, pp. 177-80; Degas Letters 1947, no. 170,
pp. 170-72.
4 December
Attends a dinner given by the lawyer and collector Paul-Arthur
Cheramy at the Cafe Anglais. Reyer is on the host's right, Degas
on his left, and Mme Caron across the table.
Fevre 1949, pp. 125-26 n. 1.
1891
Sends a telegram on a Friday to Bartholome urging him to attend
a Buddhist mass at the Musee Guimet to be read by two Buddhist
priests. "The little goddess, who knows how to dance, will be
invoked."
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXIII, p. 188; Degas Letters 1947, no. 176, p. 178.
21 January
After a performance of Sigurd, Degas dines at the Halevys* with
Jacques-Emile Blanche, Jules Taschereau, and Henri Meilhac, a
playwright and collaborator of Ludovic Halevy. He talks of Ingres
and Gauguin.
Halevy i960, pp. 56-62; Halevy 1964, pp. 49-52.
6 July
Writes to Valernes that he is planning a series of lithographs of
nudes and dancers.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLIX, pp. 182-84; Degas Letters 1947, no. 172,
pp. 174-75; see "Lithographs: Nude Women at Their Toilette," p. 499.
Fig. 272. Attributed to Degas, Degas Looking at the Statue "Fillette pleurant, " by Albert Bartholome
(T58), c. 1895-1900. Photograph printed from a glass negative in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
486
1891-1892
Fig. 273. Attributed to Degas, Degas, with Mme Ludovic Halevy (?) Reading the Newspaper (T37), c. 1890-95.
Photograph, modern print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
J August
Writes to Ludovic Halevy that on the previous Thursday he was at
a dinner given by Cheramy at Chez Durand, where he met Bertrand,
the codirector of the Opera.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXII, p. 187; Degas Letters 1947, no. 175,
pp. 177-78-
26 August
At the Opera attends Verdi's Aida for the tenth recorded time since
1887.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
September
Writes to Halevy that he dined on Saturday at Albert Cave's with
Mme Howland and Charles Haas. On Friday is at the Rouarts* be-
fore seeing a revival of the play La Cigale, by Meilhac and Halevy,
and on Monday will have the painter Jean-Louis Forain and his wife
to dinner.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXVII, p. 190; Degas Letters 1947, no. 180, p. 180.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ( 1864-190 1) writes to his mother: "Degas
has encouraged me by saying my work this summer wasn't too bad."
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Lettres 1871-1901, Paris: Gallimard, 1972,
no. 127, p. 152; Unpublished Correspondence of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,
London: Phaidon, 1969, no. 125, p. 135.
2 September
Goes to Robert le Diable (see cat. nos. 103, 159), which he will have
seen at the Opera six recorded times since 9 November 1885.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
26 October
Although he is reputed to dislike Wagner's music, sees Lohengrin at
the Opera, with Caron singing the role of Elsa, and will see it again
on 22 July 1892.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13; Eugene de Soleniere, Rose Caron, Paris:
Bibliothdque de l'Art et de la Critique, 1896, p. 39.
1892
29 February
Sees Guillaume Tell by Rossini at the Opera for the twelfth recorded
time.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
2$ March
Leaves Paul Lafond in Pau to visit his "unfortunate" brother Achille
in Geneva.
Unpublished letter to Bartholome, 26 March 1892, National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa.
28 March
Sees Valernes in Carpentras, to which he has gone by way of Gre-
noble, Valence, and Avignon.
Fevre 1949, p. 94.
13 April
Death of Eugene Manet, brother of Edouard Manet, husband of
Berthe Morisot, and father of Julie. Degas had seen him in agony
earlier in the day.
Fevre 1949, p. 98.
27 June
Attends Gounod's Faust at the Opera for the eleventh recorded time
since 13 April 1885.
Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13.
27 August
Has been painting two canvases of the billiard room at Menil-
Hubert, where he has been staying with the Valpin^ons. Was to go
by Tours, Bourges, Clermont-Ferrand, and Valence to Carpentras.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXXII, pp. 193-94; Degas Letters 1947, no. 185,
p. 183; Fevre 1949, p. 102; see "Interiors, Menil-Hubert," p. 506, and cat.
no. 302.
487
1 892-1 894
September
An exhibition of landscapes by Degas is held at Durand-Ruel; it is
the first of only two exhibitions in his lifetime known to have been
devoted to his work alone.
See "Landscape Monotypes," p. 502.
October
Wears a curious contraption to strengthen his eyes.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXXIV, p. 195; Degas Letters 1947, no. 187, pp.
184-85; Halevy 1964, p. 67.
1893
Ambroise Vollard opens a small gallery.
March
In a Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker) (cat. no. 172), owned in Great
Britain since it was first exhibited there in 1876, is shown at the
Grafton Galleries in London and arouses a sensational dispute about
its morality.
Flint 1984, pp. 8— 11.
23 May
Witness, with Puvis de Chavannes, at the marriage of Marie-Therese
Durand, daughter of Paul Durand-Ruel, to Felix- Andre Aude.
Archives, Eighth Arrondissement, Paris.
31 August
Visits his sister Therese and her ailing husband Edmondo Morbilli
at Interlaken, Switzerland, and plans to stop at the Jeanniots at Die-
nay on his way back to Paris.
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXXVI, pp. 196-97; Degas Letters 1947, no. 189,
p. 189.
15 September
Witness, with Puvis de Chavannes, at the marriage of Jeanne Marie
Aimee Durand, daughter of Paul Durand-Ruel, to Albert Edouard
Louis Dureau.
Archives, Eighth Arrondissement, Paris.
October
Writes to an unidentified woman about the death on 13 October of
his brother Achille: "You haven't forgotten my poor Achille. You
were hospitable and good to him in bad times. And remember how
your husband went out at six in the morning to wait for him to be
released from prison, that time he fired the revolver. He married in
America, twelve years ago, and lived in Switzerland afterward. But
in 1889 he had a slight stroke, two years after another which left him
half-paralyzed. He had to stay in bed for two years, losing his speech
and perhaps some of his reason. He has just died here after being
back for two weeks. His wife insisted that nobody be invited to the
funeral, and I have had to observe this restriction."
Unpublished letter, n.d., Archives of the History of Art, The Getty Center
for the History of Art and Humanities, Los Angeles, no. 860070.
4 November
At Degas's urging, Durand-Ruel opens an exhibition of the work
of Gauguin. Degas buys The Moon and the Earth (fig. 274), one of
Gauguin's most famous works.
Wildenstein 1964, no. 499. PP- 202-03.
1894
Dated works: Racehorses in a Landscape (cat. no. 306), Dancers, Pink
and Green (cat. no. 307), Young Girl Braiding Her Hair (cat. no. 319),
and possibly also Woman with a Towel (cat. no. 324).
Fig. 274. Paul Gauguin, The Moon and the Fig. 275. Paul Gauguin, The Day of the God, 1894. Oil on canvas, 27l/2X 35% in. (70X91 cm).
Earth, 1893. Oil on canvas, 44^8 X 243/s in. The Art Institute of Chicago
(112 X 62 cm). The Museum of Modern
Art, New York
488
i894_I895
ij March
Goes to see the collection of the critic Theodore Duret before its
sale. Afterward, dines at Berthe Morisot's with Mallarme, Renoir,
Bartholome, Paule andjeannie Gobillard (daughters of Yves Gobillard-
Morisot and nieces of Berthe Morisot), and Julie Manet.
Manet 1979, p. 30; see cat. nos. 87-91, 332, 333.
19 March
At the Duret sale of works by Degas and his artist friends, Degas
attacks Duret: "You glorify yourself as having been one of our
friends. ... I won't shake hands with you. Besides, your auction
will fail."
Halevy 1960, pp. 11 5-16; Halevy 1964, p. 94.
2$ April
At the sale of the collection of the painter Millet, buys El Greco's
Saint Ildefonso (fig. 276). He notes: "the painting that was over Mil-
let's bed for a long time, bought at the sale after his wife's death."
Harold E. Wethey, El Greco and His School, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1962, II, no. X-361, p. 239; unpublished notes, private collection.
31 May
By telegram, invites Mallarme, Renoir, and Berthe Morisot to
dinner.
Unpublished telegram, Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet, Paris,
MLL3284.
October
Death of Paul Valpinqon.
3 October
Writes to Halevy asking him to see a Creole actress named Schamp-
sonn, "who has posed for me quite simply."
Lettres Degas 1945, CLXXX, pp. 199-200; Degas Letters 1947, no. 194,
pp. 188-89.
7 November
Julie Manet sees at Camentron's gallery a beautiful pastel by Degas
of a woman at a milliner's trying on a hat before a cheval glass (cat.
no. 232), and also horses and dancers. She reports that Degas has
bought two of the three known parts of Manet's large Execution of
the Emperor Maximilian (National Gallery, London), hoping to re-
unite them.
Manet 1979, p. 50.
December
Death of Edmondo Morbilli.
Fevre 1949, p. 92.
22 December
After a closed court-martial, Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason and
sentenced to loss of military rank and to life imprisonment. Degas
presumably supports the verdict.
1895
Degas buys one of Gauguin's great works, The Day of the God
(fig. 275).
1984 Chicago, p. 189.
18 February
Writes to Durand-Ruel that he has bought eight works at the Gauguin
sale for Fr 1,000.
Unpublished letter, Durand-Ruel archives.
March
Dates a charcoal-and-pastel drawing of Alexis Rouart (fig. 304) made
in preparation for the double portrait with his father (cat. no. 336).
2 March
Berthe Morisot dies, having referred to Degas in her final letter to
her daughter Julie Manet.
Morisot 1950, pp. 184-85; Morisot 1957, p. 187.
Fig. 276. El Greco, Saint Ildefonso, c. 1603-05. Oil on
canvas, 44 V2 X 253/4 in. (112 X 65 cm). National Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C.
June
Obtains Delacroix's portrait Baron Schwiter (fig. 206) from the dealer
Montaignac (who had bought it at the Schwiter sale in March 1890)
in exchange for three of his pastels worth Fr 12,000.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
11 August
Writes the first of several letters from Mont-Dore to Tasset, the
color merchant and framer (of the firm Tasset et Lhote) who is
helping him with the development and enlargement of his photo-
graphs.
Newhall 1956, pp. 124-26.
18 August
At Mont-Dore, hoping for a cure from bronchitis, writes to his
cousin Lucie Degas Guerrero de Baldo asking for a statement about
his financial affairs in Naples.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXCI, p. 207; Degas Letters 1947, no. 206,
pp. 194-95-
late August
After Mont-Dore, spends five days at Saint Valery-sur-Somme,
where his family has gone since as early as 1857 (see Chronology I,
11 November 1857).
Fevre 1949, p. 96.
489
i895
Fig. 277. Mme Ludovic Halevy and Her Son Daniel (T16), c. 1895. Photograph, modern print. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
29 September
Writes to Ludovic Halevy: "One fine day, I shall burst in on you,
with my camera in hand."
Lettres Degas 1945, CXCIII, p. 208; Degas Letters 1947, no. 208,
pp. 195-96.
October
His sister Marguerite dies in Buenos Aires. Degas arranges to have
her body brought back to France and buried in the family vault in
Montmartre cemetery.
Halevy 1960, pp. 79-81; Halevy 1964, pp. 69-71.
20 November
Julie Manet visits Degas; Mallarme, Renoir, and Bartholome are
also there for dinner, served by Zoe.
Manet 1979, pp. 72-73.
29 November
Renoir takes Julie Manet to Degas's studio. She finds him modeling
a nude in wax. Degas is also at work on a bust of Zandomeneghi,
which has not survived. They go on to Vollard's to see an exhibi-
tion of the work of Cezanne. Degas embraces Julie when they part.
Manet 1979, pp. 73~74-
22 December
Degas shows his recent acquisitions to young Daniel Halevy, in-
cluding works by Delacroix, van Gogh, and Cezanne. He says, "I
buy, I buy. I can't stop myself."
Halevy i960, p. 86; Halevy 1964, p. 73 .
28 December
Undertakes a long photographic session after dinner at the
Halevys'.
Halevy i960, pp. 91-93; Halevy 1964, pp. 82-83; see "Photography and
Portraiture," p. 535.
490
1896
Fig. 279. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jacques-Louis Leblanc, 1823.
Oil on canvas, 475/sX 375/s in. (121 X 95.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York
1896
The Caillebotte bequest is accepted for the Musee du Luxembourg;
included in it are seven works by Degas.
Through Vollard, Degas exchanges two small sketches of dancers
for "Two Heads of Dried Sunflowers" by van Gogh.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
January
Buys from Vollard "Three Pears" and "Green, Yellow, and Red
Apples" by Cezanne for Fr 100 each.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
1 January
Julie Manet writes to Mallarme: "We have been told by M. Renoir
that the photographs of M. Degas are a success and exhibited at
Tasset's."
Documents Stephane Mallarme (edited by Carl Paul Barbier), IV, Paris: Li-
braireNizet, 1973, p. 427.
2 January
On rue Mansart, Degas delivers an informal speech to Daniel
Halevy: "Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things
without being aware of it."
Halevy i960, p. 96; Halevy 1964, p. 85.
23 January
Durand-Ruel buys for Degas portraits of Jacques-Louis Leblanc
(fig. 279) and Mme Leblanc (fig. 280) by Ingres at auction at Hotel
Drouot, Paris, no. 47, for Fr 3,500 and Fr 7,500 respectively. Bar-
tholome writes to Paul Lafond on 7 March: "Perhaps you have seen
something in the papers about the sensation of his collecting career:
the purchase of two portraits, of M. and Mme Leblanc, by Ingres."
Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; letter from Bar-
tholome to Lafond, in Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 172.
Fig. 280. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Mme Jacques-Louis Leblanc,
1823. Oil on canvas, 47X361/2 in. (119.4X92.7 cm). The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
Bartholome adds: "After the [collecting of] walking sticks, it was
photography, and now paintings, with an intensity that I am afraid
worries Durand-Ruel, and that worries me for his future. His disin-
terestedness is all very fine, as is his idea of a museum. But will it
catch on with other collectors as he believes? And one must eat."
Letter from Bartholome to Lafond, private collection.
In acquiring these paintings by Ingres, Degas reminds himself in a
notebook of his having been taken to see them in 1855 in the house
of a son of M. and Mme Leblanc, rue de la Vieille-Estrapade.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
20 February
Writes to Julie Manet that Durand-Ruel will lend one small room
for the posthumous exhibition of 300 of the works of her mother,
Berthe Morisot.
Degas Letters 1947, no. 209, p. 196.
2 March
On the first anniversary of Berthe Morisot's death, her daughter Julie
Manet finds Degas working with Monet and Renoir on the hanging
of the memorial exhibition of her mother's work at Durand-Ruel.
Manet 1979, p. 77.
4 March
Degas hangs the drawings in Berthe Morisot's exhibition himself.
Manet 1979, p. 77.
$ March
Death of Evariste de Valernes.
6 March
Goes to Valernes 's funeral in Carpentras. (Bartholome later writes
to Lafond that Degas has left for Cauterets suddenly, "at the news
of the death of M. de Valernes.")
Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 173.
491
1896-1897
May
Visits "M. Ramel, brother of the second Mme Ingres," and lists
eighteen works by Ingres that he has seen in their house.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
2$ May
Writes to Henri Rouart congratulating him on his children and re-
gretting his own celibacy.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXCIV, p. 209; Degas Letters 1947, no. 211, p. 197;
see cat. no. 336.
20 June
Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago buys The Morning Bath (cat. no. 320)
from Durand-Ruel.
28 July
Writes to Alexis Rouart: "Everything is long for a blind man who
wants to pretend that he can see."
Lettres Degas 1945, CXCVIII, p. 212; Degas Letters 1947, no. 214, p. 199.
November
Buys Saint Dominique by El Greco (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
from Zacharie Astruc for Fr 3,000.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
S November
First Annual Exhibition opens at the Carnegie Institute Art Gallery in
Pittsburgh, with two works by Degas.
18 November
Visits the exhibition of the work of his friend Jeanniot. Later the
same day, shows the Halevys his enlarged photographs of Charles
Haas (fig. 300), Ernest Reyer, Du Lau, and Mme Howland (fig. 301).
Halevy i960, pp. 99-100; Halevy 1964, p. 87; see "Photography and Por-
traiture," p. 535.
Fig. 281. Paul Helleu, Alexis Rouart, 1898. Etching, 21V4X i63/s in. (54 X
41.5 cm). Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Fig. 282. Rene De Gas, Degas and His Niece at
Saint- Valery-sur-Somme, c. 1900. Photograph printed
from a glass negative in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
1897
February
The Caillebotte bequest is exhibited in the Musee du Luxembourg.
Lettres Pissarro 19 so, p. 432; Pissarro Letters 1980, p. 307.
10 February
Julie Manet goes with Paule Gobillard to see Degas, who is not
feeling well.
Manet 1979, p. 124.
20 March
Invites the painter Louis Braquaval (1854-1919) and his wife to din-
ner with Rene De Gas and his family (the first written record of a
reconciliation with Rene).
Unpublished letter, private collection; see cat. no. 335.
16 August
Visits the Musee Ingres at Montauban with Bartholome, perhaps
for several days.
Lettres Degas 1945, CXCVIII, CXCIX, CCVII, pp. 211-12, 217; Degas
Letters 1947, nos. 214, 216, 223, pp. 198, 200, 203-04.
November-December
Because of his anti-Semitism, Degas becomes increasingly es-
tranged from the liberal and bourgeois — and partly Jewish —
Halevy family.
15 November
Writes to Mme Halevy of trouble with his lungs; hopes to have
dinner with the Halevys on Thursday, the 19th.
Lettres Degas 1945, CCVIII, p. 218; Degas Letters 1947, no. 225,
pp. 204-05.
2$ November
Zola publishes his first article in Le Figaro supporting Dreyfus.
1987-88 New York, p. ix.
Daniel Halevy writes in his journal: "Last night, chatting among
ourselves at the end of the evening — until then the subject [the
492
1897-1898
Dreyfus Affair] had been proscribed, as Papa was on edge, Degas
very anti-Semitic — we had a few moments of delightful gaiety and
relaxation."
Halevy i960, pp. 127; Halevy 1964, p. 100.
i December
Degas finds an excuse to avoid a dinner at the Halevy s' in a letter to
Mme Halevy: "I must beg you to excuse me tomorrow, my dear
Louise. Young Mme Alexis Rouart has actually recovered her health
and with it her knack for friendship. She has so very kindly asked
me for dinner on Thursday to continue with Candide that I cannot
refuse. Do forgive me."
Letter from Degas to Louise Halevy, Bibliotheque de Tlnstitut, Paris,
no. 352.
8 December
Julie Manet and Paule Gobillard run into Degas at the Louvre, where
he talks to them of painting and the works in the Louvre. Degas
may then have introduced Julie to her future husband, Ernest Rou-
art, whom she describes as "his pupil M. Rouart. " They go on to
the Mallarmes'.
Manet 1979, pp. H3-44-
13 December
Zola's pamphlet Letter to Youth calls on young intellectuals to rally
in support of Dreyfus.
1987-88 New York, p. ix.
23 December
Degas dines for the last time at the Halevy s\ Daniel Halevy later
writes: "One last time Degas dined with us. Who the other guests
were I don't remember. Doubtless, young people who didn't care
what they said. Degas remained silent. Conscious of the threat that
hung over us, I watched his face attentively. His lips were closed;
he looked upwards almost constantly, as though cutting himself off
from the company that surrounded him. Had he spoken it would
no doubt have been in defense of the army, the army whose tradi-
tions and virtues he held so high, and which was now being in-
sulted by our intellectual theorizing. Not a word came from those
closed lips, and at the end of dinner Degas disappeared.
"The next morning my mother read without comment a letter
addressed to her and, hesitating to accept its significance, she handed it
in silence to my brother Elie. My brother said, 'It is the language of
exasperation.'"
Lettres Degas 1945, CCX, p. 219; Degas Letters 1947, no. 227, pp. 205-
06; HaleVy i960, pp. 127-28; Halevy 1964, pp. 100-101.
The letter in question, probably written on 23 December 1897, is
almost certainly the following: "Thursday — It is going to be neces-
sary, my dear Louise, to give me leave not to appear this evening
and I might as well tell you right away that I am asking it of you
for some time to come. You couldn't imagine that I would have the
courage to be gay all the time, to make small talk. I can no longer
laugh. In your goodness you thought that these young people and I
could mix with each other. But I am a burden to them, and they
are even more unbearable to me. Leave me in my corner, where I
will be happy. There are very good moments to remember. If I let
our affection, which goes back to your childhood, suffer greater
strain, it will be broken. — Your old friend, Degas."
Unpublished letter, private collection.
1898
Andre Mellerio writes of the twenty reproductions of the drawings
of Degas exhibited at Boussod, Manzi, Joyant et Cie (published as
Degas: vingt dessins, 1 861-1896) that "the technique used by M.
Manzi for these reproductions warrants real attention" and that
since "the works of M. Degas, even his lesser drawings, are fetch-
ing increasingly enormous sums," such a publication "will help
perpetuate and further disseminate the essence, the very core of this
artist."
Andre Mellerio, "Expositions: un album de 20 reproductions," L'Estampe et
VAffiche, II, 1898, p. 82.
January
Buys a "still life with glass and serviette" by Cezanne (Kunstmuseum
Basel) from Vollard for Fr 400.
Unpublished notes, private collection.
20 January
Julie Manet records in her journal anti-Semitic statements by both
Renoir and Degas. Of Degas, she writes: "We went to invite
M. Degas to join us, but we found him so worked up against the
■ Jews that we went our way without asking anything of him."
Manet 1979, p. 150.
22 April
Degas attends the funeral of Gustave Moreau at the Church of La
Trinite in Paris and walks with Comte Robert de Montesquiou to
the burial at Montmartre cemetery.
Mathieu 1976, p. 185; Robert de Montesquiou, Altesses serenissimes, Paris:
Librairie Felix Juven [1907].
May
Buys for Fr 200 a painting by Cezanne of green pears, which he de-
scribes as "relined — without doubt, a fragment of a picture."
Unpublished notes, private collection.
June
Degas sees the two portraits of Mme Moitessier by Ingres, the
standing version (now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C.) and the seated (National Gallery, London), and makes the
following notes: "There are two painted portraits, one standing facing
us, with bare arms, a black velvet dress on a reddish ground, some
flowers in her hair, belonging to her daughter, Mme la Comtesse
de Flavigny, 9 rue de la Chaise, where I just saw it in June 1898.
Mme de Flavigny, still in mourning for her mother, dead the past
year, received me, and we chatted about the portrait. She quite nat-
urally found the arms too fat, and I wanted to persuade her that
they are right like that. She alerted her sister Mme de Bondy, who
owns the other, the seated version, and I was able to see it in her
absence, 42 rue d'Anjou (to see it with difficulty, the hotel is for
sale, and the interior turned completely upside down) (flowered
dress, fine composition, less finished than the other, and more
modern)."
Unpublished notes, private collection.
Fig. 283. Odette De Gas, the Artist's Niecef?) (T55), c. 1900. Photograph
printed from a glass negative in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
493
1898-1901
22 AugUSt
Writes to Henri Rouart that he is at Saint- Valery-sur-Somme. (He
may have been staying with Braquaval or with his brother Rene.)
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXIX, p. 224; Degas Letters 1947, no. 237, p. 210;
see "Late Landscapes at Saint- Valery-sur-Somme," p. 566.
10 September
Death of Stephane Mallarme.
3 November
Julie Manet visits Degas, who teases her about marriage and men-
tions Ernest Rouart. She finds "ravishing" a wax of a nude on
which he is working.
Manet 1979, p. 202.
22 December
Attends a reception at the Rouarts' for Yvonne Lerolle, who is to
marry their son Eugene. Degas tells Julie Manet, "I found Ernest
for you . . . now it's up to you to carry on."
Manet 1979, p. 207.
27 December
Attends the wedding of Yvonne Lerolle and Eugene Rouart.
Manet 1979, p. 208.
28 December
Is one of fifteen at a dinner party at Julie Manet's.
Manet 1979, p. 208.
1899
28 January
Julie Manet asks Degas for a drawing to be used in a publication of
Mallarme's poems. He refuses because the publisher is a Dreyfusard.
Manet 1979, p. 213.
26 March
Drafts a letter to an unknown person, angry about persistent re-
quests to exhibit his works.
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXIII, p. 227; Degas Letters 1947, no. 240, p. 212.
2$ April
Julie Manet writes that on a visit to the Hotel Desfosses to see a col-
lection to be auctioned the next day, Degas has spoken to her of Er-
nest Rouart as "a young man to marry."
Manet 1979, p. 228.
6 June
Julie Manet and Ernest Rouart dine at Degas's. At the end of the
evening, Julie writes: "I thought about it all, and told myself that
Ernest is the one for me. "
Manet 1979, p. 233.
29 June
Julie Manet sees Degas at the exhibition of the Chocquet collection
at Galerie Georges Petit; he praises Ernest Rouart.
Manet 1979, pp. 236-37.
ijuly
At the Chocquet sale, buys two works by Delacroix. After the sale,
takes Julie Manet and one of the Gobillard sisters to his studio and
shows them three pastels of Russian dancers on which he has been
working.
Manet 1979, pp. 237-38; see "The Russian Dancers," p. 581.
19 September
Dreyfus is pardoned, a judgment Degas presumably does not accept.
16 November
Julie Manet writes in her journal of quarrels between Renoir and
Degas, now reconciled.
Manet 1979, p. 279.
toward 1900
Facing with distrust the exhibition Centennale d'art jrancais proposed
for the Grand Palais, still under construction, to complement the
Exposition Universelle, Degas writes to Lafond: "I want to know
whether the Pau museum has been asked to lend its picture of the
cotton market [cat. no. 115] to this 'Concentration.' I want to pre-
vent this loan about which I was not consulted." The museum, of
which Lafond was the curator, nevertheless lends the painting. In
addition, Mrs. Sickert lends her Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage
(cat. no. 124).
Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 175.
1900
The second version of The Ballet from "Robert le Diable" (cat. no. 159)
is bequeathed by C. A. Ionides to the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
16 March
Writes to Louis Rouart, son of Henri, in Cairo telling him that Julie
Manet and his brother Ernest, already looking married, had come
to dinner with Alexis Rouart.
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXIV bis, pp. 228-29; Degas Letters 1947, no.
244, PP- 2H-15.
30 April
Invites Maurice Tallmeyer (an anti-Dreyfus journalist who had been
at the same hotel at Mont-Dore in 1897) to dinner at 7:30 at his
place with Forain and Mme Potocka (nee Pignatelli d'Aragon), a fa-
mous beauty.
Lettres Degas I945» CCXXV, p. 229; Degas Letters 1947, no. 245, p. 215.
31 May
Attends the double wedding of Julie Manet and Ernest Rouart and
of Jeannie Gobillard and Paul Valery at the church of Saint-Honore
d'Eylau.
Agathe Rouart Valery, Paul Valery, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, p. 59; Manet
1979, p- 289.
1901
Fourteen years after the death of his first wife, Albert Bartholome
remarries. His second wife is Florence Letessier, a model described
by Degas in a letter to his sister Therese as "quite young."
Unpublished letter, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
There is some estrangement between Bartholome and Degas after-
ward. Degas writes to Lafond: "He asked me to be a witness: I knew
nothing about it before everybody else. You have often heard me
quote the Russian proverb: 'silver in the beard, devil in the heart.' "
Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 176.
January
In his annual New Year's letter to Suzanne Valadon, whom he al-
ways calls Maria, Degas writes: "That she-devil of a Maria, what
talent she has."
Degas Letters 1947, no. 251, p. 218.
28 August
Writes to Joseph Durand-Ruel of a "Blanchisseuse" (possibly L216,
Neue Pinakothek, Munich) that he has finished and which Durand-
Ruel will recognize.
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXI bis, p. 234; Degas Letters 1947, no. 252,
p. 218.
g September
Toulouse-Lautrec dies at his mother's chateau at Malrome. Degas
seems to have been relatively indifferent to Lautrec, much as the
other artist admired and imitated his work.
494
1902-1907
1902
jo September
Bartholome writes to Lafond about the growing estrangement be-
tween him and Degas: "Degas is as rude as ever in order to show
that he has not changed. He always made a great fuss about coming
to dinner at Auteuil [a suburb of Paris to which Bartholome had
moved], but the last time I saw him he said very naively, 'I need
air. I take walks. Yesterday I was at Auteuil.'"
Letter from Bartholome to Lafond, private collection.
1903
Dated work: Woman at Her Toilette (fig. 335).
See "The Sao Paulo Bather," p. 600.
8 May
Death of Paul Gauguin on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands.
September
Writes to Alexis Rouart that he has done some figures in wax, adding:
"With no work, what a sad old age!"
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXII, p. 234; Degas Letters 1947, no. 254, p. 219.
13 November
Death of Pissarro, from whom Degas had been estranged since the
Dreyfus Affair.
30 December
Writes a short, sentimental letter to Felix Bracquemond, referring
to their efforts to start a periodical of prints, Le Jour et la Nuit, and
hoping that they will see each other again "before the end."
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXIII, p. 235; Degas Letters 1947, no. 255, p. 220.
1904
May
Daniel Halevy visits Degas, who has been ill with intestinal grippe
for two months. He is shocked to "see him dressed like a tramp,
grown so thin, another man entirely."
Halevy i960, pp. 131-32; Halevy 1964, p. 103.
J August
Writes to Hortense Valpingon, whom he intends to visit at Menil-
Hubert for a short stay.
Degas Letters 1947, no. 256, p. 220.
10 August
Writes to Durand-Ruel that he is "working like a galley slave" and
that Durand-Ruel would see new things very far advanced. Com-
plains that he has grown old without learning how to make money.
Needs Fr 3,500 from Durand-Ruel to settle a bill with Brame, pre-
sumably for the purchase of works of art.
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXIV, pp. 235-36; Degas Letters 1947, no. 258,
pp. 221-22.
August
Spends time at Pontarlier, where he has gone by way of Epinal,
Gerardmer, Alsace, Munster, Colmar, Belfort, Besangon, and Or-
nans. On 28 August, writes to Durand-Ruel asking for Fr 400, half
of which he intends to send to Naples. Plans to make trips from
Pontarlier and return by Nancy. (He has gone to Pontarlier for gas-
tritis, which he described in a letter at the beginning of August to
Paul Poujaud as being a mental illness.)
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXIX, p. 239; CCXXXV, p. 236; CCXXXVI,
p. 237; Degas Letters 1947, no. 261, p. 223, no. 259, p. 222, no. 257, p. 221.
27 December
Writes to Alexis Rouart: "It is true, my dear friend, you put it well,
you are my family."
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXVII, p. 238; Degas Letters 1947, no. 262,
p. 223 (translation revised).
1904-05
Makes portraits in pastel of M. and Mme Louis Rouart (L1437-L1444,
L1450-L1452) and the young Mme Alexis Rouart with her son and
daughter (see cat. nos. 390, 391).
Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 163.
1905
February
In an exhibition arranged by Durand-Ruel at the Grafton Galleries
in London, thirty-five of Degas's works are shown along with
those of Boudin, Cezanne, and the Impressionists.
21 April
Writes to his sister Therese in Naples from the country house of
Henri Rouart at La Queue-en-Brie, where he has spent several days.
He intends to tour the neighborhood.
Unpublished letter, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
1906
18 April
Writes to his sister Therese that he is relieved that she and his other
Neapolitan relatives were not affected by the eruption of Vesuvius.
Unpublished letter, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
12 July
Alfred Dreyfus is completely rehabilitated, but Degas's attitude does
not change.
September
Writes to his niece Jeannie Fevre that he must go to Naples and may
stop to see her in Nice.
RefF 1969, no. 10, p. 288 (BN, Ms. Nova, Acq. Fr. 24839, fol. 159).
22 October
Death of Cezanne, whose works Degas admires arid of which he
owns seven canvases and a watercolor.
late October
Goes to Naples.
$ December
Has returned from Naples in time to have dinner with the Rouarts —
"my family in France" — on Friday. Writes Therese that between Mar-
seilles and Lyons his pocket was picked of Fr 1,000, and he believes
he was drugged first.
Unpublished letter to Therese MorbilH, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
1907
February
The dentist Paul Paulin makes his second bust of Degas in Degas's
studio.
Letter from Paulin to Lafond, 7 March 1918, in Sutton and Adhemar 1987,
p. 179-
6 August
Writes to Alexis Rouart that he is working on drawings and pastels.
He is no longer tempted to take trips, but when it grows dark (about
5:00 p.m.), he takes a tram to Charenton or some other place. On
Sunday, he is to go see Henri Rouart, who is recovering. He him-
self suffers from pains in his kidneys.
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXLIII, pp. 241-42; Degas Letters 1947, no. 268,
pp. 226-27.
26 December
The collector and writer Etienne Moreau-Nelaton visits Degas in
his studio. Degas, who is working on a pastel of a bather, talks
495
I907-I9I2
about his collecting. They go together to Lesin, on rue Guenegaud,
who mounts Degas' s drawings and has the secret of the fixative
given to Degas by Luigi Chialiva (1842-19 14).
Moreau-Nelaton 193 1, pp. 267-70.
1908
May
Calls on the Halevys to view the body of Ludovic, whom he had
not seen since 1897 because of their differences over the Dreyfus Affair.
Halevy i960, pp. 134-35; Halevy 1964, pp. 104-05.
21 August
Writes to Alexis Rouart that he wants to do sculpture: "Soon one
will be a blind man."
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXLV, p. 243; Degas Letters 1947, no. 270, p. 227.
November
Death of Celestine Fevre, a daughter of his sister Marguerite, at La
Colline-sur-Loup, near Nice (see fig. 24).
18 November
Degas has dinner with the Bartholomes (see fig. 284). Bartholome
writes to Lafond: "He was well and in charming good humor."
1909
The painter's cousin Lucie dies in Naples.
late May
Is presumed to have attended performances of the first appearance
of Diaghilev's company in Paris after its opening on 19 May.
1910
11 March
Writes to Alexis Rouart: "I do not finish with my damned sculpture."
Lettres Degas 1945, CCXLVIII, pp. 244-45; Degas Letters 1947, no. 273,
p. 229.
4 August
Writes to Mme Ludovic Halevy: "My dear Louise — Thank you for
your kind letter. One of these days, you will discover me on your
doorstep . — Affectionately, Degas . "
Unpublished notes, private collection.
1911
April
A one-man show (his second) is held at the Fogg Art Museum at Har-
vard University. Among the twelve works are Interior (cat. no. 84)
and Racehorses at Longchamp (cat. no. 96).
May
Goes to a large exhibition of the work of Ingres at Galerie Georges
Petit.
Halevy i960, pp. 138-39; Halevy 1964, p. 107.
June
While visiting the Rouarts at La Queue-en-Brie, Degas sees his first
airplane. Has lunch with Mme Ludovic Halevy, M. and Mme Da-
niel Halevy, and Mme Elie Halevy at Sucy-en-Brie. Elie, Daniel's
brother and a distinguished historian, refuses to come down to lunch
because he has never forgiven the painter for his anti-Dreyfus stand.
Halevy i960, pp. 139-41; Halevy 1964, pp. 107-08. (Both Mme Daniel
Halevy and Mme Elie Halevy described the episode to this author.)
1912
Death of Henri Rouart.
His rue Victor-Masse apartment (where he has lived since 1890) is
to be demolished, and Degas must move. With the help of friends,
in particular Suzanne Valadon, he finds another apartment, at 6
boulevard de Clichy. Is depressed over the forced move.
12 July
Writes to his Fevre nieces to announce the death of his sister Therese
in Naples.
Fevre 1949, p. 113-
29 July
Sends money to Naples to help pay for the funeral expenses of
Therese.
Unpublished letter, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
3 December
Mary Cassatt writes to Mrs. Havemeyer of visiting Degas's Fevre
nieces but finding only "the Comtesse" (presumably Anne, Vicom-
tesse de Caqueray) at home. They live near Nice "in a most roman-
tic valley," ignorant, until she explains it to Anne, of the value of
their uncle's work.
Unpublished letter, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, C34-
10 December
Goes to the sale of Henri Rouart' s collection; his Dancers at the Barre
(cat. no. 164) sells for Fr 478,000. Daniel Halevy encounters Degas
Fig. 284. Albert Bartholome, Degas in Bartholomew's Garden, c. 1908.
Photograph, modern print. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
496
1912-1917
Fig. 285. Sacha Guitry, Degas in the
Streets of Paris, 19 12-14. Photo-
graph, modern print. Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris
at the auction (apparently he has not seen him for some time). Ha-
levy hears a voice say "Degas is here," and "there was Degas . . .
sitting motionless like a blind man." He and Degas walk away from
the auction house, and Degas says, "You see, my legs are good. I
walk well. But since I moved, I no longer work. ... I let everything
go. It's amazing how indifferent you get in old age."
Halevy i960, pp. 141-48; Halevy 1964, pp. 108-11.
13 December
Daniel Halevy sees Degas again at an exhibition of the Rouart
drawings that will be sold. At noon, the gallery is closed. "Degas
goes out first and we all follow him. Is it an apotheosis or a funeral?
Not out of indifference, but out of consideration, everyone leaves
him to his vague and grandiose solitude. He departs alone."
Halevy i960, pp. 148-49; Halevy 1964, p. in.
1915
17 November
Rene de Gas writes to Lafond: "Thank you for your interest in the
health of dear Edgar. Unhappily, I cannot tell you anything encour-
aging. Considering his age, his physical state is certainly not bad;
he eats well, does not suffer from any infirmity except his deafness,
which is increasing and makes conversation very difficult. . . .
When he goes out, he can hardly walk farther than place Pigalle; he
spends an hour in a cafe and returns painfully. ... He is admirably
looked after by the incomparable Zoe. His friends rarely come to
see him because he hardly recognizes them and does not talk with
them. Sad, sad end! Still, he is going gradually without suffering,
without being beset by anxieties, indeed surrounded by devoted care.
That is the main thing, is it not!"
Letter, private collection; cited in part in Sutton and Adhemar 1987, p. 177.
1913
The museum in Frankfurt buys Orchestra Musicians (cat. no. 98)
from Durand-Ruel.
11 September
Mary Cassatt writes to Mrs. Havemeyer that she is expecting a Fevre
niece of Degas's, whom she has urged to come to Paris to see his
condition. She says he is "immensely changed mentally but in ex-
cellent physical health."
Unpublished letter, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, B92.
4 December
Mary Cassatt writes to Mrs. Havemeyer that Degas is "a mere
wreck."
Unpublished letter, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, C48AB.
1916
Jeanne Fevre, at Mary Cassatt's urging, comes to nurse her uncle.
summer
Visits the Bartholomew at Auteuil.
1917
13 September
Paulin writes to Lafond that Bartholome "added in his letter that he
had seen Degas before leaving, that he was more beautiful than
ever, like an old Homer with his eyes looking into eternity." Paulin
goes on: "I myself went to see him before leaving again. Zoe and
Mile Lefevre [sic] are always there. He does not go out. He dreams,
he eats, he sleeps. When he was told that I was there, it seemed that
497
1917
he remembered me and said 'show him in/ I found him seated in
an armchair, draped in a generous bathrobe, with that air of the
dreamer we have always known. Does he think of something? We
cannot tell. But his pink face seems narrower; it is now framed by
long thinning hair and a great beard, both of a pure white, giving
him great presence. I need not tell you that I did not stay long. We
shook hands, and said we would see each other soon. That is all."
Letter, private collection.
27 September
Degas dies from cerebral congestion.
28 September
After a short service at the nearby Church of Saint-Jean-rfivange-
liste, Degas is buried in the family vault at Montmartre cemetery,
next to the tomb of Mme Moitessier (whose portraits by Ingres he
had admired in June 1898). On a sunny day in wartime Paris, about
one hundred people attend, including Bartholome, Bonnat, Cassatt,
Joseph and Georges Durand-Ruel, Jeanne Fevre, Forain, Gervex,
Louise Halevy, Lerolle, Monet, Raffaelli, Alexis and Louis Rouart,
Sert, Vollard, and Zandomeneghi.
Mathews 1984, p. 328.
498
Lithographs: Nude Women at
Their Toilette
cat. nos. 294-296
On 6 July 1891, Degas wrote to Evariste de
Valernes, "I am hoping to do a set of litho-
graphs, a first series on nude women at their
toilette, and a second on nude dancers."1 It
has always been quite reasonably assumed
that six lithographs of bathers (RS61-RS66),
including Nude Woman Standing Drying Herself
(cat. no. 294) and After the Bath (cat. nos. 295,
296), were the result, though Richard Brettell
has suggested an earlier date for the first
print (cat. no. 294). 2
Certainly Degas had earlier been attracted,
in other mediums — oil, pastel, drawing,
and perhaps wax sculpture — to the idea of a
female nude seen from behind, long hair
hanging down and body arched as she dries
or sponges her hip or the upper part of a
leg. These earlier studies seem to have cul-
minated in the three lithographs.
Richard Thomson has recently suggested
that the source for the figure in these litho-
graphs was the Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople, a work by Delacroix in the
Louvre: "Thirty years later [after having
made a copy of the Delacroix] he returned
to the grieving woman at the lower right,
. . . retaining her broad back and tumbling
hair, but changing her setting from the
melodramatic to the domestic."3
1. See cat. no. 58. See also Lettres Degas 1945, CLIX,
p. 182; Degas Letters 1947, no. 172, p. 175 (trans-
lation revised), incorrectly dated December instead
of July.
2. 1984 Chicago, p. 170, no. 78. Brettell relates this
print to the light-field monotypes of ten years ear-
lier— which are even less securely dated — though
he suggests the later date of 1890-91 in his caption
for the work.
3. 1987 Manchester, p. 124.
294.
Nude Woman Standing Drying
Herself
c. 1891
Transfer lithograph, crayon, tusche, and scraping
on white laid paper
Image: 13 X gs/s in. (33 X 24.5 cm)
Sheet: i63A x uVs in. (42. 5 x 30 cm)
Signed in pencil lower left: Degas
Print Department, Boston Public Library.
Albert H. Wiggin Collection
Reed and Shapiro 61. IV
Degas made a preliminary drawing of this
subject that shows that he had thought of
making the nude smaller in relation to the
room in which she stands drying herself be-
hind a chaise longue.1 Although he did
eventually enlarge the figure, and merely
suggests the room with strokes of rich orna-
ment on the wall — emphasizing the purity
of her body — the intimacy of a boudoir
scene remains.
The sensuality of the lithograph is created
by an enjoyment of the contours, the play of
the blackness of the lithographic ink — often
dryly applied — against the white of the paper.
The bather's breast is somewhat indefinite,
essentially concealed by the black shadow and
protected by the arm. Her right hip, how-
ever, juts out provocatively, and the but-
tocks are rendered with a certain tenderness.
Degas 's obvious pleasure in the contours
of the body and in its sensuality must have
been inspired by Ingres. In the beginning of
1891 (22 January), at dinner at the Halevys',
he described a meeting with Ingres during
which the older artist had said, "Draw lines,
young man, draw lines; whether from
memory or from nature. "2 On that occa-
sion, Degas also quoted some of the older
artist's aphorisms, including, "Form is not in
the contour; it lies within the contour" and
"Shadow is not an addition to the contour
but makes it." This lithograph seems to illus-
trate Degas 's acceptance of Ingres's advice.
In the preliminary drawings and in the
various states of the lithograph, there is an
increasing emphasis on the model's beautiful
head of hair, which flows downward as she
leans to dry her hip, the towel over her wrist
echoing in white the downward movement
294
499
295
of the hair.3 Two hairpieces, one hanging on
the back of the chaise and one curled on the
seat, appear almost animate.
There is a particular poignancy in the
contrast between the weight of the woman's
abundant black hair and the youthfulness of
her tenderly rendered body — as if some of
the bather's energy were pouring out from
her hair.
1. 111:384.
2. Halevy i960, pp. 57, 59; Halevy 1964, p. 50.
3. II:3i8; II:3i6; 111:327.1, Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown; 11:321; 111:262.
provenance: Albert Henry Wiggin, New York (Lugt
suppl. 2820a, not stamped); his gift to the Boston
Public Library 1941.
selected references: Delteil 1919, no. 65. Ill/ IV;
E. W. Kornfeld and Richard H. Zinser, Edgar Degas:
Beilage zum Verzeichnis der graphischen Werkes von Loys
Delteil, Bern: Kornfeld und Klipstein, 1965, repr.
n.p.; 1967 Saint Louis, pp. 30-31, nos. 18, 19; Adhe-
mar 1974, no. 63; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85,
pp. LXV-LXXII, no. 61. IV.
295.
After the Bath, large plate
1891-92
Transfer lithograph, crayon, and scraping on
off-white heavy smooth wove paper
Sheet: 12V2 x 1JV2 in. (31.7X44.6 cm)
Image maximum: 11% X 12V& in. (30.2 X 32.7 cm)
Atelier stamp at right of plate mark, lower right
The Art Institute of Chicago. Clarence
Buckingham Collection (1962.80)
Reed and Shapiro 66. Ill
Degas here achieves a greater monumentality
than in Nude Woman Standing Drying Herself
(cat. no. 294) by showing less of the model's
Fig. 286. The Toilette after the Bath (L1085), c. 1891.
Charcoal and pastel, 15 X i$3/s in. (38 X 34 cm).
The Burrell Collection, Glasgow
500
body and by having it dominate the space.
In the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, there
is a charcoal and pastel drawing (fig. 286) in
which a maidservant, as solemn-featured as
an acolyte, holds up a towel for the bathing
figure. Degas seems in that drawing to have
begun with a more concentrated composi-
tion and then, as was his custom, to have
patched on additional pieces of paper to the
sheet so that more of the nude is seen and
the space around her is amplified. The ren-
dering of the hair is particularly luxuriant.
In the third state of After the Bath, the hair
is as rich as in the drawing but the back-
ground ornament is smaller and more repet-
itive and the maid's expression is gentler
and more attentive.
provenance: With Louis Carre, Paris, 19 19. With
Richard Zinser, New York; acquired by the museum
1962.
exhibitions: 1967, Saint Louis, Steinberg Hall,
Washington University, 7-28 January /Lawrence,
The Museum of Art, The University of Kansas,
8 February-4 March, Lithographs by Edgar Degas (cat-
alogue by William M. Ittman, Jr.), no. 15, repr.;
1984 Chicago, no. 81, repr.; 1984-85 Boston,
no. 66. Ill, repr.
selected references: Delteil 19 19, no. 64; E. W.
Kornfeld and Richard H. Zinser, Edgar Degas: Beilage
zum Verzeichnis der graphischen Werkes von Loys Del-
teil, Bern: Kornfeld und Klipstein, 1965, repr. n.p.;
Passeron 1974, pp. 70-74; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85,
pp. XLV-LXIX.
296.
After the Bath, large plate
1891-92
Transfer lithograph, crayon, and scraping
on off-white laid paper
Image: i2Xi23/sin. (30.5X31.5 cm)
Sheet: i67/sX 19V& in. (42.9X48.7 cm)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (23 117)
Reed and Shapiro 66. V
In the fifth and final state of After the Bath,
the handling is broader, as if to exploit the
innate roughness of the lithographic stone,
though Degas actually used transfer papers.
There are almost no contours as the forms
merge into each other and into space. There
seem to be memories of the wallpaper in the
Burrell Collection drawing (fig. 286) as the
wall bursts into flower in the upper right.
Unlike in the more realistic Burrell draw-
ing, here the maidservant's hand, holding
up a towel like Saint Veronica's veil, appears
disembodied; the fingers, poised in a gesture
of benediction, release an aura of light above
the bather's hair. Beneath the hand, the
bather's profile is lost in shadow, the hair,
shortened and rough, hardly distinguished
297
in form and texture from the towel. The
sense of mystery, which other commenta-
tors acknowledge,1 is heightened by the
barely visible though compassionate features
of the maidservant's face.
1 . Sue Welsh Reed and Barbara Stern Shapiro in
1984-85 Boston, p. 248.
provenance: Auguste Clot, Paris; Louis Rouart, Paris;
David David- Weill, Paris (sale, Drouot, Paris, 25-
26 May 1971, no. 53); Barbara Westcott, Rosemont,
N.J.; with David Tunick, 197 1; bought by the muse-
um 1977.
exhibitions: 1979 Ottawa; 198 1, Ottawa, National
Gallery of Canada, 1 May-14 June/ Montreal Museum
of Fine Arts, 9july-i6 August/ Windsor Art Gallery,
13 September-14 October, "La pierre parle: Lithog-
raphy in France 1 848-1900" (organized by Douglas
Druick and Peter Zegers; no catalogue), no. 493.
selected REFERENCES: Delteil 1919, no. 64; E. W.
Kornfeld and Richard H. Zinser, Edgar Degas: Beilage
zum Verzeichnis der graphischen Werkes von Loys Del-
teil, Bern: Kornfeld und Klipstein, 1965, repr. n.p.;
Passeron 1974, pp. 70-74; Reed and Shapiro 1984-85,
pp. lxv-lxix.
297.
Bather Drying Herself
c. 1892
Pastel and charcoal, heightened with white
chalk, on tracing paper
ioYs X io3/s in. (26.4 x 26.4 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, i960 (61. 10 1. 18)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 856
At one point in his preoccupation with the
lithograph After the Bath (cat. nos. 295,
296), it seems that Degas made a tracing of
the bather alone, eliminating the setting and
the maid and giving more emphasis to the
figure's contours and anatomy.1 The strong
line of the forehead and nose gives more
emphasis to the profile than in any state of
the lithograph. The white chalk with char-
coal on the yellow tracing paper seems faintly
lavender in hue, and gives the drawing an
unexpectedly stylish (for the 1890s) color
scheme that Degas occasionally affected, in
spite of his reputed antipathy to Art Nouveau
501
style.2 The bather's hair is magnificently
drawn, from the tiny curls at the nape of the
neck to the purplish brown tresses rendered
with a sure sense of space, fading out with
fainter, rougher strokes of pastel.
1. All other related drawings seem to show the
maidservant. See 111:177.1; 111:334.2, British
Museum, London; IV:^$6.
2. Halevy i960, pp. 94-97; Halevy 1964, pp. 84-85.
provenance: Albert S. Henraux, Paris; Stephen C.
Clark, New York; his bequest to the museum i960.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 161; 1977 New York,
no. 44 of works on paper.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 856 (as c. 1885).
Landscape Monotypes
cat. nos. 298-301
Degas had always painted or drawn occa-
sional landscapes, but he was normally so
caustic about his Impressionist colleagues1
painting out of doors that it was a surprise
to his friends when he announced that he
had succumbed to landscape painting. At
dinner at the Ludovic Halevy s' in Septem-
ber 1892, as Halevy's son Daniel faithfully
recorded, he told the gathering that he had
finished twenty-one landscapes in mono-
type.1 He presumably also said, though
Daniel does not mention this, that they
were being shown at Durand-Ruel that
month.
Degas remarked that the monotypes had
grown out of his travels that summer. Actu-
ally, he had begun the landscapes on his fa-
mous trip by horse and carriage — a white
horse and a tilbury — in October 1890, when
he went with the sculptor Albert Bartholome
(1848-1928) to visit their mutual friend, the
artist Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848-1934),
at his large estate, Dienay par Is-sur-Tille,
in the Cote d'Or region of Burgundy. Degas
wrote highly amusing daily reports to Lu-
dovic Halevy and his wife, Louise, on their
progress.2 When they arrived at Dienay, it
became clear that Jeanniot had a printing
press and all the tools to entice Degas to
make monotypes. Later, Jeanniot described
Degas working on a copper (or zinc) plate
with colored oil paints which he applied with
a brush, and probably his fingers, wiping
away much of the paint with a pad he had
made himself.3 "We gradually saw emerg-
ing on the surface of the metal a valley, a
sky, white houses, fruit trees with black
branches, birches and oaks, ruts filled with
water from a recent downpour, orange-col-
ored clouds scudding across a turbulent sky
above the red-and-green earth. . . . All these
things emerged without apparent effort, as
if he had the model in front of him."4 Jean-
niot added, "Bartholome recognized the
places they had passed in the tilbury with
the white horse." Degas used the old press
to transfer the paint from the plate to wet
China paper and, as Jeanniot reported, he
pulled three or four proofs (though two is
more probable), each of course paler than the
proof preceding it, and hung them up to dry.
Then he used pastel to give the monotypes
more structure, recalling in the landscapes
what Jeanniot described as the "unexpected-
ness of the antitheses and the contrasts."5
Jeanniot and Bartholome, accustomed to
Degas' s earlier work and attitudes, seized
rather unexpectedly on the scant realism in
these scenes of nature that, in their view, he
had created so miraculously from memory.
This was in spite of the fact that Jeanniot
was later to record Degas as having said,
"Reproduce only what has struck you — that
is, the essential; in that way your memories
and your imagination are liberated from the
tyranny that nature holds over them."6
When almost two years later Degas talked
to the Halevys about his upcoming exhibi-
tion of landscapes, Ludovic Halevy percep-
tively asked, "What kind are they? Vague
things?" To which the artist replied, "Per-
haps." Halevy continued to question him:
"A reflection of your soul? . . . Do you like
that definition?" Degas replied, "A reflection
of my eyesight. We painters do not use such
pretentious language."7
The landscapes are indeed vague. They
go a long way toward abstraction. Although
Degas traveled incessantly in the two years
he was apparently producing these mono-
types— to Carpentras, Geneva, Dijon, Pau,
Cauterets, Avignon, Grenoble, and Lau-
sanne, as well as in Normandy — his sources
are difficult to identify. Names of specific
locations have been attached to the mono-
types, but without much conviction. Anoth-
er characteristic is a suggestion of a state of
flux, for which Degas prepared the Ha-
levys: "They are the fruit of my travels this
summer. I would stand at the door of the
coach, and as the train went along I could
see things vaguely. That gave me the idea of
doing some landscapes."8 He later wrote to
his sister Marguerite in Argentina that they
were "paysages imaginaires" (imaginary
landscapes).9
In showing the monotypes at Durand-
Ruel, Degas had the first of two one-man
exhibitions in his lifetime; he seems to have
lent the works himself. Durand-Ruel had
shown Degas's work widely in group exhi-
bitions in the British Isles, Europe, and
North America, but most often works he had
bought from the artist. When Paul Durand-
Ruel was asked by the British dealer D. C.
Thomson about the exhibition of landscapes,
he wrote somewhat nervously: "M. Degas's
exhibition consists of only a few small land-
scapes in pastel and watercolor that he has
authorized me to show to certain collectors.
They are not of enough significance to form
an exhibition in the true sense of the word;
M. Degas would doubtless not approve one,
in any case."10 Only after the exhibition, it
seems, did the dealer acquire any of the
landscapes for his own stock.
Earlier, however, Durand-Ruel had de-
cided to interest the Ministry of Fine Arts in
the exhibition and wrote on 10 September
1892 to Henry Roujon, a friend of Mallarme's
who was Surintendant des Beaux- Arts: "I am
writing to ask you, in the event that you have
a free moment and are interested, to come
to one of my galleries, on rue Lafitte, to see
a very unusual exhibition of 25 pastels and
watercolors by Degas. It is a series of land-
scapes. As you know, Degas never exhibits,
and it is a signal event to have been able to
persuade him to show a collection of new
works."11 Writing this letter must have made
Durand-Ruel even more nervous than ac-
knowledging the existence of the exhibition
to D. C. Thomson; it was Roujon who had
offered to acquire a work by Degas for the
Luxembourg museum. Degas, offended by
Roujon's condescension and his power, had
refused, and stormily wrote to Ludovic Ha-
levy: "They have the chessboard of the Fine
Arts on their table. . . . They move this
pawn here, that pawn there. ... I am not a
pawn, I do not want to be moved!"12 It was
to be 1972 before a monotype landscape by
Degas entered the Louvre (cat. no. 299).
The principal Symbolist review, Mercure de
France, did acknowledge the exhibition in
December: "At the Durand-Ruel gallery, a
series of landscapes by Degas, not studies,
but delightfully fanciful scenes, recalled
from the imagination."13
But the only thorough review was by Ar-
sene Alexandre, in Paris of 9 September
1892. He begins by emphasizing the rarity
of the event. "This is one of the most extraor-
dinary happenings of the season. M. Degas
is exhibiting. Though that is not quite the
correct way to put it, because M. Degas is
not exhibiting and will not, ever, exhibit.
But put simply, in a corner of Paris that I
will not name and that M. Degas would
prefer to be left unknown, there are some
twenty new works by him. ..." After dis-
cussing the character of the artist, he says of
the exhibition, "There are only landscapes
here, very small ones, executed with an ex-
quisite skill and restraint. M. Degas has
brought together in these works feelings
and reminiscences about nature that he con-
veys with great poignancy and power."
502
Alexandre perceptively comments on in-
dividual works, though only one is identifi-
able— "A faraway volcano, unknown to any
geographer, belching a blue column of
smoke and ash" — Vesuvius, a pastel over
monotype in the Kornfeld collection, Bern
(L1052, J310). Although Alexandre did not
have the advantage of Jeanniot's description
of Degas working with monotype and we
must remember that Durand-Ruel in Novem-
ber would describe the works to Thomson
as "pastel and watercolor," he was fascinated
by the "cuisine" — the artist's craft. "It is un-
usually difficult, in these landscapes, to dis-
cover the secrets of the 'recipe,' the artful
and exciting mix of materials for which M.
Degas has a penchant. Everything imagin-
able happens here: watercolor is treated and
brushed on like oil paint, then mixed with
gouache, reworked and accented with pas-
tel, sometimes touched up and dabbed with
a wad of cloth, at other times squiggled
with the tips of his fingers, like a child mak-
ing patterns in the mud."
Finally, Alexandre decides that Degas
must understand nature very well to have
produced these works: "To achieve such re-
sults, even to attempt such a subject, one
must have meditated at length on nature, at
its very heart, to have studied the trees leaf
by leaf, the grass blade by blade. ... In a
word, one must know nature fully and
deeply to be able to portray it, and to ex-
press it, even a little."14
No one has written more eloquently
about the landscapes since.15
1. Halevy 1964, p. 66.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, CXXVIII, CXXIX-CXXXI,
CXXX-CXLI, CXLIII-CXLV, CXLVII-CLIV;
Degas Letters 1947, nos. 140, 142-44, 146-54,
156-58, 160-67 (26 September-19 October 1890)
(translation revised).
3. Jeanniot 1933, pp. 291-93; quoted in Janis 1968,
p. xxv.
4. Janis 1968, p. xxv.
5. Ibid., p. xxvi.
6. Jeanniot 1933, p. 158.
7. Halevy 1964, p. 66.
8. Ibid.
9. Fevre 1949, p. 102 (letter of 4 December 1892,
in which Degas refers to a small exhibition of
twenty-six landscapes).
10. Letter to D. C. Thomson, London, 16 Novem-
ber 1892, Durand-Ruel archives, Paris; Sutton
1986, p. 295.
11. Durand-Ruel archives, Paris.
12. Degas Letters 1947, Appendix, "Notes on De-
gas, Written Down by Daniel Halevy, 1891-
1893," entry for 19 February 1892, p. 248.
13. R.G. in "Choses d'art," Mercure de France, V, De-
cember 1892, p. 374. The notice ended, rather
improbably, "un peu a la maniere de Corot" (a
little in the style of Corot).
14. Arsene Alexandre, "Chroniques d'aujourd'hui,"
Paris, 9 September 1892.
15. There is, however, a useful review of the exhibi-
tion, dated 25 November 1892, in a short-lived
Montreal periodical. See Philip Hale, "Art in Paris,"
Arcadia, I, no. 16, 15 December 1892, p. 326.
503
298.
Landscape
1890-92
Monotype in oil colors heightened with pastel
Plate: 10 x 1$% in. (25.4 x 34 cm)
Signed lower left in red: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard
Gift, 1972 (1972.636)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 1044
The identification of the monotypes that
were made in October 1890 at Dienay, the
Jeanniot estate in Burgundy, as well as those
among the twenty-one, twenty-five, or
twenty-six monotypes (the number varies1)
that Degas was to show two years later at
Galerie Durand-Ruel, is a matter of conjec-
ture. He made about fifty monotypes at that
time. One pair of cognates is generally as-
sumed to reflect his trip to Burgundy, par-
ticularly because in the earlier version there
is the suggestion of an emerging landscape
structure, as Jeanniot had described in the
first monotype Degas made at Dienay.2 In
addition, the first of those two landscapes
(L1055, J279) was bought by Durand-Ruel
in June 1893, not long after the exhibition,
and sent to his New York gallery, where it
was sold to Denman W. Ross in November
1894.3
Because of the nature of the Ross bequest
to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the
earlier version cannot be lent. It is, as Bar-
bara Stern Shapiro has observed, warmer in
color than the one in this exhibition, vi-
brates more chromatically, and is probably
therefore an autumnal version.4 The second
of the pair, the present version, is more deli-
cate, more achingly beautiful. Shapiro
points out that Degas "dabbed and pulled at
the ghostlike inks to diminish the effect of
vegetation. A palette of cool pastels was
lightly scumbled over the pale streaky mono-
type design; the pastel work served as a
subtle cover rather than as a vehicle for the
articulation of the terrain."5 Eugenia Parry
Janis, who has written the most basic work
on the monotypes, agrees about the abstrac-
tion achieved here. She notes that "the most
dramatic spatial effect is not in the view rep-
resented but rather in the optical vibration
set up between the two layers of color."6
It is not always easy to separate the color
monotype from the pastel. Monotype can
be recognized in the blue-gray sky, the
white mist or cloud layer, the brown that
barely covers the paper in the foreground,
the bit of blue under the mountain in the
distance, and the green under the grass.
Sometimes Degas exposed the paper, as in
the white stream. With pastel, he used a
turquoise blue on the mountain at the left,
mottled a clearer, more intense blue over the
mountaintop at the right, chose a vivid em-
erald green for the strokes of the grass, ap-
plied greens, blues, and purples on the tops
of the nearest mounds of earth, and dabbed
a grass-green-like moss on the tops of the
mounds, as if to save them from prettiness.
There is a quiet lavender between the
mounds.
With an instrument like the end of a
brush, he burnished fine strokes to indicate
horizontal lines through the sky. At the
right, he produced vertical lines in the sky
and diagonal slashes against the hill to sug-
gest rain. He incised other lines horizontally
across the grass to the left of the stream, and
introduced small strokes in the mountain
and some zigzagging below and above the
lavender between the mounds.
It is a scene of spring. The blue hills are
wonderfully tender. The sky seems to drip
into the white mist. It could be the land-
scape about which Alexandre wrote in 1892,
recalling "the sadness of grayish blue morn-
ings, wan and unreal."7 This is a beautiful,
gossamer world, essentially uninhabited and
far from reality. As Douglas Crimp has
written, the monotypes are "landscapes in
which Degas supplanted the visible world
with the visionary."8
1. It seems unlikely that the figures given casually by
the artist, or remembered casually by his friends,
can be trusted.
2. Janis 1968, p. xxv.
3. Ibid., p. xxvii.
4. 1980-81 New York, no. 31, p. 112.
5. Ibid., no. 32, pp. 112-14.
6. Janis 1968, p. xxvi.
7. Arsene Alexandre, "Chroniques d'aujourd'hui,"
Paris, 9 September 1892.
8. Crimp 1978, p. 93.
provenance: With Durand-Ruel, Paris and New
York. With Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1961; H.
Wolf 1963; Edgar Howard; bought by the museum
1972.
exhibitions: 196 1, New York, Kennedy Galleries,
Five Centuries of Fine Prints, no. 278a, p. 42, repr.;
1974 Boston, no. 107; 1977 New York, no. 5 of
monotypes; 1980-81 New York, no. 32.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1044; Janis 1968, no. 285; Cachin 1974, p. lxviii;
Minervino 1974, no. 959; The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Notable Acquisitions, 1965-197$, New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975, p. 193; Reff
1977, pp. 42, 43, fig- 77-
299.
Landscape, called Burgundy
Landscape
1890-92
Monotype in color on laid paper
n7/s X i53/4 in. (30 X 40 cm)
Signed and inscribed in red crayon lower left: A
Bartholome, Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF35720)
Exhibited in Paris
Cachin 201
Because this landscape is dedicated to Bar-
tholome, Degas's staunch companion on the
tilbury trip into Burgundy, it is tempting to
think that Degas gave it to the sculptor at
the time he was experimenting with mono-
type in the Jeanniot home at Dienay, their
destination.1 It may be partly because its
austerity is not offset by pastel, which Bar-
bara Stern Shapiro has described as "dimin-
ishing the effect of vegetation," that this
monotype seems so earthy.2 One can sense,
to quote Jeanniot, "ruts filled with water
from a recent downpour," "the red-and-
green earth," and "orange-colored clouds"
which — somewhat browner than described—
seem to have descended on the earth.3 The
thin black, almost hatched storm clouds
gather in the sky to the right above the un-
even dark purple contour of a hill bursting
over the horizon. Degas appears to have
plowed up the red soil with the coarse bristles
of his brush.
Although Degas had said at one time that
nothing in his work should appear to be ac-
cidental,4 we cannot help feeling that chance
played its role in the form of the orange
cloud lying on the earth. Degas was, to a
significant extent, beginning to accept im-
provisation, while still controlling his work
with absolute mastery.
1 . The dedication of this monotype, untouched by
pastel, argues against the assumption made by
Howard G. Lay ("Degas at Durand-Ruel, 1892:
The Landscape Monotypes," The Print Collector's
Newsletter, IX: 5, November-December 1978,
p. 143) that a landscape monotype without pastel
was "probably unfinished.*'
2. 1980-81 New York, no. 32, pp. 1 12-14.
3. Janis 1968, p. xxv.
4. He said, for example, to George Moore: "No art
was ever less spontaneous than mine"; Moore
1890, p. 423.
provenance: Albert Bartholome, until 1928; Dr. Ro-
bert Le Masle, Paris; his bequest to the Louvre.
exhibitions: 1985 London, no. 26, repr.
selected references: Philip Hale, "Art in Paris," Ar-
cadia, 1, no. 16, 15 December 1892, p. 326; Genevieve
Monnier, "Un monotype inedit de Degas, Cabinet des
Dessins," La Revue du Louvre et des Musees de France,
23rd year, 1, 1973, p. 39, repr.; Cachin 1974, no. 201;
Serullaz 1979, repr. (color) p. 27.
504
299
300.
Landscape, called Cape Hornu
near Saint-Valery-sur-Somme
1890-92
Monotype in oil colors on heavy white laid paper
Plate: n7/sX i$Va in. (30X40 cm)
Sheet: 12V16X i65/i6 in. (3 1.6 x 41.4 cm)
Trustees of the British Museum, London
(1949-4-11-2424)
Janis 295
In the 1985 Arts Council of Great Britain
exhibition Degas Monotypes, Anthony Grif-
fiths pointed out that "there is no reason to
think that he went [to Saint-Valery-sur-
Somme] in the '90s and many reasons to
think he did not."1 The title of this mono-
type is one that has been imposed on one of
Degas's imaginary landscapes. The forms
could suggest brown cliffs against a gray
sea, but there is no evidence that this is a
specific, identifiable place. The landscape is
so ambiguous that the gray could be water
or sky; the green, grass or water. Cape Homu
has a mood that is more than simply visual;
it seems to evoke other sensations — of the
weather, and even of sound. It has something
in common with the theater flats Degas was
painting in the 1890s as backgrounds for
some of his dancers.2
1. 1985 London, no. 24, p. 62. Actually, Degas did
go to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme in the 1890s, but
after producing these monotypes.
2. Paul Lafond (Lafond 19 18-19, II. P- 62) observed
the relationship between Degas's landscapes and
his theater Rats.
300
provenance; Campbell Dodgson, London; his be-
quest to the museum 1949.
exhibitions: 1985 London, no. 24.
selected references: Janis 1968, no. 295; Cachin
1974, no. 192, repr. (color).
505
30i
30i.
Landscape
1890-92
Monotype in oil colors on wove paper
Plate: 11V2 X 15V2 in. (29.2 X 39.4 cm)
Collection of Phyllis Lambert, Montreal
Janis 309
Of all the landscapes in the exhibition, this
one is the most abstract and the most fore-
boding. Although Degas's vision includes
the wonderful and mysterious rose, purple,
and gold colors of the earth, and the relief of
untouched paper, in the center there arises
a strangely conical form — not quite a tree,
not quite a tornado cloud — which vaguely
threatens us.
provenance: Maurice Exsteens, Paris; with Paul
Brame and Cesar de Hauke, Paris, 1958.
exhibitions: 1968 Cambridge, Mass., no. 78.
selected references: Cachin 1974, no. 190.
Interiors, Menil-Hubert
cat. nos. 302, 303
There was always a special place in Degas's
heart for his schoolfriend Paul Valpingon,
his wife, and their daughter Hortense (cat.
nos. 60, 61, 95, 101, 243). Visits to their
chateau Menil-Hubert in Normandy (near
Gace, in the department of Orne) were a
regular part of his life. In August 1892, he
found himself complaining to his friends, as
he had in the past, that he was staying on
unwillingly because he had trapped himself
into beginning a work of art.
On Saturday 27 August 1892, he wrote to
Bartholome, "I wanted to paint, and I set
about doing billiard interiors. I thought I
knew a little about perspective. I knew
nothing at all, and thought I could replace it
through a process of perpendiculars and
horizontals, measuring angles in space, just
through an effort of will. I kept at it."1
The three oil paintings he did of interiors —
two of the billiard room, the other perhaps
his own bedroom — seem the antithesis of
the thin, open imaginary landscapes in
monotype that he had been doing at the
same time. The interiors are real, with, as
Theodore Reff has shown, some works of
art that are identifiable.2 The interest in per-
spective provides a measurable link between
the spectator and that space, and the han-
dling of the oil paint has a richness of tex-
ture and color that makes the monotype
landscapes seem translucent.
Degas felt an affection for the house and
the people who occupied it — people with
whom he could perform a stately dance out-
side the chateau on a summer's day (see
fig. 287). Because he had moved around
constantly both as a child and as an adult,
he must have envied the stability of the
Menil-Hubert household. He must also have
savored its settled domesticity, for this was
a time when he was as nearly domesticated
as he would ever become. He had moved
into a three-storey apartment on rue Victor-
Masse in the Ninth Arrondissement in 1890,
and had taken a great interest in its furnish-
ing and decoration — looking for rugs, wall
coverings, and, as always, the printed
handkerchiefs with which Julie Manet tells
us he used to ornament his dining room.
On 20 November 1895, after having dined
with him, she wrote, "His dining room is
hung with yellow handkerchiefs, and on top
of them are the drawings of Ingres."3 Degas
was prepared to entertain. This would have
made him even more appreciative of the set-
tled rooms in this house of a friend.
1. Lettres Degas 1945, CLXXII, pp. 193-94; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 185, p. 183 (translation revised).
2. Reff 1976, pp. 141-43, identifies an eighteenth-
century tapestry at the right, Esther Swooning before
Ahasuerus, and Giuseppe Palizzi's Animals at a Wa-
tering Place, c. 1865, on the back wall.
3. Manet 1979, p. 72.
Fig. 287. Anonymous, M. and Mme
Fourchy (nee Hortense Valpincon) with
Degas at Menil-Hubert, c. 1900. Pho-
tograph printed from a glass nega-
tive in the Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris
506
302
302.
The Billiard Room at Menil-Hubert
1892
Oil on canvas
255/s X 3 17/8 in. (65 X 81 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2792)
Lemoisne 11 15
Degas did two versions of The Billiard Room
at Menil-Hubert. One of them is in a private
collection in Paris; the other is the present
work. The viewer's first impression is that
the painting is somewhat subdued, but we
are soon struck by its integrity.
Layers of color are revealed under the up-
per layers of paint — pure yellow under the
wood of the billiard table, brown under the
blue-and-rose coin-stippled rug, and a light
green under the dark of the velvet benches
by the table. There are surprising effects
with color — such as the rose wall of the
room glimpsed through the door, the blueish
cast to the billiard table, and the blue gray
of the door, the doorframe, and the ceiling.
The paintings and other works on the
walls are handled with great intimacy, even
to their frames. The difference, for example,
between the density of framed paintings and
the tapestry at the right is clearly defined.
Thin white curtains cover some of the pic-
tures in the next room. The billiard table
unifies the space but curiously does not
dominate it.
The Billiard Room is like the monotype
landscapes in that it is uninhabited and
therefore evokes a spatial experience of its
own. But it is full of the potential for hu-
man drama.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 37,
for Fr 13,000); Charles Comiot, Paris; private collec-
tion, Switzerland; with Nathan Gallery, Zurich;
bought by the museum 1967.
exhibitions: 1933 Paris, no. no.
selected references*. Francois Fosca, "La collection
Comiot," V Amour de VArt, April 1927, p. in, repr.
p. no; Barazzetti 1936, 192, p. 1; Lemoisne [1946-49],
III, no. 1115; Degas Letters 1947, no. 185, p. 183; "Staats-
galerie Stuttgart Neuerwerbungen 1967," Jahrbuch der
Staatlkhen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Wurttemberg, V,
1968, pp. 206-07, fig. 7; Minervino 1974, no. 11 57;
Reff 1976, pp. 140-43, fig. 105; Stuttgart, Staats-
galerie, 1982, p. 75.
507
303-
Interior at Menil-Hubert
1892
Oil on canvas
i^XiWbui. (33x46 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Private collection, Zurich
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 3 12
Interior at Menil-Hubert shows us a smaller
and gentler space than that of The Billiard
Room (cat. no. 302). It is probably a guest
bedroom — Theodore Reff suggests it is the
painter's1 — charmingly but informally dec-
orated with wallpaper, pictures, a mirror re-
flecting other pictures, and a towel rack. It
makes Menil-Hubert seem a most hospita-
ble place.
Although Degas had not until this time
painted interiors except as backgrounds for
his sitters or as settings for dramas, the rooms
in which the Bellelli family (see cat. no. 20)
or Mme Edmondo Morbilli (see cat. no. 94)
are placed, or in which Interior (cat. no. 84)
or The Song Rehearsal (cat. no. 117) are set,
show his sensitivity to the character of such
spaces.
Degas's paintings of the unoccupied rooms
at Menil-Hubert may have made him partic-
ularly ready in 18942 to buy and to treasure
the painting by Delacroix, now in the Louvre
(RF2206), of the tentlike room of the Comte
de Morny, with its pictures hanging on the
striped walls and its Roman lamp suspended
high above a settee. His own work here per-
haps inspired his collecting of other masters
rather than being the result of their influence.
1. Reff 1976, p. 141.
2. Letter to the author from Philippe Brame, 22 Ap-
ril 1987, confirms the date of purchase.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 31,
for Fr 13,700); Charles Comiot, Paris; Mr. and Mrs.
Saul Horowitz, New York.
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 46; 1955 Par-
is, GBA, no. 54 bis.
selected references: Francois Fosca, "La collection
Comiot," V Amour de VArty April 1927, p. in; Le-
moisne [1946-49], II, no. 312 (as 1872-73); Minervino
1974, no. 347; Reff 1976, pp. 91-92, 141, pi. 60 (color)
(as 1892).
Reflections on Horses and
Dancers at Sixty
cat. nos. 304-309
When he was about sixty and contemplating
the two subjects by then most often associ-
ated with his name — horses and riders, and
the dance — Degas was often reflective. In
the very act of reflection, he seemed to cast
a spell on his horses and dancers. Their re-
sponses are slower. They appear to live in
twilight, and whether it is in a field or on
the stage, any animation is apt to be more
optical and illusory than measurable.
Degas seemed to look back to his earlier
art, creating genealogies on particular themes.
Sometimes, such traditions had their sources
in artistic traditions of the past — like the
echoes of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Whitney
landscape Hacking to the Race (cat. no. 304).
More often, they are found in his own earlier
work — as in the Thyssen Racehorses in a
Landscape (cat. no. 306), a pastel (fig. 291),
or a painting (L767) of 1884. He even estab-
lished new sequences, as with the pastel
Dancers j Pink and Green (cat. no. 307), dated
1894, which begat the larger oil painting Two
Dancers in Green Skirts (cat. no. 308), which
in turn produced the sculpture Dressed Dancer
at Rest, Hands on Her Hips (cat. no. 309).
This sense of continuity was obviously im-
portant to Degas.
508
3o4
304-
Hacking to the Race
c. 1895
Oil on canvas
i$l/2 X 35 in. (39.4 X 89 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Mrs. John Hay Whitney
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 764
Hacking to the Race is probably the last of a
group of nine known jockey scenes that De-
gas executed in a panoramic format slightly
wider than a double square.1 This format,
an obvious choice for the rolling landscapes
and high horizons favored by Degas, was
first used by him in the late 1870s and sub-
sequently taken up by several avant-garde
painters in the 18 80s. Van Gogh adopted it
for the series of double squares he painted in
Auvers in 1890, and before him Pissarro had
made a series of overdoors in a similar format
that van Gogh probably saw in his brother's
gallery. Although the shape was commonly
used for marine pictures, it is similar to that
of Daubigny's many views of the environs of
Paris. Thus, it was a format laden with as-
sociations when Degas took it up for his
jockeys and dancers.
As John Rewald has noted, the friezelike
arrangement of the horses on parade — they
are probably hacking to the race — is reminis-
cent of Benozzo Gozzoli's Journey of the Magi
(Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence), which
Degas had copied about i860 (fig. 288), and
adapted for one of his early scenes of horse-
back riding (Li 18, Detroit Institute of
Arts).2 But the positions of the horses' legs
derive from a more contemporary source —
the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge.
At least four of the six horses are taken di-
rectly from Muybridge, and the transverse
view of the line of five horses may have
been suggested by the photographer's head-
on shots taken from a slight diagonal.
This work has generally been assigned to
the 1 8 80s, but a date of c. 1895 seems more
likely in view of what we now know. Cer-
tainly the painting must date to later than
1887, the year Muybridge' s corpus ap-
peared.3 The drawings for the individual
figures — fluent summary sketches that cap-
ture the carriage but not the character of the
jockeys — seem to date to the first half of the
1890s.4 But the elegiac mood and the care-
fully syncopated movement of the horses
suggest affinities with Degas's dancers of
the mid- 1 890s, especially the Frieze of Danc-
ers in Cleveland (L1144).5 The emphasis is
no longer on bright silks or a brilliant sky,
but on the subtly articulated limbs of the
horses, rhythmically echoed by the line of
poplars — themselves perhaps a reference to
Monet's serial views of poplars painted in
1891-92. GT
1. The others are: L446, L502, L503, L596, L597,
L597 bis, L761, BR111.
2. John Rewald, The John Hay Whitney Collection (ex-
hibition catalogue), Washington, D.C.: National
Gallery of Art, 1983, p. 40. Rewald also associates
the painting with Muybridge's photographs.
3. See "Degas and Muybridge," p. 459.
4. 111:107.3, HI: 108. 2, 111:99.2, IV: 3 78. b, III:i29.i.
5. Noted by George Shackelford in 1984-85 Wash-
ington, D.C., pp. 102-04.
I
«iJv- Mum JWLMs +v*
Fig. 288. The Journey of the Magi, detail after
Benozzo Gozzoli, The Journey of the Magi
(IV:9i.c), c. i860. Pencil, io3/sX 12 in. (26.2 X
30.5 cm). Harvard University Art Museums
(Fogg Art Museum), Cambridge, Mass.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 102);
bought at that sale by Jacques Seligmann, Paris, for
Fr 33,000 (Seligmann sale, American Art Associa-
tion, New York, 27 January 1927, no. 41); bought at
that sale by Rose Lorenz, agent, for $11,800; Helen
Hay Whitney collection, from 1927; by inheritance
to John Hay Whitney, until 1982; to present owner.
exhibitions: i960 New York, no. 39, repr.; 1983,
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 29
May-3 October, The John Hay Whitney Collection,
no. 13, pp. 40-41, repr. (color) (as 1883-90); 1987
Manchester, no. 90, p. 141, pi. 128, p. 99 (color)
(as c. 1895).
selected references: Etienne Charles, "Les mots de
Degas," La Renaissance de VArt Francais et des Industries
de Luxe, April 19 18, p. 3, repr. (as "Esquisse d'un
tableau de courses"); Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 764
(as c. 1883-90); Minervino 1974, no. 710; 1984-85
Washington, D.C., pp. 102-04, fig- 4-9-
509
J05
305-
In a Rehearsal Room
1890-92
Oil on canvas
15^4 X 35 in. (40 X 89 cm)
Signed in black lower left: Degas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Widener Collection (1942.9. 19)
Lemoisne 941
Degas's friezelike compositions of dance
classes, all about the same size, bridged the
1 8 80s, from their introduction at the end of
the seventies until their demise in the nine-
ties. In a Rehearsal Room, it is proposed, was
painted between 1890 and 1892. Durand-
Ruel bought it from the artist on 17 May
1892; normally, Degas sold works to his
dealer not long after he had produced them.1
One in the series of works that George
Shackelford brought together in 1984-85 in
his exhibition Degas: The Dancers, in Wash-
ington,2 this painting shows the ballerinas
trapped in a melancholy spell. There are
fewer dancers here — only six — than in the
other frieze compositions, the result, as
Shackelford demonstrated by X-radiograph,
of Degas's having painted out two figures
near the bench (see cat. no. 241). Although
in all the works the floor is a significant
element — Paul Valery found Degas's floors
"often admirable"3 — the floor in this paint-
ing is the most open and uninterrupted. In-
deed, the dancers can be seen as forming an
animated frame for it. This treatment of space
is particularly unlike that in The Dancing
Lesson (cat. no. 221) in the Clark Art Insti-
tute, in which the young dancer with a fan
is the center of the painting. Even the work
that is closest to the Washington canvas, the
Ballet Rehearsal at Yale (fig. 289)/ has fussier
genre details, such as the bulletin board and
the post that bisect the picture with more
energy than do any of the architectural ele-
ments in the Washington painting. Degas's
clearing of the space has a certain ruthless
simplification that suggests his work of the
nineties.
For the dancers in this painting, Degas
used, as he often did, stock poses. Some are
undoubtedly based on earlier drawings — as
was the dancer at the barre nearest the win-
dow or the dancer with her leg outstretched
on the bench.5 The figures are so close to
those in the Ballet Rehearsal that it is often
difficult to tell which of the roughly contem-
porary studies were intended for which
painting. One drawing, which must be for the
Washington canvas, is a charcoal nude study
of the two figures on the bench (fig. 290).
The left arm of the figure with the lifted leg
is bent like that of the dancer in the Wash-
ington painting rather than straight as in the
Ballet Rehearsal. It is a surprisingly abrupt
drawing, with harsh definition of the con-
tours by heavy lines or raking shadows, not
without a relationship to the small litho-
graph Three Nude Dancers at Rest (RS59)
that it has been assumed Degas made about
189 1-92. 6 A drawing of the dressed dancer
on the right (11:217. x) could be considered a
study for either the Yale or the Washington
Fig. 289. Ballet Rehearsal (L1107), c. 1890. Oil on canvas, 14V6 X 341/2 in. (38 X 90 cm).
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven
510
306.
, c. 1890-92. Charcoal,
Fig. 290. Study of Seated Nude Dancers (III:
i33/8 X 18V2 in. (34 X 47 cm). Location unknown
painting; only the inward slant of the right leg
indicates that it was made for the latter. Again
it is charcoal, a drawing in which Degas was
exploring solutions. Although transitional,
these drawings illustrate the direction of his
style at the beginning of the nineties.
If we compare the figures in the Yale paint-
ing with those in the exhibited work, we
find that the dancers at the barre in the
Washington picture are slightly less articu-
lated and less defined, without the same
sprightly contours and indications of fea-
tures. The Washington dancers are creatures
of light and shadow rather than bone. The
biggest difference in the figures on the bench
is that in the Washington painting the lifted
leg is higher, silhouetted cleanly against the
floor and wall. It appears to be the focus of
the painting, as if its spirited animation were
the antithesis of everything else in the work.
In a Rehearsal Room seems almost the expres-
sion of yearning for the optimism of earlier
dance compositions, where Degas conveyed
the sense of will and the possibility of per-
fection in the young dancers as transcending
their effort and exhaustion.
Finally, there is the melancholy mood, es-
tablished by the figures and the space they
occupy, but particularly by the color and
the handling of paint. The violets and blues
on the floor express sadness; the blues in the
shadows of the tutus and in the fabric on the
wall intensify the atmosphere of poignancy.
Even the pink of the tights serves to accen-
tuate the passivity of the other colors. The
paint is handled beautifully, dappling the
floor gently and changing the tutu of the
dancer on the right into some strange lumi-
nous flower, without its being subordinated
to the definition of either floor or tutu. Al-
though there are figures in the room, the
density of the enclosed interior space and
the sense of emptiness are close to that in
The Billiard Room at Menil-Hubert, of 1892
(cat. no. 302).
1 . The dated works in this exhibition, when com-
pared with the dates of their acquisition by Durand-
Ruel from the artist, confirm this.
2. See 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 35, pp. 93-
95, with an X-radiograph of In a Rehearsal Room,
reproduced p. 97, fig. 4.4. Shackelford dates it
c. 1885 but indicates repainting.
3. Valery 1965, p. 21; Valery i960, p. 42.
4. Lemoisne dates this c. 1891.
5. II:220.b; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 122; 111:8 1.1.
6. Richard Thomson (1987 Manchester, p. 88, fig. 117
p. 89) dates the lithograph after 1900.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 17 May 1892 (stock no. 2228); bought
by P. A. B. Widener, Philadelphia, 3 February 19 14
(stock nos. 3853, N.Y. 3741); Joseph E. Widener,
Philadelphia.
exhibitions: 1905 London, no. 51 (as "Ballet Girls in
the Foyer"); 198 1 San Jose, no. 66; 1984-85 Wash-
ington, D.C., no. 35 (as c. 1885).
selected references: Lafond 19 18-19, I, repr. p. 6;
anon. , Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at
Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pa. : privately printed,
193 1, p. 212; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 941 (as
1888); Browse [1949], p. 377, pi. 116a (as c. 1884-
86); Minervino 1974, no. 842; Kirk Varnedoe, "The
Ideology of Time: Degas and Photography,*' Art in
America, LXVHL6, Summer 1980, pp. 100, 105,
repr. (color) pp. 106-07.
Racehorses in a Landscape
1894
Pastel on tracing paper
i9l/4 X 24% in. (48.9 X 62.8 cm)
Signed and dated in black chalk lower left :
Degas/94
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano,
Switzerland
Lemoisne 114 5
Degas must have been in a reflective mood
in 1894, perhaps because it was the year of
his sixtieth birthday. In this pastel, he more
or less repeated the composition he had used
for one pastel (fig. 291) and one oil (L767)
produced exactly a decade before. Just as he
had distinguished those works from each
other by the landscape background and the
color of the jockeys' silks, he found similar
features differentiating this work from the
earlier versions.
Instead of the literal, descriptive pasture
and hills in daylight of the earlier works,
Degas chose a scene in which the lighting is
almost theatrical1 — rose and blue on the
mountaintops above a deep blue shadow,
and rose and violet through the greens of
the grass. The mountains and even the pas-
ture loom up and dominate the horses and
riders. Clearly, this landscape had been influ-
enced by the monotypes he had made two
or three years earlier. Although less impor-
tant than their natural surroundings, the
jockeys are dressed in silks the color of ani-
line dyes — shiny intense pinks and blues,
oranges and greens, which seem to grow as
naturally as flowers in the landscape setting.
They can remind us of the Mogul minia-
tures that we know Degas had admired over
thirty years before.2
Degas did not hesitate to reuse motifs. He
often repeated figures he had used in other
compositions. His fidelity to this particular
arrangement of horses and riders is never-
theless unusual. And his dating of all three
versions is rarer still. It is tempting to think
that these were among the works he referred
to in his letters as "articles" intended for
a market eager for his racetrack scenes; cer-
tainly they were bought by Durand-Ruel
immediately. This one may even have been
intended for the husband of Mary Cassatt's
friend Louisine Havemeyer, who bought it
in 1895. 3
1 . Denys Sutton writes: "It possesses a dreamy quality
which would make an ideal setting for Pellias and
Melisande" (Sutton 1986, p. 151).
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 197,
235, 241).
3. Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 102.
provenance: Bought from Degas by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 18 August 1894 (stock no. 3 116); bought from
511
306
Durand-Ruel by Horace Havemeyer, New York, 30
March 1895, for $2,700 (stock nos. 3 116, N.Y. 1376);
by descent to Mrs. James Watson- Webb, New York;
by descent to Mr. and Mrs. Dunbar W. Bostwick,
New York; Andrew Crispo Gallery, New York;
Baron H. H. Thyssen-Bornemisza, Lugano.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 72; 1936 Philadel-
phia, no. 53, pi. 105; i960 New York, no. 62, repr.;
1984 Tubingen, no. 192, repr. (color) p. 72.
selected references: Grappe 191 1, repr. p. 36;
Meier-Graefe 1923, pi. XC; Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1 145; Minervino 1974, no. 1164; Gunther Busch,
"Ballett und Gallopp im Zeichentrick," Welt am Sonn-
tag, 8 April 1984, repr. (color); Sutton 1986, pp. 150-
51, pi. 132 (color) p. 156; Weitzenhoffer 1986, p. 102,
pi. 53 (color).
Fig. 291. Before the Race (L878), dated 1884. Pastel,
i93/4 X 243/4 in. (50 X 63 cm). Private collection
307.
Dancers, Pink and Green
1894
Pastel
26 X i8V2 in. (66 X 47 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: Degas 94
Private collection
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 1149
In dating this pastel 1894, Degas was not re-
working an old idea, as he had in the Thyssen
racehorse scene (cat. no. 306), but starting a
new one. Although in the past he had paint-
ed and drawn dancers from behind, it was
usually in a class and not on the stage. Here,
he captures the excitement of a ballet in the
theater — two performers waiting beside an
exuberantly painted flat to go on stage, the
dancer at the right turning to her compan-
ion and gesturing that they must wait still.
512
Springing from their green silk bodices, their
gauze tutus are an enchanting peppermint
pink with a border of green faintly bluer
than their tops. A slightly deeper rose and
green are to be found in the shadows and on
the floor.
Since any surviving drawings related to
this composition seem to be worked up like
the later oil version (cat. no. 308), it is pos-
sible that Degas developed the pastel from
his original drawing. There is an immediacy
in the realistic angularity of the arms and
the shoulder blades and the way the fabric
pulls at the seam in the bodice that would
substantiate this. The hair is also meticu-
lously drawn. Degas used color and the
strokes of his pastel to convey the radiant
aura of a theatrical performance.
provenance: H. O. Havemeyer, New York; by
descent to present owner.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1 149; Minervino 1974, no. 1068.
513
308.
Two Dancers in Green Skirts
1894-99
Oil on canvas
55V8 X 3 1V2 in. (140 X 80 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Klapper,
New York
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 1195
This is an oil version of Dancers, Pink and
Green (cat. no. 307) and over four times as
large. Lemoisne dates it to a year after the
pastel, though it is difficult to be certain ex-
actly where it would fall between 1894 and
1899. The generosity of its scale could indi-
cate a later date.
In this instance, Degas made several
drawings in which he rounded the hair of
the dancer on the left into a bun (fig. 292). 1
He also rounded her features and her limbs,
making them more traditionally beautiful.
He pulled back the right arm so that it
would not have the same self-confident an-
gle as the left, and revealed the curve of the
breast. Drawings of the two dancers togeth-
er show Degas working on the rhythmic re-
lationship of the contours of the bodies.2
In this painting, through color, which
may have mellowed with age, Degas trans-
ports us to a world that contains less of the
excitement of the theater than it does of the
seduction of fantasy. His brushstrokes are as
bold as the total conception of the work.
Fig. 292. Standing Dancer (111:335.2),
c. 1895. Charcoal, i87/gXi3 in. (48 X
33 cm). Location unknown
1. Others are L1196; 111:402; IV: 152; 1958 Los An-
geles, no. 65.
2. 1:311; IV:i6i.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 100);
bought at that sale by Jos Hessel, Paris, for Fr 38,500;
bought by Durand-Ruel, New York, 21 March 192 1
(stock no. D 12386); Orosdi; bought from Orosdi
estate by Durand-Ruel, New York, 19 April 1927
(stock no. N. Y. 5023); bought by Albright Art Gal-
lery, Buffalo, 27 February 1928; sold to Matignon
Art Galleries, New York, 1942, in exchange for Rose
Caron (cat. no. 326); with J. K. Thannhauser, New
York. With Hammer Galleries, New York. Sale,
Christie's, New York, 16 May 1984, no. 28, repr.
(color); bought by present owner.
exhibitions: 1928, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Al-
bright Art Gallery, June- August, Selection of Paint-
ings, no. 13 (as "Two Dancers in Green Skirts");
1968, New York, Hammer Galleries, November-
December, 40th Anniversary Loan Exhibition: Master-
works of the XlXth and XXth Century, repr. (color);
1985, New York, Wildenstein, 13 November-20
December, Paris Cafes, repr. (color) p. 79.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1 195 (as 1895).
selected references: 192 i Paris, no. 23; Paris, Louvre,
Sculptures, 1933, no. 1750; Rewald 1944, no. LII (as
1896-1911); 1955 New York, no. 50; Rewald 1956,
no. LII; Beaulieu 1969, p. 375 (as 1890), fig. 8 p. 373,
Orsay 51P; Minervino 1974, no. S23; 1976 London,
no. 23; Millard 1976, p. 37 n. 59; Reff 1976, pp. 241-
42, fig. 159, Metropolitan 51 A; 1986 Florence, no. 51,
p. 200, pi. 51 p. 148.
A. Orsay Set P, no. si
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2087)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 23 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 258 (as 1890); 1984-85 Paris,
no. 74 p. 189, fig. 199 p. 201.
309
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. si
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.392)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 63; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1974 Dallas, no number; 1977 New York, no. 44 of
sculptures (dated by Millard as after 1890).
309.
Dressed Dancer at Rest, Hands
on Her Hips
c. 1895
Bronze
Height: i67/s in. (42.9 cm)
Original: brown wax. Collection of Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upper ville, Virginia
Rewald LII
Degas represented in three works of sculp-
ture a dancer in the same position as the
dancer on the left in the pastel Dancers, Pink
and Green (cat. no. 307) and the oil painting
Two Dancers in Green Skirts (cat. no. 308). 1
Two, not in this exhibition, are nude (RXXII
and RXXIII). More interesting in relation to
the pastel and in particular to the painting,
to which it is closer, is the third sculpture,
which is clothed. As in the canvas, the danc-
er's tutu is long and full, bouncing up at the
back. To support it, Degas stuffed his wax
with corks.2 Working with his fingers, he
used tiny pieces of wax to catch the light and
produce a flickering effect. Even in sculpture
he found a material and technique equiva-
lent to paint or pastel to suggest the shim-
mering light of the theater. At the same time,
the illusion does not extend to the body of
the dancer, which is angular, or to her face,
which is brutally modeled.
1. Michele Beaulieu (1969 Paris, no. 256) suggests
the relationship to cat. nos. 293 and 358, as well as
to L1015, L1016, L1017 (Art Institute of Chicago),
L1018, and L1019.
2. Millard 1976, p. 37, no. 59.
515
Bathers
cat. nos. 310-320
Degas did not make the kind of public state-
ment about his bathers in the 1890s that he
had in 1886, when he described his
contribution of a group of nudes to the last
of the Impressionist exhibitions. Neverthe-
less, nude women bathers continued to rep-
resent a large proportion of his work —
about a third. Although he could still have
said what he had observed to George Moore,
"These women of mine are honest, simple
folk, unconcerned by any other interests
than those involved in their physical con-
dition,"1 he now used the bathers' bodies
and gestures to express more than their status.
And although it was at this time that he is
recorded as having said at the Halevys' "At
last I shall be able to devote myself to black
and white, which is my passion,"2 in fact,
except for the lithographs and a few draw-
ings in charcoal, these pastels and paintings
are remarkable for the intensity of their color.
Degas continued the practice he also must
have employed in the eighties of asking his
nude models to move freely around the stu-
dio— in which a bathtub had been placed —
until they took a pose that he wanted to
"seize."3 As some explanation of the settings
for these paintings and pastels of bathers,
there is a story of the inspection by Mme
Ludovic Halevy of the painter's new apart-
ment on rue Victor-Masse in 1890. Mme
Halevy's son Daniel described her reaction:
"Mama said to Degas in speaking of his new
apartment, 'It's charming, but do remove
your dressing room from your picture gallery.
It spoils the whole thing.'" Degas replied
firmly, " No, Louise. It is convenient to me
where it is, and I don't put on airs, do I? In
the morning, I bathe. "4 The perfectly natu-
ral relationship for Degas between the act of
bathing and the enjoyment of works of art is
the basis of these compositions.
On the other hand, Alice Michel, who
modeled for Degas twenty years later, in
19 10, remembers in the middle of his untidy
studio "a bathtub, which he used in posing
models for his 'bathers.'"5
Eunice Lipton, in her provocative book
Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of Women
and Modern Life, argues with conviction that
"bathtubs, then, in late nineteenth-century
France, far from being ordinary accoutre-
ments of middle-class life, were a sign of the
prostitute."6 She points out that the "uphol-
stered chair covered with a towel or dress-
ing gown, a tub, a dressing table, a water
pitcher, a bed" reinforce this association.
But she sees an ambiguity in these bathers,
as she does in all the work of Degas. "Because
of the absence of explicit sexual gestures and
complex narratives, . . . the prostitute has
metamorphosed into any working woman,
or even middle-class woman."7 One reason
may be that although Degas may indulge in
richness of texture and color in fabrics that
would not seem inappropriate in a brothel,
his bathtubs are chastely bare, without the
skirts with which it was customary to adorn
them in brothels. In the same way, the bathers
are bare, and without affectations. Only in
the nineteenth century must their nudity have
been explained by prostitution. Degas was
in fact pursuing something more essential.
The collector and writer Etienne Moreau-
Nelaton, who visited Degas more than ten
years later, remarked on the pieces of mate-
310
rial in the studio — the sumptuous orange,
"une etoffe rose saumon," which Degas
begged him not to move.8 Although some
of the fabrics and specific pieces of material
are familiar to us from Degas's works of the
eighties, some are new, the result presum-
ably of his shopping for the rue Victor-Masse
apartment. In general, it can be said that
they are used more abstractly and often more
ambiguously than were his props a decade
earlier.
1. Moore 1890, p. 425.
2. Degas Letters 1947, "Notes on Degas, Written
Down by Daniel Halevy 1 891-1893," p. 247. Ha-
levy dates the incident Saturday 14 February 1892.
516
37-
The story may be apocryphal; Mina Curtiss omit-
ted it from her careful edition of Halevy's My Friend
Degas; see Halevy 1964.
3. Michel 1919, pp. 457-78, 623-39.
4. Halevy i960, p. 39; Halevy 1964, p.
5. Michel 1919, p. 458.
6. Lipton 1986, p. 169.
7. Ibid., p. 182.
8. Moreau-Nelaton 193 1, p. 268.
310.
Young Woman Combing Her Hair
c. 1890-92
Pastel on beige paper mounted on heavy wove
paper
32V2 X 233/s in. (82 X 57 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1942-13)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 930
Degas, who had always given great empha-
sis to the image of women combing their
hair, seems here to have found in it a reflec-
tion of sound. The bather combs her hair as
if the comb were a bow. She cups her ear
with the other hand as if listening.
The nudity of the figure is somewhat
concealed by the hennaed hair between her
breasts and by the white towel over the
lower part of her body. Nevertheless, the
drawing of the breasts is both so sculptural
and so chaste that it inevitably suggests early
fifth-century Greek sculpture. Even the
roughness of the hatching on the torso re-
minds us of the resistance of stone. On the
other hand, the pastel breaks into a panoply
of color behind the figure — a yellow green
that is an extension of the chaise longue,
what appears to be a pink towel with blue
shadow, and some reddish fabric continuing
the color of the young woman's hair. Blue
shadows on a white towel in the upper left
become more intensely turquoise in some
fabric in the upper right. This background
not only relieves the stonelike severity of the
figure, it also dissolves into an organic vortex
of color that competes with the figure and
supports the musical analogy.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 128);
bought at that sale by Dr. Georges Viau, for Fr 20,000;
Viau collection, 1918-42 (sale, Drouot, Paris, first
Viau sale, 11 December 1942, no. 69, pi. XII); bought
at that sale by the Louvre.
exhibitions: 1945, Paris, Louvre, Nouvelles acquisi-
tions des Musees Nationaux, no. 80; 1949 Paris, no. 105;
1956 Paris (no catalogue); 1969 Paris, no. 219, repr.
(color) cover; 1969, Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Des-
sins, December, "Pastels" (no catalogue); 1974, Paris,
Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, June, "Pastels, cartons,
miniatures, XVIe-XIXe siecles" (no catalogue); 1975,
Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, "Pastels du XIXe
siecle" (no catalogue); 1975-76, Paris, Louvre, Cabinet
3ii
des Dessins, "Nouvelle presentation: pastels, gouaches,
miniatures" (no catalogue); 1985 Paris, no. 89.
selected references: Germain Bazin, "Nouvelles ac-
quisitions du Musee du Louvre," Revue des Beaux-
Arts de France, 1943, pt. Ill, repr. p. 139; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 930 (as c. 1887-90); Paris, Louvre,
Impressionnistes, 1947, no. 75; Minervino 1974,
no. 939, pi. LV (color); Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Pastels, 1985, no. 89, p. 92, repr, p. 91.
311.
After the Bath
c. 1895
Pastel on wove paper, with additional strip at top
275/s X 275/s in. (70 X 70 cm)
Signed in black chalk lower right: Degas
Musee du Louvre, Paris. Gift of Helene and
Victor Lyon (RF31343)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1335
In some ways, this pastel seems a denial by
the artist of the round tub he had enjoyed
drawing in his bathers of the eighties. It is
Fig. 293. Woman in a Tub (L738), 1884-86.
Pastel, 27l/2 X 27V2 in. (68 X 68 cm). The Tate
Gallery, London
based on Woman in a Tub (fig. 293), custom-
arily dated between 1882 and 1885, which
appears to have been shown in the last Im-
pressionist exhibition.1 The earlier work
was once owned by Degas *s friend the
painter Henry Lerolle and is now in the Tate
Gallery in London. In the Tate pastel, a
nude in an almost identical position sits in a
517
flat circular tub, which emphasizes the un-
usual roundness of the forms. The tub also
contains the body most reassuringly.
In making the later work, Degas stayed
remarkably close to the original conception,
but he placed the bather on a towel on the
floor. She is therefore not protected by the
tub. And indeed there is less sense of a de-
fined intimate interior. He has opened up
the space around the figure, particularly
above her head, and he has been even less
specific about the details. Only a preparatory
drawing (L1334) indicates that there is prob-
ably an elongated tub behind the bather.
Degas compensates for his suppression of
literal description by the intensity of the color,
though it is still in stylized patches, and by
the abstract play of pastel. The nude herself
also seems more generalized, her features
lost in shadow — perhaps not quite a god-
dess, but hardly a particular individual.
One might suspect that Degas made After
the Bath for someone who had enjoyed the
earlier pastel in Lerolle's house. This does
not seem to have been the case, however,
since Degas sold After the Bath to Durand-
Ruel in June 1895, and it did not find a buyer
until the following May.
1. Thomson 1986, p. 189, fig. 4 p. 188.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 11 June 1895; bought by Mr. Von Seidlitz 2
May 1896, for Fr 4,300 (stock no. 3344); Von Seidlitz
collection, Dresden; Max Silberberg, Breslau (sale,
MM. S . . . and S . . . [Silberberg], Paris, Galerie
Georges Petit, 9 June 1932, no. 6, repr.); bought at
that sale by Schoeller, for Fr 110,000; Victor Lyon,
Paris; gift of Helene and Victor Lyon to the Louvre,
reserving rights for their son Edouard Lyon, 1961;
entered the Louvre 1977.
exhibitions: 19 14, Dresden, April-May, Exposition
de la peinture ftangaise du XIXe siecle; 1937 Paris, Or-
angerie, no. 158, pi. XXIX; 1978, Paris, Louvre,
"Donation Helene et Victor Lyon" (no catalogue).
selected references: Grappe 19 11, p. 18; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 1335 (c. 1898); Minervino 1974,
no. 1042; Anne Lpistel, "La donation Helene et Vic-
tor Lyon, II: peintures impressionnistes," La Revue du
Louvre et des Musees de France, XXVIII: 5-6, 1978,
pp. 400, 401, 406, no. 64, repr. (color); 1984-85 Par-
is, fig. 120 (color) p. 141; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Pastels, 1985, p. 86, no. 83.
312.
Nude Woman Drying Her Feet
c. 1895
Pastel
iSVs x 23V4 in. (46 x 59 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Muriel and Philip Berman,
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 113 7
One view of the body in motion that inter-
ested Degas, as he watched his models mov-
ing around his studio, was looking down at
the back of a bather as she leaned forward to
dry her lower limbs. In his most daring per-
formance with this pose — a charcoal and
pastel drawing (fig. 294) — the bather is
freestanding and seems to bow, holding her
towel with the flourish of a matador.1 By
contrast, in this pastel in the Berman collec-
tion, Degas drew a bather supporting herself
on the edge of the tub and curling around
herself as if she were a dormouse.
Degas surrounded the bather with yellow
drapery, a patterned rug, and a blue tub, to
make the scene more intimate still. He used
the pastel calligraphically, but with particular
vibration on the model's back, where the
white and black strokes of pastel spill over
the contours of her body. The energy is
therefore highly abstracted, reaching a fluid
resolution in the shining white towel, with
its blue shadows, about the bather's legs.
1 . A preparatory study for Le petit dejeuner apres le
bain (L1150 and L1151, Tel Aviv Museum).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 63,
for Fr 7,100); Charles Comiot, Paris; "Vblande Ma-
zuc, Caracas; with Wildenstein, New York; Mr. and
Mrs. Morris Sprayregen, Atlanta. Sale, Sotheby
Parke Bernet, New York, 14 November 1984, no. 17;
bought at that sale by present owner.
exhibitions: 1949 New York, no. 82, p. 65, lent by
Wildenstein; 1956, New York, Wildenstein, Novem-
ber, The Nude in Painting, no. 29; i960 New York,
no. 59, lent by Mr. and Mrs. Morris Sprayregen.
selected references: Francois Fosca, "La collection
Comiot," V Amour de VArt, April 1927, p. 113, repr.
p. 111; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1137 (as c. 1893);
Jean Crenelle, "The Perfectionism of Degas," Arts,
XXXIV:7, April i960, p. 40, repr.
518
Nude Woman Lying on Her
Stomach
c. 1895
Pastel over monotype in black ink on off-white
laid paper
i6Va X 12V4 in. (41X31 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection, France
Lemoisne 140 1
Seldom in his search for what seems to have
been a visual equivalent for energy did De-
gas ever succumb to the attractions of com-
plete relaxation as he did in this pastel. To
that end, he made drawings of a youthful
figure lying on her stomach in serenity and
self-absorption (fig. 295). The drawings
show Degas working through the emphases
in her contours toward an impression of to-
tal indolence.1 In the pastel, he placed the
figure in an interior with reddish wallpaper
and a mirror reflecting the light of the kero-
sene lamp on the table beside her. The pas-
tel, which conveys the richness of light and
shadow in the room, comes to even greater
life in indicating, with vibrating strokes, the
almost iridescent surface of her skin. The
small composition is full of visual intensity
that arouses in us a sympathy for, and even
envy of, the resting girl.
There are two problems connected with
this pastel. One is the date. Lemoisne pro-
poses about 1901, which seems late for a
work as small and as specific in detail as this
one. Eugenia Parry Janis, in her catalogue of
the Degas monotypes, brings up another
problem in describing the work as a pastel
over monotype and then dating it almost
twenty years earlier, c. 18 80- 8 5. 2 The vi-
brant handling of the pastel suggests that it
must be later; hence, a date of c. 1895 is pro-
posed here. Janis considers the work to be a
cognate of Nude Woman Lying on a Divan
(fig. 296), which is a monotype covered
with pastel that includes the same elements —
lamp, mirror, divan, and a reclining nude
figure. Nevertheless, if similar monotypes
exist under both pastels, Degas must have
used the pastel much later here than he did
for what may be its cognate and applied it
so heavily that the monotype itself is barely
visible. That this is not an impossibility is
suggested by the size of the drawings of the
recumbent figure. These are substantially
bigger than the finished pastel, indicating
that Degas was working on the composition
again at a later time when, because of his
bad eyesight, he was more comfortable
working on a larger scale.
1. L1402 (fig. 295), L1403, 111:171, III: 249.
2. Janis 1968, no. 162.
313
Fig. 295. Young Woman Lying on a Chaise Longue
(L1402), c. 1895. Pastel and pencil, 14V&X 22V2 in.
(36 X 57 cm). Private collection
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 194);
bought at that sale by Nunes et Fiquet, Paris, for
Fr 6,000; by descent to present owner.
exhibitions: 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 162.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1401; Janis 1967, p. 81, fig. 47; Janis 1968,
no. 162; Minervino 1974, no. 1046.
Fig. 296. Nude Woman Lying on a Divan
(L921), c. 1885. Pastel over monotype,
15X11 in. (38 X 28 cm). Location
unknown
314
After the Bath, Woman Drying
Her Neck
c. 1895
Pastel on wove paper, with strip added at top
24V2 x 2$Vs in. (62.2 X 65 cm)
Signed upper right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF4044)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1306
There are ambiguities in the handling of
space in this pastel of a nude drying her
neck. The tub on which she sits is not con-
sistently defined. The predominantly white
vertical strip on the far right, separated by a
dark stroke from a thinly painted blue-gray
strip, could indicate a window. The patterned
yellow-and-green material might be a cur-
tain or wallpaper. Between the tub and the
wall, there is undoubtedly the patterned
back of a chair or a chaise longue with some
orange material thrown over it, but the rest
of this piece of furniture is lost behind the
nude's body. There are other mysteries,
such as the flowing orange at the left, per-
haps a curtain, and the dark brown vertical
break that seems to make a visual pun on
the bather's hair. The work is full of puz-
zles, but it is so strong and so luminous in
color that we are not distracted by them.
The contours of the spare body are hard
beneath the radiant strokes of pastel that ex-
plode luminously in a disciplined hatching
over the shadows. Denis Rouart has de-
scribed the work as layered — a "pastel of
one layer superimposed over another."1 Be-
cause the bather's back is turned, we are not
apt to think of her as an individual, though
we do seem to feel the pull of the hair against
the fragile neck.
1. Rouart 1945, p. 40 (illustration caption).
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 24 May 1898 (stock no. 4682); bought by
Comte Isaac de Camondo, 7 September 1898, for
Fr 10,000 (stock no. 4682); his bequest to the Louvre
1908; entered the Louvre 191 1.
exhibitions : 19 14, Dresden, April-May, Exposition
de la peinture jrancaise au XIXe siecle; 1937 Paris, Palais
National, no. 242; 1949 Paris, no. 107; 1969 Paris,
no. 221.
selected references: Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14,
no. 226, p. 44; Meier-Graefe 1923, pi. XCIII; Le-
moisne 1937, repr. p. D; Rouart 1945, repr. p. 40;
Lemoisne [1946-49], HI, no. 1306 (as c. 1901); Mon-
nier 1969, p. 366, fig. 1; Monnier 1978, p. 77, repr.
(color) p. 76; Siegfried Wichmann, Japonisme: The
Japanese Influence on Western Art since i8$8y London:
Thames and Hudson, 198 1, repr. p. 26; Paris, Louvre
and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 57, pp. 65-66, repr.
p. 66 and cover (color).
315.
The Breakfast after the Bath
c. 1895
Pastel and brush on tracing paper, several pieces
joined
475/s X $6lA in. (121 X 92 cm)
Signed in orange crayon lower right: Degas
Private collection
Lemoisne 724
520
315
The very size of The Breakfast after the Bath
reveals the ambitions Degas must have had
for it. It is among the largest of his pastels.
In the stock books of Durand-Ruel and in
the exhibitions to which that firm sent the
work, it was consistently dated 1883.1 This
misconception could have resulted from the
resemblance it bears to a pastel of a bather,
undoubtedly of 1883 (cat. no. 253). The
similarity is in the energetic angle of the torso
of the bather. Nevertheless, any comparison
with the elegant feet and gestures of the ear-
lier nude and with the light that caresses
that body reveals how clumsily flat-footed
this bather is. This work is also six times
as large. And instead of the thin application
of pastel that reveals the delicacy of the
charcoal drawing in the earlier work, Degas
has drawn, painted, and rubbed on so many
irregular layers of pastel that here there is a
rich, unbroken web of color. In spite of the
presence of the green-and-yellow upholstered
chaise that also appears frequently in Degas 's
pastels of nudes in the previous decade, The
Breakfast after the Bath clearly belongs to the
1890s.
This bather is a mass of energy which the
vibrantly applied colors of her flesh — pre-
dominantly pinks and greens — do not con-
tradict. In the kind of gesture Degas always
521
loved, she holds out her heavy and luxuri-
ant hair with the left hand while she dries
her neck with the right. A touch of rose at
the top of her spine inevitably hints that her
neck could be as vulnerable as those of the
bathers in the lithographs of 1891 (cat. nos.
294-296). Nevertheless, the action is whole-
some and the soft flow from the luminously
blue-shadowed towel fulfilling and distracting
as we are led from it to the pool of the towel
on which she stands. In a setting of almost
Oriental splendor, even if it was based on
the contents of the artist's studio on rue
Victor-Masse, Degas balances this virago
with the quiet figure of the maidservant,
who has the dignity of a column but is at
the same time subservient, at least to the
passing of the years. Almost ritualistically,
she holds out a blue cup that casts an equally
blue shadow on her mistress's jutting hip.
1. Stock nos. 10949 (1917), n.y. 4137 (1917), N.Y.
4717 (1922).
provenance: With Ambroise Vollard, Paris; bought
by Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris (photo no. 1407,
also nos. 1203 [2] and 3002); bought by Galerie Du-
rand-Ruel, Paris, 16 March 19 17, for Fr 75,000 (stock
no. 10949); sent to Durand-Ruel, New York, 29 De-
cember 1917 (stock no. N.Y. 4137); bought by H. W.
Hughes, 18 January 1921, for $30,000 (stock no.
N.Y. 4137); bought by Durand-Ruel, New York, 3
January 1922 (stock no. N.Y. 4717); bought by Leigh
B. Block, Chicago, 23 June 1949; bought from him
at an unknown date by Marlborough International
Fine Art, London; bought by The Lefevre Gallery,
London, June 1978; bought by present owner De-
cember 1979.
exhibitions: 19 17, Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg,
25 June-13 July, Exposition d'art francais du XIXe siecle,
no. 30, lent by Georges Bernheim; 1928, New
York, Durand-Ruel, 31 January-18 February, Exhibi-
tion of Paintings and Pastels by Edgar Degas, no. 23 (as
1883); 1936 Philadelphia, no. 49, repr. p. 101 (as
1890?), lent by Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York;
1937 New York, no. 16, repr.; 1943, New York,
Durand-Ruel, 1-3 1 March, Pastels by Degas, no. 5;
1945, New York, Durand-Ruel, 10 April-5 May,
Nudes by Degas and Renoir, no. 6; 1947, New York,
Durand-Ruel, 10-29 November, Degas, no. 21; 1949
New York, no. 63, p. 59, repr. p. 56, lent by Du-
rand-Ruel; 1979, London, The Lefevre Gallery, 15
November-15 December, Important XIX and XX
Century Paintings, no. 5, repr. (color).
selected references: Vollard 19 14, pi. VII; Meier-
Graefe 1923, pi. LXXXVI (as c. 1890); Edward
Alden Jewell, French Impressionists and Their Contem-
poraries Represented in American Collections, New
York: Hyperion, 1944, repr. p. 168; Lemoisne [1946-
49], III, no. 724; Daniel Catton Rich, "Degas,"
American Artist, 22-27 October 1954, repr. p. 23;
Daniel Catton Rich, Edgar-Hilaire-Germain Degas,
New York: Abrams, 1966, p. 100, pi. 19 (color);
Minervino 1974, no. 891; Dunlop 1979, p. 193,
fig. 187 (color) p. 201.
316^
Nude Woman Drying Herself
c. 1895
Charcoal on tracing paper mounted on cardboard
257/s X i45/8 in. (65.8 X 37 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Von der Heydt-Museum, wuppertal
(KK1961/63)
Withdrawn from exhibition
Vente II: 269
Degas made many drawings, one work of
sculpture, and four pastels of a woman sit-
ting on a chair by a bathtub, holding up her
left arm while she dries herself under her
breast. In this drawing from Wuppertal, she
116
raises her arm so that it hides her face as she
dries herself with a luxuriant towel. Degas
used charcoal on tracing paper, presumably
tracing other drawings as he worked toward
the most effective conception. His drawing
style is strong and shows no concern about
leaving evidence of earlier thoughts or im-
perfections. The work's rhythms are de-
scriptive— the limp softness of the towel,
the short broken strokes like caresses in the
hair, the crosshatching to suggest flesh. De-
gas looks down at the nude with a certain
tenderness, emphasized by the dark shadows
under her ear and above her breast. To these
indications of vulnerability, he adds the ges-
ture of the raised hand — almost one of greet-
ing— which makes the woman a touchingly
valiant figure.
522
317-
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 269);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 1,450; Tanner; Dr. Eduard Freiherr von der
Heydt, Ascona; his gift to the museum 1955.
exhibitions: 1948, Venice, Biennale XXIV, no. 72;
1967 Saint Louis, no. 135, repr. p. 202.
selected references: Verzeichnis der Handzeichnungen
Pastelle und Aquarelle (by Hans Gunter Aust), Wup-
pertal: Von der Heydt-Museum, 1965, no. 43, repr.
Seated Bather Drying Herself
c. 1895
Pastel on wove paper, with strips added at top
and bottom
20V2 X 20V2 in. (52X52 cm)
Signed twice lower left in green (obscured) and
in yellow: Degas
Collection of Robert Guccione and Kathy Keeuon
Lemoisne 1340
Through studying the figure and the com-
position in drawings such as the charcoal
from Wuppertal (cat. no. 316), Degas arrived
at this sumptuous pastel, which he signed
with a particular flamboyance. He changed
the position of the body slightly, particularly
by reducing the action in the raised hand.
Although the movement through the body
is a spiraling one, the figure seems more
quietly resolved than in the strong charcoal
523
drawing. With less emphasis on realism in
the rendering of the body, the woman
seems more youthful as well. But the sense
of vulnerability has survived, here in partic-
ular contrast with the deep (and now diago-
nally placed), intensely blue tub and the rich
fabrics on the wall, chair, and floor. This
was a period in which Degas was enamored
with The Thousand and One Nights? the in-
tensity of the color in this pastel makes it
nearly as exotic.
i. Halevy 1964, pp. 65-66.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
Paris, 7 January 1902 (stock no. 6887); bought by
Peter Fuller, Brookline, Mass., 8 July 1925 (stock
no. 12387); Fuller family, Brookline and Boston,
1925-81 (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York,
21 May 198 1, no. 526); bought by present owners.
exhibitions: 1905 London, no. 56 (as "After the
Bath," pastel, 1899) or no. 70 (as "The Bath," pastel,
1890); 1928, Boston Art Club, Fuller Collection,
no. 5; 1935 Boston, no. 21; 1937, Boston, Institute
of Modern Art, Boston Collections; 1939, Boston,
Museum of Fine Arts, 9 June-10 September, Art in
New England: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from Pri-
vate Collections in New England, no. 39, pi. XIX.
selected references: Moore 1907-08, repr. p. 104;
Max Liebermann, Degas, Berlin: Cassirer, 19 18, repr.
p. 24; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1340 (as 1899);
Minervino 1974, no. 1043.
318^
Woman Seated in an Armchair,
Drying Under Her Left Arm
c. 1895
Bronze
Height: 12% in. (32 cm)
Original: brown wax. National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C. Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon
Rewald LXXII
Degas had made many drawings and pastels
of a nude seated in an armchair washing or
drying under her left arm. Of these, Nude
Woman Drying Herself (cat. no. 316) is partic-
ularly sensitive, and Seated Bather Drying
Herself (cat. no. 317) is probably the most
resolved and the most radiant. It was natural
to have used the same pose in sculpture as
well. Working on a small scale, which made
visitors to his studio compare his wax figures
to dolls, Degas modeled brown wax over an
unorthodox type of armature and gave it
additional resilience by incorporating corks
and pieces of wood. These are still visible on
the back of the original wax model, now in
the Mellon collection. Degas was as experi-
mental in sculpture as he was in monotype
or pastel and, indeed, in painting. The im-
pressionistic way he worked the wax with
any tool at hand, including his fingers,
makes the fabric of the bathrobe tossed over
the chair — the same rounded, tufted chair as
in the pastel — as informal as it had been in
the works on paper. The concept of a seated
figure and the way the broken surfaces of
the wax catch the light suggest that Degas
may have been looking at the work of the
Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso, who had
made a seated portrait in wax of the painter's
great friend Henri Rouart in 1894.1
The body of the bather is, however, more
solid, more defined, and more classically in-
tegrated than one by Medardo Rosso would
have been. In fact, in spite of the clumsy
way she sits with her legs and feet apart, she
seems to belong, quite naturally, to the tra-
dition of the classical nude. Charles Millard
sees a relationship here to Greek terra-cotta
figurines.2 The bather's lifted left arm is less
poignant than in the two-dimensional works,
perhaps the result of breaks, though it is not
unlike that in the Wuppertal drawing (cat.
no. 316). Woman Seated in an Armchair offers
surprises if examined directly from the front
or the rear. The chair becomes a throne, and
the woman's gesture, otherwise so feminine
and so poignant, becomes authoritarian,
even consular.
1. Millard 1976, pp. 77-78.
2. Ibid., figs. 134, 135.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 60; Paris,
Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, no. 1777; Rewald 1944,
no. LXXII (as 1896-1911), pp. 140-42, Metropolitan
43 A; 1955 New York, no. 68; Rewald 1956,
no. LXXII, Metropolitan 43 A; Beaulieu 1969, p. 380
(as 1883); Minervino 1974, no. S60; 1976 London,
no. 60; Millard 1976, pp. 109-10, fig. 134; 1986 Flor-
ence, no. 43 p. 194, pi. 43 p. 140.
3l8, METROPOLITAN
524
A. Orsay Set P, no. 43
Musee d' Orsay, Paris (RF2124)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 60 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 286 (as 1884); 1984-85 Paris,
no. 77 p. 207, fig. 202 p. 202.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 43
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.415)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 29; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1974 Boston, no. 46; 1974 Dallas, no number; 1975
New Orleans, no number; 1977 New York, no. 59
of sculptures (dated by Millard as after 1895).
319.
Young Girl Braiding Her Hair
1894
Pastel on gray heavy wove paper
24 X \W% in. (61 X 46 cm)
Signed and dated in dark green chalk upper
right: Degas/ 94
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard H. Mendik,
New York
Lemoisne 1146
Degas dated so few of his works that it is
natural to speculate about his motive when
he did. There is no reason to assume some
association with the subject of this pastel to
explain the dating; even the fact that it went
on the market right away argues against it.
It is more likely that he undertook a subject
and almost immediately achieved the reali-
zation of it. There was no need to explore it
further; the date records his satisfaction.
Young Girl Braiding Her Hair is a work of
intimate genre. The room does not possess
the untidiness of the corners of Degas's stu-
dio. Nor does it suggest the kind of culti-
vated taste reflected, for example, in the
works of art in the guest bedroom at Menil-
Hubert (see cat. no. 303). Although the ele-
ments of this room are humble, they are not
simple, and they make claims on our atten-
tion with their intense play of color, pattern,
and texture. They tend to overwhelm the
frail figure of the girl standing in her chemise
and gently braiding her hair, disciplining
any wild beauty it might have possessed. The
lift of her chin should suggest a certain
courage, but principally she invites tenderness
for her lack of grace, affectation, or anima-
tion in the oppressive room.
It is possible that Degas was consciously
making a variation on an oil painting by
Mary Cassatt, Girl Arranging Her Hair
(fig. 297), which was exhibited in the 1886
Impressionist exhibition and which he had
acquired for his collection that year. Although
Cassatt's young girl is seated and shown only
half-length, she holds her long braid and is
Fig. 297. Mary Cassatt, Girl Arranging Her Hair,
1886. Oil on canvas, 29V2X24V2 in, (75 x 62. 3 cm).
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
525
placed against a background of a washstand
and flowered wallpaper. Furthermore, she is
homely and somewhat coltish, which may
have aroused in Degas the compassion he
reveals here.
provenance: Tadamasa Hayashi, New York (estate
sale, American Art Association, New York, 1913,
no. 87, repr.); bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel,
New York, and Bernheim, Paris (stock no. N.Y.
3602; stock no. 10260); bought by Bernheim, Paris,
14 May 19 19, for Fr 20,000; Mme P. Goujon, Paris.
With Wildenstein, New York; present owner.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 174; 1939 Paris, no. 32;
1955 Paris, GBA, no. 143, repr. p. 30; 1956, Paris,
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paul Valery, no. 679; i960
Paris, no. 48; 1961, Paris, Museejacquemart- Andre,
summer, Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections particulieres,
no. 49; 1962, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Chefs-
d'oeuvre des collections francaises, no. 29.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1 146; Minervino 1974, no. 1166.
320.
The Morning Bath
c. 1895
Pastel on off-white laid paper, mounted on board
26V4 X i73/4 in. (66. 8 X 45 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
The Art Institute of Chicago. Potter Palmer
Collection (1922.422)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Lemoisne 1028
This great pastel was bought by Mrs. Potter
Palmer of Chicago in 1896, evidence of the
interest in Degas that Mary Cassatt had
aroused among her compatriots and friends.
John Walker, the former director of the Na-
tional Gallery of Art in Washington, was so
impressed by the vigor of Degas' s drawing
for the pastel that he saw in it the influence
of Michelangelo (see fig. 265). 1 More re-
cently, Richard Brettell pointed out the rela-
tionship of the energetic pose to one of Degas's
works of sculpture, Dancer Looking at the
Sole of Her Right Foot (cat. no. 321). 2 Cer-
tainly the pastel nude has the same dense,
concentrated force.
If we knew only the drawing or a black-
and-white photograph of this pastel, its col-
or and scale would be surprising. We would
expect the body, with its contrapposto, to
be heroically large rather than modest in
size. We would be unprepared to have its
power emphasized, in an almost contradic-
tory manner, by the harmony of the limpid
blues and greens. These become most in-
tense in the blue of the curtain at the right,
which casts a blue reflection on the bather's
skin. The bed in the vast foreground is in-
vitingly serene.
Although Eunice Lipton has suggested
that this pastel shares "all the traces of pros-
titutional display — the drapes ... the
towel, even part of the bed,"3 it seems too
chaste in color to make this a certainty.
Richard Brettell has observed:
In the end, as one stands before The
Morning Bath, the sheer brilliance of De-
gas's technique triumphs. The pastel is
fully worked and layered. The wall be-
hind the woman glows with separate ap-
plications of yellow, red-orange, blue,
green, and pale pink. Sometimes, these
colors were laid on directly; sometimes,
they were crumbled, dissolved in a rapidly
drying medium, and "painted" on the pa-
per. Degas worked into the pastel with
liquid solvents, using both brushes and
various stumps; he also "etched" fine lines
into the thick layers of pastel with knives
and needles. His handling of the body of
the nude is even more spectacular; it vir-
tually glows as it receives all the morning
light and every color in the rest of the
pastel. Only the bed in the foreground,
with its sleight-of-hand lines and thinly
applied areas of powder blue, lilac, and
pale green, is technically simple. Degas
was a master technician; his fascination
with his materials and their expressive
potential — with the alchemy of art — es-
tablishes him as one of the great experi-
mentalists in the history of modern art.4
1. Walker 1933, figs. 2, 3, pp. 176-78.
2. 1984 Chicago, p. 161.
3. Lipton 1986, p. 174, fig. 117.
4. 1984 Chicago, p. 160.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 16 December 1895 (stock no. 3636);
bought by Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago, 20 June
1896, for Fr 5,000 (stock no. 3636); her bequest to
the museum; entered the museum 1922.
exhibitions: 1933 Chicago, no. 287; 1934, The Art
Institute of Chicago, 1 June-i November, A Century
of Progress, no. 203; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 43, repr.;
1984 Chicago, no. 76, repr. (color).
selected references: Daniel Catton Rich, "A Family
Portrait of Degas," Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chi-
cago, XXIII, November 1929, p. 76, repr.; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 1028 (as c. 1890); Rich 195 1,
pp. 1 16-17, repr- ; Paintings in the Art Institute of Chi-
cago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago:
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1961, p. 121; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 946; Lipton 1986, p. 174, fig. 117;
Sutton 1986, p. 239, pi. 230 (color) p. 240.
321.
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her
Right Foot
1895-1910
Bronze
Height: igVs in. (48.6 cm)
Original wax destroyed
Rewald IL
We know from some of his letters and the
reports of his friends that Degas was work-
ing at sculpture in the nineties, though a date
cannot be firmly established for any of the
works. Nevertheless, the closeness of this
dancer to the nude in the Chicago pastel
The Morning Bath (cat. no. 320) suggests
that the sculpture, like the pastel, was prob-
ably made before 1896.1
This is the boldest of the three bronzes
that Degas devoted to this theme — full of
energy and possessing great compositional
interest from whatever angle it is viewed. It
clearly suffered in casting, which probably
resulted from Degas's use of unorthodox
armatures.
The British sculptor William Tucker, in
comparing the sculpture of Degas with that
of Rodin, has written of this figure: "In the
Degas sculpture, the figure is articulated,
not as with Rodin from the ground upward,
but from the pelvis outward, in every direc-
tion, thrusting and probing with volumes
and axes until a balance is achieved. From
what we know of Degas's methods — primi-
tive and insubstantial armatures, modeling
wax eked out with tallow and pieces of cork —
an actual physical balance in the model was
as much a consideration as the illusioned
balance of the figure."2
1. As pointed out by Richard Brettell, 1984 Chicago,
p. 161, fig. 76-1.
2. Tucker 1974, p. 154, p. 153 figs. 148, 149.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 33 or 34; Paris,
Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, no. 1750; Rewald 1944,
no. IL (as 1896-19 11), Metropolitan 69 A; 1955 New
York, no. 57 or 58; Rewald 1956, no. IL, Metropoli-
tan 69 A; Beaulieu 1969, p. 375 (as 1890-95), fig. 9
p. 374, Orsay 69P; Minervino 1974, no. S3 3; Tucker
1974, p. 154, figs. 148, 149 p. 153; 1976 London, no. 33;
Millard 1976, pp. 18 n. 66, 71, 107; 1984 Chicago,
p. 161, fig. 76-1; 1986 Florence, no. 69 p. 208, pi. 69
p. 166.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 69
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2098)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 34 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 264 (as 1890-95); 1984-85 Paris,
no. 48 p. 190, fig. 173 p. 188.
527
321
322
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 69
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.376)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 67; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1974 Dallas, no number; 1977 New York, no. 61 of
sculptures (dated by Millard as 1900-1912).
322, 323
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her
Right Foot
The figure here is somewhat more tentative
than in the other version of the same subject
(cat. no. 321) and has suffered the loss of
part of an arm. The cast retains Degas's
handling of the wax in a painterly, expres-
sive way, and the play of light and shadow
on the bronze is consequently particularly
beautiful.
From Alice Michel, one of the models
who posed for him in 19 10, we gather that
Degas was still making sculpture at that
time, but excruciatingly slowly; he was quite
willing to begin again when one of his waxes
fell apart. Michel describes the model as-
suming this pose: "Standing on her left foot,
her knee slightly bent, she lifted her other
foot in a vigorous backward movement. To
hold her right foot in this pose, she caught
her toe with her right hand, then turned her
head so that she could see the sole of her
foot and lifted her left elbow high to regain
her balance."1
1. Michel 19 19, p. 459.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 32; Bazin 193 1,
p. 296; Paris, Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, no. 1749;
Rewald 1944, no. LX (as 1 896-191 1), Metropolitan
67A; 1955 New York, no. 56; Rewald 1956, no. LX,
Metropolitan 67 A; Beaulieu 1969, p. 375 (as 1890-
95), fig. 9 p. 374, Orsay 67P; Minervino 1974, no. S3 2;
Tucker 1974, p. 154, figs. 148, 149 p. 153; 1976 Lon-
don, no. 32; Millard 1976, pp. 18 n. 66, 69, 71, 107,
fig. 125, Orsay 67P; 1986 Florence, no. 67 p. 207,
pi. 67 p. 164.
322.
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her
Right Foot
1895-1910
Green wax
Height: i%Vs in. (46 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2771)
Exhibited in Paris
Rewald LX
provenance: Atelier Degas; his heirs to A.-A. He-
brard, Paris, 1919, until c. 1955; consigned by He-
brard to M. Knoedler and Co. , New York; acquired
by Paul Mellon from M. Knoedler and Co. 1956; his
gift to the Louvre 1956.
exhibitions: 1955 New York, no. 56; 1969 Paris,
no. 262 (as 1890-95); 1986 Paris, no. 62.
528
32?
3^3-
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her
Right Foot
1895-1910
Bronze
Height: 18V4 in. (46.4 cm)
Original: green wax. Musee d'Orsay, Paris
(RF2771). See cat. no. 322
Rewald LX
A. Orsay Set P} no. 67
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2096)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 32 of sculp-
tures; 1984-85 Paris, no. 43 p. 190, fig. 168 p. 186;
1986 Paris, p. 137, no. 63.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 67
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.376)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 67; 1923-25 New
York; 1925-27 New York; 1930 New York, under
Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458; 1974 Dallas, no
number; 1977 New York, no. 64 of sculptures (dated
by Millard as 1900-1912).
529
530
324-
Woman with a Towel
1894 or 1898?
Pastel
373/4X 3oin. (95.9X76.2 cm)
Signed and dated upper right: Degas/9[?]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.37)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 1148
This work has the bare elements of a genre-
like setting — gilt-framed mirror, mantel-
piece with an ultramarine object on it,
green-and-orange wallpaper — rather like
the pastel Young Girl Braiding Her Hair (cat.
no. 319). The figure, however, has nothing
in common with the standing figure in the
chemise in that work. This one is heroically
and energetically muscular, her body twisted
in contrapposto, emphasized by charcoal or
black-chalk contours drawn over the pastel.
The nipple of her breast is smudged. Degas
has drawn strokes of pink over the flesh and
placed a blue shadow on her rump. She
holds her large, faintly lavender-tinted
towel, with its robin* s-egg-blue shadows,
with a flourish, enhanced — it has been point-
ed out — by the variety of means with which
Degas applied the pastel.1 He worked the
right portion of the towel with a sharp in-
strument such as the end of a paintbrush
handle, making rather rough horizontal
strokes, and used a wet brush to smear the
folds and contours. The left contour was
softened with a tampon, sponge, or bristle
brush. All this gives the towel a decisive
movement. Very different is the head,
which is bowed. Glowing red hair falls over
the young woman's face, somewhat like
that of the figure on the right in The Coiffure
from Oslo (cat. no. 345), though its elfin
profile is barely visible.
Degas dated this work, as he had Young
Girl Braiding Her Hair, but there is consider-
able difference of opinion about the reading
of the second digit. Traditionally, the date has
been read as 1894, the same date as the other
pastel, not by any means an impossibility;
but Charles S. Moffett has proposed 1898, 2
1 . These comments on technique are drawn from the
examination report made by Anne Maheux and
Peter Zegers, Pastel Project Conservators, Na-
tional Gallery of Canada.
2. 1977 New York, no. 52.
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 25 February 190 1 (stock no. 6226);
bought by H. O. Havemeyer, New York, 22 April
1901, for Fr 10,000 (stock no. 6226); bequeathed by
Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 191 5 New York, no. 39 (as "After the
Tub," 1895); 1922 New York, no. 34 (as "La sortie
du bain"); 1930 New York, no. 149; 1977 New York,
no. 52 of works on paper, repr. (as 1898).
selected references: Havemeyer 193 1, p. 131 (as
1894); Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1148 (as 1894);
New York, Metropolitan, 1967, p. 91, repr. (as 1894);
Minervino 1974, no. 1015.
Genre
cat. nos. 325-327
Genre was rare in Degas's late work; it was
too rooted in specific times and places, too
concerned with exactitude in defining the
niceties of social distinctions to be of great
interest to him as he grew older and was
drawn toward more universal themes. When
he did attempt genre, it was in a nostalgic
spirit, frequently with reference to his work
of the past.
325.
Woman Ironing
c. 1892-95
Oil on canvas
31V2X25 in. (80 x63.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (WAG6645)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 846
There were times when Degas thought of
laundresses with a certain licentious humor —
for example, in the notebook in which at
the Halevys* in 1877 he had made a draw-
ing, across two pages, of the composer Er-
nest Reyer tempting one of four laundresses
with what Degas identified in the inscrip-
tion as "une troisieme loge," which can be
interpreted as an invitation to share his box
at a theatrical performance.1 Eunice Lipton
has suggested that "perhaps 'troisieme loge'
is metaphorical, implying a third place in his
[Reyer's] amorous life."2 Woman Ironing,
from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, is
far removed from that earlier heretical parody
of a Judgment of Paris. Instead, it carries on
the tradition of Degas's image of a laundress
seen in profde, with form and features barely
visible against the backlight of a window
and the reflected light of a wall, which he
had first developed in the early seventies in
paintings such as the Metropolitan's Woman
Ironing (cat. no. 122).
In the twenty-year span we are assuming
between the Metropolitan's painting and
Liverpool's, Degas painted the Woman Ironing
now in the National Gallery of Art in Wash-
ington (cat. no. 256). In that composition,
he converted the image into something with
a greater sense of scale, which was not just a
matter of choosing a larger canvas. The
laundress is more nobly proportioned and
more at ease, and there is a wonderful
soothing serenity in the pinks, lavenders,
and blues. It was nearly a decade later that
Degas painted the Liverpool work, using a
canvas the same size as that in Washington
but, by strengthening the body and elimi-
nating the softening distraction of laundry
hanging in the background, making the
woman a sturdier and more independent
figure, removed from the humidity, if not
the heat, of such an establishment.
This late painting of a laundress, though
less ingratiating than the figure in the Wash-
ington canvas, is not without an aura of
femininity. In the ambiguous planes of the
freely painted walls, window, and floor of
the room are touches of pink that give the
composition a feminine tenderness. Some
almost lavender brushstrokes of paint on the
wall beside the laundress's profile spill gently
onto her sleeve. Her dark gray apron has a
charming rose tie, the lips of her shadowed
face are faintly pink, and her splendid bared
arms reflect a rose light. Although Degas is
gentle in painting the wisp of hair falling
over her forehead, his use of harsh broken
lines of black paint emphasizes and strength-
ens the contours of the arm and back.
Woman Ironing is not simply a painting in
rose and golden light. What is shocking
about it, and at the same time gives it physi-
cal substance, is the striking fabric — green,
with gold and rich black — painted with en-
ergetic freedom and heavy impasto. The
cloth is both alien to, and yet the reason for,
the action and the painting. Its force is
strengthened by the diagonal line of the
ironing board — itself unique in Degas's
work, his other laundresses having worked
at tables. The dignity of the ironer raises the
work above genre to an expression of simple,
austere nobility.
Gary Tinterow, in investigating Degas's
work in the eighties for this exhibition, has
proposed that the picture, which Lemoisne
dates c. 188 5, 3 must have been painted in
the nineties. Tinterow's proposal is defensi-
ble in terms of its color and handling and its
strange fusion of shadow and substance — a
quality that permeates, for example, Two
Dancers in Green Skirts (cat. no. 308), which
must have been painted after 1894.
1. Reff 1985, Notebook 28 (private collection, pp. 4-5).
2. Lipton 1986, p. 140.
3. Ronald Pickvance (1979 Edinburgh, no. 70, p. 63)
essentially agrees with Lemoisne in stating: "The
initial design could have been dated from the early
1870s, the reworking could have been done a dec-
ade or so later."
531
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 32);
Dr. Georges Viau, Paris, from at least 1925 until
September 193 o1; bought back in half-shares by
Jacques Seligmann and Wildenstein and Co. , New
York, 27 September 1930; remained in New York
until transferred to Wildenstein and Co., London,
1937; bought by the Hon. Mrs. Peter Pleydell-Bou-
verie, 27 November 1942 (sale, Sotheby's, London,
30 July 1968, no. 13); bought at that sale with the aid
of the National Art Collections Fund.
1. Cesar M. de Hauke, New York, is often indicated
as the owner at this time, but a letter from Ger-
main Seligmann of 28 December 1968, cited in
Foreign Catalogue, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool,
1977, denies that he owned the work.
exhibitions: 1937, New York, Jacques Seligmann
Gallery, 22 March-17 April, Courbet to Seurat, no. 7,
Dr. Georges Viau collection; 1942, London, National
Gallery, February-March, Nineteenth Century French
Paintings, no. 37, lent by the Hon. Mrs. Pleydell-
Bouverie; 1952 Edinburgh, no. 22 (as c. 1885), lent
by the Hon. Mrs. Pleydell-Bouverie; 1954, London,
Tate Gallery, 26 January-25 April, The Pleydell-
Bouverie Collection, no. 15, repr. cover; 1963, London,
19 April-19 May, Tate Gallery, Private Views, Works
from the Collection of Twenty Friends of the Tate Gallery,
no. 152; 1970, London, Lefevre Gallery, 4 June-
4 July, Edgar Degas 1834-1917 (foreword by Denys
Sutton), no. 10, p. 40, repr. p. 41; 1979 Edinburgh,
no. 70, p. 63, repr.; 1979, London, Royal Academy,
17 November 1979-16 March 1980, Post Impression-
ism, no. 61, p. 63, repr.
selected references: Waldemar George, "La collec-
tion Viau," V Amour de VArt, September 1925, p. 365,
repr.; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 846 (as c, 1885);
Hugh Scrutton, "Estate Duty Purchase and the Auc-
tion Room: The Technique under the Finance Act,
1930," Museums Journal, 68, December 1968, p. 113,
fig. 47; Minervino 1974, no. 638; Foreign Catalogue,
Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 1977, I, no. 6645,
pp. 51-52, II, repr. p. 59; Richard Cork, "A Post-
mortem on Post-Impressionism," Art in America,
LXVIII, October 1980, p. 92, repr. p. 93.
326.
Rose Caron
c. 1892
Oil on canvas
30 X 32V2 in. (76.2 X 86.2 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
Charles Clifton, Charles W. Goodyear, and
Elisabeth H. Gates Funds, 1943 (43.1)
Lemoisne 862
When Gary Tinterow, the author of Chapter
III of this catalogue (on Degas's work in the
1880s), proposed dating this painting of Rose
Caron in the 1890s — as opposed to Lemoisne,
who dates it 1885-90 — he also suggested
that it is a "genre portrait." Indeed, Rose
Caron in this painting is presumably por-
trayed not as she appeared in life but as she
appeared to her contemporaries on the stage
at the Opera de Paris or in Brussels at the
Theatre de la Monnaie — the quintessential
operatic lyric soprano with a strong dramatic
sense. The Nouveau Larousse illustre records
that "a warm, vibrant, well-placed voice is
combined with a fine stage presence in this
great lyric-dramatic artist."1
Although this is certainly not a conven-
tional portrait, Rose Caron's features — long
straight nose, small mouth, and small eyes
enhanced by eyelining and darkened brows —
seem close to those in an engraving of the
singer published in L' Illustration on 18 Octo-
ber 1890 (fig. 298). Her head, with its high
cheekbones and pointed jaw, could have
seemed to her contemporaries exotically
"Azteque."
Degas was, of course, infatuated with
Caron, at least from the time he attended
the dress rehearsal on 12 June 1885 of the
first performance in Paris of Sigurd by his
friend Ernest Reyer.2 (He may have seen her
earlier in Brussels.) In addition to hearing
her thirty-seven documented times in the
role of Brunehilde in Sigurd and twice in
Reyer's Salammbo, he would have seen her
between 1885 and 1 891 as Agathe in Weber's
Le Freischutz, Chimene in Massenet's Le
Cid, and Catherine in Saint Saens's Henri
VIII. When she returned from Brussels in
1890, she must have been the reason that
Degas, in spite of his reputed dislike of
Wagner, went to Lohengrin on 26 November
1 89 1 and 22 July 1892 to hear her sing Elsa.3
Degas was not only enamored of Caron
on the stage. He seems to have felt it a priv-
ilege to be invited to dine with her, and not
to have been too disappointed, when he
complimented her for being as graceful as a
Puvis de Chavannes, that she had never
heard of the artist.4 He confirmed his admi-
ration about 1889 in writing a sonnet to her,
as he wrote one to a very different woman,
532
|26
LIUiSTKATION
Fig. 298. Mme Kose Caron. Engraving.
L'lllustration, 18 October 1890
his colleague and friend Mary Cassatt, and
another to the dancer Marie Sanlaville. The
poem is not to Rose Caron, but to "Madame
Caron, Brunehilde de Sigurd":
Ces bras nobles et longs f lentement en jureur,
Lentement en humaine et cruelle tendresse,
Fleches que decochait une ante de deesse
Et qui s'allaientfausser d la terre d'erreur;
Diademe dorant cette rose pdleur
De la reine muette, a son peuple en Hesse;
Terrasse ou descendait une femme en detresse,
Amoureuse, volee, honteuse de douleur;
Apres avoir jete sa menace paree,
Cette votx qui venait, divine de duree,
Prendre Sigurd ainsi que son destin voulatt;
Tout ce beau va me suivre encore un bout de
vie . . .
Si mes yeux se perdaient, que me durdt Vouie,
Au son, je pourrais voir le geste qu'elle fait.5
(The poet, describing in classic sonnet style
the haughty Norse warrior-goddess with
her long arms, eloquent gestures, and pow-
erful effect on all who follow her and love
her, concludes with a moving tribute to Ca-
ron's "divine" voice: "This beauty will re-
main with me to the end of my days. Though
my eyes fail me, may my hearing continue
strong, for in that voice I shall forever see
what my eyes cannot. ")
Not long after Caron first appeared in Si-
gurd in Paris in 1885, Degas declared his
enthusiasm for the opera in drawings, par-
ticularly in a notebook that is now in the Met-
ropolitan Museum, and in two fans (fig. 188)
and one painting that show draped maidens
with their arms stretched upward against an
Icelandic landscape of trees and dolmens.6
The portrait of Caron in Buffalo is more apt
to suggest the later opera by Reyer in which
she appeared — Salammbo — to which Degas
533
was less devoted, at least in his recorded
attendance.
Salammbo is based on the romantic novel
by Flaubert set in ancient Carthage. Although
in the painting Caron is not wearing a cos-
tume from the opera, she sits on an extrava-
gant feather wrap draped over a chair and,
with a troubled, shadowed face and superb
gestures, pulls on her right glove. She could
easily be on the operatic stage, playing the
role of the Carthaginian priestess. The
loosely painted strokes of pink and gold,
with occasional touches of a pale and acid
green, transport her, and us, to the theater
and a romantic past.
1. Vol. II, p. 516.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXII, p. 106; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 91, p. 105.
3. Information on Rose Caron is from Eugene de
Soleniere, Rose Caron, Paris: Bibliotheque d'Art et
de la Critique, 1896. On Degas's attendance at the
Opera, see Archives Nationales, Paris, AJ13, "en-
trees personnelles, porte de communication."
4. Lettres Degas 1945, LXXXIV, to Bartholome,
p. 108; Degas Letters 1947, no. 93, p. 107.
5. Degas Sonnets 1946, no. VII, pp. 37-38.
6. RefT 1985, Notebook 36 (Metropolitan Museum,
1973.9); a drawing in the Museum Boymans-van
Beuningen, Rotterdam (FII53); fans (L594, L595
[fig. 188]), in private collections; and L975.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 17);
bought at that sale by Dr. Georges Viau, Paris, for
Fr 8,000; Viau collection, 1919-30; Andre Weil and
Matignon Art Galleries, New York, 1939; bought by
the museum 1943 .
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, hors catalogue;
1938, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, July-Septem-
ber, Hondert Jaar fransche Kunst, no. 107, repr. (as
"Rose Caron," dated 1890); 1939 Paris, no. 46, lent
by Dr. Georges Viau; 1947 Cleveland, no. 47a,
pi. XL; 1948 Minneapolis, no. 27; 1949 New York,
no. 74, repr. p. 66; 1954, Buffalo, Albright Art Gal-
lery, 16 April-30 May, Painters' Painters, p. 42,
no. 30, repr.; 1954 Detroit, no. 74, repr.; 1957, Mont-
clair, N.J. , Montclair Art Museum, 2-27 October,
Master Painters, no. 15; 1958, Houston, The Museum
of Fine Arts, 10 October-23 November, The Human
Image, no. 52, repr.; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 54; i960,
Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, 20 October-
11 December, From Gauguin to Gorky, no. 17, repr.;
i960 New York, no. 48, repr. (as 1886); 1961, Pitts-
burgh, Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, iojanuary-
19 February, "Paintings from the Albright Art Gal-
lery Collection" (no catalogue); 196 1, New Haven,
Yale University Art Gallery, 26 April-24 September,
Paintings and Sculpture from the Albright Art Gallery,
no. 14; 1962 Baltimore, no. 49, repr. p, 43; 1968,
Baltimore Museum of Art, 22 October-8 December,
From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by Eu-
ropean and American Artists, p. 81, pi. 60; 1968, Wash-
ington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 19 May-21
July, Paintings from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
p. 17, repr.; 1972, New York, Wildenstein and Co.,
2 November-9 December, Faces from the World of Im-
pressionism and Post-Impressionism, no. 23, repr. (as
c. 1885); 1978 New York, no. 36, repr. (color); 1986,
Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, 10 October
1986-25 January 1987, The Portrait in France ijoo-
1900 (by Mary Tavenor Holmes and George T. M.
Shackelford), no. 40, pp. 11 2-1 3, 137, repr. (color)
p. 31.
selected references: "Degas," Arts and Decoration,
XI: 3, July 19 19, p. 114 (regarding the atelier sale);
Annuaire de la Curiosite et des Beaux- Arts, 1920, p. 43
(listed as "Jeune femme assise mettant des gants," er-
roneously giving the name of the atelier sale pur-
chaser as M. Gradt, for Fr 8,200); Waldemar George,
"La collection Viau: I, la peinture moderne, " V Amour
de VArt, September 1925, p. 364, repr. p. 367; Claude
Roger-Marx, "Edgar Degas," La Renaissance, XXIL4,
August 1939, p. 52, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 862 (as "Femme assise tirant son gant," 1885-
90); Catalogue of the Paintings and Sculpture in the Per-
manent Collection (edited by A. C. Ritchie), Buffalo:
Albright Art Gallery, 1949, I, pp. 78, 193, no. 36,
repr. p. 79; Boggs 1962, pp. 64-65, 69, 112, pi. 122;
Minervino 1974, no. 670; Millard 1976, pp. 11-12,
fig. 123; Stephen A. Nash et al., Albright-Knox Art
Gallery : Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942,
New York: Rizzoli, 1979, pp. 216-17, rePr- P- 2I7»
pi. 10 (color) p. 26.
327.
Conversation
c. 1895
Oil on canvas
19V4 X 22 in. (49 X 60 cm)
Signed lower right: Degas
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. Gift of
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, B.A. 1929
(1983.7.7)
Lemoisne 864
In this painting, called Conversation, now at
Yale, Degas once more turned back to an
earlier work for inspiration. This time, it
was to the puzzling canvas in the Metropoli-
tan Museum from the late sixties, Sulking
(cat. no. 85). In that work, a couple are in
an office in positions that could suggest es-
trangement. As Theodore RerT has shown,
the racing print behind them, Steeplechase
Cracks, after the picture by the English painter
J. F. Herring, unites them, if not very se-
renely. He admits that Sulking is a work that
possesses a certain ambiguity.1 And the later
painting is unquestionably ambiguous.
The earlier composition has been re-
thought. The man is physically closer to the
young woman than was his predecessor in
Sulking, and there seems to be at least a
complicity, if not necessarily a sympathy,
between them. The landscape also provides
a mellower background than Herring's
Steeplechase Cracks for what appears to be
a moment of meditation rather than conver-
sation. The light on the woman's face and
hand becomes the focus of our contempla-
tion; related to the white on the man's shirt-
front, it draws them closer together. The
canvas itself has been repainted by Degas.
This is particularly apparent in the head of
the man, which is evasive in its features and
feeling.
Lemoisne believed that Conversation,
though finished in 1895, was begun in 1884
as the work Degas mentioned when he
wrote to Mme de Fleury that her sister,
Perie, and Perie's husband, Albert Bartholo-
me, had posed for "an intimate portrait"
and were "represented in their town at-
tire."2 That identification seems eccentric,
particularly because Degas was so attentive
to Bartholome after his invalid wife's death
in 1887, and it is strange that he would have
wanted to provoke sad memories of their
marriage in 1895, the year Lemoisne dates
the completion of Conversation. On the other
hand, about 1895 Degas made a posthumous
portrait of his friend the singer Lorenzo Pa-
gans (fig. 299), in which he resurrected the
ghost of his own father, dead for nearly
twenty years.3 It could have been in the
same spirit that he perhaps recalled Mme
Bartholome in Conversation.
Any features that might identify Mme
Bartholome in the painting, such as those
we find on the reclining figure on her tomb
made by her husband (fig. 253), are difficult
to detect in competition with her great hat,
the hand covering her chin, and the light
olive-green bustle that seems added like a
plume to her brown skirt. The identification
of Bartholome also presents problems. The
bald head and the long nose are features
found even in the photograph of him in
1888 looking down at the terra-cotta model
of his wife that he had made for her tomb.4
By 1890, when Manzi painted Bartholome
and Degas in their tilbury on the ride into
Burgundy5 or caricatured them with him-
self looking at a bust of Lafond, the beard
had lengthened. By the period of the unveil-
ing of Bartholomews Monument to the Dead at
the Pere-Lachaise cemetery in 1899, it was
still longer, and it was white. In the Yale
painting, the beard is shorter, which the de-
Fig. 299. Pagans and Degas's Father (L345), c. 1895.
Oil on canvas, 32X33 in. (81.3 X 83.8 cm).
Private collection
534
J*7
sire to reveal the touch of white on the shirt
could explain. But the mustache seems to
merge indistinguishably into the beard,
whereas in all the other portraits of Bartho-
lome it is nattily distinct. This leaves us in a
quandary about whether this is indeed Bar-
tholome. We can only speculate that Conver-
sation might have been intended to bring
back the spirit of Perie de Fleury Bartholome
to console her aging husband — a memorial
perhaps even more tender than Bartholo-
mews tomb for her, in which he showed
himself embracing his wife.
1. Reff 1976, p. 120, p. 316 n. 89.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, L, p. 76; Degas Letters 1947,
no. 59, P- 77.
3. See Boggs 1962, p. 56, for a discussion of the
work, and Boggs 1985, pp. 25, 27, for a redating
of it.
4. For photographs of Albert Bartholome and his
wife, of Bartholome and the tomb of his wife, and
of Manzi's painting and caricature, see 1986 Flor-
ence, pp. 50-54 in the article by Therese Burollet,
"Un'amicizia paradossale . . . quella di Edgar De-
gas et dello scultore Albert Bartholome."
5. See "Landscape Monotypes,** p. 502.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 59);
bought at that sale by Dr. Georges Viau, for Fr 22, 500;
Viau collection, 1918-42 (first Viau sale, Drouot,
Paris, 11 December 1942, no. 90). Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.; their gift to the museum
1983.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 864
(as a later replica of L335, c. 1885-95); Reff 1976,
p. 120, fig. 87 p. 316, no. 89 (refers to Lettres Degas
1945 and Degas Letters 1947, 8 January 1884).
Photography and Portraiture
cat. nos. 328-336
Absorbed as Degas had been in portraiture
in his early years, it was clearly of less inter-
est to him as he grew older. By the nineties,
his greater devotion to the general than the
particular made portraits rather improbable
subjects for him. The exceptions were usu-
ally in the medium of photography.
Most of what we know of Degas as a pho-
tographer comes from the book My Friend
Degas by Daniel Halevy (1 872-1962), a son
of the painter's old friends Ludovic and
Louise Halevy (see cat. nos. 166, 167). Da-
niel Halevy tells us that sometime about
1895, Degas "acquired a camera and used it
with the same energy he put into every-
thing."1 His camera was probably a hand-
held George Eastman Kodak, introduced in
1889, that could use rolled film. Degas re-
jected the new technology and continued to
use glass plates and a tripod, and indeed
much of the paraphernalia of earlier photog-
raphy, because in the nineties he was no
longer interested in the instantaneity of a
snapshot. Eugenia Parry Janis has pointed
out: "Whether consciously or not, Degas
pursued effects resembling older, more
primitive manifestations of camera work: a
subject's stillness; the controllable art of
posing, and most interesting of all, perhaps,
the strange unearthly illumination of da-
guerreotype and calotype, which was the
first and perhaps finest expression of this
early photographic sensibility."2 Although
some of Degas's photographs were indeed
made in daylight and it was said on at least
one occasion that he photographed at night
because he was otherwise occupied during
the day,3 he explained a decided preference
for night to the Halevys: "Daylight is too
easy. What I want is difficult — the atmo-
sphere of lamps or moonlight. "4
It was at the Halevys' house that he made
some of his finest photographs of that fami-
ly, and their relatives and friends. Three of
the noblest are individual photographs of Lu-
dovic (cat. no. 328), Louise (cat. nos. 329,
330), and Daniel (cat. no, 331), each sitting
in an armchair in which it was possible to
relax in reasonable comfort before Degas's
camera and lights. It has been estimated by
the various sitters that they had to be still
for between two minutes (Daniel — always
generous)5 and fifteen (Paul Valery — more
impatient).6 Degas expressed in these pho-
tographs his love of the Halevys, from whom
he would soon be severed by his own im-
placable unwillingness to believe in the in-
nocence of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an issue
that divided much of France.
Degas did take photographs of people
outside the Halevy circle, at least outside
their house. Among these portraits are the
profile figure of Charles Haas (fig. 300)
standing in a garden and the proud figure of
Mme Meredith Howland against a rug
(fig. 301). Daniel Halevy tells us of Degas's
indignant account of Mme Howland' s reac-
tions to the two photographs. He asked Ha-
levy, "Isn't it beautiful? But she won't see
it. She'll let her dog lick it. She's a beast.
The other day I showed her my beautiful
Haas. 4 It's all mottled,' she said. * You '11 have
to touch it up!'"7 Indeed, Degas's prints and
presumably his plates often did have surface
imperfections. His devotion to experimenta-
tion and discovery became stronger in his
later work and militated against perfection
of finish.
Exceedingly complex photographs were
made at the Halevys' on an evening about
which Daniel gave his now famous descrip-
tion of Degas's working method. It was after
dinner at his parents' house. Also present
were Jules Taschereau (an uncle) and his
daughter Henriette, and Mme Alfred Niaudet
(an aunt) and her two daughters, Mathilde
and Jeanne. Degas went to his studio to
fetch his camera and returned:
From then on, the pleasure part of the eve-
ning was over. Degas raised his voice, be-
came dictatorial, gave orders that a lamp
be brought into the little salon and that
anyone who wasn't going to pose should
leave. The duty part of the evening be-
535
gan. We had to obey Degas's fierce will,
his artist's ferocity. At the moment, all his
friends speak of him with terror. If you
invite him for the evening, you know
what to expect: two hours of military
obedience.
In spite of my orders to leave, I slid
into a corner, and silent in the dark I
watched Degas. He had seated Uncle
Jules, Mathilde, and Henriette on the little
sofa in front of the piano. He went back
and forth in front of them, running from
one side of the room to the other with an
expression of infinite happiness. He moved
lamps, changed the reflectors, tried to
light the legs by putting a lamp on the
floor — to light Uncle Jules's legs, those
famous legs, the slenderest, most supple
legs in Paris, which Degas always men-
tions ecstatically.
"Taschereau," he said, "hold onto that
leg with your right arm, and pull it in
there, there. Then look at that young per-
son beside you. More affectionately — still
more — come — come! You can smile so
nicely when you want to. And you, Mile
Henriette, bend your head — more — still
more. Really bend it. Rest it on your
neighbor's shoulder." And when she
didn't follow his orders to suit him, he
caught her by the nape of the neck and
Fig. 300. Charles Haas, c. 1895. Photo-
graph printed from a glass negative in
the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
posed her as he wished. He seized hold of
Mathilde and turned her face toward her
uncle. Then he stepped back and ex-
claimed happily, "That does it."
The pose was held for two minutes —
and then repeated. We shall see the photo-
graphs tonight or tomorrow morning, I
think. He will display them here looking
happy — and really at moments like that
he is happy.
At half-past eleven everybody left; De-
gas, surrounded by three laughing girls,
carried his camera, as proud as a child
carrying a gun.8
The photograph (fig. 302) ended in a
double exposure, as did several others Degas
made at that time (fig. 303). One problem is
knowing whether this effect was intentional
or accidental.9 Certainly Degas did acknowl-
edge he had failures, as when he told Julie
Manet on 29 November 1895 that after a ses-
sion of photographing Renoir and the Mai-
larmes, "I am sorry, the photographs are all
spoiled, I was afraid to tell you."10 How-
ever, the effects of the double exposure were
so provocative that, having arrived at one or
two by accident, Degas could have pursued
the others intentionally.
If we view the photograph that Daniel
Halevy describes Degas taking as a horizon-
Fig. 301. Mme Meredith Howland, c. 1895.
Photograph printed from a glass nega-
tive in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
tal work, we can see Henriette Taschereau,
Mathilde Niaudet, and Jules Taschereau
seated on the small sofa in front of the piano,
and we can admire one outstretched knee of
M. Taschereau's famous legs. He is doing as
Degas ordered — holding onto his right leg
with his arm and smiling at his niece. Hen-
riette leans on her cousin's shoulder as De-
gas had placed her, and Mathilde faces her
uncle as Degas had insisted. It is disconcert-
ing, however, to discover that the pictures
on the wall hang sideways, and that a double
portrait of Jeanne Niaudet and her mother is
superimposed across the shoulders of this
seated group.
What do these departures from convention-
al photography represent? In the illusive
play with reality and the abstract animation
of the spaces, the photographs could antici-
pate Analytical Cubism. In their flouting of
convention and their suggestion of action,
they could, as has been proposed, prefigure
Futurism. The strangeness of juxtapositions
and particularly the disorientation in space
seem to suggest Surrealism. But the affinity
now most frequently proposed for these
photographs is with the contemporary Sym-
bolist movement. Both Eugenia Parry Janis
and Douglas Crimp support this point of
view.
In these works, there is a sense of physi-
cal beauty that may be elusive but is also
lingering. The space is mysterious but com-
pelling and unforgettable. There is a play of
different levels of reality in the disposition of
the three-dimensional sitters — phantoms
though they may seem — against the pic-
tures on the walls, and a sense of shift and
change, which is not that of actual move-
ment but which the artist has created ab-
stractly. Janis suggests the connections with
Symbolist poetry by pointing to Degas's
friendships with the Symbolist poets Emile
Verhaeren and Stephane Mallarme, both of
whom he photographed.11 Crimp sees a
photograph such as that of the Taschereaus
and the Niaudets — "caught in the complex
web of the photographic medium . . .
transformed into a hallucinatory, spectral
image" — as sympathetic and completely con-
sistent with the nature of Symbolist poetry.12
1. Halevy 1964, p. 81.
2. 1984-85 Paris, pp. 468-69.
3. Halevy i960, p. 78; Halevy 1964, p. 69.
4. Ibid.
5. Halevy i960, p. 93; Halevy 1964, p. 83.
6. valery 1965, p. 81; Valery i960, p. 40.
7. Halevy i960, p. 83; Halevy 1964, p. 73.
8. Halevy i960, pp. 91-93; Halevy 1964, pp. 82-83.
9. Terrasse 1983, p. 43.
10. Manet 1979, p. 73.
11. 1984-85 Paris, pp. 475-76.
12. Crimp 1978, p. 91.
536
Fig. 302. Henriette Taschereau, Mathilde Niaudet, Jules Taschereau,
Jeanne Niaudet, and Mme Alfred Niaudet (T17), 1895. Photo-
graph, double exposure, modern print. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
t .*
Fig. 303. Mathilde Niaudet, Jeanne Niaudet, Daniel Halevy, Henriette Taschereau,
Ludovic Halevy, and Elie Halevy (T18), 1895. Photograph, double exposure,
modern print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
328.
Ludovic Halevy
c. 1895
Gelatin silver print
3^8X3 in. (8.1X7.8 cm)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu
(86.XM.690.3)
Ludovic Halevy, who was born the same
year as Degas, would have been sixty-one in
1895, the year this photograph was presum-
ably taken. He was not by any means as ac-
tive as his friend. His writing of librettos
and fiction was over.
In the photograph, the patterns of the anti-
macassar and, in particular, of the flowered
screen suggest Degas 's enjoyment of orna-
ment in other contemporary works, such as
the pastel Young Girl Braiding Her Hair (cat.
no. 319) of 1894. The picture shows Halevy
to have aged and mellowed considerably
since Degas had thought of him in terms of
La famille Cardinal almost twenty years be-
fore.1 He is very much the handsome man
of letters, member of the Academy since
1884, and paterfamilias, as he leans back, a
book on his lap, against the antimacassar of
his chair. There may be a certain hauteur
implied in his arched eyebrows, but the
photograph is a flattering portrait. It makes
us realize the tragedy that the break be-
tween the painter and writer over the Drey-
fus Affair in 1897 would mean for them
both.
1. See "Degas, Halevy, and the Cardinals," p. 280;
see also cat. nos. 166, 167.
provenance: Ludovic Halevy; Mme Joxe-Halevy;
Francois Braunschweig; his heirs; bought by the
museum.
selected references: 1984-85 Paris, p. 466, no. 140
p. 486, fig. 322 p. 469.
537
329.
Mme Ludovic Halevy
c. 1895
Gelatin silver print
i57/gX n5/s in. (40.3 X 29.5 cm)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu
(86. XM. 690.1)
Louise Breguet Halevy was a friend of De-
gas *s younger sister Marguerite and one of
the few women he called by her first name.
She came from a distinguished family of
physicists, engineers, and instrument
makers descended from Abraham Louis
Breguet (1747-1823), the great Swiss clock-
maker. Degas had been at the Lycee Louis-
le-Grand with a great-grandson of the
clockmaker, Louis Breguet, who was a
brother of Louise.
From his letters, it is clear that Degas re-
spected and admired Louise Halevy, whom
Henri Loyrette speculates he may have
loved when he was a young man (see cat.
no. 20). At one time, according to one of
her two sons, Daniel, he said to Mme Ha-
levy, "Louise, I would like to do your por-
trait; your features are extremely linear,"1
but he never drew or painted a portrait of
her. It was only in photography that he
tried to capture her mature beauty. It seems
to have been in the year that his sister Mar-
guerite died in Buenos Aires that he made
two photographs of her — this, and one called
The Developer,2 or Mme Ludovic Halevy, Re-
clining (T15). Degas romantically used the
chiaroscuro created by the lamps in the Ha-
levy house at 22 rue de Dduai to show only
half of her beautiful face and to make her
veined hand wonderfully moving. She
seems relaxed, but her hand reveals certain
tensions. Her face is sad, as if she could be
mourning the loss of her old friend Mar-
guerite De Gas Fevre. She may also be an-
ticipating the consequences of the Dreyfus
Affair on the friendships of the Halevy family.
1. Halevy 1964, p. 53.
2. A reference to the fact that Mme Halevy some-
times developed his films. Degas ended a letter of
29 September 1895 to her husband: "Greetings to
Louise the developer"; Lettres Degas 1945, CXCIII,
p. 208; Degas Letters 1947, no. 208, pp. 195-96.
provenance: Galerie Texbraun, Paris; bought by the
museum 1986.
exhibitions : 1984-85 Paris, no. 141 p. 486, fig. 323
p. 470.
330.
Mme Ludovic Halevy
c. 1895
Gelatin silver print
i53/4 X ii3/s in. (40. 1 X 28.7 cm) (sight)
Collection of Mme Joxe-Halevy, Paris
In the enlarged portrait photograph of Lou-
ise Breguet Halevy (cat. no. 329), Degas of-
fers us a tantalizing glimpse, through the
shadows, of a few objects — a photograph, a
lamp — in the Halevy apartment. This sec-
ond enlargement focuses in a Rembrandt-
esque fashion on Mme Halevy's face and
hand.
provenance: Ludovic Halevy; Daniel Halevy; by
descent to present owner.
selected references: Halevy 1964, repr. facing
p. 49, cropped print, Mme Joxe.
538
332.
Mallarme and Paule Gobillard
c. 1896
Gelatin silver print
11V2 X 14.V2 in. (29.2 x 37 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (PHO1986-83)
Terrasse 11
331.
Daniel Halevy
c. 1895
Gelatin silver print
i57/8X n7/8 in. (40.2 X 30.2 cm)
Collection of Mme Joxe-Halevy, Paris
Terrasse 13
When at Dieppe in 1885 Degas persuaded
the English photographer Barnes to record a
tableau vivant of his own apotheosis, he had
ranged behind him the three daughters of
Jean Lemoinne, publisher of the influential
Journal des Debats, and the two young sons
of Ludovic and Louise Halevy — Elie, aged
fifteen, and Daniel, aged thirteen — kneeling
or crouching at his feet (fig. 191). Presum-
ably then, he regarded both Halevy boys
with equal affection. Ten years later, how-
ever, it was clear that he had a special disci-
ple in the younger son, Daniel (1 872-1962),
and it is likely that Elie (1870-193 7), who
was to become a distinguished historian,
had probably already begun to regard the
painter's political conservatism with dis-
taste. Daniel uncritically idolized the painter
and was to express his admiration of him in
the essays that were to make up his book
My Friend Degas. By 1895, he was already
keeping the journal entries that would form
its core. He was also sufficiently influenced
by Degas to have bought a landscape at the
sale of Gauguin's works in February of that
year (see cat. no. 356).
It is appropriate that Degas should have
made an idealized portrait photograph of this
young man. He placed him in the same set-
ting and armchair he had used for his mother,
a chair in which the sitter could relax. Again
there is a strong play of shadow, which dram-
atizes the figure of Daniel. His expression is
thoughtful and, with his raised eyebrows,
his hand covering his lips, agreeably sar-
donic. In this print, the sense of the painter's
affection for Daniel is clearly expressed.
provenance: Ludovic Halevy; Daniel Halevy; by
descent to present owner.
selected references: Halevy 1964, repr. facing p. 48,
Mmejoxe; Terrasse 1983, no. 13.
When the parents of Paule and Jeannie
Gobillard died (their mother was Berthe
Morisot's sister, Mme Theodore Gobil-
lard),1 the two Gobillard girls were estab-
lished in a separate apartment of their own
on rue de Villejust.2 Until her death in March
1895, their aunt Berthe Morisot Manet kept
a protective eye on them. This was also true
of certain family friends — among them the
poet Stephane Mallarme, who had a daughter
Genevieve somewhat older than they. When
Berthe Morisot contemplated her approach-
ing death in a letter to her daughter Julie
Manet,3 she wrote that she hoped Julie would
join her Gobillard cousins in that apartment,
as she later did. Because Paule Gobillard was
the eldest, Mallarme referred to her as "notre
Demoiselle Patronne."4 Renoir's filmmaker
son, Jean, in his biography of his father, tells
us that "Paule became so wrapped up in
playing the part of big sister that she never
married."5 In fact, she turned to painting.6
From Julie Manet's journal, it is clear that
the three girls responded to the opportuni-
ties given them to know sqme of the finest
minds from the worlds of painting, poetry,
and music in Paris. They also enjoyed enter-
taining. As Jean Renoir wrote, "'The little
Manet girls,' as they were called, carried on
the family tradition. . . . Whenever I have
an opportunity to go and see my old friends, I
feel as if I were breathing a more subtle air
than elsewhere. "7
It was at one of their soirees in 1895 that
Degas took the solemn photograph of Mal-
larme sitting twisted in a light chair looking
toward Paule Gobillard, who sits unconven-
tionally with her arms propped on two
chairs (one the back of Mallarme's), her
arms held together as if for support. Her
great puffed sleeves and simple coiffure
seem to emphasize the classic beauty of her
head. Behind Paule Gobillard, we see the
bottom of a vertical painting by Edouard
Manet, the uncle of her cousin Julie. The
Manet canvas was painted in 1880 and
bought at the posthumous sale of the artist's
works in 1884 by Julie's parents. Although
Degas showed less than half of the painting
Jeune fille dans un jardin, or Marguerite [Guil-
lemet] at Bellevue* there may be some hint
of the protective presence of Marguerite
Guillemet in the garden at Bellevue, floating
above and between Paule Gobillard and Ste-
phane Mallarme.
539
Gobillard under a painting by Manet/ Photograph
taken by Degas in 1896/rue Villejust/and enlarged
by Tasset/P. V." [translation]); by descent to their
son Francois Valery; bought by the museum 1986.
selected references: Terrasse 1983, no. 11; Francoise
Heilbrun and Philippe Neagu, Chefs-d'oeuvre de la col-
lection photographique, Paris: Philippe Sers et R.M.N. ,
1986, no. 150.
333.
Renoir and Mallarme
1895
Gelatin silver print
15V4 X 11V2 in. (38.9 X 29.2 cm) (sight)
Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet, Paris
Terrasse 12
A photograph that seems seminal to Degas's
evolution as a photographer, this was taken
in the apartment that Julie Manet shared
with her Gobillard cousins. It is of the
painter Auguste Renoir and the poet Ste-
phane Mallarme, who were probably
friends through the late Berthe Morisot, in
333
Mallarme gently refers to the photo-
graph in the first stanza of his "Vers de
circonstance":
Tors etgris comme apparaitrait
Mire parmi la source un saule
Je tremble un peu de mon portrait
Avec Mademoiselle Paule.9
(Twisted and gray
Like a willow midst a brook
I tremble a little before this likeness
Of myself with Mademoiselle Paule.)
1. See cat. nos. 87-91.
2. Julie Manet's parents had bought the ground-floor
apartment at 40 rue de Villejust (now rue Paul-
Valery) in 1883, but Berthe Morisot had moved out
when her husband died. The Gobillard-Morisots
seem to have lived three floors above.
3. Morisot 1950, pp. 184-85; Morisot 1957, p. 187,
letter dated 1 March 1895.
4. The first line of one of his "Dons de fruits glaces,"
no. XXXIV of 1898, Mallarme: oeuvres completes,
Paris: La Pleiade, 1945, p. 124.
5. Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father, London: Collins,
1962, p. 268.
6. Her niece, Agathe Rouart Valery, kindly provided
information on her career, including two catalogues:
Dames et demoiselles: Blanche Hoschede, Jeanne Baudot,
Paule Gobillard, Paris: Durand-Ruel, 1966, and Paule
Gobillard 1867-1946, New York: Hammer Galleries,
198 1.
7. Renoir, op. cit., p. 269.
8. The identification of the painting was made by
Karen Herring, National Gallery of Canada Re-
search Assistant for the Degas exhibition.
9. Mallarme, op. cit., no. XXXII of 1896, p. 124.
provenance: Given by the artist to Paul Valery, who
married Jeannie Gobillard, Paule's sister, in 1900 (Va-
lery wrote in the margin: "Mallarme and Paule
II
540
whose former home at 40 rue de Villejust
Degas photographed them. Both men acted
as guardians to her daughter and nieces. Re-
noir is seated, and Mallarme stands by a
fireplace over which there is a mirror indis-
tinctly reflecting Mme Mallarme and their
daughter Genevieve in the lower right cor-
ner and Degas with his camera at the left.
Although Paul Valery, to whom Degas gave
a print of this photograph, pointed out that
the mirrored reflections were "like phan-
toms," and the picture session imposed
strains on the sitters, he was impressed by
the fine likeness of Mallarme: "This master-
piece of its kind involved the use of nine oil
lamps . . . and a fearful quarter hour of im-
mobility for the subjects. It has the finest
likeness of Mallarme I have ever seen, apart
from Whistler's admirable lithograph."1
More recently, the ambiguity of the work
has been emphasized. Douglas Crimp has
written: "Suspended in the specular infinitude
that is this photograph, its author is reduced
to a specter. Degas has included himself in
his photograph only to disappear, in a way
that cannot but remind us of Mallarme' s
own self-effacement in the creation of his
poetry."2
1. Valery 1965, p. 81; Valery i960, p. 40.
2. Crimp 1978, p. 95.
provenance: Paul Valery, who wrote in the margin:
"This photograph was given me by Degas, whose
ghostly reflection and camera appear in the mirror.
Mallarme is standing beside Renoir, who is sitting on
the sofa. Degas had required them to hold the pose
for fifteen minutes, by the light of nine oil lamps.
The location is the fourth floor, no. 40 rue de Ville-
just. In the mirror can be seen the shadowy figures
of Mme Mallarme and her daughter. The enlarge-
ment is by Tasset" (translation); bequeathed by Paul
Valery to the Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet,
Paris.
exhibitions: 1984-85 Paris, no. 143 p. 486, fig. 337
p. 480.
selected references: Valery 1965, p. 69; Crimp
1978, pp. 94-95, copy print from The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, repr. p. 94; Dunlop
1979, p. 210, copy print from The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York, fig. 193 p. 209; Terrasse
1983, no. 12, pp. 38-39, 121, print, Bibliotheque
Litteraire Jacques Doucet, fig. 12 p. 63; 1984-85 Par-
is, pp. 473-8i, no. 143 p. 486, fig. 337 p. 481, print,
Bibliotheque Litteraire Jacques Doucet.
334.
Paul Poujaud, Mme Arthur
Fontaine, and Degas
c. 1895
Gelatin silver print
nVs X i57/s in. (29.4 X 40.5 cm)
Inscribed in another hand in violet ink on verso:
Paul Poujaud, 13 rue Solferino
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(1983. 1092)
Terrasse 9
Degas occasionally ventured forth into po-
lite bourgeois society, as when he frequented
the salon of Mme Arthur Fontaine, whom
he photographed in her sitting room with
their friend the lawyer Paul Poujaud. Marcel
Guerin describes Paul Poujaud as "a law-
yer . . . known for his artistic culture and
sure taste. He knew all the leading musicians
and all the great painters of the period. His
judgment and opinions carried great weight,
and his influence was considerable. He be-
longed to the type of 'Dilletante,' was an ex-
cellent conversationalist and used to recount
in the most vivid manner his memories of a
whole life devoted to art."1 Guerin believed
that this photograph had been taken in the sa-
lon of the composer Ernest Chausson (1855—
1899), a brother-in-law of Mme Fontaine
(another of her sisters had married Henry
Lerolle).
Degas also had young friends who had be-
come the fashionable recorders of that and an
even more aristocratic contemporary society —
Giovanni Boldini (1845-193 1), Paul Helleu
(18 59-1927), and Jacques-Emile Blanche
( 1 861-1942). In the mannered poses into
which he manipulated Paul Poujaud, Mme
Fontaine, and himself in this photograph,
Degas may have been gently satirizing these
younger artists' work. In the exaggeration
of the poses and, in particular, in the diagonal
energy of his own body, he also anticipates
the histrionics of early films. Although Degas
often had difficulty in achieving perfect
prints of his photographs, this enlarged silver
print has a satiny surface and a precision of
detail that enhance the sophisticated image.
1 . Degas Letters 1947, Appendix, "Three Letters
from Paul Poujaud to Marcel Guerin," p. 233.
provenance: Paul Poujaud (though an attestation of
Francois Valery at Bieures, 25 May 1983, states that
it was given by Degas to Paul Valery); Paul Valery;
Francois Valery; bought from Alhis Matheos, Basel,
by the museum 1983.
selected references: Lettres Degas 1945, p. 248, pi.
XXII (as "Salon de Chausson"); Lemoisne [1946-49],
I, p. 218, repr. p. 219a, a print in the collection of
A. S. Henraux; Terrasse 1983, no. 9, p. 35, repr. p. 60,
a print in the collection of M. and Mme Marc Julia.
335.
Rene De Gas
1895-1900
Gelatin silver print
14X10 in. (35.6X25.4 cm)
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Exhibited in Paris
Terrasse 52
Although Degas had been fond of his broth-
er Rene, the youngest member of his fami-
ly, in their early years (see cat. no. 2), and
was clearly proud of him when he visited
him and his other brother Achille in New
Orleans in the winter of 1872-73, 1 he was
deeply offended when Rene deserted his
blind wife, their cousin Estelle Musson. As
late as 1882, Degas's cousin Edmondo Mor-
54i
335
billi was refusing in a letter to his wife The-
rese, the sister of the estranged brothers, to
come to Paris to request a reconciliation.2
Eventually — at least by 20 March 1897,
when Degas invited the painter Louis Bra-
quaval and his wife to dinner with Rene and
his family — that reconciliation did occur.3
One suspects that the death of their brother
Achille in October 1893 and of their sister
Marguerite two years later may have en-
couraged it.
Degas made at least two other photographs
of his journalist brother, who was an editor
of the conservative newspaper he Petit Pari-
sien. These show Rene seated at a desk and
displaying a certain air of cold calculation
(T53, T54). In this photograph, however,
there are no defenses and no protection.
Rene, who had always been improvident or
unfortunate with money, clearly suffered
with the years. His suit is coarse, his hands
clumsy. His expression suggests the com-
plete vulnerability of this man who in 1895
would have been only fifty. We are not sur-
prised to know that by 1901 he would have
changed the spelling of his name from De
Gas to de Gas, which suggests noble origin,
and would enjoy moving to a more fashion-
able quarter when the inheritance of a small
fortune from his painter brother made it
possible for him to do so.
As Eugenia Parry Janis has pointed out,
this photograph of Rene was taken in Degas's
studio with the same curtain and rope against
which the painter himself posed for a profile
portrait in a smock, a photograph which is
often attributed to his friend Bartholome
(fig. 270). 4 Ironically, Degas seems more
energetic than his brother, who was eleven
years younger.
1. Lettres Degas 1945, III, to Henri Rouart, 5 Decem-
ber 1872, p. 25; Degas Letters 1947, no. 5, p. 24.
2. Guerrero de Balde archives, Naples, 27 June 1882,
published in Boggs 1963, p. 276.
3. Unpublished letter, private collection, Paris.
4. 1984-85 Paris, p. 482.
provenance: Rene De Gas; his gift to the Biblio-
theque Nationale, Paris, 1920?
selected references: Terrasse 1983, no. 52, pp. 101,
122, repr. p. 90; 1984-85 Paris, p. 482, fig. 338 p. 481.
336.
Henri Rouart and His Son Alexis
1895-98
Oil on canvas
36V4 X 283/4 in. (92 X 73 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Neue Pinakothek, Munich (13 681)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1176
In 1895, the same year he probably photo-
graphed his old school friend Ludovic Ha-
levy, Degas began making studies for a
painting of another of their classmates at the
Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Henri Rouart,1 in
one more portrait, this time with Henri's
son Alexis. Although this painting, which is
now in Munich, seems completely different
from a photograph in its scale, in the texture
of the opaquely applied paint, and in its un-
usual color, there may have been a photo-
graphic source for it.
In writing on 11 August 1895 to his friend
Tasset, who developed and enlarged his pho-
tographs, Degas asked him to treat several
negatives. Three were of a subject he de-
scribed as "an elderly invalid in black skull-
cap; behind his armchair a friend standing.*'2
This may have been the source for the com-
position of this painted portrait, in which it
is frightening to sense the pathos — both in
the inadequacy of the son and in the son's
physical domination over his father, who
was suffering from gout. The painting seems
far removed from the romanticized photo-
graphs Degas had made the same year of
Ludovic Halevy and his son Daniel (cat.
nos. 328, 331).
We have another record of Henri Rouart
at this time. Paul Valery had been introduced
into the Rouart household by one of their
sons in 1893 or 1894 and became a frequent
visitor. He wrote in Degas Danse Dessin:
In M. Rouart himself ... I was awed by
the amplitude of a career in which nearly
all the virtues of character and intelligence
had been combined. He was untroubled
by ambition, by envy, by any thirst for
appearances. True value was all he cared
for, and he could appreciate it in several
kinds. Among the first connoisseurs of his
time, a man who admired — and made
early purchases of — the works of Millet,
Corot, Daumier, Manet . . . and El Gre-
co, he owed his fortune to machine con-
struction, to inventions which he carried
through from the purely theoretical to the
technical and thence to the stage of indus-
trial application. This is no place for the
gratitude and affection I owe to M. Rou-
art. I will only say that he is among the
542
336
men who have left an impress on my
mind. His researches into metallurgy and
mechanics, as an inventor of thermodyna-
mic machinery, went side by side with an
ardent passion for painting; he was as
much at home with it as an artist, and in-
deed practiced it himself as a true painter.
But owing to his modesty, his own out-
put, with its curious preciseness, remains
almost unknown, the possession only of
his heirs.3
Clearly, Rouart was much more imposing
and personally integrated in 1895 than Degas's
portrait suggests. Valery was aware of the
deep affection of the painter and Rouart for
each other, but "was always struck by the
contrast between two men so remarkable in
their different ways."4
In painting Henri Rouart with his son
Alexis, as he had once painted him with his
daughter Helene (cat. no. 143), Degas must
have been aware of those differences, if only
of those he was to express the following
year in a letter to Rouart: "You will be
blessed, O righteous man, in your children
and your children's children. During my
cold, I am meditating on the state of celi-
bacy, and a good three-quarters of what I
tell myself is sad. I embrace you."5
Leading to the double portrait of Henri
and his son Alexis, Degas had made a char-
coal-and-pastel drawing of Alexis, a work
he dated very precisely March 1895 (fig. 304).
543
Fig. 304. Alexis Rouart (BR139), dated
March 1895. Charcoal and pastel,
23^8 X 16 in. (58.8 X 40. 5 cm). Private
collection
Fig. 305. Paul Cezanne, The Man with the
Pipe, c. 1892-95. Oil on canvas, 282/4X24 in.
(73 X60 cm). Courtauld Institute Galleries,
London
Fig. 306. Henri Rouart (L1177), dated
1895. Pastel and charcoal, 235/sX ij^A in.
(60X45 cm). Location unknown
To us, Alexis's ill-fitting hat and coat com-
bined with his mustache irresistibly suggest
Charlie Chaplin. Someone interested in the
most advanced of the arts in early 1895,
however, might have been reminded of the
workingmen's suits and hats of the card-
players and gardeners in the current exhibi-
tion of the work of Cezanne at Vollard's
gallery on rue Laffitte. (Cezanne, after all,
had a particular interest in a man and his hat
and had even painted himself in his bowler.)
Compared with Cezanne's rustic figures,
such as The Man with the Pipe (fig. 305),
Alexis Rouart does not dominate his clothes
in a macho fashion and does not have the
protection of a clay pipe. His body is un-
equal to the great overcoat — drawn with a
few abrupt, extended zigzags of charcoal —
his hands seek each other for support, and
his mustache is revealed as pale with a reddish
tinge. Nicely understated is the mobility
and indecisiveness of the face — brows at dif-
ferent levels, eyes of different sizes, asym-
metrical mustache, mouth at an angle — its
paleness emphasized by the strokes of red
chalk on the nose and the modeling of the
right side of the face. In a curious way, this
drawing of Alexis is beautifully disciplined,
while inviting our sympathy for this son of
Henri Rouart.
That same year, 1895, Degas dated another
pastel-and-charcoal drawing for the Munich
painting, this time of Henri Rouart seated,
with the headless form of Alexis faintly in-
dicated behind him (fig. 306). Henri Rouart,
though aged and undoubtedly arthritic,
seems as full of vigorous life — or at least the
past enjoyment of it — as his son seems re-
pressed. His body flows into his shapeless
suit and is dominated by his energetically
modeled head. His mustache grows more
generously than his son's. We see more of
his hair, which curls over his brow. He
frowns with the kind of creative energy that
made Valery so much admire him. Behind
him the sage-green wallpaper breaks into
flower, the precedent for the yellow flower
that is so surprising in the painting.
The double portrait, which grew out of
two such drawings, has gone beyond indi-
vidual portraiture to a statement of physical
and intellectual decline in the individual, and
from generation to generation. Both Henri
and Alexis seem helpless and weak, their in-
effectuality revealed even by the gloves in
Alexis's hands.
What happened to Degas's characteriza-
tion of Henri Rouart between the drawing
and the painting? Consciously or uncon-
sciously, he may have projected some of his
own physical decline onto the figure of
Henri Rouart. There is no reason to believe
that Rouart possessed such agonized eyes as
Degas gave him here. It is also possible that
he was thinking of the sitter for his photo-
graph of "an elderly invalid in black skull-
cap," which, since he mentions another
photograph taken at Carpentras, is probably
of his old friend the painter Evariste de Va-
lernes, whom he often visited there and who
was to die in 1896. Degas may have pro-
jected onto Rouart some of the characteris-
tics of the dying Valernes.
It is in this work, rather than in the draw-
ing, that Degas aged his friend so brutally
and even gouged his eyes with red paint. It
is an expressive painting about the indignity
of age and the indignity of youth: the son
stands as if he were already at his father's
funeral. Degas, possibly more than they,
was troubled by the seeming loss of control
by individuals over their destiny. In this
work, which was perhaps executed as much
as three years after the drawings, he reveals
how haunted he was by the specter of age.
1. See cat. nos. 143, 144.
2. Newhall 1956, p. 125.
3. Valery 1965, p. 14; Valery i960, pp. 8, 9.
4. Valery 1965, p. 16; Valery i960, p. 10.
5. Lettres Degas 1945, CXCIV, p. 209; Degas Let-
ters 1947, no. 211, p. 197.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 17);
bought by Jacques Seligmann, Paris, for Fr 13,500
(sale, American Art Association, New York, 27 Jan-
uary 192 1, no. 44). With Justin Thannhauser, Lu-
cerne and New York; bought by the museum 1965.
exhibitions: 1949 New York, no. 83, repr. p. 22;
i960 New York, no. 63, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1 176; Boggs 1962, pp. 74-75, 128-29, pi. 140;
Minervino 1974, no. 1174; Sutton 1986, p. 301,
pi, 288 p. 304.
Oil Paintings of the Nude
cat. nos. 337-342
Although Degas is often thought of as hav-
ing turned almost exclusively to pastels in
his last years, in fact he did produce a sur-
prisingly large number of oil paintings.
These have not been omitted in major retro-
spectives of his work, such as the exhibition
in Paris in 1924 or in Philadelphia in 1936,
but they have seldom played a large role in
the literature. One reason may be that they
are not easy to understand and to like, al-
most a terrifying contradiction of what his
work had been in the seventies. There is
ambiguity, often a suggestion of hostility,
certainly an admission of the irrational, and
a denial of human perfectibility. This can be
544
perceived even in the paintings of the nudes.
Elements of the pastel nudes of this same
period are here. There are the extravagant
fabrics, the long bathtub in settings Mme
Halevy would have found surprising,1 and a
pyrotechnic brilliance of color. But the im-
age of the bathtub becomes more ominous
in the oils. Even in the pastels, there is little
indication of actual water to be enjoyed by
the bathers, as there was in some of the
works of a decade before. But in these oils,
the emptiness of the tub and its very large-
ness seem to give it a symbolic meaning, at
times almost that of a tomb. Predictably, the
handling of paint is broader than in the vi-
brantly applied pastels. The colors are also
more generalized, without the same fractur-
ing of hues. The palette and the mood
change from one work to another, most ob-
viously in the three compositions Degas
based on the same crouching figure (cat.
nos. 341, 342; fig. 310), but on the whole
the oils are more assertive and less seductive
than the pastels. Their format is almost in-
variably horizontal.
1. See "Bathers," p. 516.
337.
The Bath
c. 1895
Oil on canvas
32X46V4in. (81.3 X 117. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Ac-
quired through the generosity of Mrs. Alan M.
Scaife, 1962 (62.37.1)
Lemoisne 1029
The relationship of this painting to the pas-
tel The Morning Bath, in the Art Institute of
Chicago (cat. no. 320), has been recorded.
In his standard catalogue raisonne of the art-
ist's work, Lemoisne places the painting di-
rectly after the pastel. Richard Brettell has
also remarked on their relationship.1 It is
true that in both works a nude figure is
shown getting into a tub, her face turned
away or indistinct. There is also a back-
ground of patterned paper, and the fore-
ground is taken up by a heavily canopied
unmade bed. It may have been an exercise
on Degas' s part to have worked two very
different variations on the scheme — in the
oil choosing a horizontal composition, using
colors that are as hot as the others are cool,
and working boldly with the paint, particu-
larly in the almost pointillist disks on the
background wall.2 It was not something he
did without preparation, for there are many
drawings that show his studies of the move-
ment of the figure. Nevertheless, he appar-
ently wanted an effect more immediate and
more savage than in the highly refined pastel.
The orange-canopied bed recalls those in
late medieval paintings of fifteenth-century
Flanders. It is also like those we see today in
the Chambre des Povres in the fifteenth-
century Hotel-Dieu at Beaune. According
to Erwin Panofsky, the canopied beds in
paintings such as the wedding portrait of the
Arnolfinis by Jan van Eyck in the National
Gallery in London, or the Annunciation by
Rogier van der Weyden in the Louvre were
"nuptial rooms" of great sacramental signifi-
cance, which makes the bed in this painting
an ironic reminder of a more solemn age.3
JJ7
33*
One of the paintings that seem to have em-
erged from a series of drawings of a woman
sitting on the edge of a bathtub sponging or
drying her neck is Woman at Her Bath, a
work showing the artist's indulgence in ex-
otically beautiful colors. Particularly start-
ling are the violet and rose towels against
the mottled green-and-orange wall and the
orange glow on the flesh as if it were reflected
from the tub below. Degas introduced into
the work a maidservant who solemnly pours
water on the bather's vulnerable neck. In
the spareness of the body, there are abrupt
contours which draw our eyes, as the figure
of the maidservant also does, relentlessly
back to the picture plane. In its decorativeness
and sensuous enjoyment of color, Woman at
Her Bath goes a long way toward anticipat-
ing the later work of Pierre Bonnard.
1. 1984 Chicago, p. 161.
2. Denis Rouart (Rouart 1945) in his captions for re-
productions of the painting, pp. 48, 49 (detail),
describes the medium as "peinture a l'huile, travail
au pouce" (oil, worked with the thumb).
3. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1953, I PP- 203, 254.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 39);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 10,100; with Durand-Ruel, Paris, 19 18 (stock
no. 1 1296); with Sam Salz, Inc., New \brk (possibly
bought 6 May 1940, stock no. 11301).
exhibitions : 1955 Paris, GBA, no.' 129, repr. p. 50;
i960 Paris, no. 45.
selected references: Rouart 1945, P- 44, repr. (de-
tail) pp. 48, 49; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1029 (as
c. 1890); F. A. Myers, "The Bath," Carnegie Maga-
zine, October 1967, p. 285, repr.; Catalogue of Paint-
ing Collection, Pittsburgh: Museum of Art, Carnegie
Institute, 1973, p. 50, pi. 38 (color); Minervino 1974,
no. 948; Reff 1976, p. 278, fig. 192 (detail) p. 279;
1984 Chicago, p. 161, fig. 76.2 p. 162; Collection
Handbook, Pittsburgh: Museum of Art, Carnegie In-
stitute, 1985, p. 90 (entry by Paul Tucker), repr. (col-
or) p. 91; Sutton 1986, p. 242, pi. 224 (color) p. 236.
338.
Woman at Her Bath
c. 1895
Oil on canvas
28 X353/8 in. (71 X 89 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (55/49)
Lemoisne 11 19
546
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 73);
bought by Danthon, for Fr 33,800; George Wil-
lems sale, Galerie Petit, Paris, 8 June 1922, no. 6,
repr.). Sold in "diverses collections," Cassirer, Ber-
lin, 20 October 1932, for DM 15,600. Robert
Woods Bliss, Washington, D.C., 1949. Earl Sten-
dahl, Hollywood, Calif. , 1956; bought by the muse-
um 1956.
exhibitions: 1959, London, Ontario, London Public
Library and Art Museum, 6 February-31 March,
French Painting from the Impressionists to the Present,
repr.
selected references: Le vieux collectionneur (The
Old Collector), "Les ventes," Revue de I'Art Ancien et
Moderne, LXII:340, December 1932, p. 418, repr.
p. 415; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1119 (as c. 1892);
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Master Works in Canada:
Edgar Degas, Woman in a Bath," Canadian Art, July
1966, p. 43, repr. (color) p. 44; Minervino 1974,
no. 998.
339.
After the Bath, Woman Drying
Herself
c. 1895
Oil on canvas
30X33 in. (76.2X83.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation
Lemoisne 11 17
The dating of Degas's works is imprecise.
However, it seems to have been sometime
about 1894, the year he dated the pastel
Young Girl Braiding Her Hair (cat. no. 3 19)
and possibly the pastel nude in the Metro-
politan Museum (cat. no. 324), that he
made another pastel of a nude, Woman Dry-
ing Herself (fig. 307), now in the National
Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. The Ed-
inburgh pastel is close to the other dated
works in the twist of the body and the lank-
ness of the hair. However, Degas carried the
composition forward to this much harsher
painting of the nude, in which he used oil
sparingly on the canvas, with a resulting
texture unlike the density of the pastel.
There are transitional drawings (L1118;
fig. 308) leading up to this work. The posi-
tion of the figure had always been a curious
one — a young nude woman leaning across
the back of a chaise longue covered by a
towel or sheet while she dries her back with
her left hand. But as Degas pursued the idea
547
Fig. 307. Woman Drying Herself (L1113 bis),
c. 1894. Pastel, 255/8X 243/4 in. (65X63 cm).
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Fig. 308. After the Bath, Woman Drying
Herself (III:20o), c. 1895. Charcoal height-
ened with white, 36V4X3oy4 in. (92 X
78 cm). Location unknown
through the large charcoal drawing with
white highlights (fig. 308), he made the
model's position more uncomfortable, al-
most cutting her head away from her body.
In many of his late nudes, the neck seems a
vulnerable place; but in this drawing and here
it is lost as a transition between the shoul-
ders and the disembodied head. Broad brush-
strokes of vermilion paint above the shoulders
and arms dramatize the severance, which
the black line falling like a strand of hair seems
to mourn. The position of the woman's
body is itself strained enough to indicate
pain,1 as with her right hand (unlike that of
the nude in the Edinburgh pastel) she dries
her stomach. Although this could be inter-
preted as a scene of agony depicting a figure
whose contours are as austere as those of a
medieval wooden saint, and although the col-
ors are otherwise strong and boldly applied —
the background with large disks of pink,
orange, yellow- green, and dark blue paint,
the bath a green blue, the towel a fresher
turquoise with dashes of red — the canvas is
handled with such dryness that it possesses
a fundamental restraint.
1. Eunice Lipton (Lipton 1986, pp. 177-78) writes:
"It seems quite likely that the contorted bodies
. . . represent women who are experiencing in-
tense physical pleasure."
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 98);
bought by Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Fr 11,500; with
Ambroise Vollard, Paris; A. de Galea, Paris.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 73; i960 New York,
no. 56, repr.; 1962 Baltimore, no. 51, repr.; 1966,
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sum-
mer Loan Exhibition, no. 44; 1967, Detroit Institute of
Arts, no. 27, repr. p. 54; 1968, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, summer, New York
Collects, no. 54; 1970, Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth
Atheneum, spring and fall, Impressionism, Post-Im-
pressionism, and Expressionism: The Mr, and Mrs. Hen-
ry Pearlman Collection, no. 31; 1971, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 July-7 September,
Summer Loan Exhibition, no, 34; 1974, New York,
The Brooklyn Museum, An Exhibition of Paintings,
Watercolors, Sculpture and Drawings from the Collection
of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pearlman and the Henry and Rose
Pearlman Foundation, no. 10.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 11 17
(as c. 1892); Minervino 1974, no. 994; Lipton 1986,
p. 215 n. 32.
After the Bath
cat. nos. 340-342
In 1896 or 1897, Degas's friend the Italian
painter and publisher Michel Manzi (1849-
19 1 5) issued a volume of reproductions of
drawings by Degas on which he had worked
in collaboration with the artist in Manzi's
rue Forest studio.1 Number 19 of the twenty
reproductions is of a drawing (fig. 309),
which is dated 1896 in that portfolio. This
pastelized drawing is clearly a study for
three paintings (fig. 310; cat. nos. 341, 342)
that have in common a figure of a nude re-
clining on the back of a chaise longue in a
position as awkward and strained as the
nude in After the Bath in the Pearlman col-
lection (cat. no. 339), but even more con-
torted. In recent years, a bromide photograph
(cat. no. 340) has been discovered (once in
the collection of Sam Wagstaff, now in the
J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu) which
shows the nude placed somewhat more grace-
fully in the same position, her head cut off
by the black shadow. The photograph has
been attributed to Degas.2
Whether the idea began for Degas with
the photograph or with the drawing, whether
indeed he was the photographer, it is un-
doubtedly true that the figure itself is a poi-
gnant blend, as both Eugenia Parry Janis
and Eunice Lipton have written, of eroticism
and anguish. Janis has commented about the
model:
She seems to writhe in pain. The lines of
her shoulders and spine are more compa-
rable to the agonized torsos of the damned
in Rodin's Gates of Hell than to most other
nudes drawn by Degas. . . . The head has
succumbed to deep shadow. The psychic
pain expressed through the body, twisted
into an agitated shadow pattern, and the
awkwardly projecting knees and elbows
are strikingly reminiscent of Degas's early
interpretations of the nude [as in Scene of
War in the Middle Ages, cat. no. 45]. . . .
At the same time, despite the anguish con-
veyed, there is a strange eroticism in this
figure; but this is not a depiction of desire
in the usual sense. We are moved, as al-
ways with Degas's conception of sexuality,
by our privileged access to a private "per-
formance."3
Lipton, who believes such works by Degas
are of "women who are experiencing in-
tense physical pleasure,"4 sees the relation-
ship of these nudes to a Persian miniature of
lovers that Degas had copied in a tracing of
Fig. 309. After the Bath (L1232), 1896.
Pastel and charcoal, i53/sX 13 in. (39 X
33 cm). Private collection
Fig. 310. Study of a Nude (L1233), 1896. Oil on
canvas, 30V4X 325/s in. (77X83 cm). Private
collection
548
a reproduction some thirty years before. She
suggests: "Ecstasy is the subject of both."5
Faced with such convictions that these
works represent some form of autoeroticism,
it is not unwise to remember Gauguin's de-
scription in 1892 of his The Spirit of the Dead
Watching, now in the Albright-Knox Gal-
lery, Buffalo. He wrote to his wife from Ta-
hiti, "I painted a nude of a young girl. In
that position, a trifle can make it indecent."6
It is not impossible, moreover, that in the
three works by Degas, the young girl could
be pregnant _7 In the three paintings, there is
undoubtedly an undercurrent of sensuality,
but also an ambiguity and a youthfulness
that keep them remarkably restrained. And
what the three paintings also reveal, in their
different colors and in the variations of their
handling, is how much Degas loved to paint
in oil and how he could exploit it in a great
decorative and emotional range. In addition,
he used space and certain domestic symbols —
sheets, towels, bathtubs, basins, a sponge —
in a highly evocative way. The works have a
tenderness and a sense of something young
that is either threatened or lost.
It has not been possible to borrow one of
the three related paintings, Study of a Nude
(fig. 310), for the exhibition. It is the small-
est of the three, the one with the most un-
complicated visual appeal, and the most
sensual. The nude gives the greatest sense of
her enjoyment of the position she has as-
sumed, her soft flesh caressed by the towel.
Although the sponge, the basin, and the
ewer could be considered visual metaphors,
associating the figure with another Passion,
in fact they are so beautifully painted and so
tactile in their appeal that the effect is to in-
crease the sensuality of the work rather than
to evoke any sense of agony. Indeed, the
sponge seems to emphasize the softness of
the nude's exquisitely painted rump. Only
the falling mass of hair suggests that hers
could be a covert act.
Although all of these works can safely be
dated c. 1896, it seems difficult to find any
clues to their chronological sequence.
1. Vingt dessins [1897], no. 19.
2. See A Book of Photographs from the Collection of Sam
Wagstaff, New York: Gray Press, 1978, p. 126; Ter-
rasse 1983, no. 25, pp. 45-46, repr. p. 75.
3. 1984-85 Paris, p. 473.
4. Lipton 1986, p. 178.
5. Ibid., p. 179.
6. Paul Gauguin, Lettres de Gauguin a sa femme et a ses
amis (edited by Maurice Malinque), Paris: Grasset,
1946, no. CXXXIV, p. 237, Tahiti, 8 December
1892.
7. Jeanne Baudot, the painter and a protegee of Re-
noir's, in Renoir: ses amis, ses modeles (Paris: Edi-
tions Litteraires de France, 1949, p. 67), tells of
Degas's making use of a model whom Renoir had
dismissed because she was pregnant; it could have
been for this painting, though Baudot states it is for
one in which the figure is "couchee sur le ventre"
(lying on her stomach).
340.
After the Bath
1896
Bromide print
6Y4 X 47/8 in. (16. 5 X 12 cm)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu
(84.XM.495.2)
Terrasse 25
This exquisite bromide print has become so
much a part of the history of three major
paintings1 that it takes self-discipline to
think of it as a separate image. Very much
like the props that Degas used in his paint-
ings and pastels of bathers and even in the
portrait photograph of his brother Rene
(cat. no. 335) are what appear to be an un-
stable screen, a heavy swag of patterned fab-
ric on the right, a paisley shawl over the
seat of the chaise, and a plain white towel
over its back. These suggest that the photo-
graph could have been taken in the painter's
studio. Degas required great skill to pose
the model in a strained position that would
convey the desired combination of anguish
and ecstasy, and to devise lighting that
would illuminate her arched nude body so
that the shadows along her spine would fall
like the stroke of a brush.
1. See "After the Bath," p. 548.
provenance: Sam Wagstaff, New York; bought by
the museum 1984.
exhibitions: 1978, Washington, D.C., Corcoran
Gallery of Art, 4 February-26 March/ Saint Louis
Art Museum, 7 April-28 May/New York, Grey Art
Gallery, New York University, 13 June-25 August/
Seattle Art Museum, 14 September-22 October/
Berkeley, University Art Museum, 8 November-
31 December/ Atlanta, High Museum, 20january-
5 March, A Book of Photographs from the Collection of
Sam Wagstaff, p. 126.
selected references: Jean Sutherland Boggs, "New
Acquisition: Museum Acquires Late Degas Paint-
ing," Freelance Monitor, 1, October-November 1980,
p. 33, fig. 9; Terrasse 1983, no. 25, pp. 45-46, 122;
1984-85 Paris, pp. 472-73, fig- 334 p. 478; Boggs
1985, P* 32, fig. 23 p. 34; Lipton 1986, p. 216 n. 36.
549
341
341.
After the Bath
1896
Oil on canvas
45% x 38% in. (116 x 97 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Private collection, Paris
Lemoisne 1234
Ambroise Vollard was never Degas 's official
agent — Paul Durand-Ruel was — but he did
buy works by Degas from Durand-Ruel
and perhaps occasionally from the artist
himself. His taste, which was revealed in
those acquisitions and in his publication of
an album of indifferent photographic repro-
ductions of the works of Degas in 19 14, ran
toward the more extreme examples of the
artist's late works.1 This was consistent
with his championing of Cezanne and the
young Picasso. When Degas was still living,
Vollard bought the smallest (fig. 3 10) of
three related nudes, including this painting
and the Philadelphia After the Bath (cat.
no. 342). At the sale of the contents of the
artist's studio after his death, he acquired
this canvas, the largest of the three. Unlike
the small painting, it is still in the hands of a
member of the family of one of Vollard's
heirs.
In this work, Degas chose a vertical for-
mat, unusual for his late oil paintings and
for his nudes. He also decided to change the
position of the left leg, probably to give a
greater diagonal sweep to the large figure in
this sizable canvas. He arrived at the position
of the nude through a drawing (fig. 311) that
is surprisingly rhythmic and very softly
feminine. In the painting, however, he made
550
Fig. 311. After the Bath, 1896. Charcoal and pas-
tel, n3/sXglA in. (29X23.5 cm). Collection of
Philippe Boutan-Laroze, Paris
the figure harder and crisper to a point
where it almost becomes sexually ambiguous
and could, like the photograph of the figure,
remind Eugenia Parry Janis of Degas's
drawings for Scene of War in the Middle Ages
(cat. nos. 46-57). 2 It also seems remarkably
chaste, like the nudes of Northern painters
such as Bouts and Memling, whose works
Degas could have studied on his trip to
Brussels in 1890.
The mood of the painting is established
by the intense cobalt blue of the wall at the
left. With the bathtub placed like a sarcoph-
agus in the foreground, and the earthy orange
tones of the rug, the hair, and some accents
on the flesh, the blue seems to lift the figure
from its tomb as if in a form of exaltation.
1. Vollard 19 14. Degas had signed the drawings.
2. 1984-85 Paris, p. 473. See 1967 Saint Louis,
p. 70, on the sexual ambiguity of certain figures
in Scene of War in the Middle Ages,
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 88);
bought by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for Fr 15,500; by
descent to present owner.
exhibitions: 1925, Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs,
28 May- 1 2 July, Cinquante ans de peinture francaise
187 5-1923, no. 31, lent by Ambroise Vollard; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 53; 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 25,
repr. (color).
selected references: Waldemar George, "Cin-
quante ans de peinture frangaise," L' Amour de VArt,
7 July 1925, repr. p. 275; Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1234 (as 1899); Minervino 1974, no. 1029; Boggs
1985, P- 35. fig. 25; Lipton 1986, p. 215 n. 32.
342.
After the Bath
c. 1896
Oil on canvas
35 X 453/4 in. (89 X 116 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased: The
Trustees of the Estate of George D. Widener
(1980-6-1)
Lemoisne 123 1
The third in Degas's series of related nudes
of about 1896,1 this work is so thinly painted
that bare canvas can be seen in areas of the
towel over the chaise. It is so limited in color
that it could be considered a monochromatic
study in red; indeed, analysis of it by the
Conservation Laboratory at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art proves it to have been
painted with only four hues: charcoal black,
zinc-oxide white, red ochre, and burnt sien-
na.2 Such a degree of simplification has led
many commentators to believe it to be un-
finished, intended as an underpainting for
thickly encrusted oils like the other two
versions of the subject. They suggest that
this is substantiated by Degas's having used
a color that was a favorite for the under-
342
551
painting of Venetian artists such as Titian.3
These commentators also suggest that the
painting was an experiment and therefore
the first in the series.
However, there are arguments in favor of
Degases not having carried the painting fur-
ther because he felt it to be resolved. The
evidence lies in his increasing defense in his
late years of his work in terms of abstrac-
tion. For example, he told Georges Jeanniot
that a picture was "an original combination
of lines and tones which make themselves
felt."4 This canvas is also a highly consistent
painting. The figure of the nude is smaller
in relation to the space than are the figures
in the other two versions; she seems smoth-
ered by the red of the room and the smoky
floor, and her vulnerability is enhanced by
the pink and white of the towel and increased
by the black gash on the wall above her
wrist. On one level, the work seems an ex-
ercise in abstraction, to which Degas would
not have been averse. On another, it is sim-
ply a very poignant painting.
1. See "After the Bath," p. 548.
2. Boggs 1985, p. 32.
3. Rouart 1945, pp. 50-54; Reff 1976, p. 296.
4. Jeanniot 1933, p. 158.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 17);
bought by Dr. Georges Viau, Paris, for Fr 23,000
(first Viau sale, Drouot, Paris, 11 December 1942,
no. 94, pi. XXXI, for Fr 500,000); H. Lutjens, Zu-
rich; with Feilchenfeldt, Zurich; bought from Mrs.
Feilchenfeldt by the museum 1980.
exhibitions: 1936 Philadelphia, no. 54, repr. p. 106;
1964, Lausanne, Palais de Beaulieu, Chefs-d'oeuvre de
collections suisses de Manet a Picasso, no. 11, repr.; 1976,
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 17 Decem-
ber 1976-1 March 1977, European Master Paintings
from Swiss Collections: Post-Impressionism to World War
II (text by John Elderfield), repr. (color) p. 25; 1983,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 7 May-3 July, " 100
Years of Acquisitions" (no catalogue); 1985 Philadel-
phia.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Jamot I924, pi. 72b (as C. 189O-
95); Rouart 1945, pp. 50-54, repr. p. 51; Lemoisne
[1946-49], HI, no. 123 1, repr. (as 1896); Jean Grenier,
"La revolution de la couleur," XXe Siecle, XXII: 15,
1950, repr. p. 14; Reff 1976, p. 296, fig. 213 (detail);
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "New Acquisition: Museum
Acquires Late Degas Painting," Freelance Monitor, 1,
October-November 1980, pp. 28-33, repr. (color)
pp. 28-29; Boggs 1985, pp. 32-35, no. 15 p. 47,
repr. (color) p. 33.
343.
The Masseuse
c. 1895
Bronze
Height: 17 in. (43.2 cm)
Original: brown plasteline.1 National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C. Collection of Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon
Rewald LXXIII
Although this rather large group is normally
dated in the twentieth century, an earlier
date is proposed here because of the work's
almost anecdotal quality — its closeness to
genre, unlike the more generalized, univer-
sal nature of Degas's later work. The maid-
servant massages the outstretched leg of a
bather who is lying on a chaise longue. The
body of the bather is forcefully twisted
across the chaise, with the diagonally pulled
sheets uniting the work and adding to its
spatial interest. With her puffed sleeves and
tidy hair, the small masseuse is gently con-
centrated on her task. From behind, her
body and dress make a dignified simple
form, which is still too human to be monu-
343
mental. Charles Millard has written that
this work is the "most sculpturally satisfy-
ing of the series" of seated bathers, among
them Woman Seated in an Armchair, Drying
under Her Left Arm (cat. no. 318) and Seated
Bather Drying Her Left Hip (cat. no. 381).2
1. See Millard 1976, p. 37 n. 55.
2. Ibid., p. 109.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 68; Rewald
1944, no. LXXIII (as 1896-1911), p. 143, Metropoli-
tan 55 A; 1955 New York, no. 69; Rewald 1956,
no. LXXIII, Metropolitan 5 5 A, pi. 89; Tucker 1974,
p. 158, fig. 154 p. 157; 1976 London, no, 68; Millard
1976, pp. 37 n. 55, 109, no, fig. 139; 1986 Florence,
no. 55 p. 202, pi. 55 p. 152.
A. Orsay Set P, no. $$
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2132)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no, 68 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 295; 1984-85 Paris, no. 82
p. 207, fig. 207 p. 203.
552
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 55
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.371)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 1921; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 68; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1971, Louisville, Speed Art Museum, 1 November-
5 December, French Sculpture, no. 61; 1974 Dallas, no
number; 1975 New Orleans; 1977 New York, no. 68
of sculptures (dated by Millard as 1900-1912).
344.
The Coiffure
c. 1896
Oil on canvas
48% X 59 in. (124 X 150 cm)
Vente stamp on verso
The Trustees of the National Gallery, London
(4865)
Lemoisne 1128
Some fifteen years before Degas painted
The Coijjure> the mother of his friend Mary
Cassatt wrote to her son Alexander about
an observation of Degas' s: "He says it is one
of those works which are sold after a man's
death, and artists buy them not caring
whether they are finished or not."1 This
daring work, which is usually described as
unfinished, has qualities that have attracted
painters since the death of Degas; Henri
Matisse was for some years the owner of it.
The position of the pregnant woman2 hav-
ing her hair combed is awkward, even pain-
ful. Degas made several preparatory drawings
of the figure, including one pastel that re-
mained in the family of the painter's brother
Rene until 1976 (L1130). In that drawing,
the woman's right hand grasps her forehead
as if she were suffering from migraine; the
anguish is physical. In the painting, arrived
at through a sequence of such drawings, the
physical accent is less strong, though the
body is frail, the pregnant stomach distended,
the face reduced to the features of a delicate
clown, the mouth a small slit, and the eye
disturbingly contracted into a black hole in
the middle of a purplish shadow. While not
reducing the pathos but making it less obvi-
ously physical, Degas in various drawings
developed the movement through the arms
of the seated woman, the right slightly lifted
553
and the left raised protectively. With black
contours he strengthened this movement,
which continues through the magnificently
heavy orange hair and terminates in the fig-
ure of the attentive standing maidservant.
The servant's massive body in some of the
preparatory drawings suggests that Degas's
maid, Zoe Closier, could have posed origi-
nally,3 and that she was replaced later by a
more conventional model who stands with
great serenity and stability in marked con-
trast to her mistress.
In this painting, Degas restrained his color,
allowing an orange red to dominate/ Al-
though he did not restrict his palette as in
the Philadelphia After the Bath (cat. no. 342),
it is clear that in both he enjoyed working
within a limited range. The result is, of
course, an elegant performance in which we
can indulge our love of color in the pink of
the maidservant's shirtwaist against the or-
ange wall or the red in the heavy folds of
the curtain. We can admire the confidence
with which Degas draws his black contours,
suggests the lightest of white material around
the left arm of the seated figure, or provides
a break in the monochromatic orange reds
and pinks with the amber color of the comb
and brush. At the same time the work is ex-
pansive, almost the antithesis of Young Girl
Braiding Her Hair (cat. no. 319). Even the
strains we feel in the seated woman seem re-
solved in the figure of the maidservant.
1. Quoted in Mathews 1984, pp. i54~55, letter of
10 December [1880].
2. To my knowledge, first observed by Richard
Kendall; see Kendall 1985, p. 26.
3. In particular, IV: 168.
4. A particularly sensitive analysis of the color is found
in Kendall 1985, pp. 26-27.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 44);
bought by Trotti Gallery, Paris, for Fr 19,100; Winkel
and Magnussen 1920; with Galerie Barbazanges;
Henri Matisse, Paris, who sold it about 1936 to his
son, Pierre Matisse; bought from the Pierre Matisse
Gallery by the museum 1937.
exhibitions: 1920, Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konst-
galleriet, Degas, no. 15; 1936 Philadelphia, no. 52,
pi. 52; 1952 Edinburgh, no. 32.
selected references: Hoppe 1922, p. 66, repr.; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 1128 (as c. 1892-95);
Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: French
School, London, 1957, pp. 74-75; Minervino 1974,
no. 1 172; Sigurd Willoch, "Edgar Degas: Nasjonal-
galleriet," Kunst Kultur, Oslo, 1980, pp. 22-24, repr.
p. 25; Kendall 1985, p. 27; Sutton 1986, p. 250,
pi. 248 (color) p. 252.
345.
The Coiffure
after 1896
Oil on canvas
32»/4 X 34% in. (82 X 87 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo (NG1292)
Lemoisne 1127
One of the most tender paintings Degas
ever made of two women at a toilette is this
one in Oslo. Like the London painting (cat.
no. 344), this work could be described, with
even more reason, as unfinished; Degas did
not hesitate to leave parts of the canvas un-
covered, while other parts provide, as Sigurd
Willoch, former director of the Nasjonal-
galleriet in Oslo, described it, a "lightly
smudged, broken-up surface."1 Instead of
reducing the painting chromatically as much
as in the London work, Degas played here
with a glowing range from a penetrating
greenish yellow to a watermelon pink,
against which he used whites for the che-
mises and the sheets, executed in very rough,
highly scumbled paint; the whites seem ash-
en. The seated figure is a mere girl, small,
slight, even an invalid, wearily lifting her
heavy mass of henna-colored hair. The
standing figure is also frail, her shoulders
bent, her own dark tresses falling over her
face like the wing of a bird as she tends the
other's hair. Both convey an aching sense of
apathy and futility.
The two women might suggest figures
on a Greek mourning stela or lecythus, ex-
cept that, significantly, there is no difference
in scale to indicate difference in status. The
painting nevertheless gives an equivalent
sense of human loss.
1. Sigurd Willoch, "Edgar Degas: Nasjonalgalleriet,"
Kunst Kultur, Oslo, 1980, p. 24.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 99);
bought at that sale by Jos Hessel, Paris, for Fr 19,000;
with Ambroise Vollard, Paris; gift of Nasjonalgalleriets
Venner, Oslo, 19 19.
selected references: Hoppe 1922, p. 67; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 1 127 (as 1892-95); Minervino
1974, no. 1 173, pi. LVIII (color); Sigurd Willoch,
"Edgar Degas: Nasjonalgalleriet," Kunst Kultur, Oslo,
1980, pp. 22-24, repr. p. 24.
Bathers in a Landscape
cat. nos. 346-350
An undated group of pastels by Degas seem
dedicated to the enjoyment of nudity out of
doors. Against landscapes of meadows with
long grass, trees with trunks as fluid as Art
Nouveau glass, and shallow pools of water,
bathers indulge in the movement of their
bodies in sun and air — figures thrust diago-
nally into the enveloping space. The sheer
animality of their pleasure seems underlined
by the ghostly presence of a faint red cow in
one large pastel (cat. no. 346) and the intro-
duction of a cocky black dog into another
(L1075). The nudes themselves, sometimes
almost androgynous, range from tenderly
adolescent figures to those that are heftier
and more mature. These compositions rep-
resent a departure from most of Degas' s
nudes since the 1860s in the variety of the
actions of the bathers within a single pastel
and in the contrasts of their often awkward
positions.
On the other hand, there are elements of
nudes of the eighties in these figures, though
their very awkwardness gives them a greater
muscular reality. They have connections
with the single pastel of a nude against a
landscape, Nude Woman Pulling On Her Che-
mise (fig. 186), in the National Gallery of
Art in Washington, which, dated 1885, is
certain to have been in the last Impressionist
exhibition in 1886. The landscapes and the
bathers' flesh in these works are, however,
less luminous. The figures also evoke images
of Degas's nudes of thirty years earlier for
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. nos. 46-
57), but without any of the same tragic in-
tensity. It is as if he were using memories of
an old vocabulary to convey a very different,
hedonistic meaning.
It is tempting to seek an external stimulus
for these compositions, and we seem to find
it in the nineties. It is not probable that it
could have been the work of Gauguin, much
as Degas was moved by the exhibitions of
that artist's works, both when they were put
up for sale before Gauguin went to Tahiti in
1 89 1 and after his return in 1893. Perhaps it
was a response to the nudes of Courbet, whose
Uatelier he was to hope to buy in 1897. 1
The earthy relish of the nudity of Degas's
bathers is not so far removed from that of
Courbet's. It is easy to believe that Degas
would have been provoked by the glimpses
of bathers by Cezanne in Vollard's gallery
from 1895. Indeed, Richard Brettell has
suggested that his purchase of two bathers
by Cezanne may have provided the stimulus
for these works and consequently is inclined
to date them after 1895. 2 One pastel of this
group, which is in the Barnes Collection
554
555
(L1087), almost has Cezanne's daring.
In studying the drawing Bather (cat.
no. 348), lent by Princeton to this exhibi-
tion, it was discovered that it was related to
another large composition of bathers that
Degas had laid out in a charcoal drawing
(fig. 3 14) now in the Musee des Arts De-
coratifs in Paris.3 This drawing has such ex-
plicit allegorical allusions (see the catalogue
commentary for the Bather) that it seems
possible Degas thought of all his bathers in a
landscape as related to the allegorical tradi-
tion in Renaissance painting.
One problem in dating these works is
provided by a related pastel (L1075) of two
bathers wading with a black poodle. It is
tempting to identify this pastel with the
work described by Felix Feneon in his re-
view of the 1886 Impressionist exhibition as
three bathers with a dog,4 or perhaps with
another pastel that George Moore in 1890
wrote about seeing in the painter's studio,
depicting "three large peasant women
plunging into a river, not to bathe, but to
wash or cool themselves (one drags a dog in
after her)."5 Aside from the fact that the
pastel has two bathers instead of three, there
are stylistic reasons — which, admittedly, re-
working might explain — that make it un-
likely this group of bathers could be from
the eighties.
A letter has recently come to light that
might help date the bathers. It is from De-
gas to the painter Louis Braquaval, whom
Degas may have met for the first time in
1 896. 6 In any case, Degas refers to his
brother Rene, with whom it is unlikely he
was reconciled until after the death of their
Fig. 312. Bathers (L1079), c. 1896. Pastel, 41V&X
425/a in. (104.6 X 108.3 cm). The Art Institute of
Chicago
556
brother Achille in 1893. Degas wrote: "I
have begun a large painting in oil, three
women bathing in a stream edged with
birches. My brother, who knows the coun-
tryside like a poacher, always knows right
away where to find the birches that I need. I
will send you a preliminary outline for this
idea, and if you find some trees that will suit
my purposes, I would be very pleased if you
would make me a sketch or a small study in
pastel."7
Although nothing has survived of a paint-
ing in oil of bathers against a landscape, the
letter does seem to substantiate the proposal
that Degas must have made these pastels of
bathers about 1896.
1. Rouart 1937, p. 13.
2. 1984 Chicago, p. 189.
3 . The discovery was made by Gary Tinterow and
Anne M. P. Norton of the Metropolitan Museum,
who prepared the commentary for cat. no. 348.
4. Thomson 1986, p. 189.
5. Moore 1890, p. 425.
6. See "Late Landscapes at Saint- Valery-sur-Somme,"
p. 5<$<5.
7. Unpublished letter, private collection, Paris.
346.
Bathers
c. 1896
Pastel and charcoal on tracing paper
427/8 X 433/4 in. (108.9 Xi 11. 1 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Dallas Museum of Art. The Wendy and Emery
Reves Collection (1985. R. 24)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 107 1
It is clear that Degas worked through several
studies for this large composition in charcoal
and pastel, presumably unfinished, that is
now in the Dallas Museum of Art. Since it
is the same size as Bathers (fig. 3 12) in the
Art Institute of Chicago, another unfinished
work which Degas enlarged to this size, it
has been suggested by Richard Brettell that
the two were conceived as a pair.1 In any
case, both belong to a long tradition of pas-
toral nudity in painting.
The Dallas pastel is full of contrasts be-
tween the figures and their poses. For ex-
ample, Degas teasingly placed the head and
left arm of the young girl combing her hair
against the rump of the nude leaning over to
dry her leg. In another highly developed
pastel of these two figures alone (L1072), he
made the contrast so much more physically
distasteful that sometime before 1970, the
crouching figure was removed by a restorer
to make a more neutral background for the
seated figure.2
347.
Bather Seated on the Ground,
Combing Her Hair
c. 1896
Pastel and charcoal on three pieces of pale buff
laid paper
2i3/4 X 263/8 in. (55 X 67 cm)
Signed in red chalk lower right: Degas
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF31840)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1073
In this drawing for the large pastel composi-
tion in Dallas (cat. no. 346), the appealingly
adolescent body with outstretched toes is
dominated by a magnificently fluid head of
hair that completely screens the girl's face as
she combs her golden tresses. Degas had of-
ten drawn and painted superbly long and
lustrous heads of hair, but the precedent for
this drawing seems to be the pained, crouch-
ing figure of a girl (fig. 3 13) in Scene of War
in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45), painted thirty
years before. Remembering that work makes
us realize how free of pain and tension this
drawing is.
provenance: With Ambroise Vollard, Paris; Albert
S. Henraux; acquired in 1967 for the Louvre from
Mme Henraux, who retained life interest.
exhibitions: 1924 Paris, no. 180; 1937 Paris, Oran-
gerie, no. 168; 1939 Paris, no. 33.
selected references: Vollard 1914, pi. LXX; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 1073 (as 1890-95); Paris,
Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 84, pp. 86-87,
repr. p. 86.
1. 1984 Chicago, pp. 189-91. Because Brettell be-
lieves the Chicago work was influenced by De-
gas's purchases of Gauguin's The Day of the God
(fig. 275) and Cezanne's Bather beside the River in
1895, he dates the two large pastels of bathers
1895-1905.
2. Brame and RefF 1984, no. 135.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 212);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 7,900; Emery Reves; acquired by the museum
1985.
exhibitions: 1936, Paris, Galerie Vollard, Degas.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1071 (as c. 1890-95); Minervino 1974, no. 1006.
it-
Fig. 313. Nude Woman Leaning
Forward, study for Scene of War in
the Middle Ages, c. 1863-65. Pencil,
14X9 in. (35.6X22.9 cm). Musee
d'Orsay, Paris (RF15514)
557
ing work in a group of pastels of bathers
wading in a pond or resting in a grassy
field.1 It would have differed from the others
in the group because of the inclusion of a
specific narrative detail: the large dog (or
small bear) at the left that has frightened the
bathers at the right.
The pose in this drawing is a traditional
one used by artists since Masaccio for Eve's
expulsion from the garden of Eden (fig. 315);
occasionally it was adopted for one of the
attendant nymphs of the goddess Diana
during her encounter with Acteon. It is pos-
sible that Degas meant in his large unfinished
pastel (fig. 3 14) to refer to the scene in which
Diana, bathing, changes one of her nymphs,
Callisto, into a bear. With her slumping
shoulders and awkward gait, the figure —
even without a head — powerfully conveys
fright and shame. After the completely un-
selfconscious nudes of the 1870s and 18 80s,
the modesty of this figure seems poignantly
retrogressive; it conjures memories not only
of nudes by Masaccio, Titian, and Rembrandt,
but also of the chaste nudes of Degas's own
youth. There is a commonality of feeling
that joins the figure in this work with the
figures of wounded women at the left in
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (cat. no. 45)
and with the figure in the wash drawing
(L351, Kunstmuseum Basel) for the dis-
graced woman of Degas's genre picture In-
terior (cat. no. 84).
Degas made a counterproof of this draw-
ing, presumably to study the figure in re-
verse (L1020 bis), though he never used the
leftward-turning figure in a subsequent
348.
Bather
c. 1896
Charcoal and pastel on robin's-egg blue wove
paper
1 8V2 X i25/s in. (47 X 32 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Art Museum, Princeton University. Gift of
Frank Jewett Mather, Jr. (43-136)
Vente 111:337.1
Degas made this figure drawing, one of the
most expressive of the bather studies, in
preparation for an enormous pastel of women
bathing out of doors. Only the underdraw-
ing of that pastel was completed (fig. 314),
but had he finished it, it would have ranked
as one of the largest of his pictures, larger
than the pastel of four bathers in Chicago
(fig. 3 12) and nearly the same size as the Basel
Fallen Jockey (cat. no. 351). The composition
was apparently destined to be the culminat-
Fig. 314. Bathers (IV:254), c. 1896. Charcoal and pastel,
633/4X 76 in. (162 X 193 cm). Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris
Fig. 315. Masaccio, The Expul-
sion of Adam and Eve, c. 1425.
Fresco, 8i7/sX345/8 in. (208 X
88 cm). Brancacci Chapel, Santa
Maria del Carmine, Florence
558
composition. The counterproof is on tracing
paper, and while it is possible that he placed
the tracing paper on top of this drawing,
traced an outline, reversed the sheet, and filled
in the contours, more probably he made a
simple sandwich of this drawing and the
tracing paper and ran it through a press.
This process would have created a faint im-
pression on the tracing paper, which he then
would have heightened. It is clear that he
made the present drawing first, for the
robin's-egg blue paper is too opaque to have
been used for tracing; the use of pink chalk
to erase some of the charcoal lines on the
neck, breast, and hip is evidence of the care
he gave this work. The subtle modeling of
the torso in reddish brown chalk is especially
fine.
In all, there are thirteen drawings of this
figure: five pairs, each with an original
drawing and a counterproof, and three related
but slightly different drawings.2 Just as Degas
perfected the movement of Rose Caron's
arm by repeating the pose on successive sheets
of transparent paper in one of his notebooks,3
so he created the figure of this nude, who
began in one of his first studies (111:340.2) as
a slight young woman with long hair and an
expression of curiosity, and ended, through
repetition, as a heavier and no doubt older
woman, almost crouching in fear (111:345.1).
Degas modeled a sculpture of a figure in this
pose, Woman Taken Unawares (cat. no. 349),
and the large number of associated drawings
may relate to his work on the wax model.
GT
1. L1070, L1071, and the studies L1072-L1074;
L1075-L1082. See cat. nos. 346, 347, 350.
2. 111:346.2 and its counterproof 111:340.2; IIU56
(L1020) and its counterproof IV: 3 69; 111:337.1 and
its counterproof IV: 326 (L1020 bis); 111:345.2 and
its counterproof IV: 3 36 (L1020 ter); IV:37i and its
counterproof 111:337.2; as well as three drawings
without known counterproofs, III: 191, 111:340.1,
and 111:345.1.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 36 (Metropolitan Museum,
1973-9, pp. 17. 21-26, 29).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19,
no. 337. 1); bought at that sale by Bernheim-Jeune,
Paris, for Fr 900. With Weyhe Gallery, New York;
Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.; his gift to the museum
I943-
exhibitions: 198 i San Jose, no. 58.
selected references: Bazin 193 1, P* 300, fig. 93;
Boggs 1985, p. 29, fig. 2i, compared with bronze
cast (see cat. no. 349).
349.
Woman Taken Unawares
c. 1896
Bronze
Height: 16 in. (40.6 cm)
Original: Yellow-brown wax. National Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C. Collection of Mr.
and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Rewald LIV
In an article of 193 1, ten years after Degas's
sculptures were first exhibited in Paris, Ger-
main Bazin related this sculpture to draw-
ings such as Bather (cat. no. 348) and grouped
the works under the suggestive title "La
femme blessee" (The Wounded Woman).1
He saw them as descendants of the battered
women in Scene of War in the Middle Ages
(cat. no. 45), though in fact they relate more
direcdy to Degas's project of the mid-i8oos
for a large pastel of women bathing out of
doors (fig. 314). While this bather's pose
clearly indicates that she has been startled
and modestly wishes to cover herself, there
is nothing to suggest that she has been hurt
or is in mortal danger.
The sculpture differs from the drawings
in a significant way. While in the drawings
Degas was able to convey only a suggestion
of sculptural relief, here he was able to claim
all three dimensions for his figurine. With
her head sharply turned, her shoulders
twisted, her back inclined, and her legs
caught in mid-movement, the action of the
349
559
sculptured figure is much more dynamic
than that in the drawings. The sculpture
presents an interesting view from every di-
rection— even from the back, which is how
it is often exhibited and photographed.
Comparing Degas to Renoir, Bazin identi-
fied as characteristic of Degas's talent his
ability to work in three dimensions and to
actively engage the surrounding space. "For
Renoir, sculpture is the conquest over mass.
For Degas, it is the definitive conquest over
space. . . . Renoir's statue is a monument,
it forms an isolated block, shut off from
space. Degas's statuette cuts into space,
tears at it in every direction."2
The modeling of the surface falls midway
between the extremes of finish that Degas
allowed himself. It is lively and varied, but
it has neither the smooth polished skin of an
early bather such as Woman Washing Her Left
Leg (RLXVIII) nor the rough unfinished
texture of Dancer Putting on Her Stockings
(RLVII). A serious break at the back of the
neck of the wax model was left unrepaired
by the foundry in casting.
GT
1. Bazin 193 1, p. 300.
2. Ibid., p. 301.
selected references: Lemoisne 19 19, repr. p. 114,
wax; 192 1 Paris, no. 61; Bazin 1931, p. 293, figs. 90-
92 p. 300; Havemeyer 193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 42 A;
Paris, Louvre, Sculptures, 1933, p. 71, no. 1778, Or-
say 42P; Rewald 1944, no. LIV (as 1896-1911), Metro-
politan 42 A; Borel 1949, p. 10, n.p. repr.; Rewald 1956,
no. LIV, Metropolitan 42 A; Beaulieu 1969, p. 380
(as 1890), fig. 21 p. 379, Orsay 42P; Minervino 1974,
no. S64; 1976 London, no. 61; Boggs 1985, pp. 28-29,
no. 15 (as c. 1892); 1986 Florence, pp. 193-94, no. 42,
pi. 42 p. 139.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 42
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2125)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired by the Louvre thanks to the
generosity of the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard
family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 61; 1937 Par-
is, Orangerie, no. 235; 1969 Paris, no. 292; 1984-85
Paris, no. 38 p. 190, fig. 163 p. 185.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 42
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.389)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer late August 1921; Mrs. H. O.
Havemeyer Collection, New York, 1921-29; her be-
quest to the museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 3; 1930 New York,
under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458; 1974
Dallas, no number; 1977 New "York, no. 46 of sculp-
tures.
350.
Two Bathers in the Grass
c. 1896
Pastel on heavy wove paper
27l/2 X 27V2 in. (70 X 70 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF29950)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 108 1
The almost palpable energy of the indolent
figures in Two Bathers in the Grass, the inten-
sity of color and handling of the yellow-green
pastel of the grass on which they recline,
even the size of the work are characteristic
of nine of the late compositions of bathers.1
The pastel is rich and sumptuous. The bodies
are simplified, particularly in this picture, to
the point where they seem to anticipate the
work of Matisse.
1. L1072; L1075; L1076; L1077; L1078, Antwerp;
L1080; L1082, The Barnes Foundation, Merion
Station, Pa.; L1083.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 308);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 6,000; acquired by the Louvre 1953.
exhibitions : 1936, Paris, Galerie Vollard, Degas; 1969
Paris, no. 220.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1081 (as 1890-95); Paris, Louvre, Impression-
nistes, 1958, no. 100; Monnier 1969, p. 368; Miner-
vino 1974, no. 1001; 1984 Chicago, no. 91; Paris,
Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 72, repr. p. 79.
The Late Horses and Riders
cat. nos. 351-353
The pastels Degas made of horses and riders
after 1895 are far removed from the race-
course itself. They have moved into abstrac-
tions of color, line, and texture. In some
ways, they are comparable to tapestries,
which the very interweaving of the strokes
of pastel are apt to suggest.
560
One phenomenon in the late nineties is a
new version of The Steeplechase -,1 which De-
gas had exhibited, without arousing any at-
tention, in the Salon of 1866. We know that
he had this work on his mind in 1897, since
he spoke of it when he ran into the journal-
ist Francois Thiebault-Sisson in Clermont-
Ferrand that year. Thiebault-Sisson recorded
their conversations there and at neighboring
Mont-Dore. Degas had remarked, "You are
probably unaware that, about 1866 I perpe-
trated a Scene de steeplechase, the first, and
for long after the only one of my pictures
inspired by the racecourse."2 Sometime about
1897, he took a canvas the same size he had
used for The Steeplechase thirty years before
and reduced the composition to one horse,
the jockey, and a barren landscape. The sky
is stormy, and the black-bearded jockey,
wearing gold and luminous white, is obvi-
ously dead as he lies with his arms spread
out like a puppet's on the green grass. Over
him is the leaping dark brown horse, cast-
ing a shadow and ostensibly the symbol of
death.
1. See the commentary by Gary Tinterow,
cat.no. 351, and fig. 316.
2. Thiebault-Sisson 192 1, p. 3.
351.
Fallen Jockey
c. 1896-98
Oil on canvas
70^ X S9V2 in. (181 X 151 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
OefTentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum
Basel (G 1963. 29)
Lemoisne 141
Fallen Jockey was probably painted during a
single campaign in the 1890s, but it is closely
allied to The Steeplechase (fig. 316), painted
in 1866 and reworked in 1880-81. It seems
likely that his lingering dissatisfaction with
the reworked Steeplechase finally led Degas
to paint Fallen Jockey, which became a re-
statement and synthesis of the earlier picture
in his late expressive style.
Degas exhibited The Steeplechase only
once during his lifetime — at the Salon of
1866. It was a large painting for the thirty-
four-year-old artist, even by the standards
of history painting to which he aspired in
the 1860s. As John Rewald has suggested,
Degas probably followed the same rules as
those expressed by Frederic Bazille: "In or-
der to be noticed at the exhibition, one has
to paint rather large pictures that demand
very conscientious preparatory studies and
thus occasion a good deal of expense; other-
wise, one has to spend ten years until people
notice you, which is rather discouraging."1
Yet despite the size of the canvas, and the
dozen or so preparatory drawings that pre-
ceded its execution, The Steeplechase went
quite unnoticed at the Salon. Critical atten-
tion was focused on the notoriety of Cour-
bet's Woman with a Parrot (The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York). Zola was pre-
occupied with the Refuses.2
Had Zola not been distracted, he might
have observed that Degas's painting was
based on Manet's entry to the Salon of two
years earlier, Incident in the Bullring (frag-
ments of which are now in the Frick Collec-
tion, New York, and the National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C.).3 Degas adopted
not only the subject (an athlete killed in
competition) and to some extent the composi-
tion (a sharply foreshortened recumbent fig-
ure in the foreground with additional figures
and animals above), but most important the
ambition: to take a scene from contempo-
rary life and enlarge it to heroic proportions.
The genesis of Degas' s Steeplechase re-
mains unclear. A logical ordering for the
preparatory drawings has been proposed,4
but this sequence does not explain the curi-
ous appearance in the painting of two rider-
less horses, with only one dismounted jockey;
nor has the existence of drawings of the
leaping horse in the foremost plane, seen in
reverse (as in fig. 318), been noted. Further-
more, no one has yet put forward a plausi-
ble explanation for the small picture Degas
painted, perhaps in the 1870s, that shows
The Steeplechase hanging in his studio with
one riderless horse (fig. 317). Until now, all
the related works have been dated to the
1860s.
In all probability, when The Steeplechase
was shown at the Salon of 1866, it had only
one runaway horse in the foreground and
looked much as it does in the little painted
copy later, fig. 3 17. It may have included as
well the fallen horse visible at the far right
of fig. 3 17. Degas presumably decided about
188 1 to add to the painting the second rider-
less horse, found in a drawing from the 1860s
in his studio (IV:235.b), and traced it in re-
verse on a sheet of tracing paper (fig. 318)
and traced it again, in reverse, for inclusion
in a compositional study (IV:227.b). Seeing
the second (foremost) riderless horse as an
afterthought would explain its awkward
placement immediately over the body of the
jockey, and justify the large number of pen-
timenti in its execution. It seems Degas was
not satisfied with the pose: he probably
changed the position of the horse behind it
in accommodation, and may have regretted
the inclusion after all.
His dissatisfaction with the painting is doc-
umented in letters from the Cassatt family.
Mary Cassatt attempted in 1880 to secure
The Steeplechase for her brother Alexander.
Cassatt's mother wrote to Alexander about
the picture on 10 December 1880: "I don't
know whether Mary has written to you or
not on the subject of pictures. I didn't en-
courage her much as to buying the large one
being afraid that it would be too big for
anything but a gallery or a room with a
great many pictures in it — but as it is unfin-
ished or rather as a part of it has been
washed out and Degas imagines he cannot
retouch it without painting the whole over
again and can't make up his mind to do that,
I doubt if he ever sells it."5
It must have been at this point, the winter
of 1880-81, that Degas planned his changes,
most notably in the addition of the second
leaping horse. In a remarkable letter written
thirty-seven years later, when The Steeple-
chase was finally sold at the Degas atelier sales
(fulfilling the artist's prediction), Mary Cas-
satt recalled Degas's campaign of revision:
"Joseph [Durand-Ruel] bought for Fr 9,000
the splendid picture of the steeple chase.
Degas you know wanted to retouch it and
drew black lines over the horses [sic] head
and wanted to change the movement. I
thought these could be effaced but it was
not possible. Well now Joseph has had the
lines filled in no doubt he will sell it for
$40,000 or more. I wanted the picture for
my brother Aleck and Degas declared it was
my fault that he spoiled it! I begged him so
to give it as it was, it was very finished, but
he was determined to change it."6 Evidently,
it was not only Degas who reworked The
Steeplechase, but a restorer employed by Du-
rand-Ruel as well, and it is to this last revision
that one can attribute the lack of congruence
between Degas's "black lines" and the mod-
eling of the forwardmost horse.
Having "spoiled" The Steeplechase about
188 1, Degas later made Fallen Jockey, The
appearance of its painted surface is incon-
ceivable before the 1890s.7 On a canvas
identical in size to that of The Steeplechase,
Degas impatiently scumbled the most ab-
breviated of landscapes, articulated only by
the sharply rising hill at the right and the
hint of a plain at the left. The sky, though
bright and blue, is agitated and far more
forbidding than the calm pink-and-yellow
haze of the earlier picture. Bursting through
the horizon, the runaway horse, frightened
and frenzied, turns his head to the viewer
before starting toward his right. The jockey,
larger, full-bearded, and thus seemingly
older than the jockey in the earlier painting,
has fallen flat on his back; and though his
pose is less crumpled than that of the figure
in The Steeplechase, the image Degas con-
56i
562
Fig. 316. The Steeplechase (L140), 1866, re-
worked 1880-81. Oil on canvas, 707/sX597/g in.
(180 X 152 cm). Collection of Mr. and Mrs.
Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.
Fig. 317. Studio Interior with "The Steeplechase"
(L142), 1870s. Oil on canvas, 10V2 X i6¥s in.
(26.5 X 41.5 cm). Private collection
Fig. 318. Runaway Horse (IV:234.c). Pencil,
7V4X 11 in. (18.5 X 28 cm). Location unknown
jures is one of finality, whereas in the earlier
painting one suspects that the jockey might
possibly be revived.
The runaway horse in Fallen Jockey is
loosely based on the riderless horse in The
Steeplechase as it would have appeared before
Degas changed its "movement" and added
the second horse in the foreground. Both
derive from the elaborately worked drawing
in the Clark Art Institute (cat. no. 67) that
dates from the mid-i86os, and it in turn
seems to derive as much from English sport-
ing prints as it does from the study of na-
ture. Degas of course knew prints by Herring
and others — he made notes from them at
Haras du Pin in 1861, and he copied one for
inclusion in Sulking (cat. no. 85). Both the
Clark drawing and The Steeplechase were
executed before Eadweard Muy bridge's
photographic studies of the movement of
horses (see "Degas and Muybridge," p. 459).
And although Degas painted Fallen Jockey
long after he had studied Muybridge's pho-
tographs, he retained for this picture the an-
tiquated (and incorrect) position of the legs.
Degas did not bother to paint the jump
over which the horse in Fallen Jockey has
presumably just leaped, yet the event is no
less clearly understood. Much of the persua-
sive power of the image seems to reside in
Degas's spare, epigrammatic treatment of
the figures and the space, and the result is a
picture compelling in its pathos.
GT
1. Letter from Bazille to his parents, 4 May 1866, in
Rewald 1973, p. 140.
2. Rewald noted the absence of reviews of Degas's
painting and listed works exhibited in the same
Salon by Bazille, Fantin-Latour, and Monet,
among others (Rewald 1973, p. 193 n. 2). Only
two mentions of this painting, as exhibited in 1866,
are now known: see cat. no. 67.
3 . For reviews, see George Heard Hamilton, Manet and
His Critics, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1954, pp. 81-87. The obvious relationship be-
tween Manet's painting and Degas's has been ig-
nored in both the Manet and the Degas literature.
Charles F. Stuckey seems to have been the first to
note it (1984-85 Paris, p. 21).
4. Paul-Henry Boerlin, "Zum Thema des gestiirzten
Reiters bei Edgar Degas," Jahresbericht des Oeffent-
lichen Kunstsammlung Basel, Basel, 1963, pp. 45-54.
5. Quoted in Mathews 1984, pp. 154-55.
6. Unpublished letter to Louisine Havemeyer, 22 Sep-
tember [1918], on deposit at the Metropolitan Mu-
seum. (The date 19 18 seems accurate in relationship
to the atelier sales discussed, and is substantiated by
the fact that Mrs. Havemeyer clipped the letter to
two additional letters dating from the summer of
1918.)
7. It must be acknowledged that there is a possibility,
albeit unlikely, that Fallen Jockey was begun at the
same time as The Steeplechase, about 1866, or in
the early 1880s, when Degas reworked The Steeple-
chase. Infrared reflectographs of Fallen Jockey show
a number of pentimenti under the painting of the
horse. Regardless, however, of the beginnings of
Fallen Jockey, the surface now visible was almost
certainly applied in the late 1890s.
provenance: Deposited by the artist with Durand-
Ruel, Paris, 22 February 1913 (as "Cheval emporte,"
707/gX 59V2 in., 180 X 151 cm, stock no. 10251). Ate-
lier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 56); bought at that
sale by Jos Hessel, for Fr 16,000 (sale, Drouot, Paris,
Tableaux Modernes, 9 June 1928, no. 36, repr.);
bought at that sale by Georges Bernheim, Paris, for
Fr 20,000. 1 Benatov collection, Paris, by 1955, until
1957; E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York, by
1959; bought by the museum 21 March 1963.
1. "Chronique des ventes," Gazette de VHotel Drouot,
37:68, 12 June 1928, p. 1: "A large painting by Degas,
*Le cheval emporte,' which sold for Fr 16,000 at
the Degas atelier sale in 19 18, went for Fr 20,000
to M. Bernheim."
exhibitions: 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 29 (label on re-
verse identifies M. Benatov as lender); 1957 Paris,
no. 87 (as "Le jockey blesse," 58V4X 58% in., 148 X
148 cm); 1959, New York, E. and A. Silberman Gal-
leries, 3-21 November, Exhibition 19 $9: Paintings
jrom the Galleries' Collection, no. 1, repr. frontispiece.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], II, no. 141
(as c. 1866); Guy Dumur, "Consultons le diction-
naire," UOeil, 33, September 1957, repr. p. 36 (as
Benatov collection, Paris); Paul-Henry Boerlin, "Zum
Thema des gestiirzten Reiters bei Edgar Degas,"
Jahresbericht der Oeffentlichen Kunstsammlung Basel, Basel,
1963, pp. 45-54, figs. 6 (color), 11 (detail); Miner-
vino 1974, no. 169; Weitzenhoffer 1986, pp. 26-27.
352.
Three Jockeys
c. 1900
Pastel on tracing paper mounted on board
19V4 X 24V2 in. (49 X 62 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection, New York
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 763
This pastel is the last in a group of three
works, spread over about twelve years, in
which the same principal figures recur. The
earliest (L762) is identical in size and was
made about 1888; the second, in a long hori-
zontal format (L761), seems to date to the
early 1890s. In the foreground of all three is
a mounted horse with its neck extended,
possibly about to bite off a clump of grass
(which racehorses are trained not to do) or
buck the rider. So exceptional, and comical,
is the horse's action that the other jockeys
have turned to watch. This horse first ap-
peared— reversed — in a panel executed in
1882 (cat. no. 236), and was used again in
later variants.
Degas constructed the pastels with the
same methodical approach as for the oil
paintings on panel. He drew each figure a
number of times in order to refine precisely
the action he wanted, and then transferred
his figures — often by squaring — onto the
support for the pastel. Several of the draw-
ings for this work are squared, as is the pas-
tel itself at the far right.1 After the pastel
was largely completed, Degas through
squaring transferred the jockey and the
turning horse onto the preexisting design,
in the process obscuring a fourth horse and
rider just visible between the jockey in blue
and the jockey at the far right. Although
the artist had executed a similar figure many
times in the past, he nevertheless continued
to adjust and refine this one, leaving a trail
of revisions and corrections. One of the
563
drawings for the jockey at the left (IV: 391)
bears the artist's note to himself "faire sentir
l'omoplate" (bring out the shoulder blade),
which he followed by heightening the back of
the figure with a bright white highlight across
the shoulders. Another drawing (fig. 319) is
notable for what looks to be the sun placed
in the upper right corner2 — hence the bril-
liant yellow in the pastel's remarkably change-
able sky, which runs the gamut from raindrops
and clouds at the left to bright sun at the
right.
Lemoisne dates this work 1883-90, a
wide latitude that signals some of the diffi-
culties of accurately assigning a date. While
the composition of this work descends di-
rectly from the 1882 panel paintings, the in-
tensity of the color and the handling of the
pastel point to a date about 1900. Certainly
not before 1890 does one find Degas apply-
ing his pastel as he does here, in deliberate,
Fig. 319. Jockey (01:354.1), c. 1900. Charcoal,
57/s X 77/8 in. (15 X 20 cm). The Burrell Collec-
tion, Glasgow
independent strokes that make no conces-
sion to the contours of the forms they de-
scribe. And not until the period around
1898-1900 does he apply pastel so heavily
or work it so extensively. Much of the sur-
face has been burnished through rubbing
and then further worked with a kind of
scrawled sgraffito (either with the butt of a
brush or a small stick) that is prevalent only
in the late pastels, such as the series of Rus-
sian dancers.3 It is curious that Degas did
not correct the movement of the horses'
legs, as one might have expected him to do
in a work made after his examination of
Muybridge's publications of 1887. This may
be because he relied on earlier studies of
horses in wax, such as Rearing Horse (cat.
no. 281) and RXII, though it is more likely
the result of his change in emphasis from an
accurate description of movement to a syn-
thesis of motion and the evocative effects of
rich, tapestry-like texture. ^
1 . There are two drawings for the jockey and the
turning horse, IV:245.b and III: 114. 2, and another
which conforms exactly to the artist's squaring
still visible to the right in the pastel IV:237.c. See
also cat. no. 96.
2. As seen in the reproduction of the drawing in the
catalogue of Vente III, 19 19. The right margin was
obscured in the reproduction in the catalogue of
the Rene de Gas estate sale (Paris, Drouot, 10 No-
vember 1927, no. 22 upper); it was evidently
trimmed from the original sheet at an unknown
date, for it is no longer part of the drawing. How-
ever, it is possible that the sun appearing in this il-
lustration is only an optical effect produced by a
round label on the verso of the drawing which
could have formed creases on the surface.
3. See "The Russian Dancers," p. 581, and cat.
nos. 367-370.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 136);
bought at that sale by Jacques Seligmann, Paris, for
Fr 11,000 (Seligmann sale, American Art Associa-
tion, New York, 27 January 192 1, no. 27); bought at
that sale by Durand-Ruel, New York, for $ 1,85c;1
deposited with Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris (stock
no. 12547), 4 July 192 1 ; acquired by G. and J. Du-
rand-Ruel, New York, 10 September 1924 (stock
no. 4675); bought by Hugo Perls, 20 May 1927, for
Fr 13,600 (stock no. 12593); Esther Slater Kerrigan
collection, New York (Kerrigan collection sale,
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 8-10 January
1942, no. 47); bought at that sale by Lee A. Ault,
New York, for $3,600 (sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries,
New York, 24 October 195 1, no. 93, consigned by
V. Dudensing); bought at that sale by French and
Co., New York, for Bryon Foy, for $6,000 (Bryon
Foy collection sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New
York, 26 October i960, no. 75); bought at that sale
by present owner, for $65,000.
1 . According to the Durand-Ruel archives and labels
on verso. In the American Art Association ar-
chives, however, Ambroise Vollard is listed as
purchaser, acting in association with Durand-Ruel
and Seligmann.
exhibitions: 1926, Maison-Laffitte, Chateau de Mai-
son-Laffitte, 20 June-25 July, Les courses en France,
no. 88, p. 23, repr. facing p. 33 (as "Trois jockeys,"
lent by MM. Durand-Ruel); 1968 New York, no. 12,
repr., lent anonymously; 1978 New York, no. 29,
repr. (color).
selected references: James N. Rosenberg, "Degas —
pur sang," International Studio, LXXIII, March 192 1,
repr. p. 21; Henri Hertz, "Degas, coloriste," V Amour
de I'Art, V, March 1924, repr. p. 67; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 763 (as c. 1883-90); Minervino
1974, no. 713; 1983 London, no. 25 (as 1882-85);
1987 Manchester, p. 101, fig. 129 p. 100 (as c. 1900).
352
564
353
353-
Racehorses
1895-1900
Pastel on tracing paper, with strip added at
bottom
21V4 X 243/4 in. (54 X 63 cm)
Signed in red lower right: Degas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (5771)
Lemoisne 756
Unlike the Thyssen-Bornemisza pastel (cat.
no. 306) of 1894, this scene subordinates the
landscape to the horses and riders. Although
both the jockeys and the animals are larger,
they are no more individualized than in the
Thyssen pastel. Degas has deliberately
smudged or scraped the faces of the riders
into apparitions. The horses are even less ar-
ticulated. The coats of the horses and the
jackets of the riders are less silken and more
insistently the texture of pastel. Degas has
entered a level of abstraction here in which
the riders seem symbols of a directionless
energy.
There are precedents in the eighties for
this composition, as for the Thyssen work.
One is a very animated, articulated, and
sunny pastel, Before the Race, in the Cleve-
land Museum of Art (fig. 320). In a char-
coal-and-pastel drawing in the Museum of
Art of the Rhode Island School of Design in
Providence (L757), this composition is re-
versed, its landscape reduced to a field and
sky, and its handling made more rudimen-
tary. It may have been this drawing that was
used for the beautiful color lithograph made
by George William Thornley and published
by Boussod et Valadon in 1889.
With tracing paper, Degas worked during
the next decade toward the pastel now in
Ottawa. All that seems to have survived of
what must have been a series of drawings on
tracing paper is one in charcoal (fig. 321). At
this stage, he had decided to remove the horse
and rider on the left of the Cleveland pastel
and to move in closer. However, in making
another drawing on tracing paper as the ba-
sis for the Ottawa work, he restored the
horse and jockey on the left. For the pastel,
he made other changes, all at the cost of the
articulation in the drawing. He also added
an extra piece of paper at the bottom.
Degas's tracing in charcoal on the paper
used for the Ottawa work was so heavily
fixed that it looks like graphite. It was pro-
fessionally mounted before he began to
work with the pastel. Degas drew boldly
and assertively, using the brush, particularly
in the sky. At some intermediate point, he
applied a fixative that gives the pastel a cer-
tain gloss. But he seems to have drawn with
dark blue pastel over the surface to unite
Fig. 320. Before the Race (L755), c. 1884. Pastel,
225/s X 25V4 in. (54 X 62 cm). The Cleveland
Museum of Art
and strengthen the drawing.1 What emerges
is a work of great daring and artfulness.
Ronald Pickvance was the first to reject Le-
moisne's dating of 1883-85 and to propose
that this was probably the last of Degas's
racetrack scenes, emerging in the late nine-
ties.2 It may evoke the works Degas had
done in the eighties, but it carries them to a
new intensity as they are remembered
through his vivid, abstracting imagination.
1 . The observations on technique were influenced by
the examination report made by Anne Maheux
and Peter Zegers, Pastel Project, National Gallery
of Canada.
2. 1968 New York, no. 17, and last page of intro-
duction, n.p.
provenance: With Ambroise Vollard, Paris; bought
from the Vollard estate by the museum 1950.
exhibitions: (?) 1939 Paris, no. 40; 1950, Ottawa,
National Gallery of Canada, November, Vollard Col-
lection, no. 10, repr.; 1958 Los Angeles, no. 44, repr.
p. 50; 1968 New York, no. 17, repr. (as late 1890s).
selected references: Vollard 1914, pi. VIII; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 756 (as c. 1883-85); Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 704.
Fig. 321. Three Jockeys (IL270), c. 1895-1900.
Charcoal, i87/s X i95/s in. (48 X 50 cm). Location
unknown
565
Late Landscapes at Saint- Valery-
sur-Somme
cat. nos. 354-356
Although Degas was entering a period
when his intransigent stand on the Dreyfus
Affair meant the end of old friendships, in
particular with the Halevys, whom he did
not see after 1897 except under the most un-
usual circumstances, he did form some new
friendships with artists and their families.
One was with Georges Jeanniot, who was
to describe Degas making a landscape mono-
type.1 Another was with Louis Braquaval.
Braquaval was, like Jeanniot, a man of in-
dependent means, and also like Jeanniot had
a house in the country as well as in Paris.
This country house was at Saint- Valery-sur-
Somme, where Degas seems to have vaca-
tioned forty years before.2 It must have
been in 1896 that Degas saw Braquaval
painting at Saint- Valery and went up to him
and said: "I am impressed, my friend, with
your energy, and the steady pace at which
you work. But that isn't what painting is:
let me give you a little of my poison."3
Although it is usually assumed that they
met in 1898,4 Degas had addressed a famil-
iar New Year's letter to Braquaval on 1 Jan-
uary 1897 in which he wrote: "You love that
rocky headland, the solitude of the seashore."5
They became friends, and Degas continued
to give him advice. It was a friendship that
was to embrace the whole family, including
the Braquavals' daughter Loulou.6 Degas
seems to have gone often to Saint- Valery-
sur-Somme, apparently with his brother
Rene.
Jeanne Raunay has described Saint- Valery-
sur-Somme and its importance for Degas:
Degas, with his brother and his nieces,
frequented a seaside resort where the
Channel merges into the North Sea and
where, as a result, the light shifts constant-
ly, as do the colors and the moods of the
water — from brown to gold, from anima-
tion to reflection, from turbulence to calm.
In these regions of transition, nature seems
to become truly personified, with all the
attendant floods of temperament, whimsy,
and tenderness.
Degas enjoyed coming back to this little
village where his parents had brought him
from childhood. There he found every-
thing that he loved: the sea with its sur-
prises, the streets lined with old houses,
the ruined castle walls, the monumental
arched gate under which Joan of Arc had
passed. But more than that, he found in
these surroundings the first memories of
his childhood and could recall in them all
those whom he had loved.7
At Saint- Valery-sur-Somme, Degas be-
came a landscape painter again, somewhat
more rooted to the source of his inspiration
than he had been when he was making the
landscape monotypes at the beginning of the
nineties. He also seems to have taken photo-
graphs, which he had enlarged, of trees and
the seashore at Saint- Valery. 8 He wrote in
September 1898 to Alexis Rouart, "Were it
not for landscapes that I am determined to
try, I should have left. My brother had to
go back to his newspaper [Le Petit Parisien]
on the 1st, and the landscapes (!) kept me
here a few days longer." He added, with his
usual awareness that his landscapes would
always surprise his friends and critics,
"Your brother [Henri Rouart], will he be-
lieve this?"9
Most of these Saint- Valery landscapes
were in Degas's studio at the time of his
death. His niece Jeanne Fevre owned two,
but perhaps this was because she had received
566
them during the division of some of his
works before the sales. Degas's new friend
Braquaval not unexpectedly owned two
others. But the pictures were not generally
known in Degas's lifetime.
1. See "Landscape Monotypes," p. 502.
2. Reff 1985, Notebook 14A (BN, Camet 29, pp. 40-
41); Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, p. 161). Both
notebooks are dated by Reff to about 1859-60.
3. Oeuvres de Braquaval (1854-1919) (exhibition cata-
logue, introduction by Albert Besnard), Paris: Ga-
leries Simonson, 1922, p. 7.
4. Ibid.
5. Unpublished letter, 1 January 1897, private collec-
tion, Paris.
6. See "The Braquavals," in Ambroise Vollard, De-
gas: An Intimate Portrait, New York: Dover, 1986,
pp. 50-54.
7. Jeanne Raunay, "Degas: souvenirs anecdotiques,"
La Revue de France, nth year, II, 15 March 193 1,
p. 274.
8. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass. See Ter-
rasse 1983, nos. 60, 61.
9. Lettres Degas 1945, CCXX, p. 225; Degas Letters
1947, no. 218, pp. 210-n.
354.
View of Saint^ Valery-sur-Somme
1896-98
Oil on canvas
2oVs X 24 in. (51 X 61 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975,1.167)
Brame and Reff 150
sweeping lines of hills, their colors, the har-
mony of green meadows and yellow trees."2
This account is significant not only for its
revelation of Julie Manet's sensitivity to sea-
sonal landscapes and Degas's paintings of
them but also for its indication, from the
date of the entry, that some of the land-
scapes may have been produced before Sep-
tember 1898, perhaps as early as 1896.
355.
At Saint- Valery-sur-Somme
1896-98
Oil on canvas
26% X 3 17/8 in. (67. 5 X 8 1 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (883c)
Lemoisne 12 15
In this painting, decorative trees are played
against the faceless buildings of a typical
French town. The scene is somewhat damp
and mournful; neither the long walls nor the
road present an inviting prospect. On the
other hand, it is beautiful in its colors, with
pink and lavender, sometimes intermingled
with green. In the very freedom with which
Degas did not cover the canvas — if not in
the reticence of the color — he anticipated
some Fauve painting in the next decade.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 44);
bought at that sale by Clausen, Paris, for Fr 4, 100;
Carl J. Becker ; his bequest to
the Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen, December 194 1;
transferred from Statens Museum for Kunst 1945.
exhibitions: 1948 Copenhagen, no. 127.
selected references: Meier-Graefe 1920, p. 29; Le-
moisne [1946-49], HI, no, 1215; Minervino 1974,
no. 1180.
In painting the small town of Saint- Valery-
sur-Somme, Degas was apparently attracted
to the way nature intruded on the town. He
seems to have painted the scenes, some thir-
teen of them identified (L1212-L1219; BR150-
BR154), in a warm but hazy autumnal light.
This view is, of all of them, the most dis-
tant and panoramic. It also reduces the foli-
age to a minimum so that the picture, as
Denys Sutton has pointed out, seems almost
an anticipation of Cubism in its illusive ar-
chitectural forms.1 However that may be,
Degas, with his photographers eye, also
gives an unerring sense of the atmosphere of
this seaside town on an early autumn day.
Julie Manet, the daughter of Berthe Mo-
risot, wrote in her journal on 16 October
1897: "Suddenly, autumn arrived, with its
golden foliage; how beautiful it was at sun-
set after the rain. It was exactly like the
landscapes of D. [sic] Degas, with their
1. Sutton 1986, p. 301.
2. Manet 1979, p. 136.
provenance: Jeanne Fevre, Nice (sale, Galerie Char-
pentier, Paris, n June 1934, no. 135). Robert Leh-
man, New York; his gift to the museum 1975.
exhibitions: 1957, Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries,
May-June, Exposition de la collection Lehman de New
York, no. 65; i960 New York, no. 67, repr.; 1977
New York, no. 19 of the paintings; 1978 New York,
no. 53, repr. (color); 1983, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Museum of Art, 23 April-18 July, Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism: XIX and XX Century Paintings
from the Robert Lehman Collection, pp. 32-33, repr.
(color).
selected references: George Szabo, The Robert Leh-
man Collection, New "York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1975, p. 100, pi. 100; Brame and Reff 1984,
no. 150, repr.; Sutton 1986, p. 301, pi. 286 p. 302.
567
356.
The Return of the Herd
c. 1898
Oil on canvas
28 x 36V4 in, (71 x 92 cm)
Vente stamp bottom left
Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries,
Leicester (11 A 1969)
Lemoisne 12 13
In painting his townscapes and landscapes at
Saint- Valery-sur-Somme about 1898, Degas
must often have thought of the work of
Gauguin, whose paintings he so much ad-
mired. Only three years before, at the Gauguin
sale (18 February 1895) where he himself
bought eight works, he had persuaded the
twenty-three-year-old DanieJ Halevy to
buy one of Gauguin's Tahitian landscapes,
Te Fare or La maison, for Fr 180. 1 Halevy
used to relate that, as Degas grew older and
his eyesight was failing, whenever he visited
Halevy he would get very close to the paint-
ing and say, "Ah, even Delacroix never painted
quite like that."2
It is in the muted harmony of color that
The Return of the Herd suggests Gauguin.
That harmony evokes the climate of the sea-
side village — moody and wet. Whether it is
the quiet before or after a storm or whether
it is dawn or dusk is uncertain, but the
painting possesses a trancelike calm. Degas
provides surprises in color with a subjectivi-
ty and imagination like Gauguin's own. There
is the remarkable sulphur yellow, mixed
with rose in the sky and more intense in the
building in the right foreground. Behind the
dark green trees are halos of color, orange at
the left, green behind those in the center,
and a bluer green behind those at the right.
Degas has painted lavender over the house at
the left, used pink over turquoise blue for a
door, and scrubbed on an orange-yellow
paint roughly, thickly, and vigorously on
the chimney at the right. As with Gauguin,
that essential daring with color (without the
use of primaries) is subordinated in these
landscapes to the harmony of the whole.
On the other hand, the Norman village of
Saint- Valery-sur-Somme was obviously far
removed from Tahiti. In the paintings of
Degas, it retains the hermetic secretiveness
of French towns. Nevertheless, Degas did
try at two points here to suggest, tantaliz-
ingly, that it might open up. A gutter of
water in the street leads our eyes back — al-
most, but not quite — to the wine-red door
of the low building in the distance. Through
an open window at the right, he even sug-
gests the interior of a room. But basically,
we are strangers in the street.
The cows add to the sense of alienation.
They are painted in such a summary fashion
that they seem out of focus. We are beside
them but look beyond.
1. Wildenstein 1964, no. 474, p. 191.
2. As told to the author by Daniel Halevy.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente HI, 1919, no. 38);
bought at that sale by Avorsen, Oslo, for Fr 3, 100
(sale, Sotheby's, London, 23 June 1965, no. 78); Peter
Koppel 1969; bought by the museum.
selected references: Hoppe 1922, pp. 58, 59, repr.
p. 59; Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 12 13.
The Dancer in the Amateur
Photographer's Studio
cat. nos. 357-366
In 1978, Image, the journal of the George
Eastman House in Rochester, New York,
published an article by Janet E. Buerger on
three glass collodion plates, assumed to be
by Degas, in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
Buerger followed up the first article with
another one in the same journal in 1980 after
she had seen the plates in Paris.1 The attri-
bution of the photography and developing
to Degas must be regarded as hypothetical.
Although Buerger does not state how the
Bibliotheque Nationale acquired the three
plates, one must assume that they were with
archival material, including Degas's note-
books and other photographic plates, that
came into the library's possession as a gift of
the artist's brother Rene in 1920. The plates
were made by the collodion process, with
which it is clear Degas was familiar from a
letter he wrote to Pissarro about 1880. 2 Col-
lodion-based negatives were becoming ob-
solete by 1873 and were almost unknown
after 188 1; this would seem to date the pho-
tographs before 1881 if we think of Degas as
a technical innovator. If, however, like Eu-
genia Parry Janis, we see him as ingenious
technically but often prepared to use archaic
means, the 188 1 date does not provide a ter-
minus ante quern.3
568
There seem to have been certain problems
with the plates. The emulsion coated them
unevenly, and crazed. In addition, they are
not, as one would have expected, negatives
but rather positives from which only nega-
tives can be printed. Apparently this rever-
sal, or solarization as it is called, can result
from extreme overexposure in the camera,
exposure to light in the darkroom, or the
use of certain developing agents, whether
intentional or accidental. Another aspect of
the solarization phenomenon found in these
plates is the presence of so-called Sabatier
lines which give a halolike luminosity to the
contours. Finally, whereas a conventional
collodion negative plate is pale green and
transparent — the pale green producing the
lights, the transparent areas the darks —
these plates are dark green and red orange,
the latter printing dark.
It should be pointed out that these photo-
graphs, if indeed they are by Degas, are his
only known photographs of dancers. The
same dancer clearly posed for all three (cat.
no. 357; figs. 322, 323). In one, she holds
her right hand to her throat and lifts her left
hand to grasp the top of the screen, giving
the arm a strong diagonal movement. In an-
other, her left elbow is raised as her hand
meets the other to adjust her right shoulder
strap. In the third, we see her from behind
with her elbows out, each hand grasping, in
a gesture seemingly cultivated by dancers,
the nearer shoulder strap. She is dressed in a
rather short, meager tutu, beginning below
the waist. The bodice is like a corselet, dec-
orated at the skirt with something corre-
sponding to the more generous frill around
the neckline. The model is placed against
flimsy, temporary screens covered with
sheets — surely amateurish and more tempo-
rary than a professional photographer would
have provided in his studio. Although her
features are often lost in the photography or
in the developing process, the dancer seems,
in the second view (adjusting her shoulder
strap), to be conventionally pretty — perhaps
even beautiful.
Janet Buerger indicates the pleasure Degas
must have taken in the red-orange-and-
green glass plates. Since they were posi-
tives, he would receive from the recto an
impression of what he or another photogra-
pher would have seen when the model
posed. If he looked at the back of the plate,
he would find the composition reversed, a
mirror image, with which he had often ex-
perimented, particularly in making counter-
proofs from his drawings.4 As Buerger
points out, collodion plates "generally ex-
hibit a marked tendency to reverse tonal
values (light vs. dark) when held in the
hands and tipped in different directions."5
Degas, who was clearly fascinated by such
transformations of images throughout his
life, must have enjoyed examining these ef-
fects with the plates in his hands and could
have been inspired by them. Nevertheless,
by the late nineties when, as Buerger indi-
cates, these photographs provided source
material for some one hundred paintings,
pastels, and drawings, he was sufficiently
troubled by his failing eyesight to have
found it difficult to work with such small
objects. Thus, he must have had prints
made — if only the negative reversals — and
presumably enlarged by his friend Tasset, who
had enlarged other photographs for him.6
One question — perhaps never to be re-
solved, since so few vintage prints of photo-
graphs associated with Degas are believed to
have survived — is whether in a spirit of ex-
perimentation, not unknown to him, he
would have had as many variations of prints
made as did the Bibliotheque Nationale in
1976. The Bibliotheque made six different
prints of each plate — two negative prints,
one a combination of positive and negative
as a result of solarization, and the mirror
image of all three.
A second question is whether the photo-
graphs themselves — undoubtedly used by
Degas in the late nineties — could have been
made earlier, even as early as the seventies,
which Buerger suggests as a probability. In
their smallness, the images have a delicacy
of contour and of light and shadow that is
apt to suggest, as it does to Buerger, Degas's
works in the seventies, when the technique
of collodion photography was common.
However, the fact that Degas sometimes
\ 7
4
*
chose to use archaic techniques in his work
makes it possible that he could have used
collodion in the nineties, counting on his in-
genious friend Tasset to help him develop
and possibly enlarge the prints. In addition,
the contrived poses suggest that Degas di-
rected the model as he had also directed the
poses of the Halevys and their friends for
more conventional photographs. Even the
strange lighting effects, reminiscent of his
earlier monotypes and of the light of the
theater, would have enchanted him. Wheth-
er or not the date can be determined,7 and
whether or not these three are the only sur-
viving photographs of many more he made
of dancers in the late nineties, it is clear that
they were the inspiration for many of his
late paintings and pastels of dancers.
1. Buerger 1978, pp. 17-23; Buerger 1980, p. 6.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, XXV, p. 53; Degas Letters
1947, no. 34, p. 57-
3. 1984-85 Paris, pp. 468-69.
4. Although he did make counterproofs and occa-
sionally drawings from these, a substantial majori-
ty of any motif were nevertheless facing in the
same direction.
5. Buerger 1980, p. 6.
6. On Degas's relationship with Tasset, see Newhall
1956, pp. 124-26.
7. Terrasse, in Terrasse 1983, nos. 26-34, pp. 46-47,
dates the photographs from about 1896. Shackel-
ford, in 1984-85 Washington, D.C., figs. 5.2,
5.3, 5.4, pp. 112-14, questions Degas's authorship
and proposes a date of c. 1895. Janis, in 1984-85
Paris, figs. 330-33 pp. 476-77, suggests a date of
c. 1896; Thomson, in 1987 Manchester, no. 104
p. 142, fig. 160-2 p. 120, dates the photographs
c. 1895 or earlier.
Fig. 322. Dancer from the Corps de Ballet (T28),
c. 1896. Photograph printed from a glass nega-
tive in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Fig. 323. Dancer from the Corps de Ballet (T34),
c. 1896. Photograph printed from a glass nega-
tive in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
569
357-
Dancer from the Corps de Ballet
c. 1896
Glass collodion plate
7x5^ in. (18 X 13 cm)
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Exhibited in Paris
Terrasse 27
provenance: Atelier Degas; (?) Rene de Gas, Paris;
his gift to the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, (?) 1920.
selected references: Buerger 1978, repr. p. 17; Crimp
1978, repr. pp. 96, 97; Buerger 1980; Terrasse 1983,
figs. 26, 27, 30; 1984-85 Paris, p. 477, figs. 332, 333;
1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 114, fig. 5.2; 1987
Manchester, p. 120, fig. 160-2 left.
358.
Dancers in Blue
c. 1893
Oil on canvas
337/i6 X 29Y4 in. (85 X 75. 5 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF1951.10)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1014
Although this painting does not use the
poses of the photographs1 and is clearly based
on the composition of the Metropolitan's
Dancers, Pink and Green (cat. no. 293), in the
intensity of the pervasive blue and the rhyth-
mic play with the dancers' arms it suggests
Moscow's Behind the Scenes (fig. 325), the
work most dependent on the photographs.
Indeed, it could almost be a larger version in
oil of that pastel.
For the Orsay Dancers in Blue, Degas sim-
plified considerably the composition of
Dancers, Pink and Green. He reduced the
number of principal figures from five to
four, and eliminated the suggestion of a
male onlooker. In effect, the emphasis has
now shifted entirely away from narrative
and toward the more abstract concerns of
picture making: color, form, surface, and
scale. Although Degas made the dancers in
the background more legible than in Dancers,
Pink and Green, the focus is concentrated
more specifically on the dancers in the fore-
ground; the simplified scenery provides little
distraction from the rhythmic interweaving
of the four dancers turning in on themselves,
their arms akimbo reflecting the shape of
their tutus. We do not know if Degas referred
to models while making this picture, but if
he did, he may have used one model for all
four figures. Viewing the painting, one can
imagine that the artist actually revolved
around the model to examine her from all
directions, and then compressed into a single
block of figures the kinds of observations
depicted laterally in Cleveland's Frieze of
Dancers (L1144).
In comparison with Dancers, Pink and
Green, this picture is painted more broadly
(with a concomitant reduction of detail) and
in colors of greater intensity and uniformity.
These factors suggest a date later than that
of the New 'York painting, perhaps as late as
1893 if the earlier painting dates from about
1890. GT
1 . See "The Dancer in the Amateur Photographer's
Studio," p. 568.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 72);
sold at that sale for Fr 80,000; Danthon collection,
Paris; Dr. and Mme Albert Charpentier collection,
Paris, by 1937; their gift to the Louvre 195 1.
exhibitions: 1934, Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, 11
May-16 June, Quelques oeuvres importantes de Corot a
Van Gogh, no. 11; 1936, Paris, Bernheim-Jeune for
the Societe des Amis du Louvre, 25 May-13 July,
Cent ans de theatre, music-hall et cirque, no. 36; 1936,
Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, March-April, Peintures
du XXe siecle, no. 17, repr., no lender listed; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 45, lent by Dr. Albert Char-
pentier; 1937 Paris, Palais National, no. 311, lent by
Dr. Albert Charpentier; 1938, Amsterdam, Stedelijk
Museum, 2 July-25 September, Honderd Jaar fransche
Kunst, no. no (private collection); 1951-52 Bern,
no. 47, repr.; 1952 Amsterdam, no. 42, repr.; 1952
Edinburgh, no. 28; 1955, Brives/La Rochelle/
Rennes/Angouleme (traveling exhibition), Impres-
sionnistes et precurseurs, no. 17, repr.; 1956, Warsaw,
Muzeum Narodowe, 15 June-31 July, French Painting
from David to Cezanne, no. 36, pi. 87; 1956, Moscow,
Pushkin Fine Art Museum/ Leningrad, Hermitage
Museum, Peinture franchise du XIXe siecle, no. 36,
pi. 37; 1957, Besancpn, Musee des Beaux-Arts, 6
September-15 October, Concerts et musiciens, no. 62;
1967-68, Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries, 16 Decem-
ber 1967-March 1968, Vingt ans d'acquisitions au Mu-
see du Louvre 1947-1967, no. 408; 1969 Paris, no. 33;
1971 Madrid, no. 35; 1985-86, Antibes, I5june~9
September/Toulouse, 19 September-n November/
Lyons, 21 November 1985-15 January 1986, Orsay
avant Orsay, no. 12.
570
571
selected references: Lemoisne 1937, repr. p. B; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 1014 (as 1890); Paris,
Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958, p. 52, no. 99; Mi-
nervino 1974, no. 856; Keyser 198 1, p. 66; 1984-85
Paris, fig, 150 (color) p. 175; Paris, Louvre and Orsay,
Peintures, 1986, III, p. 197.
359.
Dancers
c. 1899
Pastel on tracing paper mounted on wove paper
23!/sX i8y4in. (58.5X46.3 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Art Museum, Princeton University. Bequest
of Henry K. Dick (54-13)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 13 12
This pastel, from Princeton, was not based
on any of the known collodion photographic
plates,1 but the dancer in the photographs
could have posed for these figures, though
their hair is worn loose and hers is not. The
poses have the same exaggeration, and the
contours of neckline and arms the same lin-
ear interest. The pattern of lights and darks,
which could be explained by solarization in
the photographs, suggests theatrical lighting
here. And the Sabatier-efFect aura finds an
equivalent in the vibrant strokes of the pastel.
Degas characteristically made several
studies in pastel and in charcoal of a group
of three dancers waiting in the wings, with
Fig. 324. Dancers (L1311), c. 1899. Pastel, 253/4X
20 in. (65.4 X 50.8 cm). The Detroit Institute of
Arts
the principal dancer dramatically holding
her left hand to her head and more prosai-
cally scratching her back through the bodice
with her right.2 The movement in this fig-
ure is as strong as anything in the three
photographs, the contours strengthened by
continuous heavy lines of black and relieved
by the curls of her hair. While the dancer
adjusting her strap remains constant, the
figure at the right, facing us, definitely does
not. In this, the smallest and the richest pas-
tel of the group, Degas gives that dancer a
haunting, tragic face and lifts her left arm in
a gesture of despair. In another version, in
the Detroit Institute of Arts (fig. 324), she is
almost a classical statue in her impassivity.
Degas 's interest in landscape is revealed in
the variation of the stage flats in each version
and in the harmony he establishes, almost as
inevitable as the seasons, between the danc-
ers and the background.
With a rather loose use of pastel, Degas
created a tapestry of hills and sky for the
flat. The hills are shot through with squiggles
359
of blue, green, and pink, and dabs of or-
ange. The dancer in front wears a rose tutu
which Degas enlivened by some strokes of
orange and pink, a foil for the wonderful
surface of red orange he gives her hair, ap-
plied over a darker ground. The skin is vi-
brant with hatching that breaks through
what might have been the monotonously
continuous contours and is pink and green
as well as flesh-colored. Hauntingly beauti-
ful in its color, the Princeton Dancers also
moves us through the inexplicably tragic
figure of the dancer behind.
1 . See "The Dancer in the Amateur Photographer's
Studio," p. 568.
2. L1313, L1314, 11:295, 11:298.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 275);
bought at that sale by Gustave Pellet, Paris, for
Fr 9,000; Maurice Exsteens, Paris; Henry K. Dick;
his bequest to the museum 1954.
exhibitions: 1949 New York, no. 90, lent by Henry
K. Dick; 1972, Princeton, The Art Museum, 4
March-9 April, 19th and 20th Century French Draw-
ings from the Art Museum, Princeton University, pp. 62-
572
63, no. 33, repr.; 1979 Northampton, no. 20, repr.
p. 35; 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 52, repr. (col-
or) p. 117.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 13 12 (as c. 1898).
360.
Dancers
1899
Pastel on tracing paper, laid down
235/s X 243/4 in. (60 X 63 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right: Degas
Private collection, France
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1352
In 1898 and 1899, Degas made three ap-
proximately square and very rich pastels of
groups of three or four dancers waiting to
go on stage. Of these, Dancers, which was
acquired from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
may be the last. The first to be bought by
Durand-Ruel, on 12 November 1898, was
Behind the Scenes (fig. 325), now in Moscow,
in which the poses of three of the figures are
clearly derived from the Bibliotheque Na-
tionale photographs, while little is seen of
the bending fourth figure in the foreground.1
The second Dancers (fig. 326), in Toledo,
was bought on 7 July 1899; Degas had mod-
ified the poses, varied the color, and elimi-
nated the fourth dancer. The third, this pastel,
which was sold to Durand-Ruel on 9 August
1899, reintroduced a fourth figure and placed
that dancer in the foreground; Degas also
changed the position of the left arm of the
dancer on the left. The Moscow pastel,
which is closest to the photographs, though
not monochromatic is predominantly and
intensely blue. In the two pastels Degas sold
in 1899, he plays with a much greater variety
of color.
All three pastels, in addition to providing
evidence of their common use of the three
small photographs, bear a clear relationship
to the very large oil painting Four Dancers
(fig. 271), now in the Chester Dale Collec-
tion at the National Gallery of Art in Wash-
ington. In this work, which is almost six
feet (180 centimeters) wide, four dancers
share approximately half the canvas against
a background of painted shrubbery. The rest
is given over to a view of fields with round-
ed trees and a rose-colored sky that is clear-
ly neither landscape nor stage scenery; the
dancers' freely painted tutus seem to reflect
that background. The problem is whether
this work, in which green and orange pre-
dominate, perhaps in response to the even
more intense color of the three collodion
plates, was the result of the studies of the
other works or whether, instead, it spawned
the three pastels. No external evidence has
been found to date the large painting, which
Fig. 325. Behind the Scenes (L1274), c. 1898. Pas-
tel, 26 X 263/s in. (66 X 67 cm). Pushkin Fine Art
Museum, Moscow
was not exhibited in Degas's lifetime and
was in his studio at the time of his death.
The scale of Four Dancers indicates Degas's
ambitions for it as a masterpiece to be trea-
sured in his studio rather than as an "article"
Fig. 326. The Dancers (L1344), c. 1899. Pastel,
24V2 X 25V2 in. (62.2 X 64. 8 cm). The Toledo
Museum of Art
573
for sale. It seems probable that it was painted
first, and that from the drawings he made
for it, tracing, making counterproofs, chang-
ing the poses somewhat, he found the poses
to be used in the pastels.2
In the final work, exhibited here — as in
the pastels in Moscow and Toledo — we come
physically very close to the half-length
dancers, looking down at them in a spatially
improbable way. More than in the other
two, Degas creates in this composition a
gracefully unified movement through the
limbs of the dancers. Whereas in the Mos-
cow pastel he limited himself largely to an
intense blue, and whereas he seems to have
based Toledo's on the brilliant contrasts of
the three complementary colors with the vi-
olet dress of the dancer on the left, here he
worked primarily with red (which becomes
pink) and green. There is an almost acid
contrast between the intense yellow green of
some of the costumes against the phospho-
rescent pinks. The red hair is like burning
coals. And the dancers harmonize with the
landscape, in which the bare tree trunk in
the green grass has the pinks and reds of
some of the tutus and the hair.
In each of these pastels and in the painting
in Washington, the dancer on the left, based
always in some way on the photograph of
the dancer with the upstretched arm, stands
somewhat in isolation. Like the haunted fig-
ure at the right in the Princeton pastel (cat.
no. 359), she appears oracular, as a reminder
that this is illusion. In the Washington paint-
ing, she is gaunt, shorn of most of her hair
by the frame. In the Moscow pastel — the
closest to the photograph — she turns away
from the other dancers. In the Toledo pastel,
she is aloof but benevolent. In this work,
she seems only for a moment preoccupied,
as she puts her hand on her head. Always
she reminds us that a spell has been cast.
1 . See "The Dancer in the Amateur Photographer's
Studio," p. 568. Janet Buerger (Buerger 1978,
p. 20) refers to the suggestion based on a statement
by Jean Cocteau in Secret professionnel (Paris: Li-
brairie Stock, 1924, p. 18) in an article by Luce
Hoctin ("Degas photographe," L'Oeil, no. 65,
May i960, pp. 38-40) that Degas may have worked
directly on enlargements of photographs. Hoctin
incorrectly suggests that this might have been done
with Dancer Posing for a Photograph (cat. no. 139) in
Moscow. Buerger more reasonably proposes that
this could have been done with Moscow's Behind
the Scenes (fig. 325). Nevertheless, an enlargement
even to its modest size of 26 X 26% in. (66 X 67 cm)
would have been an ambitious undertaking. And a
photograph would surely not provide a practical
surface on which to work with pastel.
2. L1268, L1269, L1272, L1273, L1359, L1361,
L1362, BR147, 111:392, III:i85, IV:349 (counter-
proof), IV: 3 68 (counterproof ).
provenance: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel,
9 August 1899 (stock no. 5424, "Danseuses avec
fleurs dans les cheveux"); private collection.
exhibitions: 1905 London, no. 64; 19 16, New York,
Durand-Ruel, 5-29 April, Exhibition of Paintings and
Pastels by Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, no. 20 (as
1898); 1918, New York, Durand-Ruel, 9-26 January,
Exhibition: Paintings and Pastels by Degas, no. 14; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 11; i960 Paris, no. 60; 1970,
Hamburg, Kunstverein, 28 November 1970-24 Jan-
uary 197 1, Franzbsische Impressionisten: Hommage a
Durand-Ruel, no. 14; 1974, Paris, Durand-Ruel,
15 January-15 March, Cent ans d'impressionnisme,
1874-1974, no. 18; 1984-85 Washington, D.C.,
no. 51, repr. (color) p. 108.
SELECTED REFERENCES: Coquiot I924, pp. 176-77;
Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1352 (as 1899); Browse
[1949], p. 412, pi. 240; Minervino 1974, no. 1133.
361.
The Rehearsal Room
c. 1898
Oil on canvas
i63/s X 36^ in. (41 . 5 X 92 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
E. G. Biihrle Foundation Collection, Zurich
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 996
In The Rehearsal Room, adult and even
huskily broad-shouldered dancers are cap-
tured in a moment of relaxation. One bends
to adjust her shoe, another pulls at both
straps of her bodice, the third flounces her
tutu. Behind them are other dancers, but
they are indistinct. A door opens provoca-
tively, creating a passage of light on the
floor at the left. George Shackelford has
found an engraving, after an earlier compo-
sition of this kind by Degas, that shows a
spiral staircase, presumably leading to the
theater beyond the open door.1
That the forms and coarse black contours
are not the result of overpainting is clear
from the many drawings made in preparation
for this work — from the total composition
to individual figures. Degas executed squared
drawings for each of the principal dancers
(fig. 327, for example), a process that made
them, in the final work, more frontal and
more monumental. Shadows are indicated
by brusque, continuous zigzag hatching.
Such drawings underline the painting and
have created these robotlike figures that
have grown to gigantic proportions within
the low frame of the picture. The dancer
fluffing out her tutu must bow her head a
little to avoid the top of the canvas.
In the presence of this work, we are capti-
vated by the color and accept the gigantic
dancers as the vehicles for it. Their tutus of
blue green are so luminous they are almost
phosphorescent. There is a marvelous orange
€
viJI
Fig. 327. Dancer (111:267), c. 1898. Charcoal,
i87/8 X 14V& in. (48 X 36 cm). Location unknown
glow to the wall and to the door. Degas
took his brush of black paint and at places
gave the dancers the severest of contours so
that we would not succumb to the seduc-
tion of color.
He added to the sense of mystery in the
work by the orange through the open door
and by the inexplicable splash of red on the
wall at the left.
Degas applied his paint with the kind of
freedom that makes us feel any instrument,
including his fingers, could have been used.
The painting is often described as unfinished.
And certainly it lacks finish. But as Paul
Valery explained "finish" in writing about
Degas, "nothing could be remoter from the
taste or, if you will, the whims of Degas."2
He had argued earlier that "to complete a
work consists of getting rid of everything
that reveals or hints at how it was made. . . .
It has come to seem as if finish were not only
useless and troublesome but even a hindrance
to truth, sensibility, and the revelation of
genius"3 Degas would have been embarrassed
by the assumption of genius, but he would
have agreed with the fascination in the pro-
cess of creating a work of art, as he had
chosen, after innumerable careful studies, to
expose it here.
1. Shackelford argues that under the Biihrle canvas is
the original from which the lithograph was made
(1984-85 Washington, D.C., p. 98, fig. 4.6).
This seems unlikely.
2. Valery 1965, p. 45; Valery i960, p. 21.
3. Valery 1965, p. 44; Valery i960, pp. 20-21.
574
361
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 11);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel, New York, for
Fr 11,200 (stock no. 11398); with Durand-Ruel, Par-
is; private collection, Paris; acquired by Emil G.
Biihrle, Zurich, 195 1.
exhibitions : 1951-52 Bern, no. 46; 1952 Amster-
dam, no. 41; 1958, Kunsthaus Zurich, 7 June- Sep-
tember, Sammlung Emil G. Buhrle, no. 162 p. 106,
fig. 46 p. 213; 1984-85 Washington, D.C., no. 41,
repr. p. 98, repr. (color) p. 140.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 996 (as c. 1899); Minervino 1974, no. 852.
362.
Group of Dancers
c. 1898
Oil on canvas
i81/sX24in. (46X61 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Maitland Gift, i960
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 770
Even in the 1870s, Degas had been interested
in the professional world of the dancer at the
periphery of the stage, waiting for a perform-
ance or a rehearsal to begin. At its wittiest
and bawdiest, it was seen through the eyes
of Ludovic Halevy and his fictional charac-
ters, the Cardinals.1 In the eighties the
theme continued, though very much subdued
and without the wit of the previous decade.
In one pastel, Dancers in the Studio (fig. 3 28), 2
dated 1884 by Lemoisne, Degas had used
the horizontal frieze format to show a group
of four dancers to the right of the composi-
tion, with the back of one reflected in a large
wall mirror. Somewhat later, presumably in
the early nineties rather than in 1884 as
Lemoisne dates it, Degas made another,
squarer version, in oil, Four Dancers in the
Studio (fig. 329). Not only had the dancers
aged and lost their wistful charm, but Degas
had inserted another, highly muscular figure
Fig. 328. Dancers in the Studio (L768), c. 1884. Pastel, 15 X 283/s in. (38 X 72 cm). Fig. 329. Four Dancers in the Studio (L769), c. 1892.
Location unknown Oil on canvas, 2ilA X z$5/s in. (54 X 65 cm). Location
unknown
575
in the foreground bending over to tie her
shoe. It was even later in the nineties that he
produced another version, Group of Dancers,
now in the National Gallery of Scotland in
Edinburgh.3
In the Edinburgh painting, the emphasis
is placed on the two dancers found in each
of the earlier versions and drawings4 — the
one reflected in the mirror and the one with
her back to us who raises her left arm. The
dancer on the right has been enlarged and
strengthened so that the bending dancer can
be eliminated. The dancer on the left, though
(like all the figures) more spectral than in
the earlier versions, turns more gracefully to
her companions; consequently, less is re-
flected in the mirror. The other dancers are
reduced to smudges of paint.
Group of Dancers is freely painted and the
contours applied with a particular daring.5
Its emerald greens, orange, and luminous
whites, much more decorative than the acid
yellows, oranges, and greens of the earlier
Four Dancers in the Studio, are reminiscent of
the Biihrle Foundation's The Rehearsal Room
(cat. no. 361), or the Four Dancers in Wash-
ington (fig. 271). There are obviously draw-
ings in preparation for this painting, as there
are for the earlier Dancers in the Studio and
Four Dancers in the Studio (see note 4). But
like Washington's Four Dancers, this strong
painting could also have spawned some
drawings (including cat. nos. 363, 364) and
one major pastel (fig. 330).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 51);
bought at that sale by Jos Hessel, Paris, for Fr 14,000;
S. Sevadjian (sale, Drouot, Paris, 22 March 1920,
no. 6, repr.); Jules Strauss, Paris. With Arthur Tooth
and Sons, Ltd., London; bought by Mr. and Mrs.
Alexander Maitland 1953; their gift to the museum
i960.
exhibitions: 1979 Edinburgh, no. 119.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 770
(as 1884); Kendall 1985, p. 27.
1. See "Degas, Halevy, and the Cardinals," p. 280.
2. This cannot be the work put on sale at Sotheby
Parke Bernet, New York, 14 May 1980, no. 214;
see Brame and Reff 1984, no. 92.
3. Although Lemoisne (Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
pp. 438, 830) assigned the date of 1884 to both
fig. 329 and cat. no. 362, he pointed out their rela-
tionships to L1459 (fig. 330), L1460-L1462, which
he dated c. 1906-08.
4. A drawing for Dancers in the Studio is fig. 328, and
for Four Dancers in the Studio, fig. 329.
5. See Kendall 1985, p. 27, for a brilliant analysis of
the color.
363.
Dancers on the Stage
c. 1898
Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper
223/8X233/4in. (56.8X60.3 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection, New York
Lemoisne 146 1
576
It is tempting to think of this drawing, in
which the dancers are executed so lightly
that they might be apparitions, as coming
toward the end of Degas' s career. Neverthe-
less, it was probably drawn somewhat earlier
than that.1 What we seem to have here is a
development beyond the Edinburgh paint-
ing (cat. no. 362) of an emphasis on a group
of three dancers talking — with some sug-
gestion of two others behind. Degas was
exploring; the bodies under the tutus are re-
vealed, for example. As he changed his
mind, he smudged the charcoal, particularly
in the arms and legs. What is extraordinary
is the confidence with which he varied the
weight and width of his line, from the light
strokes to suggest the two dancers in the
background, almost like a late drawing by
Daumier, to the velvety but harsh lines that
define the legs nearest to us. It is a drawing
that suggests the positions of the figures
confidently. Degas used the vibrant strokes
of pastel (the tracing paper must have been
placed on a rough surface) to indicate the
color of the tutus, to emphasize economically
the central group by drawing a shadow above
them rather like a halo, and to enliven the
floor which he had drawn with waving,
coarse black lines. The focus narrows finally
to the foreground group — particularly the
part enclosed by the dancers' arms. Degas
comes close to indicating intimacy between
two human beings as the two front dancers,
whose hair he has masterfully drawn, talk
to each other. Everything in the end is so
essentially intangible and elusive that it sug-
gests a longing for a world that to the artist
had proved ephemeral.
1 . I now believe it is earlier than the c. 1905 I sug-
gested in 1967 Saint Louis, no. 156, p. 228.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 19 19, no. 60);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Fr 1,010
(stock no. 1 1 444); with Knoedler, Paris; Mrs. John
H. Winterbotham, New York; Theodora W. Brown
and Rue W. Shaw, Chicago; with E. V. Thaw, New
York; Jaime Constantine, Mexico City (sale, Chris-
tie's, London, 1 July 1980, no. 118); with E. V.
Thaw, New York; present owner.
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 156 (as 1905), lent
by Theodora W. Brown and Rue W. Shaw, Chicago;
1974 Boston, no. 90, lent by E. V. Thaw and Co.
Inc.; 198 1 San Jose, no. 62, repr.; 1983, Maastricht,
23 April-28 May /London, 14 June-29 July, Impres-
sionists, organized as exhibition-sale by Noortman
and Brod, no. 5; 1984 Tubingen, no. 226, repr. (color)
(as 1906-08), lent by E. V. Thaw.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1461 (as 1906-08); Browse [1949], no. 255 (as
1905-12).
577
J*4
364.
Dancers on the Stage
c. 1898
Pastel on tracing paper, with strip added
at bottom
29X411/2 in. (73.7 x 105.4 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Acquired through the generosity of the Sarah
Mellon Scaife family, 1966 (66.24.1)
Withdrawn from exhibition
Lemoisne 1460
This large drawing in pastel on tracing pa-
per, from the Carnegie Museum of Art in
Pittsburgh, is one of several studies Degas
made between the painting in the National
Gallery of Scotland (cat. no. 362) and a fin-
ished pastel in the Chester Dale Collection of
the National Gallery of Art in Washington
(fig. 330).1 Several things have happened.
Degas obviously decided on a horizontal
format and a formal composition of a cer-
Fig. 330. Ballet Scene (L1459), c. 1898. Pastel, 3oV4X433/4 in. (76.8 X in. 2 cm).
Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
578
tain size, because this drawing is the same
size as the finished pastel. He also changed
the position of the arms of the figure nearest
the front, which does not provide the same
link with the other figure as in the smaller
composition but gives the arms a greater sug-
gestion of energy and reveals the dancer's
breast.2 The intimate link between the three
figures is gone. Each now seems estranged
from the other. The dancers, vague in the
Edinburgh painting, have now assumed a
decisive character — one, with her arm raised,
acknowledges another dancer to the left,
who makes a deep bow to her. Behind the
figures in the Pittsburgh work is a contin-
uous curtain with exuberantly drawn shrub-
bery in red pastel, breaking into an intense
blue sky in the upper left corner.
Degas did two unexpected things. He
contrasted the new alienation of the members
of the group in the foreground — psycholog-
ically in the wings — with the dramatic dia-
logue between two performers on the stage.
He also broke down the physical separation
of wings and stage. Perhaps this was be-
cause he was representing a rehearsal rather
than a performance. Whatever his inten-
tions, the muted blue floor and the painted
curtain continue, and there is no other bar-
rier between those dancing and those wait-
ing to perform. Such ambiguities add to the
mystery of this great drawing, which is so
fresh in its color and so forceful in its execu-
tion.
A postscript should be added about the
pastel in Washington, which is the culmina-
tion of this series. It is brilliant, complex,
rich, and luminous; its colors are seductive,
with predominant blues, greens, and or-
anges over pinks. Particularly astonishing is
the stage curtain, which is even more fantastic
in form and color than in the Pittsburgh
drawing, in fact so full of bravura, so essen-
tially abstract, that it could be an Abstract
Expressionist painting. It seems to reinforce
the movement of the dancers, though above
the bowing dancer at the left the curtain
breaks into a form like that of the dancing
Loi'e Fuller, whose performances in the
nineties must have been the antithesis of
their own.
1. In particular, L1462 (Von der Heydt-Museum,
Wuppertal), executed between L1461 (cat. no. 363)
and Li 460 (cat. no. 364); and BR 162, executed be-
tween L1460 (cat. no. 364) and L1459.
2. This figure is a reversal of the principal figure in
cat. no. 308.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 209);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel (stock no. D12731)
and Ambroise Vollard (1CS23), Paris, for Fr 8,100;
Max Pelletier, Paris; with Sam Salz, Inc. , New York;
bought by the museum 1966.
exhibitions: 1932, Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 23
November-23 December, Pastels et dessins de Degas,
no. 16; 1936, Paris, Galerie Vollard, Degas.
selected references: Etienne Charles, "Les mots de
Degas," La Renaissance de VArt Francais et des Industries
de Luxe, April 19 18, p. 7; Lemoisne [1946-49], I,
repr. (detail) p. 199, III, no. 1460 (as 1906-08);
Browse [1949], no. 233, repr. (as 1905-12); F. A.
Myers, "Two Post-Impressionist Master works,*'
Carnegie Magazine, XLI:3, March 1967, pp. 81,
84-86, repr. p. 85; Catalogue of Painting Collection,
Museum of Art, III, Pittsburgh: Museum of Art,
Carnegie Institute, 1973, p. 51.
365.
Three Nude Dancers
c. 1895-1900
Charcoal on tracing paper
35X34% in. (89X88 cm)
Signed lower right in black pastel: Degas
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay),
Paris (RF29941)
Exhibited in Paris
This strong drawing makes no concession to
grace or finish as it concentrates on the en-
ergy of the figures. Degas's handling of the
charcoal is bold and at moments unexpect-
edly decisive in the exaggeration of certain
contours. He does not hesitate to leave what
could have been first thoughts or even mis-
takes, as around the upper left arm, but
somehow he exploits these strokes to in-
crease the suggestion of action. He achieves
the same effect in the raised hand of the cen-
tral figure, which gains in expressiveness by
its very openness. No painting or pastel
seems to have survived for which this power-
ful drawing, with its diagonal thrust back
into space, could have been a study, though
there is a related drawing (11:285), some-
what fussier and more explicit about the set-
ting, with something resembling a statue
visible at the left.
provenance: Henri Riviere; his bequest to the
Louvre 1952.
exhibitions: 1955-56 Chicago, no. 154; 1959-60
Rome, no. 184; 1962, Warsaw, 20 March-20 April,
Francuskie Rysunki XVII-XXw. I Tkaniny, no. 12;
1963, Aarau, Argauer Kunsthaus, 11 April-12 May,
Handzeichnungen und Aquarelle aus den Museen Frank-
reichs, no. 97; 1964 Paris, no. 72; 1969 Paris, no. 224.
579
366.
Dancers
c. 1895- 1900
Pastel and charcoal on two pieces of tracing
paper, mounted on wove paper, mounted on
board
375/8X26 3/4 in. (95.4X67.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Memorial Art Gallery of the University of
Rochester. Gift of Mrs. Charles H. Babcock
(31.21)
Exhibited in Ottawa
Lemoisne 1430
This pastel of dancers shows the same direc-
tion of diagonal movement onto the stage
and beside the flats as Dancers, Pink and
Green (cat. no. 307). But there is not the
same physical clarity in the movement, the
same definition of muscles and sinews in the
bodies, or the same glimpse of individual
personalities. Some of the dancers' legs are
indiscernible. And the figures themselves
are not as clearly distinguished from the
flats in the background, which are also less
precisely rendered; the jade-green bushes in
these flats are like luminous toadstools. But
the dancers seem to have a fierce energy,
emphasized by the charcoal contours under-
neath and over the pastel that draw the fig-
ures together. They are not graceful in
themselves, and their features are somewhat
demoniac. They may not be the exotic me-
dusas evoked by Paul Valery in considering
Degas and the dance, but they are, in spite
of their bodies, "incomparably translucent,"
their tutus "domes of floating silk" with
pinks worked into the blue tutu and orange
into the yellow. 1 The work indeed has the
translucency, range, and fragility of a rain-
bow, this beauty a seeming contradiction of
the harshness of the figures.
Apparently, Degas began the work as a
charcoal drawing on two attached pieces of
tracing paper, working on a smooth surface.
When he decided to add pastel, he moved the
tracing paper to a rough surface, which gives
the pastel a nubby texture. He smudged on
or stumped the colors, not actually covering
all the paper, which probably contributes to
the translucent effect of the pastel. After the
tracing paper was mounted on a smooth
support, he defined the image further with
charcoal on the hair and contours.2
About this pastel, Linda Muehlig has
written recently: "The brilliant, jewel-like
creatures that wait and watch in the Roches-
ter pastel are dancers certainly, though not
individualized: they exist as semaphore rath-
er than statement. Like all Degas's dancers,
but especially those at the close of his career,
they are the work of an informed imagina-
tion, an artifice enacted upon the essential
artifice of the dance."3
1. Valery 1965, p. 27; Valery i960, p. 17.
2. Based on a special report by Anne Maheux of the
National Gallery of Canada Degas Pastel Project.
3. Linda Muehlig, "The Rochester Dancers: A Late
Masterpiece," Porticus, IX, 1986, p. 8.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no. 296);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel, New York, for
Fr 16,100 (stock no. N.Y. 4352); transferred to Du-
rand-Ruel, Paris, 23 January 1920; bought by the
museum 2 May 1921, for $4,000 (stock no. N.Y.
4658).
exhibitions: 1947 Cleveland, no. 52, pi. XLIV.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1430 (as c. 1903); Minervino 1974, no. 115 1;
Buerger 1978, p. 22, repr. p. 23; Linda Muehlig,
"The Rochester Dancers: A Late Masterpiece," Porticus,
The Journal of the Memorial Art Gallery of the Uni-
versity of Rochester, IX, 1986, pp. 2-9, repr. (color)
cover.
580
The Russian Dancers
cat. nos. 367-371
Until the publication of Julie Manet's journal
in 1979, there had been a great deal of uncer-
tainty about the dating of a group of pastels
of Russian dancers that Degas made toward
the end of his working life. Speculation
ranged from his having seen a troupe of
such dancers at the Folies-Bergere in 1895
(Lemoisne) to his having been inspired by
the first appearance of Diaghilev's ballet
company in Paris in 1909 (Lillian Browse).1
Julie Manet, however, wrote enthusiastically
of Degas's showing her these pastels when
she visited his studio on 1 July 1899:2
M. Degas was as solicitous as a lover. He
talked about painting, then suddenly said
to us: "I am going to show you the orgy
of color I am making at the moment,"
and then he took us up to his studio. We
were very moved, because he never
shows work in progress. He pulled out
three pastels of women in Russian cos-
tumes with flowers in their hair, pearl
necklaces, white blouses, skirts in lively
hues, and red boots, dancing in an imagi-
nary landscape, which is most real. The
movements are astonishingly drawn, and
the costumes are of very beautiful colors.
In one the figures are illuminated by a
pink sun, in another the dresses are shown
more crudely, and in the third, the sky is
clear, the sun has just disappeared behind
the hill, and the dancers stand out in a
kind of half-light. The quality of the whites
against the sky is marvelous, the effect so
true. This last picture is perhaps the most
beautiful of the three, the most engaging,
completely overwhelming.3
Lemoisne reproduces fourteen pastels and
colored drawings of these dancers, and there
are additional drawings as well, including
Three Russian Dancers (cat. no. 371). The
style of some of them has an abandon that
suggests they might have been drawn later
than the three pastels Degas showed Julie
Manet; Three Russian Dancers is probably re-
lated to these later works. In the National-
museum in Stockholm, there is a rather thinly
covered pastel (L1181) of the same composi-
tion as the three he showed that one might
think was one of the three. However, judg-
ing from the attractive rounded features of
the dancer on the right, the decided pretti-
ness of the salmon-colored skirts against the
red shoes and white blouses, and the thin-
ness of the pastel, it is probable that this was
an "article" intended for the market. In fact,
it was sold on 9 November 1906 to Durand-
Ruel, probably not long after Degas made
it. The three pictures Julie Manet saw are
most likely the versions in the Lehman Col-
lection in the Metropolitan Museum in New
York (cat. no. 367), the Museum of Fine
Arts in Houston (cat. no. 368), and the col-
lection of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Lewyt of
New York (cat. no. 370).
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 1181; Browse [1949],
pp. 63-64.
2. Also noted in Sutton 1986, pp. 179-82.
3. Manet 1979, 1 July 1899, p. 238.
367.
Russian Dancers
1899
Pastel on tracing paper
243/4 X 25V2 in. (62.9 X 64.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975. 1. 166)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne 1182
The salmon sky in this pastel gives the im-
pression of being lit by a red sun which,
against the muted lavender and green of the
grass and hill, brings out the wonderful
richness of the dancers' garments and what
Degas described as his "orgy of color."1 The
white blouses are somewhat blued by the
coming shadows. The flowers in the dancers'
hair are a soft peach, exploding like sparklers
with touches of white pastel. And the colors
of the skirts above the red boots move from
a violet and rose through a blue with green
to the yellow of the dancer in the foreground.
The figures are united through color as well
as through the vigorously drawn movement
that had so thrilled Julie Manet. There are
many layers of pastel covering a support of
mounted tracing paper. A sharp instrument
has been used to burnish the surface.
1. Manet 1979, p. 238; see also "The Russian
Dancers," above.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 266);
bought at that sale by Danthon, for Fr 10,000; M.
and Mme Riche, Paris; M. E.R. (sale, Drouot, Paris,
16 May 1934, no. 3, repr.); M. R. (sale, Drouot,
Paris, 17 March 1938, no. 120, repr.); Mr. Van Hou-
ten (sale, Drouot, Paris, 12 June 1953, no. 8, repr.);
anon, (sale, Charpentier, Paris, 15 June 1954, no. 80,
repr. [color]). Robert Lehman, New York; his be-
quest to the museum 1975.
exhibitions : 1932, Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 23
November-23 December, Pastels et dessins de Degas,
no. 10; 1937, London, Adams Gallery, exhibition
closed 4 December, Degas 1834-1917, no. 10; 1959,
Cincinnati Art Museum, 8 May- 5 July, The Lehman
Collection, no. 146; 1977 New York, no. 51 of works
on paper.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1 182 (as 1895); Minervino 1974, no. 1074.
368.
Russian Dancers
1899
Pastel on tracing paper mounted on cardboard
24V2 X 243/4 in. (62.2 X 62.9 cm)
Signed lower left: Degas
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The
John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection.
On extended loan to the museum (TR 186-73)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Lemoisne 1183
Houston's Russian Dancers is less harmoni-
ous in its colors than the Lehman pastel
(cat. no. 367). The brash separation of color
in the skirts of the dancers, which Julie Manet
had described, gives the work great vigor. 1
The flowers around the hair and necks of
the dancers are an orange red and seem more
abundant than in the Lehman pastel. They
match the young women's magnificent
boots and the pattern over gold on their
sashes. The skirt at the left is a vibrant em-
erald green, the skirt in the middle an intense
blue threaded with red, and the last a more
muted violet. As in the Lehman work, these
figures are placed against a landscape with
tough grass and a low hill, an unexpected
setting for the Dionysian intensity of their
dance but a very sympathetic one.
1. Manet 1979, p. 238. Michael Shapiro (Shapiro
1982, p. 12), without knowing of the reference in
Julie Manet's journal, wrote: "The hue of each
color is slightly harsh."
provenance: With Ambroise Vollard, Paris; Mary
S. Higgins, Worcester, Mass. (sale, Sotheby Parke
Bernet, New York, 10 March 197 1, no. 15, repr.
[color]); Mr. and Mrs. John A. Beck, Houston; their
gift to the museum 1973 .
exhibitions: 1937 Paris, Orangerie, no. 181; 1946,
Worcester, Mass., Worcester Art Museum, 9-14 Oc-
tober, Modern French Paintings and Drawings from the
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Aldus C. Higgins, no num-
ber; 1974, Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, The
Collection of John A. and Audrey Jones Beck (catalogue
by Thomas P. Lee), p. 34, repr. (color) p. 35.
selected references: Vollard 1914, pi. V; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 1 183 (as 1895); Minervino 1974,
no. 1075; Shapiro 1982, pp. 9-22, fig. 1; The Collec-
tion of John A. and Audrey Jones Beck (compiled by
Audrey Jones Beck), Houston: The Museum of Fine
Arts, 1986, p. 38, repr. (color) p. 39.
581
582
5«3
the white blouse with dolman sleeves that
floats above it. The accessories are right,
too — the magnificent reddish boots, the
peach, lavender, and pale blue flowers at the
neck and hair, and the mass of deep blue
ribbons that flow from the dancer's head-
dress down her back. The variations within
the broad movements come from the falling
of the garments against the moving body.
Forceful as she is, the dancer still bows
her head. Energetic as she is, the movement
seems to be motivated by convention rather
than by a radiant joy. This figure was used
in the third composition, apparently to
shove the former front dancer into second
place and to take over the leading role her-
self.
i. Manet 1979, p. 238.
provenance: With Ambroise Vollard, Paris; Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, New York; her bequest to the
museum 1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, (?) no. 82 (as "Dan-
seuse espagnole [sic] en jupe rose"); 1930 New York,
no. 154; 1977 New York, no. 50 of works on paper.
selected references: Vollard 19 14, pi. LXXXVII;
Havemeyer 193 1, pp. 185-86, repr.; Lemoisne
[1946-49], III, no. 1 184 (as 1895); Browse [1949],
no. 242; Minervino 1974, no. 1079; Shapiro 1982,
pp. 10-11, fig. 2; 1984 Tubingen, p. 395.
3*>
369.
Russian Dancer
1899
Pastel and charcoal on tracing paper
243/s X 18 in. (62 X 45.7 cm)
Signed lower left in black charcoal: Degas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.556)
Exhibited in New York
Lemoisne n 84
This is a drawing for the figure in the left
foreground of what was probably the third
pastel Julie Manet saw in Degas's studio
(cat. no. 370). 1 It is not surprising to see
Degas at this time suggesting the texture of
sky and grass so cursorily but effectively
with pastel. The energy of the figure is also
not unexpected. But these colorful gar-
ments make us realize the restrictions of the
classical ballet tutu. Degas, who always had
a feeling for dress — male or female — reveals
it here in the bulky, glowing peach skirt and
370
584
370.
Russian Dancers
1899
Pastel and brush on tracing paper
23 X 30 in. (58.4 X 76.2 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Mrs. Alexander Lewyt
Lemoisne 1187
For the third of the pastels of dancers in
Russian peasant dress, Degas used a wider
paper and broadened the composition, giving
the former primary dancer a secondary role,
and introducing the figure for which the
drawing in the Metropolitan Museum (cat.
no. 369) is a preparatory study. He was able
to add more landscape — trees and a house
peering above the edge — and he had more
space to give greater emphasis to the out-
stretched leg of the dancer at the left. With
its strong unity of burnt orange reds for
boots, skirts, and ornament, against a land-
scape bathed by the fading sun, it is indeed
as Julie Manet described it: "This last pic-
ture is perhaps the most beautiful of the
three, the most engaging. It is extraordi-
nary, completely overwhelming."1
1. Manet 1979, p. 238.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 270);
bought at that sale by Rene de Gas, the artist's
brother, for Fr 26, 500 (sale, Drouot, Paris, 10 Novem-
ber 1927, no. 38); Dieterle, Paris; Albert S. Henraux,
Paris.
exhibitions: i960 New York, no. 64, repr., lent by Mr.
and Mrs. Alex M. Lewyt; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 155,
repr. (color) frontispiece; 1978 New York, no. 50,
repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [194.6-49], III,
no. 1 187 (as 1895); Minervino 1974, no. 1076.
371.
Three Russian Dancers
1900-1905
Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper
39 X 29*/2 in. (99 X 75 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Mrs. Alexander Lewyt
Vente IIL286
Although there is no clear evidence, it
seems that this drawing belongs to a later
group of Russian dancers by Degas,1 clearly
based, however, on the pastels of 1899. The
earlier dancers are united in the fanlike com-
position formed by their bodies and costumes
and do not possess any marked individual-
ity, but, at least in the Lehman and Houston
pastels (cat. nos. 367, 368), they can be dis-
tinguished by color.2 Here, however, the
figures flow into each other, in a way that
makes them appear inseparable, in fact one
organic being. Degas drew on the tracing
paper with great fluidity consistent with the
organic conception of the group of dancers.
He must have worked over a rough surface,
which explains the seemingly granulated
strokes of charcoal at certain points. He varied
the weight and width of his lines to add to the
sense of rhythmic unity. Finally, he touched
up the drawing, adding pastel to the flowers
in the hair of the central dancer.
1. In particular, L1188, L1189, and L1190.
2. Shapiro 1982, p. 12.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 286);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 1,350; Christian de Galea, Paris.
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 154; 1979 North-
ampton, no. 18, repr. p. 32; 1984 Tubingen, no. 223.
selected references: Browse [1949], p. 413, under
no. 243; Eugenia Parry Janis, "Degas Drawings,"
Burlington Magazine, CIX:772, July 1967, p. 414.
585
372, 373
First Arabesque Penchee, errone-
ously called Grande Arabesque,
Third Time (First Study)
Of the seventy-four works of sculpture by
Degas cast in bronze, seven were of dancers
executing a variety of arabesques — RXXXVI-
RXXXIX and RXL-RXLII. They range from the
beginning of his career as a sculptor (RXXXVII,
a child tentatively executing a fourth ara-
besque, which almost certainly predates The
Little Fourteen- Year-Old Dancer [cat. no. 227]
and is thus one of the earliest sculptures of a
dancer to have survived), to the period in
the mid- 1 8 80s when his sculpture reached a
kind of classical zenith (RXXXVI, a lithe young
woman in a first arabesque penchee), to the
period in the 1890s when the present work
was made. As Degas became older and
heavier, so too did his sculpted dancers. If
his dogged determination to continue work-
ing during his seventh decade was in part an
act of defiance, so too can this unlikely dancer
be seen as defiant in her attempt to perform
gracefully despite a sagging stomach and
stocky legs. The very improbability of such
a woman holding such a pose is evidence of
the shift in Degas's sensibility away from
naturalism toward an expressive symbolism.
In Paris, visitors to this exhibition (or at
other times to the Musee d'Orsay) have
been able to compare the original wax by
Degas with the bronze that was cast after
his death. In one of the few instances of such a
reversal, the bronze cast indicates something
no longer visible in the original wax: the
large and dangerous crack in the left leg just
above the knee. A. -A. Hebrard, in consulta-
tion with Degas's friend the sculptor Albert
Bartholome, made the decision to replicate,
as far as possible, all the imperfections of the
original waxes in order to obtain "truthful*'
casts. At a later date, however, the crack in
the wax was repaired.
Degas included dancers in arabesques in a
number of paintings and pastels from the
1870s through the 1890s,1 but in no other
instance did he describe an arabesque penchee
as here. gt
1. For example, L445, L493, L591, L601, L653, L654,
L735, L736, L1131, L1131 bis, BR124.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 7; Havemeyer
193 1, p. 223, Metropolitan 6oA; Paris, Louvre,
Sculptures, 1933, p. 66, no. 1724, Orsay 60P; Re-
wald 1944, no. XXXIX (as 1882-95), Metropolitan
60A; Rewald 1956, no. XXXIX, Metropolitan 60A;
Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958, p. 220, no. 439,
wax; Pierre Pradel, "Nouvelles acquisitions: quatre
cires originales de Degas," La Revue des Arts, 7th
year, January-February 1957, pp. 30-31, fig- 3 P- 31.
wax (erroneously as "Danseuse: grande arabesque:
deuxieme temps"); Beaulieu 1969, p. 374 n. 39; 1976
London, no. 7; Millard 1976, p. 35 (as after 1890);
1986 Florence, p. 204, no. 60, pi. 60 p. 157.
372
372.
First Arabesque Penchee, errone-
ously called Grande Arabesque,
Third Time (First Study)
c. 1892-96
Brown wax, with pieces of wood and cork
in the base
Height: 17% in. (43.8 cm)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2769)
Exhibited in Paris
Rewald XXXIX
provenance: Atelier Degas; his heirs to A. -A. He-
brard, Paris, 19 19, until c. 1955; consigned by He-
brard to M. Knoedler and Co., New York; acquired
by Paul Mellon from M. Knoedler and Co. 1956; his
gift to the Louvre 1956.
exhibitions: 1955 New York, no. 38; 1967-68, Paris,
Orangerie des Tuileries, 16 December 1967-March
1968, Vingt ans d'acquisitions au Musee du Louvre
1947-1967, no. 326 (as executed between 1882 and
1895; erroneously as Rewald XL); 1969 Paris, no. 249,
pi. 14 (as 1877-83); 1986 Paris, no. 61, p. 138, repr.
p. 137 (as c. 1885-90).
586
374-
Dancers at the Bane
c. 1900
Pastel and charcoal on tracing paper
49*/4 X 42l/8 in. (125 X 107 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1826)
Lemoisne 808
373.
First Arabesque Penchee, errone-
ously called Grande Arabesque,
Third Time (First Study)
c. 1892-96
Bronze
Height: 17% in. (43.8 cm)
Original: brown wax, Musee d'Orsay, Paris
(RF2769)
Rewald XXXIX
A. Orsay Set P, no. 60
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2073)
Exhibited in Paris
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 60
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.390)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A.-A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer late August 192 1; her bequest to
the museum 1929.
exhibitions: Probably 192 1 Paris (no catalogue);
1922 New York, no. 55 (as second state); (?) 1923-25
New York; 1930 New York, under Collection of
Bronzes, nos. 390-458; 1947 Cleveland, no. 79,
pi. LIX; 1974 Dallas, no number; 1977 New York,
no. 39 of sculptures.
Degas made many drawings of these two
dancers at the exercise barre, both nude and
dressed, separately and together. This study
with pastel was probably his last before at-
tempting the oil painting (cat. no. 375)
now in the Phillips Collection in Washing-
ton. The charcoal drawing in this pastel,
with its heavy, repeated contours, is not un-
like that in the Louvre's Three Nude Dancers
(cat. no. 365), though it goes further in ren-
dering the fierceness and angularity of the
bodies. It is also similar to the Rochester
Dancers (cat. no. 366) in that the diaphanous
blue tutus distract us with their prettiness
from the harshness of the drawing. Con-
fronted with the boniness, the inertia, and
the apathy of the dancer at the right, and
the lack of a sense of governing intelligence,
we are not allowed the escape that the Roch-
ester pastel provides. Comparison with
the much earlier Dancers at the Barre in the
British Museum (cat. no. 164) emphasizes
the sense of futility in both figures in the
later composition.
There are problems in dating this work,
but it can be safely placed close to 1900. 1
1. Boggs 1964, pp. 1-9.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 118);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Ft 15,200; Jacques Seligmann (sale, American Art
Association, New York, 27 January 192 1, no. 62);
with Scott & Fowles, New York; bought by the mu-
seum 192 1.
exhibitions: 1934, Ottawa, National Gallery of Can-
ada, January/The Art Gallery of Toronto, February/
The Art Association of Montreal, March, French
Painting, no. 41; 1949, The Art Association of Mon-
treal, 7-30 October, "Masterpieces from the Nation-
al Gallery" (no catalogue).
selected references'. Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 808 (as c. 1884-88); Browse [1949], no. 321 (as
1900-1905); R. H. Hubbard, The National Gallery of
Canada Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture, II: Modern
European Schools, Ottawa: National Gallery of Cana-
da, 1959, p. 20, repr.; Boggs 1964, pp. 1,2, 5, fig. 9
(color); Minervino 1974, no. 833.
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 8; 1937
Paris, Orangerie, no. 224; 197 1 Madrid, no. 104,
repr. p. 155; 1984-85 Paris, no. 57 p. 196,
fig. 182 p. 193.
587
375-
Dancers at the Bane
c. 1900
Oil on canvas
51 X 38 in. (130X96.5 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Lemoisne 807
The Ottawa pastel Dancers at the Barre (cat.
no. 374) was transformed into this oil paint-
ing, now in the Phillips Collection in Wash-
ington. The painting is almost the same
width as the pastel, but it is slightly higher
to allow a greater area of wall and floor. The
raised foot of the dancer on the right has
been cut by the frame, but now Degas shows
the uncomfortable position of the outstretched
leg of the dancer at the left. In some ways,
these works can be seen as interesting exer-
cises in the exploration of differences in me-
dium. Degas worked lightly, palely, and
openly with pastel, hatching in parallel strokes
that are often linked to each other. In the
oil, he turned the red and brown strokes of
pastel on the wall into smudges of a glow-
ing orange paint. Similarly, the blue of the
tutus becomes more solid. The strokes of
the floor in the painting run vertically, com-
pared with those of the pastel, contradicting
the floor's architectural character. The orange
on the dancers' stockings is particularly ar-
resting. Dancers at the Barre is a strong, mad
painting in which the dancers, in Mallarme's
terms, are not women and do not dance.1
The figures seem to express even more viv-
idly than those in the Ottawa pastel a sense
588
of futility in the very expenditure of energy
that cannot be rationally explained.
i . Stephane Mallarme, Oeuvres completes, Paris; Gal-
limard, 1945, p. 304. Mallarme observes that a
"danseuse" is not a woman dancing. She is not a
woman but a metaphor, summing up all the fun-
damental elements of our being. And she is not
dancing; she is the personification of a work of
art — a poem, independent of the writer's craft.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 93,
for Fr 15,200); with Ambroise Vollard, Paris; with
Jacques Seligmann, Paris and New York (sale,
American Art Association, New York, 27 January
192 1, no. 65); with Scott and Fowles, New York
(sale, American Art Association, New York, 17 Janu-
ary 1922, no. 22). Mrs. W. A. Harriman, New York;
Valentine Gallery, New York; bought by the muse-
um 1944.
exhibitions: 1950, New York, Paul Rosenberg, 7
March-i April, The igth Century Heritage, no. 6;
1950, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, 17
April-21 May, French Paintings of the Latter Half of the
19th Century from the Collections of Alumni and Friends
of Yale, no. 5, repr.; 1955, The Art Institute of Chica-
go, 20 January-20 February, Great French Paintings: An
Exhibition in Memory of Chauncey McCormick, no. 12,
repr.; 1978 New York, no. 32, repr. (color); 1979
Northampton, no. 5, repr. p. 22; 1981, San Francisco
Fine Arts Museum, 4 July-i November/Dallas Mu-
seum of Fine Arts, 22 November 1981-16 February
1982 /Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts, 14 March-
30 May /Atlanta, High Museum of Art, 24 June-16
September, Master Paintings from the Phillips Collec-
tion, p. 54, repr. p. 55.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III, no. 807
(as c. 1884-88); Browse [1949], no. 220 (as 1900-
1005); The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.:
Phillips Collection, 1952, p. 27, pi. 59 (color); Boggs
1964, pp. 1, 2, 5, fig. 8; Minervino 1974, no. 832.
589
376.
Two Nude Dancers on a Bench
c. 1900
Charcoal on tracing paper
3 1V2 X 42 Vs in. (80 X 107 cm)
Private collection
In many ways, Two Nude Dancers on a Bench
is stylistically close to the Louvre's Three
Nude Dancers (cat. no. 365), but the differ-
ences are perhaps even more significant. This
drawing is almost twice the size of the other,
neither the composition nor the figures are
as active, and the dancers are more exposed —
their breasts, their pelvic regions, and even
their faces. They succumb wearily, and with-
out defense, to inertia.
In spite of this weariness that overcomes
action and certain decencies, Two Nude
Dancers on a Bench is by no means a prudish
or inept work. One reason is that, as in the
Louvre's drawing, Degas has used his char-
coal as if it were a chisel or an ax, an un-
yielding weapon he forced again and again
to form the outlines of the bodies or de-
scribe their three-dimensional reality. It is
not surprising that a great modern sculp-
tor— Henry Moore — should have owned
the drawing. It has a monumentality and
sculptural presence made all the more force-
ful by its scale and by the breadth of the
contours and the economy with which they
bind the two figures so inevitably together.
Such a drawing was undoubtedly used
for the pastel of the same size, Two Dancers
on a Bench (cat. no. 377), where the figures
are more frail and the position of the dancer
on the left is one of greater lassitude, though
in fact the drawing is closer to another pas-
tel, Two Dancers Resting (L1258, Paris art
market, 1987). The charcoal drawing is
charged with a certain drama because,
though the figures do not face each other,
there is in the dancer at the left a brutal and
almost masculine force that at least chal-
lenges the passivity of the other dancer. In
the expression of the latter's rudimentarily
rendered face, there is a shade of wistfulness.
provenance: Durand-Ruel, Paris; Browse and Del-
banco, London; Henry Moore; by descent to present
owner.
exhibitions: 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 77; 1984 Tubingen,
no. 196.
590
177
377-
Two Dancers on a Bench
c. 1900
Pastel on tracing paper, laid down on cardboard
325/s X 42 Vs in. (83 X 107 cm)
Private collection
Lemoisne 1256
In his catalogue raisonne, Lemoisne repro-
duces seven pastels of two dancers on a
bench (L1254-L1259 bis), all about the same
size, which he dates c. 1896. Two Dancers on
a Bench is one of a group in which the danc-
ers are shown at their weariest and most
frail. The figure on the left appears to sup-
port herself by grasping her ankles and is
scarcely able to raise her head. The arms of
the dancer on the right are poignantly thin
and her position on the bench hardly stable,
though she clearly has a place on the bench
and the other dancer may not. Even her head
seems small, particularly when set off against
the spot of purple in the curtain behind.
Through these fragile figures, Degas mourns
the expectations, the vitality, and the cour-
age of his dancers of the past. But the pathos
he arouses is not in criticism of the dancers,
but of a world that no longer permits them
to determine their destiny. These figures
have been drained of will. The atmosphere
of dispiritedness is in striking contrast to the
wonderful richness of the colors of the dancers'
costumes — a lavender pink over the orange
of the tutus and an orange that is more solid
in the bodices and in the hair of the dancer
at the right. In addition, there is the mag-
nificent purple in the shadow as the dancer
on the left bows her head. Degas has squiggled
strokes of pastel freely across contours and
forms, producing his equivalent of shim-
mering artificial light.
The greatest shock is in the stage curtain,
which at first seems like the one in the
Washington Ballet Scene (fig. 330). The cur-
tain appears here to be a magnificently liber-
ated abstract painting, not quite as full of
movement as that in the Ballet Scene, but
dazzling nevertheless. It is only as we look
at it longer that the heavy tree trunk at the
left asserts itself and an impression of other
foliage emerges. Degas increased the sense
of abstraction by roughly hatching orange
strokes of pastel over the landscape and onto
591
the unstable bench. The abstractions of col-
or and texture and the illusion of theatrical
lighting are stirring for us but oppressive
for the two dancers, whose weariness has
been depicted so movingly with the char-
coal lines that emerge from under the pastel.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no. 144);
bought at that sale by Jacques Seligmann, for Fr 9, 500;
with Ambroise Vollard, Paris. Mr. and Mrs. Edward
G. Robinson, Los Angeles; sold through Knoedler
1957; Stavros Niarchos by 1958; with Tarica, Paris;
bought by present owner 1986.
exhibitions: 1957, New York, Knoedler Gallery, 3
December 1957-18 January 195 8 /Ottawa, National
Gallery of Canada, 5 February-2 March /Boston,
Museum of Fine Arts, 15 March-20 April, The
Niarchos Collection of Paintings, p. 28, no. 12, repr.
p. 29; 1958, London, The Arts Council of Great
Britain, 23 May-29 June, The Niarchos Collection,
no. 13, pi. 31; 1976-77 Tokyo, no. 53, repr. (color);
1984 Tubingen, no. 197, repr. (color).
selected references: Vollard 1914, pi. LXXX; Le-
moisne [1946-49], III, no. 1256 (as 1896).
378.
Seated Nude Dancer
1905-10
Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper, laid down
287/s X 17 in. (73 . 3 X 43 . 2 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
Private collection
Lemoisne 1409
This drawing of a nude dancer sitting in an
athletic pose on a bench is particularly dis-
turbing because the body is handled in such
a perfunctory way; there are almost no con-
cessions to its articulation and none to its
beauty. Even the luxuriant long hair, in
which Degas used to love to indulge him-
self, seems more like the hair of a figure by
Edvard Munch than by Edgar Degas. The
contours are unusually heavy and persistent,
particularly in creating something like a
mourning border for the total figure. In fact,
the hair could be a mourning veil as well.
Degas used very little pastel, a touch of blue
on the skin, of red in the hair, to relieve this
terrible vision he had of the future of humanity.
Seated Nude Dancer is a study for the pas-
tel Two Dancers with Yellow Bodices (fig. 331).
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 207);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 800; Marlborough Fine Art Ltd. , London.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1409 (as c. 1902).
Fig. 331. Two Dancers with Yellow Bodices (L1408),
c. 1905-10. Pastel, 323/4X27V2 in. (81X68 cm).
London art market
379-
Two Dancers Resting
c. 1910
Pastel and charcoal on light buff wove paper
303/4 x 38% in. (78 x 98 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF38372)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1465
It seems inevitable that, at the end of his ca-
reer, when his poor eyesight made it almost
impossible for him to work and he was suc-
cumbing to depression, Degas should have
chosen to continue to show his dancers rest-
ing or idling on a bench rather than prepar-
ing to dance. But in earlier works, such as
In a Rehearsal Room (cat. no. 305), even the
dancers on the bench show a certain vitality,
and in Two Dancers on a Bench (cat. no. 377),
though the figures appear weary and frail,
the work itself has great energy. In this
heavily worked pastel, the weariness of the
dancers and the artist seem one. The indif-
ference of the dancer on the right seems to
have infected the artist.
Nevertheless, the pastel is as strange and
mesmerizing as a Byzantine mosaic. Al-
though the strokes of gold on the back-
ground have none of the refined discipline of
tesserae and the hue is a little raw, the free
calligraphic strokes of orange yellow remove
us as much from reality as do Byzantine
backgrounds of gold. The intense blue swag
at the left is as difficult to determine as are
such forms on the walls of The Rehearsal
Room (cat. no. 361) and preparatory studies
for it.1 The dancers and their tutus at first
seem ashen (like many formal Byzantine
figures), but that ash is animated with strokes
of pink and yellow that give it at least a half-
hearted supernatural glow. In this strange
environment, the two dancers seem less
than human. In fact, the dancer nearer to us
appears to be wearing a mask that from one
direction can be read as a grinning satyr and
from another as the profile of a beaked bird.
Degas had reached a time when retirement
was the only escape from his vivid imagina-
tion, his cynical intelligence, and even his
relentlessly expressive hand.
1. L997, Toledo Museum of Art; L998, Wallraf-
Richartz Museum, Cologne.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 137,
for Fr 7,600); with Nunes et Fiquet, Paris; Elisabeth
and Adolphe Friedmann, Paris; gift in lieu of succes-
sion duties 1979.
exhibitions: 1955 Paris, GBA, no. 164; 1980, Paris,
Grand Palais, 15 October 1980-2 March 198 1, Cinq
annees d'enrichissement du patrimoine national, no. 207,
repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1465 (as c. 1906-08); Minervino 1974, no. 1154;
"Les recentes acquisitions des musees nationaux," La
Revue du Louvre et des Musees de Prance, 4, 1980, p. 263;
Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985, no. 87, repr.
p. 90.
592
The Last Nudes
cat. nos. 380-386
In the years after 1900 when visitors found
Degas working in his studio, he was usually
drawing on tracing paper or modeling in
wax and plasteline, and the subject was al-
most invariably a nude. He would become
obsessed with a motif and pursue it relent-
lessly— tracing and retracing, as he himself
said.
Jules Chialiva, the son of Luigi Chialiva,
the artist who is supposed to have given De-
gas his recipe for his fixative for pastel,
claims that he — the son — may have been in-
directly responsible for Degas's having used
tracing paper. When Jules was at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts and his father wanted to
touch up one of his son's drawings to show
him how it might be improved, Jules asked
him to make the changes on tracing paper
rather than on the original, as it was done at
the school. As the son recalled it: "My father
was immediately struck by the advantages
of this means of making comparisons, the
time saved, and the avoidance of risk in
making a drawing (or certain lines of a
drawing) too heavy or of losing a sketch
which, at that moment, might be just right.
The very next morning, as soon as he arrived
at his studio, he first posed the model nude,
then asked her to change her poses slightly
and made corrections through a series of
tracings. Finally, he asked the model to
dress and altered his drawings accordingly,
always by superimposing tracing paper."1
One evening, Degas visited Chialiva's stu-
dio and saw ten or twelve of these drawings
that had just been fixed. "From that day,"
Jules wrote, "Degas enthusiastically adopted
the technique of drawing and redrawing on
superimposed tracing paper, and never
again drew in any other way. "2
Degas had used tracing paper as early as
i860.3 In addition, in a notebook now in the
Metropolitan Museum, we see that about
1882-85 he had played with the transparen-
cy of a thin paper — not tracing paper — to
superimpose one image on another.4 Whether
or not it was Chialiva's drawings that in-
593
spired him to go further, Degas did use
tracing paper and would write, for example,
to his painter friend Louis Braquaval in 1902,
"I trace and I retrace."5
At the same time that Degas was using
tracing paper, which he seems always to
have had mounted professionally before he
finished a drawing or pastel, making it less
ephemeral than it would otherwise have
been, he was also refusing to consider hav-
ing his works of sculpture in wax or plaste-
line cast into bronze. To Ambroise Vollard,
who was disappointed to see a "little dancing
girl" reduced to "the original lump of wax
from which it had sprung," Degas answered,
"I wouldn't take a bucket of gold for the
pleasure I had in destroying it and beginning
over again."6 He enjoyed the processes of
drawing and modeling in themselves; begin-
ning again was one of the pleasures in his
life as he grew old.
In Degas's last works, since his eyesight
was an increasing problem, we cannot pre-
sume an ideal sequence for these studies,
moving from the tentative to the fully real-
ized, from hesitation to assurance, from the
specific to the general. Undoubtedly, factors
beyond the artist's control, including acci-
dent, determined the character of these very
late bathers.
1 . Jules Chialiva, "Comment Degas a change sa
technique de dessin," Bulletin de la Societe de
I'Histoire de VArt Frangais, 1932, p. 45.
2. Ibid.
3. Reff 1985, Notebook 18 (BN, Carnet 1, pp. 96,
100, 106).
4. Reff 1985, Notebook 36 (Metropolitan Museum,
1973.9).
5. Unpublished letter, 29 September 1902, private
collection, Paris.
6. Ambroise Vollard, Degas: An Intimate Portrait,
New York: Dover, 1986, p. 89.
380.
After the Bath
1 896-1907
Charcoal and traces of pastel on tracing paper
22 X 207/s in. (56 X 53 cm)
Signed in red upper left: Degas
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (25.452)
When Paul-Andre Lemoisne published his
small but pioneering book on Degas in
19 12, he ended with this drawing, which
was then in the collection of Lucien Hen-
raux. He wrote that "the artist was able to
sum up, in a few extraordinary, precise lines,
this image of a woman leaving her bath."
And he noted further "the heavy strokes of
crayon [sic] and the bold black hatching. Yet
what powerful realism, what character there
is in this little scene; we could not provide a
better example of the artist's last style.*'1
When the collector and author Etienne
Moreau-Nelaton went to Degas's studio at
the end of 1907, he described a pastel with
which he said Degas "had been fencing all
day." He went on: "Nearby was the pastel,
pinned to cardboard; it had been done on
tracing paper. It represented a young woman
leaving her bath, with a servant in the back-
ground. In the foreground was the pink
stuff that was not to be disturbed. The exe-
cution was a bit summary, as was everything
done during this period by this man whose
sight was weakening day by day. But what
vigorous, magnificent drawing!"2
Although After the Bath is a charcoal
drawing with only the slightest smudge of
color and the servant here is in the foreground,
it does seem the kind of work Moreau-
Nelaton could have seen on his 1907 visit.
The execution could be described as sum-
mary— harsh hatching that seems to vibrate
because the artist must have worked over a
coarse paper or card under the tracing paper.
At the same time, it is a magnificent, vigorous
Fig. 332. After the Bath (L1204), c. 1 895-1900.
Pastel, 30 x 32% in. (76.2 X 82.8 cm). The
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
594
drawing in which the maidservant in profile,
who holds out a great towel, is a figure of
stability to balance the diagonal thrust of the
bather's body. The bather is crowned by
heavy arcs across her hair that seem symbols
for the energy she has revealed.
This drawing is related to one of the finest
of Degas's pastels, After the Bath (fig. 332), in
the Phillips Collection in Washington, which
is even closer to Moreau-Nelaton's descrip-
tion of the 1907 pastel but because of the
sensuousness of its drawing and color must
be of an earlier date.
1. Lcmoisne 1912, pp. 111-12.
2. Moreau-Nelaton 193 1, p. 267.
provenance: Lucien Henraux, Paris; his bequest to
the museum 1925.
selected references: Lemoisne 1912, pp. 111-12,
pi. XL VIII; Riviere 1922-23, pi. 100; Lemoisne
[1946-49], I, p. 195, repr.; 1986 Florence, p. 209,
fig. 71B.
381.
Seated Bather Drying Her Left Hip
c. 1900
Bronze
Height: 14Y4 in. (36.2 cm)
Original: red wax, cork and wood visible at
back. National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Rewald LXIX
381, METROPOLITAN
In this statue of a bather, which seems to
have a great inner centrifugal force, Degas
placed the figure out of doors. She is propped
on the edge of the stump of a tree, her knees
touching but her enormous feet spread apart
and firmly attached to the earth. Both tree
and ground are richly textured. By contrast,
the back of the bather (which in photographs
seems almost as smooth as a bronze by
Maillol) is in fact, like her head and her
breasts, modeled more harshly, almost as if
it were cut with a knife. In his effort to
avoid any sense of individual personality,
Degas broke the head into illusive planes,
somewhat suggestive of what the Cubists
were, or would be, doing.1 The bather sits
back on her tree trunk but projects forward
daringly into space with very little evident
support — a courageous performance for the
sculptor.
In the wax original, color seems used for
emphasis or clarification. The tree trunk is
redder than the earth. Red is used with telling
emphasis on the body — for example, along
the spine, in the buttocks, on the right
shoulder blade, and along the right arm.
1 . He had also done this in the pastel Three Dancers
(L1446).
595
selected references: 192 1 Paris, no. 59; Rewald
1944, no. LXIX (as 1 896-191 1), p. 135, Metropoli-
tan 46 A; 1955 New York, no. 65; Rewald 1956,
no. LXIX, Metropolitan 46A; Minervino 1974,
no. S59; 1976 London, no. 67; Millard 1976, pp. 109-
10, fig. 133; 1986 Florence, no. 54 p. 202, pi. 54
p. 151.
A. Orsay Set P, no. 46
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2123)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 i Paris, Orangerie, no. 59 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 287 (dated c. 1884); 1984-85
Paris, no. 79 p. 207, fig. 204 p. 202.
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. 42
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.389)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A.-A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 31; 1930 New
York, under Collection of Bronzes, nos. 390-458;
1974 Boston, no. 49; 1974 Dallas, no number; 1975
New Orleans; 1977 New York, no. 58 of sculptures
(dated by Millard as after 1895).
382.
Nude Woman Drying Herself
c. 1900
Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper
31X32 in. (78.7X83.8 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert
Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, Gift of Sarah
Campbell Blaffer (56.21)
Lemoisne 1423 bis
One motif to which Degas devoted himself
in his late years was a standing nude, seen
from behind, whose body arches as she bends
to dry her neck vigorously with her right
hand while holding out her generous head
of hair with her left. (She undoubtedly de-
rives from the nudes in the lithographs of
the 1890s, cat. nos. 294-296.) The motif must
have appealed to Degas because, though the
gesture itself is routine, it involves a repre-
sentation of classical nudity and provides an
opportunity to draw masses of red hair.
The variations he worked on the motif
were undoubtedly partly intentional and
partly accidental. Sometimes the nude was
depicted indoors (cat. no. 383), sometimes
in a wood with some shallow water (L1423).
Sometimes, as in this drawing, the bather
handles her hair so easily that it falls in gen-
erous waves. At other times (L1423), she
pulls at it as if intent on wrenching it out by
the roots. Sometimes, the pressure on the
neck is so great it threatens to sever the
head from the body (L1427). Although al-
ways somewhat heavily proportioned, the
body can be reasonably well articulated, like
the present nude, or it can be so perfuncto-
rily and strangely drawn that the bather
seems to be another form of life (L1464).
The originals of the known works in this
series still usually possess dazzling color.
Nude Woman Drying Herself is probably an
early stage of the motif, when Degas, in
drawing the contours of the figure with
charcoal and accenting it, was still concerned
with what could be seen. Although there is
some modeling of the contours in the Hous-
ton work, the effect is not so much sculp-
tural as it is suggestive of the softness of
flesh. Inevitably, the body's rhythms set up
a foil for the wonderful fluidity of the red
hair. Behind the head, a hanging towel sta-
bilizes the composition and further empha-
sizes the hair. Although this is a rational
work, it hovers on the edge of the strangely
irrational.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 191 8, no. 70);
bought at that sale by Nunes et Fiquet, Paris, for Fr
4,950; Mrs. Robert Lee Blaffer, Houston; her gift to
the museum 1956.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1423 bis (as c. 1903); Shapiro 1982, pp. 12-16,
fig. 4; 1984 Chicago, p. 185.
383-
After the Bath, Woman Drying
Her Hair
c. 1905
Pastel on three pieces of tracing paper, mounted
333/4X291/sin. (85.8 X 73.9 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection
Lemoisne 1424
The most famous of the studies Degas made
in the twentieth century of the back of a
bather is undoubtedly Woman at Her Toilette
(fig* 333), a pastel at the Art Institute of
Chicago. In that composition, a yellow-
orange curtain is pulled down and across the
596
woman's hip to conceal the lower part of
her body and her gloriously auburn hair is
reinforced by some red-orange fabric hang-
ing on the wall behind her.1 After the Bath
may be a study on the way to that richly
finished and heavily fixed pastel, or it may
be another and even later version.
Fig. 333. Woman at Her Toilette (Li 426), c. 1905.
Pastel, 293/8X28V8in. (74.6X71.3 cm). The Art
Institute of Chicago
As Anne Maheux of the National Gallery
of Canada's Pastel Project has pointed out,
Degas made this version probably without
using fixatives; instead, he burnished and
rubbed the pastel to make it stable. He began
with a strong charcoal drawing on tracing
paper which seems, however, less crisp than
the drawing in the Houston Nude Woman
Drying Herself (cat. no. 382). Sometime in
the process, while already working with
pastel, he added a strip of paper for composi-
tional reasons at the bottom. He seems to
have been uncertain about the position of the
figure and left his first attempts clearly visible
597
behind the bather's back and rump and more
difficult to detect through her stomach.
Although the charcoal drawing may have
some vagaries, the application of pastel is
decisive and full of resonant color. The blue
of the basin, over which the woman holds
her lustrous yellow-brown hair, recalls blue
basins in Degas's work back into the eighties.
With his fingertips, he smudged more blue
into the curtain at the right. He used an or-
ange red to bind the composition together,
applying it in broad swirls on the back-
ground and in decisive hatching over the
bather's body, radiating beyond its con-
tours. He applied roughly parallel vertical
strokes of yellow pastel like golden rain in
the background. The ponderous weight of
the body is transformed by this pyrotechnic
performance, uniting dazzling color and the
calligraphic strokes of pastel.
i . On the Chicago work, see Richard R. Brettell in
1984 Chicago, no. 89, pp. 184-85; Shapiro 1982,
pp. 15, 16, fig. 10.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 282);
bought at that sale by Vollard and Durand-Ruel,
Paris, for Fr 14,000; transferred from Durand-Ruel,
Paris (stock no. 11300), to Durand-Ruel, New York
(stock no. N.Y. 4501), November-December 1920;
bought by Sam Salz, New York, 9 November 1943,
for S6,ooo. Sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York,
17-18 January 1945, no. 165, for $4,250. Present
owner.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1424 (as c. 1903).
384.
Woman Arranging Her Hair
1900-1910
Bronze
Height: 18V4 in. (46.4 cm)
Original: yellow wax. Collection of Mr. and
Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia
Rewald L
In addition to making pastels and drawings
on the theme of a bather drying her neck,
Degas pursued the subject in a piece of
sculpture he modeled from yellow wax.
Charles W. Millard points out that this
work is one of "the two most canonically
classical figures among all the Degas sculp-
ture" and that it inevitably suggests a classi-
cal Aphrodite.1 From the nicely modeled
back, it could be inferred that, as in the pas-
tels and drawings, this was the point of
view Degas preferred; in some ways, it
seems an equivalent in sculpture to the
Houston drawing (cat. no. 382). From the
front, the handling of the woman's body is
rougher and we discover that her feet seem
to grow out of the soil, as if rooted there.
Although it contains elements of classicism,
Woman Arranging Her Hair anticipates the
forceful Expressionism of the developing
twentieth century.
1. Millard 1976, pp. 69-70.
selected references: 1921 Paris, no. 62; Paris, Louvre,
Sculptures, 1933, no. 1779; Rewald 1944, no. L (as
1896-1911); 1955 New York, no. 48; Rewald 1956,
no. L, pi. 75; Beaulieu 1969, p. 380 (as 1903); Miner-
vino 1974, no. S62; 1976 London, no. 62; Millard
1976, pp. 69-70, fig. 107; 1986 Florence, no. 64
p. 206, pi. 64 p. 161,
A. Orsay Set P, no. 50
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF2126)
Exhibited in Paris
provenance: Acquired thanks to the generosity of
the heirs of the artist and of the Hebrard family 1930.
exhibitions: 193 1 Paris, Orangerie, no. 62 of sculp-
tures; 1969 Paris, no. 293 (as c. 1903); 1984-85 Paris,
no. 73 p. 196, fig. 198 p. 201.
384, METROPOLITAN
384, ORSAY
598
B. Metropolitan Set A, no. so
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection (29.100.438)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
provenance: Bought from A. -A. Hebrard by Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer 192 1; her bequest to the museum
1929.
exhibitions: 1922 New York, no. 9; 1923-25 New
York; 1930 New York, under Collection of Bronzes,
nos. 390-458; 1974 Dallas, no number; 1977 New
York, no. 42 of sculptures (dated by Millard as after
1890).
385.
Bather Drying Her Legs
c. 1900
Charcoal and pastel on three pieces of tracing paper
263A X 14V8 in. (68 X 36 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Collection of Barbara and Peter Nathan, Zurich
Lemoisne 1383
One activity of his bathers that obsessed
Degas in the opening years of the twentieth
century was their sitting on the edge of a
tub while leaning over to dry their shins or
ankles. Among the earlier of these works is
the present drawing, executed with charcoal
and pastel on tracing paper.
Bather Drying Her Legs is reminiscent of a
pastel now in the Dayton Art Institute (fig.
334) that Degas had made of a bather in a
similar pose about 1886, the time of the last
Impressionist exhibition. Although he
greatly reduced and simplified the setting
for the later pastel, Degas retained the tub
in the same position, gave some semblance
of a patterned rug to the olive-colored floor,
placed a red slipper in a position similar to
that of the pink one in the earlier work, and
introduced a rose-colored fabric (now only a
patch of color) on the wall behind the bather
in the same position as the fuller curtain in
the Dayton pastel. These similarities, how-
ever, are hardly identifiable in the austerity
and compression with which he worked out
his new composition, fitting the bather into
a vertical format and increasing the effect by
adding paper to the bottom, on which he
drew, and to the top, which he left un-
touched.
Degas must have worked from a model
for this work, because it evokes a strong
sense of the bather's substantial body and
the energy she is exerting in drying her
legs. She bends down farther than her Day-
ton predecessor, her hair flowing down and
her features hidden. The body is drawn
with assurance. The hatching sometimes, as
on the arm, follows the form of the body,
but more often, as on the haunches, works
quite independently of it. Sometimes the
strokes, like the squiggle on the spine, be-
come ornamental. The great force in the
figure is in the area above the left arm. Be-
low it, the towel, used to dry the legs, be-
comes limp — not threatening the bather's
stability, however, because the tub seems to
insure her equilibrium. The drawing con-
veys a wonderful sense of contained energy.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 53);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Ft 2,450. Present owners.
exhibitions: 1953, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Figures
nues d'icole jrangaise, no. 48 or 49; 1984 Tubingen,
no. 214, repr. (color).
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no, 1383 (as c. 1900); 1969 Nottingham, under no. 27.
Fig. 334. Bather Drying Herself (L917), c. 1886.
Pastel, 18 X 23V4 in. (48 X 62 cm). The Dayton
Art Institute
599
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 191 8, no. 243);
bought at that sale by Jos Hessel, for Fx 12, 100;
Thorsten Laurin, Stockholm. Sale, Christie's, Lon-
don, 1 December 1980, no. 25, repr. (color); bought
by present owner.
exhibitions: 1920, Stockholm, Svensk-Franska
Konstgalleriet, Degas, no. 37; 1926, Stockholm, Lil-
jevalchs Konsthall, no. 151; 1954, Stockholm, Lilje-
valchs Konsthall, Fran Cezanne till Picasso.
selected references: Otto von Benesch, "Die
Sammlung Thorsten Laurin in Stockholm," Die bild-
enden Kiinste, Wiener Monatshefte, 3 rd year, 1920, p.
170, repr. p. 169; Hoppe 1922, repr. p. 68; Ragnar
Hoppe, Catalogue de la collection Thorsten Laurin,
Stockholm, 1936, no. 420, repr.; Lemoisne [1946-
49], III, no. 1380 (as c. 1900).
The Sao Paulo Bather
cat. nos. 387, 388
In the Museu de Arte in Sao Paulo, there is
a charcoal-and-pastel drawing, Woman at
Her Toilette (fig. 335), in which a bather
dries her legs. Unusual for Degas, this draw-
ing is dated. In the upper right corner, he
wrote "Degas 1903." This makes it a particu-
larly valuable document, the only work the
artist inscribed with a date in the twentieth
century.
The Sao Paulo drawing is closer in com-
position to After the Bath, Woman Drying
Herself (cat. no. 386) than to the Nathan
pastel, Bather Drying Her Legs (cat. no. 385).
The furnishings and the room are much
386.
After the Bath, Woman Drying
Herself
c. 1 900- 1 902
Pastel and charcoal with white wash on
tracing paper
3 1V2 X 28V4 in. (80 X 72 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Private collection
Lemoisne 1380
Because this pastel and the drawing of the
bather in the Nathan collection (cat. no. 385)
were both executed on tracing paper, with
the image of the bather approximately the
same size, either one could have been traced
from the drawing of the other, as was Degas's
custom at this time. It does seem, however,
that the Nathan drawing is closer to the
model and that this pastel is more stylized,
as though it came later. The stylization is in-
creased by the use of an almost completely
monochromatic orange red which, with the
charcoal and white, gives the work a sur-
prising chromatic unity.
It is interesting to see what has happened
to the conception of the earlier Dayton pas-
tel (fig. 334). Obviously, the penetrating
but cozy hues of the Dayton work have
gone. Although Degas used some of the
same elements — a rug, an upholstered chair,
and a curtain — he moved the chair to pro-
vide a sympathetic termination to the ac-
tions of the figure and brought the curtain
into the foreground at the right, partly con-
cealing the tub, to give the composition a
stability that is neither oppressive nor rigid.
This drawing is grander and more inte-
grated in conception than the Dayton pastel.
As the bather moves farther forward and
down, the contours of her body become
wonderfully unified rhythmically, and the
interior contours, including that of one breast,
are heavily and protectively reinforced by
deep shadow.
Although less concentrated and austere
than the Nathan drawing, this is neverthe-
less a rich and powerful work.
Fig- 335- Woman at Her Toilette (L1421), dated
1903. Charcoal and pastel, 227/s X 21V* in. (58 X
54 cm). Museu de Arte, Sao Paulo
600
more loosely executed, though a slightly
open door — mysterious as always — has
been introduced at the upper left. However,
it is in the figure in particular that we feel
the difference between this bather and the
other two. Using a linear vocabulary closer
to that of the Nathan pastel, Degas drew
with even greater force and violence. The
contours are very heavy, the hatching seem-
ingly gouged out of the paper with char-
coal, the shadows a magnificent black. Most
surprising are the strokes of heavy black ir-
regular hatching outside the bather's body
but along her back, creating an impression
of the frenetic nature of her actions. In con-
trast to this excessively active figure, the
softness and limpness of the towel are sug-
gested by a few mimetic lines of charcoal.
This then is a dated work — somewhat
later than either Bather Drying Her Legs or
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself- —
against which later works must be meas-
ured. Degas was perhaps persuaded to date
the drawing by the dealer Ambroise Vol-
lard, who was its first owner and who
would have been conscious, through the ex-
ample of the younger artists in his stable —
including Picasso — of the significance of
dating works to give a sense of an artist's
development. It is also a work whose ab-
stract force Vollard would very much have
admired.
387*
After the Bath
c. 1905
Charcoal and pastel on two pieces of tracing paper
231/2X2i1/a in. (59.7 x 53.6 cm)
Vente stamp lower right
The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Ayala and
Sam Zacks Collection. Permanent loan to the
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Lemoisne 1382
In all these drawings of bathers drying their
legs (cat. nos. 385, 386, and fig. 335), there
is a suggestion of the energy that is needed
to overcome inertia — and energy has been
601
triumphant. But as Degas continued to
work after 1903, inertia spread insidiously.
This is true of the handsome drawing in the
Zacks collection in which the nude is much
heavier, her shoulders rounded, her move-
ments more difficult, and even her hanging
hair somewhat limp. There is no longer the
sense of a centrifugal force radiating from
her body.
This is another work that Degas clearly
left unfinished — a work in process for other
artists to appreciate and enjoy. The maid-
servant beside the door or partition at the
right is barely blocked in, her form smudged
like a shadow. The chair is as cursorily and
boldly drawn as if it were a Matisse, five
years into the future. There are wonderful
decorative touches — the dark red used for
the pattern of the rug and the lighter red for
the wall. As in the Sao Paulo drawing
(fig. 335), the wall has a slightly open door.
The yellow slipper is a surprise. Degas added
a large piece of paper to the bottom of the
original sheet to put the bather even farther
back in space. As a result, we are not too
overcome by the physical, psychological,
and spiritual inertia the figure represents,
and delight instead in the ornamental char-
acter of the drawing.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 1918, no. 67);
bought at that sale by Pelle (Gustave Pellet?), Paris,
for Ft 3,600; Gai'de, Paris; Dr. Roblyn, Brussels;
Sam and Ayala Zacks, Toronto (acquired in Basel
1959); their gift to the museum 1970.
exhibitions: i960, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,
I9january-2i February, Canada Collects: European
Paintings, no. 192; 1967 Saint Louis, no. 141; 197 1,
Toronto, The Art Gallery of Ontario, 21 May- 27
June/ Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2-31 Au-
gust, A Tribute to Samuel J. Zacks: From the Sam and
Ayala Zacks Collection, no. 103, repr.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1382 (as c. 1900).
388.
After the Bath, Woman Drying
Her Feet
c. 1905
Pastel, charcoal with stump, black wash, and
touches of red and blue chalk on buff wove
tracing paper, pieced, laid down on sulphite
board
22% X 16 in. (56.7 X 40.8 cm) (maximum)
Vente stamp lower left
The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Mrs. Potter
Palmer II (1945.34)
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Vente 11:307
The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the
last, most beautiful, and most disturbing of
the drawings of a bather drying her legs or
feet. The pose of the figure is the simplest of
the group, more nearly a profile seen directly
rather than from above. The woman's left
arm is straight, forming with her leg and
torso a rough triangle that encircles some
rather evocative imagery. At the same time,
in spite of this greater simplicity, she seems
perilously placed on the tub and even en-
dangered by the black shadow beneath her
leg. The poignancy of this situation is in-
creased by the touches of red and blue chalk
Degas used with the charcoal on the skin
and the hair. Symbolized perhaps by her
hair, which loses itself beautifully as it falls
into shadow, the bather's energy appears to
drain actively from her, a seemingly inevitable
descendant of the bather in the lithograph of
about 1 89 1, Nude Woman Standing Drying
Herself (cat. no. 294). She is tragically without
expectations or hope.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente II, 19 18, no. 307,
for Fr 1,350); with Jacques Seligmann and Co., New
York; bought by the museum 1945.
exhibitions: 1946, The Art Institute of Chicago, 16
February-summer, Drawings Old and New (catalogue
by Carl O. Schniewind), no. 11, repr.; 1947 Wash-
ington, D.C., no. 1; 1963, New York, Wildenstein,
17 October-30 November, Master Drawings from the
Art Institute of Chicago (catalogue by Harold Joachim
and John Maxon), no. 105; 1976, Paris, Musee du
Louvre, 15 October 1976-17 January 1977, Dessins
fiancais de VArt Institute de Chicago: de Watteau a Picasso,
no. 59, repr. ; 1977, Frankfurt, Stadtische Galerie, 10
February-10 April, Franzdsische Zeichnungen aus dem
Art Institute of Chicago (catalogue by Margaret Stuff-
man), no. 60 (as c. 1900); 1984 Chicago, no. 90.
selected references: Agnes Mongan, French Draw-
ings, vol. 3 of Great Drawings of All Times (edited by
Ira Moskowitz), New York: Sherwood Publishers,
1962, no. 791.
602
The Last Portraits and Genre
cat. nos. 389-392
In the last works Degas devoted to portrai-
ture and genre, we must expect neither op-
timism nor much sense of the individual.
Although his portraits in pastel of the Rouarts
of about 1904-05 have a certain originality
in conception, in this genre he was content
to rework earlier themes. The emphasis in
most of these works is on individual will —
harsh, unyielding, demanding — which is
normally expressed through the diagonal
thrusts of the bodies in the compositions.
Lillian Browse observes a relationship be-
tween Degas's "innate sense of, and emphasis
upon, rhythm through posture" in the Lau-
sanne Washerwomen and Horses (cat. no. 389)
and in the photograph Paul Poujaud, Mme
Arthur Fontaine, and Degas (cat. no. 334). 1
However, the poses in the photograph are
conceived as if for the stage, whereas the di-
agonal thrusts in Washerwomen and Horses,
the portraits of the Rouarts (cat. nos. 390,
391), and the Orsay At the Milliner's (cat.
no. 392) have the harsh reality of the human
spirit exposed.
1. Browse [1949], no. 235a, p. 411.
389.
Washerwomen and Horses
c. 1904
Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper with strip
added at bottom
33^8 X 42 Vs in. (84 X 107 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (333)
Lemoisne 141 8
Almost thirty years after having painted
Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town (fig. 336),
which he had exhibited at the Impressionist
exhibition of 1879, Degas drew another in
pastel, almost four times as large, in which
the laundresses are not "in town" but in a
stable yard with gigantic horses. Since the
horses are in all probability Percherons,
which were bred in Normandy not too
far from Menil-Hubert, Paul Valpingon's
chateau in Orne, a visit to the Valpin^ons in
1904 may have inspired the work.1 It is
quite clear that, though he was now draw-
ing in pastel on tracing paper, Degas had
not forgotten the earlier painting. Even
though the laundress at the left stretches out
her left arm, and the position of the woman
at the right is reversed and her body laps
over the other, reminders of the earlier
Fig. 336. Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town
(L410), c. 1876-78. Oil on canvas, i8y8X24in.
(46 X 61 cm). London art market
painting survive. Admittedly, the laundresses
have grown taller, leaner, and older, and
they are more harshly drawn. Between the
painting of the seventies and the pastel, Degas
made drawings of the laundress on the left
(L960, L961) — perhaps, as Lemoisne sug-
gests, about 1888-92 — which give a sense
of physical charm that is absent in either the
early painting or this vigorous late pastel.
The relationship of the two women to the
horses in this work is curious. In one way,
they are threatened by them. In another,
they seem to be characters in an operatic sit-
uation that does not have much sense of re-
ality. Richard Thomson sees it differently:
"The horses help set the figures in an en-
closed, yet still relief-like, metropolitan
space, and act as a metaphor for the labor-
ing laundresses."2
1. See Degas Letters 1947, no. 256, p. 220, to Hor-
tense Valpincon, 3 August 1904. On the other
hand, if the pastel was the Laundresses shown in
Manchester in 1907-08, it may be dated, as the
catalogue indicated, 1902.
2. 1987 Manchester, pp. 103-05.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 182,
for Fr 5,000); with Paul Rosenberg, Paris; M. Snay-
ers, Brussels (sale, 4 May 1925, no. 45, repr.); Dr.
A. Widmer, Valmont-Territet; his bequest to the
museum.
exhibitions: (?) 1907-08 Manchester, no. 173 (as
1902); 1951-52 Bern, no. 69; 1952 Amsterdam, no.
56; 1967, Geneva, Musee de l'Athenee, De Cezanne a
Picasso; 1984 Tubingen, no. 218, repr. (color) p. 97;
1984-85 Paris, no. 16 p. 126, fig. 100 (color) p. 119;
1987 Manchester, pp. 103, 105, fig. 135 p. 104.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1418 (as c. 1902); Browse [1949], no. 235a, p. 411;
Cooper 1952, pp. 14, 26, no. 31, repr. (color); Janis
1967, pt. I, p. 22 n. 14; Rene Berger, Promenade au
Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Lausanne:
Credit Suisse et Rene Berger, 1970, p. 40, repr. p. 41;
Catalogue du Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne: Musee
Cantonal des Beaux- Arts, 197 1; Minervino 1974,
no. 1 192; Sutton 1986, pi. 287 (color) p. 303.
603
390.
Mme Alexis Rouart
c. 1905
Charcoal and pastel on cream-colored grained
paper
23V2X18 in. (59.7X45.7 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
The Saint Louis Art Museum
Exhibited in Ottawa and New York
Vente 111:303
Paul- Andre Lemoisne observed that the last
portraits Degas drew or painted were of Mme
Alexis Rouart and her children about 1904
or 1905. He also reported that his sitters had
sensed the artist's increasing disabilities and
frustrations.1 Certainly Degas's irritation
comes out in this drawing of Mme Alexis
Rouart alone. She was the daughter-in-law
of his great friend Henri and the wife of
Alexis, whom he had painted about ten
years earlier with his father (cat. no. 336).
An undated letter to Alexis Rouart shows
his affection for the younger man.2 Earlier,
he had written of Alexis's wife with a sug-
gestion of affectionate camaraderie.3 The ir-
ritation revealed in the drawing was certain-
ly directed more at himself than at Mme
Rouart. And the reduction of her eyes to
slits was clearly more autobiographical than
descriptive.
In spite of certain shortcomings, this draw-
ing is exceedingly expressive. Mme Rouart's
impatience is indicated by the energetic thrusts
and counterthrusts of her angular body in
the relentlessly curving chair. With a little
pastel in the hair, Degas ornamented the
drawing and reduced its violence.
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 163.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, CCXX, pp. 225-26; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 239 p. 211.
3. See letter in Chronology IV, 1 December 1897.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente III, 1919, no. 303);
bought at that sale by Durand-Ruel, Paris, for Fr 360
(stock no. 1 1496); with Nierendorf Galleries, New
York; Col. Samuel A. Berger, New York (sale, Sothe-
by Parke Bernet, New ^rk, 27 April 1972, no. 55);
Greenberg Gallery of Contemporary Art, Saint Louis;
bought by the museum 1979.
exhibitions: 1967 Saint Louis, no. 144, repr. p. 216.
SELECTED REFERENCES: BoggS 1962, pi. I45.
391.
Mme Alexis Rouart and
Her Children
c. 1905
Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper
63 X 55V2 in. (160 X 141 cm)
Vente stamp lower left; atelier stamp on verso
Musee du Petit Palais, Paris (PPD3021)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 1450
In describing the circumstances surrounding
the portraits Degas made of Mme Alexis
Rouart and her children, Lemoisne admitted
that, in spite of the strangeness of the draw-
ing, Degas was still a consummate colorist.1
And indeed, this very large pastel is enchant-
ing in color, its harmonious pinks, yellows,
violets, and greens a happy contradiction of
the emotions revealed in the drawing.
The features and hair of Mme Rouart are
more conventional and more serene than in
the Saint Louis drawing of her alone (cat.
no. 390), but the thrust of her body conveys
a suggestion of impatience. She leans toward
her small son, who seems to be seeking
comfort from her. In contrast, her daughter,
with shapeless clothes, long, untamed hair,
and an eldritch face, twists on her chair so
that she turns her back on her mother. Mme
Rouart's desperation may be suggested by
her straw hat lying on the grass.
To understand Degas' s own feelings
about Mme Rouart and her children, we are
dependent on one undated letter to Alexis
Rouart. Degas obviously enjoyed Madeline,
the daughter, about whom he wrote: "That
Madeline, I could spend whole days talking
to her; what an individual she is."2 Indeed,
Lemoisne published a photograph of Degas
and the Rouart children at their country
house at La Queue-en-Brie with one of them,
presumably Madeline, at its axis, propped
beside the painter.3 That Degas was not un-
aware of a strain between mother and daugh-
ter may be revealed in his final sentence in
the letter to Alexis: "Regards to the poor little
woman, mother of Madeline, and also to
Madeline's father." Although he had often
found tensions in his portraits of the Rouarts,
of whom he had once written to the elder
Alexis Rouart (Henri's brother), "You are
my family,"4 in earlier times he might not
have expressed them as openly.
Charles W. Millard sees a relationship
between this work and Degas's relief The
Apple Pickers (cat. no. 231). 5 There are cer-
tain similarities, but the drawings, at least
for the relief, suggest the possibility of unin-
hibited happiness, which his earlier work
could exhibit but his later work did not admit.6
390
604
6os
1. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, p. 163.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, CCXX, pp. 225-26; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 239, p. 211 (translation revised).
3. Lemoisne [1946-49], I, before p. 223.
4. Lettres Degas 1945, CCXXXVII, p. 238; Degas
Letters 1947, no. 262, p. 223, 27 December 1904
(translation revised).
5. Millard 1976, p. 16 n. 57, fig. 45.
6. Reffi976, figs. 164-69, pp. 251-53.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 1918, no. 159);
bought at that sale by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, for
Fr 10,000; gift of M. Galea for the heirs of Ambroise
Vollard 1950.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 1450 (as c. 1905); Boggs 1962, pp. 77-78, 125,
pi. 144; Minervino 1974, no. 1197; Millard 1976,
p. 16 n. 57, fig. 45; Catalogue sommaire illustre des pas-
tels (by M.-C. Boucher, with Daniel Imbert), Paris:
Musee du Petit Palais, 1983, no. 34, repr. (color).
392.
At the Milliner's
c. 1905-10
Pastel on three joined sheets of tracing paper
$$Va X 29l/2 in. (91 X 75 cm)
Vente stamp lower left
Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF37073)
Exhibited in Paris
Lemoisne 13 18
At the Milliner's in the Musee d'Orsay was
not the only scene of milliners that Degas
made late in his life. There is a painting in
the Emile Roche collection of two milliners
with a feather and a hat between them (L13 15),
as well as a pastel (L1316) and at least three
drawings (L1317, L1319, and 111:8 5. 3).1In
none is there a customer, and the two mil-
liners in aprons are either featureless or
seemingly caricatured, though there is a
graceful rhythm binding the figures together.
This pastel seems to have the same char-
acters, though a distinction is made between
the milliner who works on the hat and the
standing figure in the apron. The milliner is
more intent here than in the other works,
and the standing figure seems to play a more
subordinate role, like the maidservants in
many of Degas' s scenes of bathers. Another
difference is that the two figures are seen
across a table with a hatstand and certain or-
naments. In some respects, the vertically of
the composition (achieved in the pastel by
additional pieces of paper) and the discovery
of the milliner behind the hats remind us of
another pastel, At the Milliner's (fig. 179),
which Degas dated 1882 and which was in
the collection of Mme Mellet-Lanvin. How-
ever, the later work is more raw in color,
more two-dimensional, and without the
same coquetry.
The Orsay pastel has been so flattened
into decorative areas of color — such as the
orange ornament in the foreground, the in-
tense blue feathers on the hat, and the red
waist on the figure at the right — that it sug-
gests an Art Nouveau poster, like the fa-
mous one Pierre Bonnard made for La
Revue Blanche in 1894. It is almost as if De-
gas had crushed his pastels into the paper to
achieve both the flatness and the intensity of
color.
The vibrancy of the blue against the softer
oranges and yellows jars enough that we are
not lulled into thinking of this as a decora-
tive pastel. For those who are sociologically
inclined, it could represent at least two levels
of servitude — the maid to the milliner and
the milliner to her customers, represented
by the hats — and even by implication a
third, the adornment of women to serve
men or society. And yet if this is what De-
gas intended, it could have been part of a
social chain of being, a natural law from
which he saw no escape. But the elements
of revolution are here.
The ingredients of this pastel are not ren-
dered with the clarity, distinctness, and
charm of an earlier pastel that he had dated
1882, The Little Milliners (fig. 207), now in
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kan-
sas City. Looking at the hands of the milli-
ner in the later work, we could not imagine
Degas telling Mme Straus — the great Paris
beauty, famous for her salons — that he liked
to go with her when she went to her tailor's
for fittings because of "the red hands of the
little girl who holds the pins."2
The milliner's hands in the Orsay pastel
are not articulated in the same loving way as
were the young women's hands in the Kan-
sas City work. Indeed, all the forms are
somewhat indistinct and seem about to
transform themselves into other shapes,
though the metamorphosis is never fully re-
alized. The milliner may suggest a crow —
but she is much more a woman. Although
she is a woman, and even a woman with a
suggestion of turn-of-the century elegance
with her silhouette of leg-of-mutton sleeves,
she is quite without the affectations of the
two milliners from the eighties. Her body
has been reduced to an image of thrusts of
desperate energy, her gentle profile is mocked
by the flamboyant hat, and the blue feather
held out by the maidservant seems a chal-
lenge she consciously ignores. With deter-
mination she concentrates on the hat — an
illustration of individual will which Degas
had always admired, and admired even here
where it appears taunted and suppressed.
It has often been considered — quite un-
reasonably, and inaccurately — that Degas
was a misogynist, even though he did, for
example, encourage the talents of women
artists, including Mary Cassatt, Berthe Mo-
risot, and Suzanne Valadon.3 Even Mary
Cassatt, in 19 14, commented ironically on
Louisine Havemeyer's idea of having an ex-
hibition of the work of Degas "in favor of
the suffrage. It is 'piquant' considering De-
gas's opinions."4 In his later years, Degas
was frequently closer to contemporary is-
sues than was generally supposed. And in
his stand on the Dreyfus Affair, that black
mark in his personal life, he at least never
pretended it was not an issue in France. Here,
in At the Milliner's, he produced an image —
probably unconsciously — that could have
been used as a poster for Cassatt *s and Mrs.
Havemeyer's political cause. Although the
woman in black could represent oppressed
but productive energy, the maidservant on
the right offers her the blue feather, provok-
ing her to thought or action while at the
same time providing, in the tradition of her
predecessors in the poignant London and
Oslo paintings (cat. nos. 344, 345), a strong
sense of stable, sisterly support.
1. Apparently based on Lino, which has the appear-
ance of being an earlier work.
2. Lettres Degas 1945, CXVII n. 1, p. 147; Degas
Letters 1947, "Annotations," no. 129, p. 267.
3. Broude 1977.
4. Unpublished letter to Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 15
February 19 14, Archives, The Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York, C96.
provenance: Atelier Degas (Vente I, 19 18, no. 153,
for Fr 13,000); Comte de Beaumont, Paris; thence by
descent (sale, Christie's, London, 6 December 1977,
no. 18, repr. [color]); bought by the museum from
Comtesse Eliane de Beaumont 1979.
selected references: Lemoisne [1946-49], III,
no. 13 18; Minervino 1974, no. 11 87 (as c. 1898);
"Les recentes acquisitions des musees nationaux," La
Revue du Louvre et des Musees de France, XXIX:4,
1979, p. 3 15, fig. 9; Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pas-
tels, 1985, no. 86, pp. 88, 90, repr. p. 89.
606
A Note on Degas 's Bronzes
GARY TINTEROW
Published by Royal Cortissoz in "Degas as He
Was Seen by His Model," New York Herald,
19 October 1919, section IV, p. 9.
Rewald 1986, pp. 150-51.
See John Rewald's account of the appearance of
the modeles in Rewald 1986, pp. 152-56, an arti-
cle originally written for the catalogue of the first
exhibition of the modeles at the Lefevre Gallery,
London, in 1976.
Paul Gsell first published some of these photo-
graphs, now in the Durand-Ruel archives, in 19 18.
He reproduced seven original waxes and two
plaster casts (Paul Gsell, "Edgar Degas, Statuaire,"
La Renaissance de VArt Francais et des Industries de
Luxe, December 1918, pp. 373-78). Patricia Fail-
ing has recently published two of these docu-
mentary photographs in "Cast in Bronze: The
Degas Dilemma," Art News, January 1988,
pp. 136-41.
See Jean Adhemar's interview with Palazzolo,
"Before the Degas Bronzes" (translation by Mar-
garet Scolari), Art News, 54, no. 7, November
1955, pp. 34-35, 70. See also Charles Millard's
analysis of the history of the manufacture of the
bronzes, "Exhibition, Casting and Technique,"
in Millard 1976, pp. 27-39.
There are many accounts of Degas's railing against
the conferring of medals on artists or friends.
One of the most amusing is recounted by the
model Pauline, in Michel 1919, p. 624.
Lettres Degas 1945, CI, p. 127; Degas Letters
1947, no. 112, p. 125.
The bronzes included in this exhibition, like those widely distributed throughout the
world, are posthumous, second-generation casts of the original wax sculptures by Degas.
In a letter of 7 June 19 19 to Royal Cortissoz, the art critic of the New York Tribune , Joseph
Durand-Ruel stated that when he made the inventory of the contents of Degas's studio,
he found "about one hundred fifty pieces [of sculpture] scattered over his three floors. . . .
Most of them were in pieces, some reduced to dust. We put apart those that we thought
might be seen, which was about one hundred, and we made an inventory of them. Out
of these, thirty are about valueless; thirty badly broken up and very sketchy; the re-
maining thirty quite fine. . . . They have all been entrusted to the care of the sculptor,
Bartholome, who was an intimate friend of Degas, and in the near future, work will be
started by the founder, Hebrard, who will reproduce them in cire perdue."*
According to John Rewald, work had begun at Hebrard's by the end of 1919.2 In all,
seventy-two sculptures were cast in bronze in time for an exhibition at Hebrard's gallery
in 1921. The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (cat. no. 227), Degas's largest surviving sculp-
ture, seems to have been cast in an unnumbered edition of at least twenty-five examples
in the 1920s — that is, after the smaller sculptures; The Schoolgirl, the seventy-fourth,
was not cast until the 1950s. After considerable repair to the surviving statuettes, molds
were made from these original sculptures — fragile plasteline, wax, and cork amalgams
supported by amateurish armatures — and from these molds, a set of "master bronzes"
or modeles was fabricated through the lost- wax process. Afterward, editions of at least
twenty-two bronze casts were made of each statuette from molds taken from the modeles.
Those intended for sale were marked with a letter from A through T; examples reserved
for the artist's family were marked HERD, and examples reserved for the foundry
were marked either HER or HERD. Outside of the group marked A through T, only
two additional casts of each statuette were to be made.
By means of the two-step system involving the creation of intermediary bronze modeles,
the original waxes were preserved. (These were sold by Hebrard in 1955, having been
out of view since 192 1, and acquired by Paul Mellon, who gave several to the Musee du
Louvre [cat. nos. 80, 290, 322, 372]. The bronze modeles were sold by Hebrard in 1976
and acquired by Norton Simon. From time to time, other modeles, marked FR MODELE,
have appeared.)3 But the virtue of saving the original sculptures exacted a cost in the
manufacture of the final edition of bronzes, because with each of the two generations
after the original model there was inevitably a significant loss of precision. Incidental
details, such as fingerprints, threads, and wires of the ad-hoc armatures — reproduced
with surprising fidelity in the modeles — appear indistinct or blurred in the final edition
of the bronzes. Even the modeles lack much of the liveliness still evident today in the
original waxes, and the original waxes now differ in some respects from photographs
taken of them between 1917 and 1919.4
Despite the difficulties attending the casting of such fragile originals, Hebrard's work
was widely acclaimed when the pieces were first exhibited in Paris in 192 1. This was
largely due to the skill of the caster, Albino Palazzolo, and to the supervision of Degas's
friend Albert Bartholome. So remarkable was the result that Palazzolo, who had known
Degas and had given him advice on his armatures, was awarded the Legion of Honor.5
Degas would no doubt have scoffed at the medal, for he detested such worldly honors.6
He would also have deplored the casting of his sculptures. He toyed with the idea of
having them cast more than once in the late 18 80s and the 1890s, and could have arranged
to do so at any time; in one letter, he referred to Bartholome as his possible fondeur
(caster).7 Of all his sculptures, he exhibited only one, after hesitating for a year: The
609
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, which he showed at the 1881 Impressionist exhibition.
In the end, he had allowed only three works to be cast — in plaster — sometime around
1900: Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (RXLV), Spanish Dance (RXLVII), and
Woman Rubbing Her Back with a Sponge, Torso (RLI).8 Sensitive and intelligent observers,
such as Mary Cassatt, were opposed to the posthumous casting. In an unpublished let-
ter to Louisine Havemeyer, Cassatt wrote that she had received a letter "from Mile Fevre,
Degas 's niece, with the account of how their [the family's] hands were forced by the
press [to have them cast], under the instigation of a sculptor friend of Degas [Bartholome]
who needs to wrap himself in Degas's genius, not having any of his own."9
What Degas seems to have valued most in his waxes was their mutability. Many visi-
tors to his studio, models, and friends describe him constantly at work on them in his
late years.10 And it was probably because of his reluctance to finish the sculptures — in
tandem with the lack of motive to exhibit them — that he continually refused to commit
them to bronze. Vollard recounted that Degas once threatened to finish a statuette of a
dancer that was in its twentieth transformation: "This time I have it. One or two more
sittings and Hebrard [his founder] can come.' The next day I [Vollard] found the dancer
once again returned to the state of a ball of wax. Faced with my astonishment [Degas
said]: 'You think above all of what it was worth, Vollard, but if you had given me a hatful
of diamonds my happiness would not have equalled that which I derived from demol-
ishing [the figure] for the pleasure of starting over.'"11
8. Millard 1976, p. 30.
9. Letter of 9 May 1918, on deposit in the archives
of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
10. See Thiebault-Sisson 192 1; reprinted in English
as "Degas on Sculpture" in 1984-85 Paris,
pp. 177-82.
11. Vollard 1924, pp. 1 12-13; translation by Charles
Millard (Millard 1976, p. 36).
6lO
Key to Abbreviations
Exhibitions
1874 Paris
1876 London
1876 Paris
1877 Paris
1879 Paris
1880 Paris
1881 Paris
1886 New York
1886 Paris
1898 London
1905 London
1907-08 Manchester
191 1 Cambridge,
Mass.
19 1 5 New York
191 8 Paris
192 1 Paris
1922 New York
1923-25 New York
1924 Paris
1925-27 New York
3 5 boulevard des Capucines, Societe Anonyme des
Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc., 15 April-
15 May, Premiere exposition.
Deschamps Gallery, 168 New Bond Street, Spring,
Twelfth Exhibition of Pictures by Modem French Artists.
11 rue Le Peletier, Societe Anonyme des Artistes
Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. , April, ze exposi-
tion de peinture.
6 rue Le Peletier, April, $e exposition de peinture.
28 avenue de l'Opera, 10 April-i 1 May, 4me exposition
de peinture.
10 rue des Pyramides, 1-30 April, $me exposition de
peinture.
35 boulevard des Capucines, 2 April- 1 May, 6me
exposition de peinture.
American Art Association, 10-28 April, and National
Academy of Design, 25 May- Special Exhibition: Works
in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris.
1 rue Laffxtte, 15 May-15 June, 8me exposition de
peinture.
Prince's Skating Ring, The International Society of
Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, 26 April-22 Septem-
ber, Exhibition of International Art.
Grafton Galleries, January-February, Pictures by Boudin,
Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir,
Sisley (exhibition organized by Durand-Ruel, Paris).
Manchester City Art Gallery, Winter, Modern French
Paintings.
Fogg Art Museum, 5-14 April, A Loan Exhibition of
Paintings and Pastels by H. G. E. Degas.
M. Knoedler and Co., 6-24 April, Loan Exhibi-
tion of Masterpieces by Old and Modern Painters.
Petit Palais, 1 May- 30 June, Expositions exceptionnelles:
hommage de la "Nationale" a quatre de ses presidents decides.
Galerie A.-A. Hebrard, May-June, Exposition des sculp-
tures de Degas.
The Grolier Club, 26 January-28 February, Prints,
Drawings, and Bronzes: by Degas.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 1923-
January 1925, Sculptures by Degas, 12 works (no
catalogue).
Galeries Georges Petit, 12 April-2 May, Exposition
Degas (introduction by Daniel Halevy).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 1925-
December 1927, Degas Bronzes (no catalogue).
1929 Cambridge,
Mass.
1930 New "Vbrk
193 1 Cambridge,
Mass.
193 1 Paris,
Orangerie
193 1 Paris,
Rosenberg
1932 London
1933 Chicago
1933 Northampton
1933 Paris
1933 Paris,
Orangerie
1934 New York
1935 Boston
1936 Philadelphia
1936 Venice
1937 New York
1937 Paris,
Orangerie
1937 Paris,
Palais National
1938 New York
1939-40
Buenos Aires
1939 Paris
Fogg Art Museum, 6 March-6 April, Exhibition of
French Paintings of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10 March-
2 November, The H. O. Havemeyer Collection.
Fogg Art Museum, 9-30 May, Degas.
Musee de l'Orangerie, 19 July-i October, Degas: por-
traitiste, sculpteur (preface by Paul Jamot).
Galerie Paul Rosenberg, 18 May-27 June, Grands mattres
du XIXe sihle.
Royal Academy of Arts, 4january-5 March, Exhibition
of French Art, 1200-1900 (commemorative catalogue,
Oxford: Oxford University Press /London: Humphrey
Milford, 1933).
The Art Institute of Chicago, 1 June-i November, A
Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture.
Smith College Museum of Art, 28 November-18 Decem-
ber, Edgar Degas: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Sculpture.
Musee des Arts Decoratifs, April-July, Le decor de la
vie sous la Hie Ripublique.
Musee de l'Orangerie, Les achats du Musee du Louvre et
les dons de la Societe des Amis du Louvre 1922-1932.
Marie Harriman Gallery, 5 November- 1 December,
Degas.
Museum of Fine Arts, 15 March-28 April, Independent
Painters of Nineteenth-Century Paris.
The Pennsylvania Museum of Art [now Philadelphia
Museum of Art], 7 November-7 December, Degas:
1834-1917 (organized by Henry Mcllhenny; prefatory
note by Paul J. Sachs; introduction by Agnes Mongan).
Padiglione della Francia, XXa Esposizione Biennale
Internazionale d'Arte, 1 June-3 September, Mostra
retrospettiva di Edgar Degas (1834-1917).
Durand-Ruel Galleries, 22 March-10 April, Exhibition
of Masterpieces by Degas.
Musee de l'Orangerie, 1 March-20 May, Degas (cata-
logue by Jacqueline Bouchot-Saupique and Marie
Delaroche-Vernet; preface by Paul Jamot).
Palais National des Arts, Summer and Fall, Chefs-d'oeuvre
de Vartfrancais.
Wildenstein & Co., Inc., 1-29 March, Great Portraits from
Impressionism to Modernism.
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, July- August 1939/
Montevideo, Salon Nacional de Bellas Artes, April 1940,
La pintura jrancesa, de David a nuestros dias, 2 vols.
Galerie Andre Weil, 9-30 June, Degas: peintre du mouve-
ment (preface by Claude Roger-Marx).
6ll
1940-4 1 San Francisco
194 1 New York
1947 Cleveland
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, December 1940-
January 194 1, The Painting of France: Since the French
Revolution.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6 February-26 March,
French Painting from David to Toulouse-Lautrec (preface by
Harry B. Wehle).
Cleveland Museum of Art, 5 February-9 March, Works
by Edgar Degas (introduction by Henry Sayles Francis).
1947 Washington, D.C. Phillips Memorial Gallery, 30 March-30 April, Loan
Exhibition of Drawings and Pastels by Edgar Degas, 1834-
1917.
1948 Copenhagen
1948 Minneapolis
1949 New York
1949 Paris
1950- 51 Philadelphia
1951- 52 Bern
1952 Amsterdam
1952 Edinburgh
1952-53
Washington, D.C.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 4-26 September/ Stockholm,
Galerie Blanche, 9 October-7 November, Edgar Degas
1834-1917 (by Haavard Rostrup).
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 6-28 March, Degas's
Portraits of His Family and Friends (unnumbered checklist).
Wildenstein & Co., Inc., 7 April-14 May, A Loan Exhi-
bition of Degas for the Benefit of the New York Infirmary
(text by Daniel Wildenstein).
Musee de l'Orangerie, May-June, Pastels francais des col-
lections nationales et du Musee La Tour de Saint-Quentin.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 4 November 1950-11 Feb-
ruary 195 1, Diamond Jubilee Exhibition: Masterpieces of
Painting.
Kunstmuseum Bern, 25 November 195 1-1 3 January 1952,
Degas (catalogue by Fritz Schmalenbach).
Stedelijk Museum, 8 February-24 March, Edgar Degas.
Edinburgh Festival Society and Royal Scottish Acad-
emy, 17 August-6 September/London, Tate Gallery,
20 September-19 October, Degas (introduction and
notes by Derek Hill).
National Gallery of Art/The Cleveland Museum of
Art, 9 December 1952-11 January 1953/Saint Louis,
City Art Museum /Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Mu-
seum, 23 February-8 March /New York, The Metro-
politan Museum of Art, 20 March-19 April, French
Drawings: Masterpieces from Five Centuries.
1953-54 New Orleans Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, 17 October 1953-10 Jan-
uary 1954, Masterpieces of French Painting through Five
Centuries 1400-1900.
1954 Detroit
1955 New York
1955 Paris, GBA
1955 Paris,
Orangerie
1955 San Antonio
1955-56 Chicago
The Detroit Institute of Arts, 24 September-6 Novem-
ber, The Two Sides of the Medal: French Painting from
Gerome to Gauguin (by Paul Grigaut).
M. Knoedler & Company, Inc. , 9 November-3 Decem-
ber, Edgar Degas: Original Wax Sculptures (foreword by
John Rewald).
Gazette des Beaux- Arts, opened 8 June, Degas: dans les
collections francaises (catalogue by Daniel Wildenstein).
Musee de l'Orangerie, 20 April-3 July, De David a
Toulouse-Lautrec: chefs-d'oeuvres des collections americaines,
Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, 16 October-
13 November, Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture
by Edgar Degas.
The Art Institute of Chicago, 13 October-27 Novem-
ber 195 5 /The Minneapolis Institute of Arts/The Detroit
Institute of Arts, 11 January-n February 1956/San
Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor,
7 March-10 April, French Drawings: Masterpieces from
Seven Centuries.
1956 Paris
1957 Paris
1958 London
1958 Los Angeles
1958-59 Rotterdam
1959 Williamstown
1959-60 Rome
1960 New York
i960 Paris
1962 Baltimore
1964 Paris
1964-65 Munich
1965 New Orleans
1965-67 Cambridge,
Mass.
1967 Saint Louis
1967-68 Paris
1967-68 Paris,
Jeu de Paume
1968 Cambridge,
Mass.
1968 New York
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, 1 1 July-3 Oc-
tober, Pastels du XIXe siecle (no catalogue).
Musee Jacquemart- Andre, May-June, Le second empire
de Winterhalter d Renoir.
The Lefevre Gallery, April-May, Degas Monotypes, Draw-
ings, Pastels, Bronzes (foreword by Douglas Cooper).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March, Edgar
Hilaire Germain Degas (by Jem Sutherland Boggs).
Boymans Museum, 31 July-28 September 1958 /Paris,
Musee de l'Orangerie, 1958-59/New York, The Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art, 3 February-15 March, French
Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse
(published in Rotterdam as Van Clouet tot Matisse, ten-
toonstelling van Franse tekeningen uit Amerikaanse collecties,
and in Paris as De Clouet a Matisse: dessins francais des
collections americaines).
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, opened 3 Oc-
tober 1959, Degas.
Palazzo di Venezia, 18 December 1959-14 February
1960/Milan, Palazzo Reale, March-April, // disegno
francese da Fouquet a Toulouse-Lautrec (edited by Jacque-
line Bouchot-Saupique; catalogue by liana Toesca).
Wildenstein & Co. , Inc. , 7 April-7 May, Degas (fore-
word by Kermit Lansner; introduction by Daniel
Wildenstein).
Galerie Durand-Ruel, 9june-i October, Edgar Degas
1 834-1917 (introduction by Agathe Rouart- Valery) .
The Baltimore Museum of Art, 18 April-3 June, Paint-
ings, Drawings, and Graphic Works by Manet, Degas,
Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt (catalogue by Lincoln
Johnson).
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, Dessins de
sculpteurs de Pajou a Rodin (entries on drawings by Lise
Duclaux, entries on sculptures by Michele Beaulieu
and Franchise Baron).
Haus der Kunst, 7 October 1964-6 January 1965, Fran-
zosische Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts von David bis Cezanne
(preface by Germain Bazin).
Isaac Delgado Museum, 2 May-16 June, Edgar Degas:
His Family and Friends in New Orleans (articles by John
Rewald, James B. Byrnes, and Jean Sutherland Boggs).
Fogg Art Museum, 15 November 1965-15 January
1966 /New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 19 De-
cember 1966-26 February 1967, Memorial Exhibition:
Works of Art from the Collection of Paul J. Sachs (catalogue
by Agnes Mongan).
City Art Museum of Saint Louis, 20 January-26 Feb-
niary/Philadelphia Museum of Art, 10 March-30 April/
The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, 18 May-25 June,
Drawings by Degas (by Jean Sutherland Boggs).
Musee de l'Orangerie, 16 December 1967-March 1968,
Vingt ans d'acquisitions au Musee du Louvre 1947-1967.
Musee du Jeu de Paume, Spring, Autour de trois tableaux
majeurs par Degas (no catalogue).
Fogg Art Museum, 25 April-14 June, Degas Mono-
types (by Eugenia Parry Janis). Cited as 1968 Cambridge,
Mass. for works in the exhibition. Cited as Janis 1968
for the checklist; see under Selected References.
Wildenstein & Co., Inc., 21 March-27 April, Degas'
Racing World (by Ronald Pickvance).
6l2
1968 Richmond
1969 Nottingham
1969 Paris
1970 Williamstown
1970-71 Leningrad
197 1 Madrid
1973- 74 Paris
1974 Boston
1974 Dallas
1974 Paris
1974- 75 Paris
1975 New Orleans
1975 Paris
1976 London
1976-77 Tokyo
1977 New York
1978 New York
1978 Paris
1978 Richmond
1979 Bayonne
1979 Edinburgh
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 23 May-9 July, Degas.
Nottingham University Art Gallery, 15 January-15 Feb-
ruary, Degas: Pastels and Drawings (by Ronald Pickvance).
Musee de FOrangerie, 27 June-15 September, Degas:
oeuures du Musee du Louvre (preface by Helene
Adhemar).
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 8 January-
22 February, Edgar Degas (introduction by William
Ittmann, Jr.).
The Hermitage Museum, 1 December 1970-10 January
197 1 /Moscow, Pushkin Fine Art Museum, 25 January -
1 March, Les impressionnistes frangais.
Museo Espanol de Arte Contemporaneo, April, Los
impresionistas franceses.
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, 25 October
1973-7 January 1974, Dessins frangais du Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, de David a Picasso.
Museum of Fine Arts, 20 June-i September, Edgar
Degas: The Reluctant Impressionist (by Barbara S. Shapiro).
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 6 February-24 March,
The Degas Bronzes (text by Charles Millard).
Bibliotheque Nationale, October 1974-January 1975,
Uestampe impressionniste (catalogue by Michel Melot).
Grand Palais, 21 September-24 November, Centen-
aire de I'impressionnisme/New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 12 December 1974-10 February 1975,
Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition (preface by Jean
Chatelain and Thomas Hoving; foreword by Helene
Adhemar and Anthony M. Clark; introduction by Rene
Huyghe; catalogue by Anne Dayez, Michel Hoog, and
Charles S. Moffett).
New Orleans Museum of Art, 12 June-15 July, Sculp-
ture by Edgar Degas (no catalogue).
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre, June- September,
Pastels du XIXe siecle (no catalogue).
The Lefevre Gallery, 18 November-21 December, The
Complete Sculptures of Degas (introduction by John
Rewald).
Seibu Museum of Art, 23 September-3 November/
Kyoto City Art Museum, 7 November-10 December/
Fukuoka Art Museum, 18 December 1976-16 January
r977, Degas (introduction and catalogue by Francois
Daulte; articles by Denys Sutton, Antoine Terrasse,
Pierre Cabanne, and Shuji Takashina).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26 February-4 Sep-
tember, Degas in the Metropolitan (checklist by Charles
S. Moffett).
Acquavella Galleries, Inc. , 1 November-3 December,
Edgar Degas (introduction by Theodore Reff).
Musee du Louvre, Donation Picasso (entries on Degas
by Genevieve Monnier, Arlette Serullaz, and Maurice
Serullaz).
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 23 May-9 July, Degas.
Musee Bonnat, October-December, Dessins frangais
du Musee du Louvre d'Ingres a Vuillard.
National Gallery of Scotland for the Edinburgh Inter-
national Festival, 13 August-30 September, Degas iSjg
(catalogue by Ronald Pickvance).
1979 Northampton
1979-80 Ottawa
1980 Paris
1980-81 New York
198 1 San Jose
1983 London
1983 Ordrupgaard
1984 Chicago
1984 Tubingen
1984-85 Boston
1984-85 Paris
1984-85 Rome
1984-85
Washington, D.C.
1985 London
1985 Paris
Smith College Museum of Art, 5 April-27 May, Degas
and the Dance (by Linda D. Muehlig).
National Gallery of Canada, 6July-2 September/St.
Catharines, Ont., Rodman Hall Art Centre, 1-30 No-
vember/Surrey, B.C., Surrey Art Gallery, 15 December
1979-15 January 1980/Regina, Sask., Mackenzie Art
Gallery, 1-28 February /Charlottetown, P.E.L, Con-
federation Centre Art Gallery, Prints of the Impressionists
(no catalogue; organized by Brian B. Stewart).
Musee Marmottan, 6 February- 20 April [extended to
28 April], Degas: la famille Bellelli (introduction by
Yves Brayer).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 16 October-7 De-
cember 1980/Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 24 January/
22 March 198 1, The Painterly Print: Monotypes from the
Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (essays by Eugenia
Parry Janis, Barbara Stern Shapiro, Colta Ives, and
Michael Mazur; catalogue by Barbara Stern Shapiro).
San Jose Museum of Art, 15 October-15 December,
Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas (essay by Nancy Mowll
Mathews).
Artemis Group (David Carritt Limited), 2 November-
9 December, Edgar Degas: 1834-1917 (introduction by
Ronald Pickvance).
Ordrupgaardsamlingen, Copenhagen, 11 May-24july,
Degas et la famille Bellelli (catalogue by Hanne Finson;
introduction by Jean Sutherland Boggs) .
The Art Institute of Chicago, 19 July-23 September,
Degas in the Art Institute of Chicago (introductions and
catalogue by Richard R. Brettell and Suzanne Folds
McCullagh).
Kunsthalle Tubingen, i4january-25 March/Berlin,
Nationalgalerie, 5 April-20 May, Edgar Degas: Pastelle,
Olskizzen, Zeichnungen (by Gotz Adriani). English edi-
tion, Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings, New York:
Abbeville Press, 1985.
Museum of Fine Arts, 14 November 1984-13 January
198 5 /Philadelphia Museum of Art, 17 February-14 April/
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gal-
lery, 15 May-7 July, Edgar Degas: The Painter as Print-
maker (selection and catalogue by Sue Welsh Reed and
Barbara Stern Shapiro; contributions by Clifford S.
Ackley and Roy L. Parkinson; essay by Douglas Druick
and Peter Zegers). Also cited as Reed and Shapiro 1984-
85; see under Selected References.
Centre Culturel du Marais, 14 October 1984-27 January
1985, Degas: Form and Space (essays by Maurice Guil-
laud, Charles F. Stuckey, Thi6bault-Sisson, Theodore
Reff, Eugenia Parry Janis, David Chandler, and Shelley
Fletcher). French edition, Degas: le modeli et Vespace,
same publisher?
Villa Medici, 1 December 1984-10 February 1985, Degas
e V Italia (preface by Jean Leymarie; selection and cata-
logue by Henri Loyrette).
National Gallery of Art, 22 November 1984-10 March
1985, Degas: The Dancers (by George T. M. Shackelford).
Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery, 15 May-
7 July, Degas Monotypes (organized by Lynne Green;
foreword by R. B. Kitaj; catalogue by Anthony
Griffiths).
Cabinet des Dessins, Musee du Louvre (Orsay), Pastels
du XIXe siecle (catalogue by Genevieve Monnier). Also
cited as Paris, Louvre and Orsay, Pastels, 1985; see
under Selected References.
613
1985 Philadelphia Philadelphia Museum of Art, 17 February-14 April,
Degas in Philadelphia Collections (no catalogue).
1986 Florence Palazzo Strozzi, 16 April-i 5 June/ Verona, Palazzo di
Verona, 27 June-7 September, Degas scultore (essays by
Ettore Camesasca, Giorgio Cortenova, Therese Burollet,
Lob Relin, Lamberto Vitali, Giovanni Piazza, and Luigi
Rossi).
1986 Paris Grand Palais, 10 April-28 July, La sculpture franqaise au
XIXe Steele (edited by Anne Pingeot; entries on waxes
by France Drilhon and Sylvie Colinart).
1986 Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Art, i7january-6 April/The Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco, 19 April-6 July, The
New Painting: Impressionism 1 874-1 886 (by Charles S.
MofFett, with essays by Stephen F. Eisenman, Richard
Shiff, Paul Tucker, Hollis Clayson, Richard R. Brettell,
Ronald Pickvance, Charles S. MofFett, Fronia E. Wiss-
man, Joel Isaacson, and Martha Ward).
1987 Manchester
1987-88 New York
Whitworth Art Gallery, 20 January- 2 8 February /Cam-
bridge, Mass., Fitzwilliam Museum, 17 March-3 May,
The Private Degas (by Richard Thomson).
The Jewish Museum, 13 September 1987-15 January
1988, The Drey jus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice.
Selected References
Adam 1886 Paul Adam, "Peintres impressionnistes," La Revue Con-
temporaine Litteraire, Politique et Philosophique, 4 April 1886,
pp. 541-51-
Adhemar 1958 Cited as Paris, Louvre, Impressionnistes, 1958.
Adhemar 1974 Jean Adhemar and Francoise Cachin, Degas: The Com-
plete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes (translated by
Jane Brenton, foreword by John Rewald), New York:
Viking Press, 1974. French edition, Edgar Degas: gravures
et monotypes, Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques, 1973 .
Adriani 1984 Cited as 1984 Tubingen; see under Exhibitions.
Ajalbert 1886 Jean Ajalbert, "Le Salon des impressionnistes," La Revue
Moderne, Marseilles, 20 June 1886, pp. 385-93.
Alexandre 1908 Arsene Alexandre, "Collection de M. le Comte Isaac
de Camondo," Les Arts, 83, November 1908, pp. 22-
26, 29, 32.
Alexandre 19 12 Arsene Alexandre, "La collection Henri Rouart," Les
Arts, 132, December 1912, pp. 2-32.
Alexandre 1918 Arsene Alexandre, "Degas: graveur et lithographe,"
Les Arts, XVnji, 1918, pp. 11-19.
Alexandre 1929 Arsene Alexandre, "La collection Havemeyer: Edgar
Degas," La Renaissance de VArt Franqais et des Industries
de Luxe, XX: 10, October 1929, pp. 479-86.
Alexandre 1935 Arsene Alexandre, "Degas: nouveaux apercus," VArt
et les Artistes, XXIX: 154, February 1935, pp. 145-73.
Barazzetti 1936 S. Barazzetti, "Degas et ses amis Valpincon," Beaux-
Arts, 190, 21 August 1936, pp. 1, 3; 191, 28 August,
pp. 1, 4; 192, 4 September, pp. 1-2.
Bazin 193 1 Germain Bazin, "Degas: sculpteur," L' Amour de VArt,
12th year, VII, July 193 1, pp. 292-301.
Bazin 1958
Beaulieu 1969
Benedite 1894
Beraldi 1886
Blanche 19 19, 1927
Boggs 1955
Boggs 1958
Boggs 1962
Boggs 1963
Boggs 1964
Boggs 1967
Boggs 1985
Bouchot-Saupique
1930
Bouret 1965
Brame and Reff 1984
Brettell and
McCullagh 1984
Briere 1924
Broude 1977
Browse [1949]
Browse 1967
Buerger 1978
Buerger 1980
Burroughs 19 19
Germain Bazin, Tresors de Vimpressionnisme au Louvre,
Paris: Editions Aimery Somogy, 1958.
Michele Beaulieu, "Les sculptures de Degas: essai de
chronologie," La Revue du Louvre et des Musees de France,
19th year, 6, 1969, pp. 369-80.
Leonce Benedite, "La collection Caillebotte et l'ecole
impressionniste," L1 Artiste, VIII, August 1894, pp. 131-
32.
Henri Beraldi, Les graveurs du XIXe siecle, Paris:
Librairie L. Conquet, V, 1886, p. 153.
Jacques-Emile Blanche, Propos de peintre, I, De David
a Degas, Paris: Emile Paul Freres, 1st edition, 19 19.
9th edition, 1927.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Edgar Degas and the Bellellis,"
Art Bulletin, XXX VII:2, June 1955, pp. 127-36, figs. 1-17.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Degas Notebooks at the Bib-
liotheque Nationale, I, Group A, 185 3-1 8 5 8," Burlington
Magazine, O.662, May 1958, pp. 163-71; "II, Group B,
1858-1861," Q663, June 1958, pp. 196-205; "III, Group
C, 1863-1886," C.664, July 1958, pp. 240-46.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, Portraits by Degas, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1962.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Edgar Degas and Naples,"
Burlington Magazine, CV:723,June 1963, pp. 273-76,
figs. 30-37-
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Danseuses d la barre by Degas,"
The National Gallery of Canada Bulletin, II: 1, 1964,
pp. i-9-
Cited as 1967 Saint Louis; see under Exhibitions.
Jean Sutherland Boggs, "Degas at the Museum: Works
in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and John G. Johnson
Collection," Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin,
LXXXL346, 1985.
Cited as Paris, Louvre, Pastels, 1930.
Jean Bouret, Degas, Paris: Editions Aimery Somogy,
1965. English edition (translated by Daphne Wood-
ward), London: Thames and Hudson, 1965.
Philippe Brame and Theodore Reff, Degas et son oeuvre:
A Supplement, New York: Garland Press, 1984.
Cited as 1984 Chicago; see under Exhibitions.
Cited as Paris, Louvre, Peintures, 1924.
Norma Broude, "Degas's Misogyny," Art Bulletin,
LIX:i, March 1977, pp. 95-107.
Lillian Browse, Degas Dancers, London: Faber and Faber,
[1949].
Lillian Browse, "Degas's Grand Passion," Apollo,
LXXXV:6o, February 1967, pp. 104-14.
Janet F. Buerger, "Degas' Solarized and Negative Pho-
tographs: A Look at Unorthodox Classicism," Image,
XXI:2, June 1978, pp. 17-23.
Janet F. Buerger, "Another Note on Degas," Image,
XXIII: 1, June 1980, p. 6.
Bryson Burroughs, "Drawings by Degas," The Metropol-
itan Museum of Art Bulletin, XIV:5, May 1919, pp. 115-17.
614
Burroughs 1932
Burroughs 1963
Cabanne 1957
Cabanne 1973
Cachin 1974
Callen 1971
Cambridge, Fogg,
1940
Chevalier 1877
Claretie 1877
Claretie 188 1
Cooper 1952
Cooper 1954
Coquiot 1924
Crimp 1978
Crouzet 1964
Degas Letters 1947
Degas Sonnets 1946
Dell 1913
Delteil 19 19
Dunlop 1979
F. F. 192 1
Feneon 1886
Louise Burroughs, "Degas in the Havemeyer Collec-
tion," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XXVII: 5,
May 1932, pp. 141-46.
Louise Burroughs, "Degas Paints a Portrait," The Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XXI: 5, January 1963,
pp. 169-72.
Pierre Cabanne, Edgar Degas, Paris: Pierre Tisne, 1957.
Pierre Cabanne, "Degas chez Picasso," Connaissance
des Arts, 262, December 1973, pp. 146-51.
Jean Adhemar and Francoise Cachin, Degas: The Com-
plete Etchings, Lithographs and Monotypes (translated by
Jane Brenton, foreword by John Rewald), New York:
Viking Press, 1974. French edition, Edgar Degas: gra-
vures et monotypes, Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques,
I973-
Anthea Callen, "Jean-Baptiste Faure, 1830-19 14: A
Study of a Patron and Collector of the Impressionists
and Their Contemporaries," unpublished M. A. thesis,
University of Leicester, 197 1.
Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Drawings in
the Fogg Museum of Art (by Agnes Mongan and Paul
J. Sachs), 3 vols., Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1940.
Frederic Chevalier, "Les impressionnistes," L' Artiste,
1 May 1877.
Jules Claretie, "Le mouvement parisien: l'exposition
des impressionnistes," LTndependance Beige, 15 April
1877.
Jules Claretie, La vie a Paris: 188 1, Paris: Victor Havard,
1881.
Douglas Cooper, Pastels by Edgar Degas, Basel: Hol-
bein, 1952/New York: British Book Center, 1953.
Douglas Cooper, The Courtauld Collection, London:
University of London, Athlone Press, 1954.
Gustave Coquiot, Degas, Paris: Ollendorff, 1924.
Douglas Crimp, "Positive/Negative: A Note on Degas's
Photographs," October, 5, Summer 1978, pp. 89-100.
Marcel Crouzet, Un meconnu du realisme: Duranty (1833-
1880), Vhomme, le critique, le romancier, Paris: Librairie
Nizet, 1964.
Degas Letters (edited by Marcel Guerin, translated by
Marguerite Kay), Oxford: Cassirer, 1947. French edi-
tion cited as Lettres Degas 1945.
Huit Sonnets d'Edgar Degas (preface by Jean Nepveu-
Degas), Paris: La Jeune Parque, 1946.
R.E.D. [Robert E. Dell], "Art in France," Burlington
Magazine, XXII: 119, February 1913, pp. 295-98.
Loys Delteil, Edgar Degas, Le peintre-graveur illustre,
IX, Paris: privately printed, 19 19.
Ian Dunlop, Degas, New York: Harper, 1979.
¥. F., "Des peintres et leur modele," Le Bulletin de la
Vie Artistique, 2nd year, 9, 1 May 192 1.
Felix Feneon, "Les impressionnistes en 1886 (VHIe
exposition impressionniste)," La Vogue, 13 -20 June
1886, pp. 261-75 (reprinted in Au-dela de Vimpressionnisme
[edited by Franchise Cachin], Paris: Hermann, [1966],
pp. 64-67).
Feneon 1970 Felix Feneon, Oeuvres plus que completes (edited by Joan
U. Halperin), 2 vols., Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970.
Fevre 1949 Jeanne Fevre, Mon oncle Degas (edited by Pierre Borel),
Geneva: Pierre Cailler, 1949.
Flint 1984 Impressionists in England: The Critical Reception (edited
by Kate Flint), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
Fosca 192 1 Francois Fosca [Georges de Traz], Degas, Paris: Messein,
1921.
Fosca 1930 Francois Fosca [Georges de Traz], Les albums d'art Druet,
VI, Paris: Librairie de France, 1930.
Fosca 1954 Francois Fosca, Degas: etude biographique et critique, Le
gout de notre temps, Geneva: Skira, 1954.
Frantz 19 13 Henry Frantz, "The Rouart Collection," Studio Inter-
national, L:i99, September 1913, pp. 184-93.
Geffroy 1886 Gustave Geffroy, "Salon de 1886," La Justice, 26 May
1886, n.p.
Geffroy 1908 Gustave Geffroy, "Degas," VArt et les Artistes, IV: 3 7,
April 1908, pp. 15-23.
Gerstein 1982 Marc Gerstein, "Degas's Fans," Art Bulletin, LXIV:i,
March 1982, pp. 105-18.
Giese 1978 Lucretia H. Giese, "A Visit to the Museum," Boston
Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, LXXVI, 1978, pp.
43-53-
Goetschy 1880 Gustave Goetschy, "Independants et impressionistes
[sic]," Le Voltaire, 6 April 1880.
Goncourt Journal 1956 Cited as Journal Goncourt 1956.
Grappe 1908, 191 1, Georges Grappe, Edgar Degas, L'art et le beau, 3rd year,
19 1 3 I, Paris: Librairie Artistique et Litterairc, 1908. Reprint
editions, 191 1, 1913.
Grappe 1936 Georges Grappe, Edgar Degas, Editions d'histoire et
d'art, Paris: Librairie Plon, 1936.
Gruetzner 1985 Anna Gruetzner, "Degas and George Moore: Some
Observations about the Last Impressionist Exhibition,"
in Degas 1834-1984 (edited by Richard Kendall), Man-
chester: Department of History of Art and Design,
Manchester Polytechnic, 1985, pp. 32-39.
Guerin 1924 Marcel Guerin, "Notes sur les monotypes de Degas,"
V Amour de VArt, 5th year, March 1924, pp. 77-80.
Guerin 193 1 Marcel Guerin, Dix-neuf portraits de Degas par lui-meme,
Paris: privately printed, 193 1.
Guerin 1932 Marcel Guerin, "Trois portraits de Degas offerts par
la Societe des Amis du Louvre," Bulletin des Musees de
France, 7, July 1932, pp. 106-07.
Guerin 1945 Cited as Lettres Degas 1945.
Guerin 1947 Cited as Degas Letters 1947.
Guest 1984 Ivor Guest, Jules Perrot: Master of the Romantic Ballet,
London: Dance Books, 1984.
Halevy i960 Daniel Halevy, Degas park . . . , Paris: La Palatine, i960.
Halevy 1964 Daniel Halevy, My Friend Degas (translated and edited
by Mina Curtiss), Middletown: Wesley an University
Press, 1964. French edition cited as Halevy i960.
Havemeyer 193 1 H. O. Havemeyer Collection: Catalogue of Paintings, Prints,
Sculptures and Objects of Art, New York: privately printed,
193 1.
615
Havemeyer 196 1 Louisine W. Havemeyer, Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of
a Collector, New York: privately printed, 196 1.
Haverkamp- Cited as Williamstown, Clark, 1964.
Begemann 1964
Hermel 1886 Maurice Hermel, "L'exposition de peinture de la rue
Laffitte," La France Libre, 27 May 1886.
Hertz 1920 Henri Hertz, Degas, Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1920.
Hoetink 1968 Cited as Rotterdam, Boymans, 1968.
Hoist 1982 Cited as Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, 1982.
Hoppe 1922 Ragnar Hoppe, Degas och hans arbeten: Nordisk ago, Stock-
holm: P. A. Norstedt & Soner, 1922.
Hourticq 19 12 Louis Hourticq, "E. Degas," Art et Decoration, suppl.,
XXXII, October 19 12, pp. 97-113.
Huth 1946 Hans Huth, "Impressionism Comes to America," Ga-
zette des Beaux-Arts, XXIX, April 1946, pp. 225-52,
Huyghe 193 1 Rene Huyghe, "Degas ou la fiction realiste," L' Amour
de VArt, 12th year, July 193 1, pp. 271-82.
Huyghe 1974 Rene Huyghe, La releve du reel: impressionnisme, symbol-
isme, Paris: Flammarion, 1974.
Huysmans 1883 Joris-Karl Huysmans, Uart modeme, Paris: G. Char-
pentier, 1883.
Huysmans 1889 Joris-Karl Huysmans, Certains: G. Moreau, Degas,
Cheret, Whistler, Rops, Le Monstre, Le Fert etc., Paris:
Tresse et Stock, 1889.
Jacques 1877 Jacques [pseud.], "Menu propos: exposition impression-
niste," L'Homme Libre, 12 April 1877.
Jamot 1 9 14 Paul Jamot, "La collection Camondo au Musee du Louvre:
les peintures et les dessins," pt. 2, Gazette des Beaux-
Arts, 684, June 1914, pp. 441-60.
Jamot 1918 Paul Jamot, "Degas," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XIV,
April-June 1918, pp. 123-66.
Jamot 1924 Paul Jamot, Degas, Paris: Editions de la Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, 1924.
Janis 1967 Eugenia Parry Janis, "The Role of the Monotype in
the Working Method of Degas," Burlington Magazine,
CIX:766, January 1967, pp. 20-27; CIX:767, February
1967, pp. 71-81.
Janis 1968 Eugenia Parry Janis, Degas Monotypes, Cambridge, Mass. :
Fogg Art Museum, 1968. Cited as Janis 1968 for works
in the checklist; cited as 1968 Cambridge, Mass., for
works in the exhibition; see under Exhibitions.
Janis 1972 Eugenia Parry Janis, "Degas and the 'Master of Chiaro-
scuro,"' Museum Studies, The Art Institute of Chicago,
VII, 1972, pp. 52-71.
Janneau 192 1 Guillaume Janneau, "Les sculptures de Degas,"
La Renaissance de VArt Fran^ais, IV: 7, July 192 1,
pp. 352-53-
Jeanniot 1933 Georges Jeanniot, "Souvenirs sur Degas," La Revue
Uniyerselle, LV, 15 October 1933, pp. 152-74; 1 No-
vember 1933, pp. 280-304.
Journal Goncourt 1956 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal: memoires de la
vie litteraire (edited by Robert Ricatte), 4 vols., Paris:
Fasquelle, Flammarion, 1956.
Kendall 1985
Keyser 198 1
Koshkin-Youritzin
1976
Lafond 19 18-19
Lassaigne 1945
Lemoisne 19 12
Lemoisne 19 19
Lemoisne 192 1
Lemoisne 1924
Lemoisne 193 1
Lemoisne 1937
Lemoisne [1946-49]
Richard Kendall, "Degas's Colour," in Degas 1834-
1984 (edited by Richard Kendall), Manchester: Depart-
ment of History of Art and Design, Manchester Poly-
technic, 1985, pp. 19-31.
Eugenie de Keyser, Degas: realite et metaphore, Louvain-
la-Neuve: Institut Superieur d'Archeologie et d'Histoire
de 1' Art, College Erasme, 198 1 .
Victor Koshkin-Youritzin,"The Irony of Degas," Gazette
des Beaux- Arts, LXXXVII, January 1976, pp. 33-40.
Paul Lafond, Degas, 2 vols., Paris: H. Floury, 191 8-19.
Jacques Lassaigne, Edgar Degas, Paris: Editions Hyperion,
1945.
Paul-Andre Lemoisne, Degas, L'art de notre temps,
Paris: Librairie Centrale des Beaux- Arts, 19 12.
Paul- Andre Lemoisne, "Les statuettes de Degas," Art
et Decoration, XXXVI, September- October 19 19,
pp. 109-17.
Paul- Andre Lemoisne, "Les carnets de Degas au Ca-
binet des Estampes," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXIII,
April 1921, pp. 219-31.
Paul- Andre Lemoisne, "Artistes contempo rains: Edgar
Degas a propos d'une exposition recente," Revue de
VArt Ancien et Modeme, XL VI, June 1924, pp. 17-28;
July 1924, pp. 95-108.
Paul-Andre Lemoisne, "A propos de la collection inedite
de M. Marcel Guerin," V Amour de VArt, 12th year,
July 1931, pp- 284-91.
Paul-Andre Lemoisne, "Degas," Beaux- Arts, 75th year,
new series, 219, 12 March 1937, pp. A-B.
Paul-Andre Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, 4 vols. , Paris:
Paul Brame and C. M. de Hauke, Arts et Metiers Gra-
phiques, [1946-49]. Reprint edition, New York/ London:
Garland Publishing, 1984.
Leprieur and Demonts Cited as Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 19 14, 1922.
1914
Lettres Degas 1945 Lettres de Degas (edited by Marcel Guerin), Paris: Gras-
set, 193 1. New edition with additional letters, 1945.
English edition cited as Degas Letters 1947.
Lettres Gauguin 1984 Correspondance de Paul Gauguin (edited by Victor Merlhes),
I, Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1984.
Lettres Pissarro 1950
Lettres Pissarro 1980
Ley marie 1947
Lipton 1986
Loyrette 1984-85
Manet 1979
Keller 1962
Harald Keller, Edgar Degas: Die Familie Bellelli, Stutt-
gart: Recham, 1962.
Camille Pissarro: lettres a son fils Lucien (edited with the
assistance of Lucien Pissarro by John Rewald), Paris:
Editions Albin Michel, 1950.
Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, I: i86$-i88s (edited
by Janine Bailly-Herzberg; preface by Bernard Dorival),
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980.
Jean Leymarie, Les Degas au Louvre, Paris: Librairie
des Arts Decoratifs, 1947.
Eunice Lipton, Looking into Degas: Uneasy Images of
Women and Modem Life, Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1986.
Cited as 1984-85 Rome; see under Exhibitions.
Julie Manet, Journal (1893-1899), Paris: Librairie C.
Klincksieck, 1979. English edition, Growing up with
the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet (translated,
edited, and with an introduction by Rosalind de Boland
Roberts and Jane Roberts), London: Sotheby's Publi-
cations, 1987.
616
Manson 1927 J. B. Manson, The Life and Work of Edgar Degas, Lon-
don: Studio, 1927.
Mantz 1877 Paul Mantz, "L'exposition des peintres impressionnistes,"
Le Temps, 22 April 1877.
Mantz 188 1 Paul Mantz, "Exposition des oeuvres des artistes inde-
pendants," Le Temps, 23 April 1881.
Marx 1897 Roger Marx, "Cartons d'artistes: Degas," LTmage,
11, October 1897, pp. 321-25.
Masson 1927 Cited as Paris, Luxembourg, 1927.
Mathews 1984 Cassatt and Her Circle: Selected Letters (edited by Nancy
Mowll Mathews), New York: Abbeville Press, 1984.
Mathieu 1974 Pierre-Louis Mathieu, "Gustave Moreau en Italie (1857-
1859) d'apres sa correspondance inedite," Bulletin de la
Societe de I'Histoire de I'Art Frangais, 1974, pp. 173-91.
Mathieu 1976 Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau, Boston: New
York Graphic Society, 1976.
Mauclair 1903 Camille Mauclair, "Artistes contemporains: Edgar
Degas," Revue de I'Art Ancien et Modeme, XIV:8o,
November 1903, pp. 381-98,
Maupassant 1934 Guy de Maupassant, La Maison Tellier, Paris: Vollard,
1934.
Mayne 1966 Jonathan Mayne, "Degas's Ballet Scene from Robert
le Diable," Victoria and Albert Museum Bulletin, IL4,
October 1966, pp. 148-56.
McMullen 1984 Roy McMullen, Degas: His Life, Times and Work, Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984/London: Seeker
and Warburg, 1985.
Meier-Graefe Julius Meier-Graefe, Degas, Munich: R. Piper, 1920.
1920, 1924 Reprint edition, 1924.
Meier-Graefe 1923 Julius Meier-Graefe, Degas (translated by J. Holroyd-
Reece), London: Ernest Benn, 1923. German edition
cited as Meier-Graefe 1920, 1924.
Michel 19 19 Alice Michel, "Degas et son modele," Mercure de France,
16 February 1919, pp. 457-78, 623-39.
Migeon 1922 Cited as Paris, Louvre, Camondo, 1922.
Millard 1976 Charles W. Millard, The Sculpture of Edgar Degas,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Minervino 1974 Fiorella Minervino, Tout I'oeuvre peint de Degas (intro-
duction by Jacques Lassaigne), Paris: Flammarion, 1974.
Original Italian edition, Milan: Rizzoli, 1970.
Mirbeau 1886 Octave Mirbeau, "Exposition de peinture," La France,
Paris, 21 May 1886, pp. 1-2.
Moffett 1979 Charles S. Moffett, Degas: Paintings in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1979.
Moffett 1985 Charles S. Moffett, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist
Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Abrams, 1985.
Moffett 1986 Cited as 1986 Washington, D.C.; see under Exhibitions.
Mongan 1932 Agnes Mongan, "Portrait Studies by Degas in American
Collections," Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum, L4, May
1932, pp. 61-68.
Mongan 1938 Agnes Mongan, "Degas as Seen in American Collec-
tions," Burlington Magazine, LXXIL423, June 1938,
pp. 290-302.
Mongan and Sachs
1940
Monnier 1969
Monnier 1978
Moore 1890
Moore 1891
Moore 1892
Moore 1907-08
Moore 19 18
Cited as Cambridge, Fogg, 1940.
Genevieve Monnier, "Les dessins de Degas du Musee
du Louvre: historique de la collection," La Revue du
Louvre et des Musees de France, 19th year, 6, 1969,
pp. 359-68.
Genevieve Monnier, "La genese d'une oeuvre de Degas:
'Semiramis construisant une ville,'" La Revue du Louvre
et des Musees de France, 28th year, 5-6, 1978, pp.
407-26.
George Moore, "Degas: The Painter of Modern Life,"
Magazine of Art, XIII, 1890, pp. 416-25.
George Moore, Impressions and Opinions, New York:
Scribner's, 1891.
George Moore, "Degas in Bond Street," The Speaker,
London, 2 January 1892, pp. 19-20.
George Moore, "Degas," Kunst und Kunstler, III, 6th
year, 1907-08, pp. 98-108, 138-51.
George Moore, "Memories of Degas," Burlington Mag-
azine, XXXII: 178, January 1918, pp. 22-29; XXXIL179,
February 19 18, pp. 63-65.
Moreau-Nelaton 1926 Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, Manet raconte par lui-meme,
2 vols., Paris: H. Laurens, 1926.
Moreau-Nelaton 193 1 Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, "Deux heures avec Degas,"
L' Amour de I'Art, 12th year, July 193 1, pp. 267-70.
Morisot 1950
Morisot 1957
Newhall 1956
New York,
Metropolitan, 193 1
New York,
Metropolitan, 1943
New York,
Metropolitan, 1967
Nora 1973
Paris, Louvre,
Correspondance de Berthe Morisot, Paris: Quatre Chemins-
Editart, 1950.
The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot (edited by Denis
Rouart, translated by Betty W. Hubbard), London:
Lund Humphries, 1957. French edition cited as Morisot
1950.
Beaumont Newhall, "Degas: Amateur Photographer,
Eight Unpublished Letters by the Famous Painter Written
on a Photographic Vacation," Image, V:6, June 1956,
pp. 124-26. French translation, "Degas, photographe
amateur," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXI, January 1963,
pp. 61-64.
Cited as Havemeyer 193 1.
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Euro-
pean Drawings from the Collections of the Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, II: Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, French,
and British Drawings, New York, 1943 .
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, French
Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, III: XIX-XX Centuries (by Charles Sterling
and Margaretta M. Salinger), Greenwich: New York
Graphic Society, 1967.
Franchise Nora, "Degas et les maisons closes," L'Oeil,
219, October 1973, pp. 26-31.
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Catalogue de la col-
Camondo, 1914, 1922 lection Isaac de Camondo (by P. Leprieur and L. Demonts),
1st edition, 1914. Second edition, 1922.
Paris, Louvre, Im-
pressionnistes, 1947
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Catalogue des pein-
tures et sculptures exposees au Musee de VImpressionnisme ,
feu de Paume des Tuileries: les impressionnistes, leurs pre-
curseurs et leurs contemporains (entries on paintings by
Helene Adhemar, assisted by Miles Berhaut, Bouthet,
and Dureteste; entries on sculptures by Michele Beau-
lieu), Paris: Musees Nationaux, 1947.
617
Paris, Louvre, Im-
pressionnistes, 1958
Paris, Louvre, Im-
pressionnistes, 1973
Paris, Louvre, Im-
pressionnistes, 1979
Paris, Louvre,
Pastels, 1930
Paris, Louvre,
Peintures, 1924
Paris, Louvre,
Peintures, 1959
Paris, Louvre,
Peintures, 1972
Paris, Louvre,
Sculptures, 1933
Paris, Luxembourg,
1894
Paris, Luxembourg,
1927
Paris, Louvre and
Orsay, Pastels, 1985
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Catalogue des pein-
tures, pastels, sculptures impressionnistes exposes au Musee
de I'Impressionnisme , Jeu de Paume des Tuileries (entries
on paintings by Helene Adhemar, assisted by Made-
leine Dreyfus-Bruhl; entries on pastels by Maurice
Serullaz; entries on sculptures by Michele Beaulieu; pre-
face by Germain Bazin), Paris: Musees Nationaux, 1958.
Paris, Musee du Louvre, Musee du Jeu de Paume (edited
by Helene Adhemar and Anne Dayez), Paris: Editions
des Musees Nationaux, 1973.
Paris, Musee du Louvre, Musee du Jeu de Paume (edited
by Helene Adhemar and Anne Dayez-Distel), Paris:
Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 4th
edition, revised, 1979.
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Catalogue des pastels
(by Jacqueline Bouchot-Saupique), 1930.
Paris, Musee National du Louvre: Catalogue des pein-
tures exposees dans les galeries, I: Ecole Jrancaise (edited by
Gaston Briere), Paris: Editions des Musees Nationaux,
1924.
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Peintures, II: Ecole
Jrancaise: XIXe siecle (by Charles Sterling and Helene
Adhemar), Paris: Editions des Musees Nationaux, 1959.
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Catalogue des pein-
tures, I: Ecole Jrancaise, Paris: Editions des Musees Na-
tionaux, 1972.
Paris, Musee National du Louvre, Catalogue des sculp-
tures du Moyen Age, de la Renaissance et des temps modemes,
suppl. (preface by Paul Vitry), Paris: Musees Nationaux,
1933-
Paris, Musee National du Luxembourg, Catalogue som-
maire des peintures, sculptures, dessins, gravures en medailles
et surpierres fines et objets d'art divers de V ecole contempo-
raine exposes dans les galeries du Musee National du Luxem-
bourg, Paris, 1894.
Paris, Musee National du Luxembourg, Catalogue des
peintures, sculptures et miniatures, Paris: Musees Natio-
naux, 1927.
Paris, Musee du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, Musee
d'Orsay, Pastels du XIXe siecle (by Genevieve Monnier),
Paris: Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux,
1985. Also cited as 1985 Paris for works in the exhibition;
see under Exhibitions.
Paris, Louvre and Paris, Musees du Louvre et d'Orsay, Catalogue som-
Orsay, Peintures, 1986 maire illustre des peintures du musee du Louvre et du musee
d'Orsay: ecole Jrancaise (by I. Compin and Anne Roque-
bert), 3 vols., Paris: Editions de la Reunion des Musees
Nationaux, 1986.
Paris, Orsay, Paris, Musee d'Orsay, Catalogue sommaire illustre des
Sculptures, 1986 sculpteurs (by Anne Pingeot, Antoinette Le Normand-
Romain and Laure de Margerie), Paris: Editions de la
Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 1986.
Passeron 1974 Robert Passeron, Impressionist Prints, New York: Dutton,
1974.
Pica 1907 Vittorio Pica, "Artisti contemporanei: Edgar Degas,"
Emporium, XXVI: 156, December 1907, pp. 405-18.
Pickvance 1962 Ronald Pickvance, "Henry Hill: An Untypical Victor-
ian Collector," Apollo, LXXVL10, December 1962,
pp. 789-91.
Pickvance 1963 Ronald Pickvance, "Degas's Dancers: 1 872-1 876,"
Burlington Magazine, CV:723, June 1963, pp. 256-66.
Pickvance 1966
Pickvance 1968
Pickvance 1979
Pissarro Letters 1980
Pittaluga and Piceni
1963
Pothey 1877
Raimondi 1958
Reed and Shapiro
1984-85
Reff 1963
Reff 1964
RefF 1965
RefT 1968
RefF 1969
Reflf 1971
RefF 1976
RefF 1977
RefF 1985
Rewald 1944
Rewald 1946, 196 1,
1973
Rewald 1946 GBA
Rewald 1956
Rewald 1973 GBA
Ronald Pickvance, "Some Aspects of Degas's Nudes,"
Apollo, LXXXIIL47, January 1966, pp. 17-23.
Cited as 1968 New York; see under Exhibitions.
Cited as 1979 Edinburgh; see under Exhibitions.
Camille Pissarro: Letters to His Son Lucien (edited with
the assistance of Lucien Pissarro by John Rewald, trans-
lated by Lionel Abel), London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 4th edition, 1980. French edition cited as Lettres
Pissarro 1950.
M. Pittaluga and E. Piceni, De Nittis, Milan: Bramante,
1963.
A. P. [Alexandre Pothey], "Beaux- Arts," Le Petit Parisien,
7 April 1877.
Riccardo Raimondi, Degas e la suajamiglia in Napoli:
ijg^-igij, Naples: SAV, 1958.
Sue Welsh Reed and Barbara Stem Shapiro, Edgar Degas:
The Painter as Printmaker (with contributions by Clifford
S. Ackley and Roy L. Parkinson; essay by Douglas W.
Druick and Peter Zegers), Boston: Museum of Fine
Arts, 1984. Cited as 1984-85 Boston for works in the
exhibition; see under Exhibitions.
Theodore Reff, "Degas's Copies of Older Art," Burlington
Magazine, CV:723, June 1963, pp. 241-51.
Theodore Reff, "New Light on Degas's Copies," Bur-
lington Magazine, CVL735, June 1964, pp. 250-59.
Theodore Reff, "The Chronology of Degas's Note-
books," Burlington Magazine, CVII:753, December 1965,
pp. 606-16.
Theodore Reff, "Some Unpublished Letters of Degas,"
Art Bulletin, L:i, March 1968, pp. 87-93.
Theodore Reff, "More Unpublished Letters of Degas,"
Art Bulletin, LL3, September 1969, pp. 281-89.
Theodore Reff, "Further Thoughts on Degas's Copies,"
Burlington Magazine, CXIIL82, September 1971, pp. 534-
43-
Theodore Reff, Degas: The Artist's Mind, New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harper and Row,
1976.
Theodore Reff, "Degas: A Master among Masters,1'
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XXXIV:4,
Spring 1977, n.p.
Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas, 2 vols.,
New York: Hacker Art Books, 2nd revised edition,
1985. First edition, London: Clarendon Press, 1976.
John Rewald, Degas, Works in Sculpture: A Complete
Catalogue, New "York: Pantheon Books /London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. , 1944.
John Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1st edition, 1946. Third re-
vised edition, 196 1. Fourth revised edition, 1973.
John Rewald, "Degas and His Family in New Orleans,"
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXX, August 1946, pp. 105-26.
Reprinted in 1965 New Orleans; see under Exhibitions.
John Rewald, Degas: Sculpture, New York: Abrams, 1956.
John Rewald, "Theo van Gogh, Goupil and the Im-
pressionists," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, LXXXI, January
1973, pp. 1-64; February 1973, pp. 65-108.
618
Rewald 1986
Rich 195 1
Riviere 1877
Riviere 1935
Riviere 1922-23
Roberts 1976
Rosenberg 1959
Roskill 1970
Rotterdam, Boymans,
1968
Rouart 1937
Rouart 1945
Rouart 1948
Scharf 1968
Serullaz 1979
Shackelford 1984-85
Shapiro 1980
Shapiro 1982
Sickert 19 17
Silvestre 1879
Sterling and Adhemar
1959
Sterling and Salinger
1967
Stuttgart, Staats-
galerie, 1982
Sutton 1986
Sutton and Adhemar
1987
John Rewald, Studies in Post-Impressionism (edited by
Irene Gordon and Frances WeitzenhofFer), New York:
Abrams, 1986.
Daniel Catton Rich, Degas, New York: Abrams, 195 1.
Georges Riviere, "L'exposition des impressionnistes,"
L'Impressionniste, 6 April 1877.
Georges Riviere, Mr. Degas, bourgeois de Paris, Paris:
Floury, 1935.
Henri Riviere, Les dessins de Degas, Paris: Editions De-
motte, I, 1922; II, 1923. Reprint edition, 1973.
Keith Roberts, Degas (with notes by Helen Langdon),
Oxford: Phaidon/New York: Dutton, 1976.
Jakob Rosenberg, Great Draughtsmen from Pisanello to
Picasso, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1959. Revised edition, 1974.
Mark Roskill, Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionist
Circle, Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1970.
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Cata-
togus van de Verzameling (by H. R. Hoetink), 1968.
Ernest Rouart, "Degas," Le Point, 1 February 1937,
PP- 5-36.
Denis Rouart, Degas a la recherche de sa technique, Paris:
Floury, 1945.
Denis Rouart, Degas monotypes, Paris: Quatre Chemins-
Editart, 1948.
Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography, London: Allen Lane,
1968 /Baltimore: Penguin, 1972.
Maurice Serullaz, L'univers de Degas, Paris: Henri
Screpel, 1979.
Cited as 1984-85 Washington, D.C.; see under Exhi-
bitions.
Michael Shapiro, "Degas and the Siamese Twins of
the Cafe-concert: The Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar-
d'Ete," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XCV:i335, April 1980,
pp. 153-64.
Michael Edward Shapiro, "Three Late Works by Edgar
Degas," The Bulletin, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
Spring 1982, pp. 9-22.
Walter Sickert, "Degas," Burlington Magazine, XXXI: 176,
November 19 17, pp. 183-92.
Armand Silvestre, "Le monde des arts," La Vie Modeme,
1 May 1879, pp. 52-53.
Cited as Paris, Louvre, Peintures, 1959.
Cited as New York, Metropolitan, 1967.
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Malerei und Plastik des 19. Jahr-
hunderts (edited by Christian von Hoist), Stuttgart:
Staatsgalerie, 1982.
Denys Sutton, Edgar Degas: Life and Work, New "York:
RizzoH, 1986. French translation, Degas: vie et oeuvre,
Fribourg: L'Office du Livre, 1986.
Denys Sutton and Jean Adhemar, "Lettres inedites de
Degas a Paul Lafond et autres documents," Gazette
des Beaux- Arts, CIX:i4i9, April 1987, pp. 159-80.
Terrasse 1974
Terrasse 198 1
Terrasse 1983
Thiebault-Sisson 1921
Thomson 1979
Thomson 1985
Thomson 1986
Thomson 1987
Thornley 1889
Tietze-Conrat 1944
Tucker 1974
Valery 1934, 1936,
1938, 1946, 1965
Valery i960
Ventel, 1918
Vente II, 19 18
Vente III, 1919
Vente IV, 19 19
Vente Collection I,
1918
Vente Collection II,
1918
Vente Collection
Estampes, 19 18
Vente Estampes, 19 18
Venturi 1939
Antoine Terrasse, Edgar Degas, Milan: Fratelli Fabbri,
1971, 1972 /Garden City: Doubleday, 1974
Antoine Terrasse, Edgar Degas, Frankfurt, Berlin, and
Vienna: Ullstein Biicher, 198 1.
Antoine Terrasse, Degas et la photographic, Paris: Denoel, 1983 .
Francois Thiebault-Sisson, "Degas sculpteur par lui-
meme," Le Temps, 23 May 192 1, p. 3. Reprinted in
1984-85 Paris, pp. 177-82; see under Exhibitions.
Richard Thomson, "Degas in Edinburgh," Burlington
Magazine, CXXL919, October 1979, pp. 674-77.
Richard Thomson, "Notes on Degas's Sense of Humour,"
in Degas 183 4-1984 (edited by Richard Kendall), Man-
chester: Department of History of Art and Design,
Manchester Polytechnic, 1985, pp. 9-19.
Richard Thomson, "Degas's Nudes at the 1886 Im-
pressionist Exhibition," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, CVIII,
November 1986, pp. 187-90.
Cited as 1987 Manchester; see under Exhibitions.
George William Thornley, Quinze lithographies d'apres
Degas, Paris: Boussod et Valadon, 1889.
Erika Tietze-Conrat, "What Degas Learned from Man-
tegna," Gazette des Beaux- Arts, XXVI, December 1944,
pp. 413-20.
William Tucker, Early Modem Sculpture: Rodin, Degas,
Matisse, Brancusi, Picasso, Gonzalez, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1974.
Paul Valery, Degas danse dessin, Paris: Vollard, 1934,
1936/Gallimard, 1938, 1946, 1965.
Paul Valery, Degas Manet Morisot (translated by David
Paul), New York: Pantheon Books, i960.
Catalogue des tableaux, pastels et dessins par Edgar Degas
et provenant de son atelier . . . , Paris: Galeries Georges
Petit, 6-8 May 1918.
Catalogue des tableaux, pastels et dessins par Edgar Degas
et provenant de son atelier . . . , Paris: Galeries Georges
Petit, 11— 13 December 1918.
Catalogue des tableaux, pastels et dessins par Edgar Degas
et provenant de son atelier . . . , Paris: Galeries Georges
Petit, 7-9 April 1 9 19.
Catalogue des tableaux, pastels et dessins par Edgar Degas
et provenant de son atelier . . . , Paris: Galeries Georges
Petit, 2-4 July 1 9 19.
Catalogue des tableaux modernes et anciens: aquarelles, pas-
tels, dessins . . . composant la collection Edgar Degas . . . ,
Paris: Galeries Georges Petit, 26-27 March 19 18.
Catalogue des tableaux modemes: pastels, aquarelles, dessins,
anciens et modemes . . . faisant partie de la collection Edgar
Degas .... Paris: Hotel Drouot, 15-16 November 1918.
Catalogue des estampes anciennes et modemes . . . compo-
sant la collection Edgar Degas . . . , Paris: Hotel Drouot,
6-7 November 1918.
Catalogue des eaux-fortes, vemis-mous, aqua-tintes, litho-
graphies et monotypes par Edgar Degas et provenant de son
atelier . . . , Paris: Galerie Manzi-Joyant, 22—23 No-
vember 19 1 8.
Lionello Venturi, Les archives de I'impressionnisme, 2 vols.,
Paris /New York: Durand-Ruel, 1939.
619
Villard 1881
Vingt dessins
Vollard 19 14
Vollard 1924
Vollard 1936
Vollard 1938
Walker 1933
Nina de Villars [sic], "Varietes: exposition des artistes
independants," he Courrier du Soir, 23 April 188 1.
1897] Degas: vingt dessins, 1861-1896, Paris: Goupil et Cie,
Boussod, Manzi, Joyant et Cie, [1896-98].
Ambroise Vollard, Degas: quatre-vingt-dix-huit reproduc-
tions signees par Degas, Paris: Vollard, 19 14.
Ambroise Vollard, Degas, Paris: G. Cres et Cie, 1924.
Ambroise Vollard, Recollections of a Picture Dealer (trans-
lated by Violet M. Macdonald), London: Constable,
1936. French edition, Souvenirs d'un marchand de tableaux,
Paris: Albin Michel, 1937. Revised and enlarged
edition, 1959.
Ambroise Vollard, En ecoutant Cezanne, Degas, Renoir,
Paris: Grasset, 1938,
John Walker, "Degas et les maitres anciens," Gazette
des Beaux- Arts, X, September 1933, pp. 173-85.
Wehle 1930
Weitzenhoffer 1986
Wick 1959
Wildenstein 1964
Williamstown,
Clark, 1964
Williamstown,
Clark, 1987
H. B. Wehle, "The Exhibition of the H. O. Havemeyer
Collection," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,
XXV, March 1930, pp. 54-76.
Frances Weitzenhoffer, The Havemeyers: Impressionism
Comes to America, New York: Abrams, 1986.
Peter A. Wick, "Degas' Violinist," Boston Museum of
Fine Arts Bulletin, LVII:309, 1959, pp. 87-101.
Georges Wildenstein, Gauguin, Paris: Les Beaux Arts, 1964.
Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Insti-
tute, Drawings from the Clark Art Institute (by Egbert
Haverkamp-Begemann, Standish D. Lawder, and
Charles W. Talbot, Jr.), 2 vols., New Haven /London:
Yale University Press, 1964.
Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Insti-
tute, Degas in the Clark Collection (by Rafael Fernandez
and Alexandra R. Murphy), Williamstown: Sterling
and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1987.
620
Index of Former O wners
Numbers refer to catalogue numbers.
Only former owners mentioned in the
Provenance section of the catalogue
entries are listed here; present owners
have not been included. Art dealers
and galleries are included among the
former owners, but not when they had
a work only on deposit or loan, or
when they acted solely as temporary
agent or custodian; thus, for example,
the auction houses through which
many works passed are not listed here
as owners. (Index of Former Owners
compiled by Anne M. P. Norton.)
Aghion,Jack, 137
Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 308
Amsinck, Mr. and Mrs. Erdwin, 86
Andre, Mme Eugene Frederic (nee
Alquie), 121
Angello, Mme, 232
Angladon-Dubrujeaud, Jean, 142
Archdale, James, 289
Arnhold, Edouard, 158
Arnoldi-Livie Gallery, Munich, 19
Arthur, T. G., 232
Aubry, 278
Aubry, Mme Paul, 253
Auk, Lee A., New York, 352
Avorsen, 356
Baca-Flor, Carlos, 26
Bacri, 261
Baker, Walter C, 243
Barbazanges, Galerie, Paris, 221, 250,
259, 344
Barret-Decap, Charles, 229
Barret-Decap, Maurice, 11
Bartholome, Albert, 504
Bartholow, Mr. and Mrs. Frank, 259
Bauer, Simon, 277
Beatty, Sir Alfred Chester, 11
Beatty, Mrs. Alfred Chester, 11
Beaumont, Comte de, ^92
Beaumont, Comtesse Eliane de, 392
Beck, Mr. and Mrs. John A., 368
Becker, Carl J., 355
Bejot, Eugene, 178
Bellino, A., 162
Benatov, 357
Berger, Colonel Samuel A., 390
Bernheim, Georges, 3 5 1 ; see also
Bernheim-Jeune et Cie
Bernheim, J., see Bernheim-Jeune et Cie
Bernheim-Jeune et Cie, Paris, 10, 26, 40,
71, 77, 96, 98, no, 220, 229, 250, 270,
3i9> 348
Bernstein, Carl, 173
Berthier, Alexandre, see Wagram,
Alexandre Berthier, Prince de
Beuningen, D. G. van, 279, 282
Beyeler, Galerie, Basel, 268
Bignou, 28
Bignou, Etienne, Paris, 2, 155, 289
Bignou, New York, 2
Bing, Marcel, 62, 69, 118, 119, 156, 255
Bingham, Harry Payne, 130
Bingham, Mrs. Harry Payne, 130
BlafFer, Mrs. Robert Lee, 382
Blake, J. M., 211
Blake, William P., 211
Bliss, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods, 25,
"7, 338
Bliss, Mrs. Robert Woods, 25
Block, Leigh B., 315
Boivin, Emile, 60
Boivin, Mme Emile, 60
Boivin, Jules-Emile, 214.
Boivin, Mme Jules-Emile, 214
Bostwick, Mr. and Mrs. Dunbar W., 306
Botton, Mario di, 39
Boussod, Emile, 271
Boussod et Valadon (Goupil et Cie), Pa-
ris, and The Hague, also known as
Boussod, Valadon et Cie, 60, 124, 129,
133, 138, 142, 177, 221, 237, 250, 256,
261, 265, 271, 272, 274, 275
Bozzi, Sig.a Marco (nee Anna Guerrero
de Balde), 15, 145
Brame, Hector, Paris, 42, 127, 139, 143,
147, 197. 210, 236, 244
Brame, Paul, Paris, 133, 170, 181, 182,
184, 185, 188, 189, 244, 301
Brandon, Edouard, 106
Braunschweig, Frangois, 328
Brewster, Kate L., 266
Brewster, Walter S., 208
Bricka, Capitaine and Mme, 143
Brown, John Nicholas, 108, 109
Brown, Theodora W,, 363
Browse and Delbanco, London, 376
Bryson, John N., 238
Buhrle, Emil G., 158, 278, 361
Bunes, R., 225
Burke, J., 120
Burty, Philippe, 14, 244
Cadaval, Due de, 205
Cailac, Galerie, Paris, 7
Caillebotte, Gustave, 160, 163, 174, 190,
218
Camondo, Comte Isaac de, 42, 68, 107,
112, 120, 123, 129, 137, 157, 162, 172,
246, 251, 252, 257, 265, 271, 273, 314
Cargill, William A., 229
Carre, Louis, 295
Carstairs, Carroll, New York, 148
Cassatt, Alexander, 219
Cassatt, Mrs. Alexander, 219
Cassatt, Mary, 209, 268, 269
Cassirer, Paul, Berlin, 147, 173, 279, 282
Charpentier, Dr. and Mme Albert, 358
Chausson, Ernest, 261
Chausson, Mme Ernest, 261, 284
Clark, Robert Sterling, 9, 12, 67, 221, 236
Clark, Stephen C, 263, 297
Clark, Senator William A., 128
Clausen, 355
Clauzet, Paris, 264
Clerc, 270
Clot, Auguste, 296
Coats, Peter, 259
Cobden-Sickert, Ellen, see Sickert, Mrs.
Walter
Coburn, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned, 70
Cobum, Mrs. Lewis Larned, 70, 145, 235
Cochin, Baron Denys, 113, 147
Cochin, Mme Jacques, 113
Comiot, Charles, 302, 303, 312
Constantine, Jaime, 363
Cottevielle, 6
Courtauld, Samuel, 221
Cramer, Gerald, Galerie, Geneva, 152
Crispo, Andrew, Gallery, New York, 306
Dale, Chester, 10 1
Daniels, David, 6, 7
Danthon, 338, 358, 367
David-Weill, David, 94, 146, 270, 296
Davis, Reginald, 62, 76
Degas, Lucie, see Guerrero de Balde,
Marchesa Edoardo
De Gas, Rene (after 1900, de Gas), 1, 2,
3, 8, 21, 23, 24, 41, 63, 64, 94, 102,
108, 109, 242, 278, 335, 357, 370
Demotte, Mme, 76
Denton, Tom, 250
Deschamps, Charles W., London, 124,
128, 129, 139, 172, 225
De Sylva, Mr. and Mrs. George Gard, 65
Dick, Henry K., 258, 359
Dick, Martha B., 258
Dieterle, Paris, 370
Dihau, Desire, 97
Dihau, Marie, 97, 155
Dodgson, Campbell, 245, 300
Doria, Comte Armand, 139
Doucet, Jacques, 14, 142, 183, 186, 195
Doucet, Mme Jacques, 142
Drake del Castillo, J., 221
Dreyfus, Carle, 169, 240
Dubrujeaud, Jean -Edouard, 142
Duez, Ernest- Ange, 2 1 1
Dujarric de la Riviere, Mme Rene, 267
Dupuis, 113, 274, 275
Durand-Ruel, Paris, London, and New
York, 9, 11, 12, 16, 26, 40, 42, 60, 68,
7i > 75> 77, 84, 85, 86, 95, 96, 98, 103,
106, 107, no, 113, 114, 120, 122, 125,
130, 139, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 173,
174, 210, 211, 214, 215, 218, 220, 224,
225, 229, 230, 232, 233, 235, 236, 238,
239, 244, 250, 251, 253, 256, 257, 259,
261, 263, 265, 266, 275, 283, 284, 285,
286, 298, 305, 306, 308, 311, 314, 3 1 5,
317, 319, 320, 324, 337, 339, 352> 360,
3^ 364, 366, 376, 383> 390
Durand-Ruel, Charles, 253
Durand-Ruel, Georges, 256
Durand-Ruel, Mme Georges, 253, 256
Durand-Ruel, Joseph, 230
Duranty, Edmond, 215
Eddy, Charles B., 72
Ephrussi, Charles, 99
Essberger, Mrs. Elsa, 249
Exsteens, Maurice, 133, 152, 170, 180,
181, 182, 184, 185, 188, 189, 197, 206,
212, 244, 301, 359
Faure, Jean-Baptiste, 68, 95, 98, 103, 122,
J30, 157, *59> 256
Feilchenfeldt, Amsterdam and Zurich, 78,
143, 147, 342
Fevre, Gabriel, 58
Fevre, Henri, 91, 279
Fevre, Jeanne, 17, 18, 27, 44, 59, 206,
247, 354
Finlayson, R. W., 18
Fiquet, see Nunes et Fiquet
Fourchy, Mme Jacques (nee Hortense
Valpincon), 10 1, 243, 260
Fourchy, Raymond, 243, 260
Foy, Bryon, 352
Frelinghuysen, Hon. Peter H. B.,Jr., 161
Frelinghuysen, Mrs. Peter H. B., Sr., 161
French Gallery, London, 106
Friedmann, 267
Friedmann, Elisabeth and Adolphe, 379
Fuller, Peter, 317
Gai'de, 387
Galea, de, 391
Galea, A. de, Paris, 339
Galea, Christian de, 371
Gallimard, Paul, 237, 257, 285
Gay, Walter, 190
Gebhard-Gourgaud, Baronne (Eva),
92, 93
Gerard, 39
Gerard, Mme Alphonse (nee Madeleine-
Emilie Boivin), 214
Gibson, Thomas, Fine Art Ltd. , London,
233
Ginn, Mr. and Mrs. Frank H., 259
Glaenzer, Eugene W., and Co., New
York, 128, 133, 221
Gobillard, Jeannie, see Valery, Mme Paul
Gobillard, Paule, 90
Goetz, Walter, 6
Goldschmidt, Lucien, New York, 193
Goujon, Mme P., 319
Goupil et Cie, Paris, see Boussod et
Valadon (Goupil et Cie)
Greenberg Gallery of Contemporary Art,
St. Louis, 390
Guerin, Daniel, 12
Guerin, Marcel, 7, 12, 22, 74, 91, 151,
152, 155, 171, 187, 216, 240
Guerrero de Balde, Marchesa Edoardo
(nee Lucie Degas), 15, 145
Guillaumin, Armand, 137
Guiot, Marcel, 207
Gulbenkian, Calouste, 44
Guyotin, 251
Haberstock, Karl, 86
Haim, H., 279
Halevy, Daniel, 330, 331
Halevy, Elie, 166
Halevy, Mme Elie, 166
Halevy, Ludovic, 166, 328, 330, 331
Halevy, Mme Ludovic, 166
Hammer Galleries, New York, 171, 308
Hansen, Wilhelm, 82, in, 259, 268
Harriman, Mrs. W. A., 375
Hauke, Cesar de, 74, 133, 153, 164, 189,
197, 200, 249, 301
Havemeyer, Henry Osborne, 66, 103,
122, 124, 125, 136, 138, 210, 213, 218,
220, 222, 225, 232, 239, 283, 307, 324
Havemeyer, Mrs. Henry Osborne (nee
Louisine Elder), 60, 66, 79, 81, 85, 87,
103, 106, 122, 124, 125, 135, 136, 138,
140, 161, 165, 175, 209, 210, 213, 218,
220, 222, 225, 226, 227, 231b, 232,
239, 262b, 269, 272, 274, 276b, 280,
281b, 283, 286, 287b, 288, 291b, 293,
307, 309b, 318b, 321b, 323b, 324,
343b, 349b, 369, 373b, 381b, 384b
Havemeyer, Horace O., 124, 175, 218,
220, 283, 306
Havemeyer, Mrs. Horace O. (nee Doris
Dick), 175, 283
Hayashi, Tadamasa, 288, 319
Hebrard, A.-A., 79, 80, 81, 290, 322, 372
Heller, Sari, Gallery Ltd., Beverly Hills,
215
Henraux, Albert S., 177, 297, 347, 370
Henraux, Mme Albert S., 347
Henraux, Lucien, 380
Henriquet, 7
Hessel, Jos, 75, in, 286, 308, 345, 351,
362, 386
Heydt, Dr. Eduard Freiherr von der, 10,
316
Higgins, Mary S., 368
Hill, Captain Henry, 106, 124, 128, 129,
172
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York,
242
Hoentschel, Georges, 221
Horowitz, Mr. and Mrs. Saul, 303
Howard, Edgar, 298
Hughes, H. W., 315
Huth, Louis, 107
Hyde, Mrs. Louis F., 261
Ickelheimer, Henry R., 173
Imberti, Vincent, 146
621
Inglis, James S., 286
Ionides, Constantine Alexander, 159
Ivins, William M., Jr., 16, 193
Jaccaci, Auguste F., 84
Jamot, Paul, 4, 142
Jeantaud, Charles, 100
Jeantaud, Mme Charles, 100, 142
Jones, Mr. and Mrs. William Powell, 259
Joxe-Halevy, 328
Kann, Alphonse, 78
Kann, Alphonse, heirs of, 78
Karshan, Donald H. , 176a, 179
Kay, Arthur, 172, 239
Kelekian, Dikran Khan, 25, 234
Kennedy Galleries, New York, 298
Kerrigan, Esther Slater, 352
King, Mrs. Ralph, 264
Knoedler, M., and Co., Paris, London,
and New York, 2, 67, 104, 105, 114,
171, 173, 201, 215, 221, 228, 237, 242,
263, 264, 290, 322, 363, 372
Koechlin, Raymond, 113
Koenigs, Franz, 127, 279, 282
Koppel, Peter, 356
Kbrnfeld, Eberhard, 244
Kramarsky, Siegfried, 204
Lamonta, Mme de, 212
Laroche, Henri-Jean, 65
Laroche, Jacques, 65
Laurent, 113, 263
Laurin, Thorsten, 386
Lawrence, New York, 158
Lefebure, Mme Jacques, 256
Lefevre Gallery, London, 316
Lehman, Robert, 233, 354, 367
Lehman, Mrs. Robert, 233
Le Masle, Dr. Robert, 299
Lenars, A., et Cie, Paris, 289
Lepic, Ludovic, 86
Lerolle, Henry, 114, 127, 148, 236, 275
Lerolle, Mme Henry (Madeleine), 114,
127, 148, 236, 275
Levis, Mr. and Mrs. William E., 83
Levy, Adele R., 225
Lewisohn, Adolphe, 75
Lichtenhahn, Lucas, 278
Loncle, Maurice, 151, 167
Lutjens, H., 342
Lyon, Victor, 311
Mcllhenny, Henry P., 84, 133, 289
Maguire, Mrs. G. D. (nee Ruth Swift),
250
Maitland, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, 362
Mancini,J., 133
Manzi, Michel, 25, 42, 86, 87, 106, 107,
112, 128, 129, 140, 257; see also Manzi-
Joyant, Galerie
Manzi, Mme Michel, 140
Manzi-Joyant, Galerie, Paris, 257
Manzini, 251
Marin, Mme Eugene (nee Helene Rouart),
228
Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd., London,
315, 378
Martin et Camentron, Paris, 172, 232, 239
Marx, Roger, 224, 234, 274
Matheos, Alhis, Basel, 334
Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. , 348
Matignon Art Galleries, New York, 308,
326
Matisse, Henri, 344
Matisse, Pierre, Gallery, New York, 344
Matsukata, Kojiro, 82, 268
May, Ernest, 125, 203, 220
May, Georges, 125
Mayer (Salvador Meyer?), 274
Mazuc, Yolande, 312
Meadows, Mr. and Mrs. Algur, 259
Meller, S., 279
Mellon, Mr. and Mrs. Paul, 80, 155,
196, 256, 267, 290, 322, 327, 372
Meyer, Andre, 268
Michel, Dr. Herbert Leon, 248
Michel-Levy, Henri, 249
Migeon, Gaston, 126
Milliken, E. F., 239, 286
Molyneux, Captain Edward, 114
Montejasi, Duchessa di (nee Stefanina
Degas), 146
Moore, Henry, 376
Moore, Mrs. William H., 96
Morisot, Berthe (Mme Eugene Manet), 90
Morris, Herbert C, 284
Mulbacher, Gustave, 123
Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, 263
Nathan, Galerie, Zurich, 302
Nepveu-Degas, Roland, 8, 24, 242
Nepveu-Degas, Mme Roland (nee Odette
de Gas), 102
Neuerberg, Walter, 244
New Gallery, New York, see Thaw, E. V. ,
and Co.
Niarchos, Stavros, 228, 377
Nicholls, L. A., 242
Nierendorf Galleries, New York, 390
Nunes et Fiquet, Paris, 70, 92, 93, 313,
379, 382
Ochse, Fernand, 133
Orosdi, 308
Paine, Robert Treat, II, 63
Palmer, Mrs. Potter, 320
Paulus, H., 154
Payne, Colonel Oliver H., 130
Pay son, Joan Whitney, 90
Pearlman, Henry and Rose, 270, 339
Pelle (Pellet, Gustave?), 258, 387
Pellet, Gustave, 152, 164, 170, 180, 182,
184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 197, 212, 244,
245, 359
Pelletier, Max, 364
Peploe, W., 185
Perls, Hugo, New York, 352
Peters, Gerald, 250
Petiet, Henri, 150
Petit, Galerie Georges, Paris, 108, 109
Petitdidier, 133
Petrides, Paul, 18
Phillips, Duncan, 148
Picasso, Pablo, 170, 180, 181, 182, 184, 188
Pissarro, Camille, 192
Pleydell-Bouverie, Hon. Mrs. Peter, 325
Pope, A. A., 84
Portier, Alphonse, Paris, 215
Poujaud, Paul, 334
Pozzi, 5
Premsel, 106
Proute, Galerie, Paris, 5
Puy, Hubert du, 113
Reid, Alexander, London and Glasgow,
172, 232, 239
Reid and Lefevre Ltd. , London, see also
Lefevre Gallery, 155, 181, 182, 184,
185, 188, 201, 229, 237, 289
Reinach, Mile Gabrielle, 99
Reinach, Theodore, 99
Renoir, Auguste, 218
Reves, Emery, 346
Riabouschinsky, M. P., 263
Riche, M. and Mme, 367
Riviere, Henri, 365
Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. ,
228, 377
Roblyn, Dr., 387
Rockefeller, John D., Ill, 242
Rodier, 108, 109
Rosenberg, Paul, New York and Paris,
11, 18, 61, 65, 78, 83, 116, 177, 201,
205, 261, 277, 315, 389
Rosenwald, LessingJ., 150
Rothschild, Baron de, 18
Rouart, Alexis, 176b, 179, 207
Rouart, Alexis or Henri, 103
Rouart, Clement, 144
Rouart, Denis, 176b
Rouart, Ernest, 143, 144, 228, 233
Rouart, Mme Ernest (nee Julie Manet),
144, 233
Rouart, Helene, see Marin, Mme Eugene
Rouart, Henri, 143, 144, 165, 175, 215,
228, 233
Rouart, Henri A., 176a, 176b, 207
Rouart, Louis, 296
Rouart, Mme Paul (nee Agathe Valery), 88
Rutte, Paul de, 141
Sachs, Arthur, 147
Sachs, Paul J., 61, 76, 168, 200
Salz, Sam, Inc., New York, 211, 233,
285, 337, 365, 383
Sand, Marc, 5
Sauphar, Lucien, 229
Schab, Margo, New York, 179
Schab, William H., Gallery Inc., New York,
72, 176a
Schafer, Mr. and Mrs. Robert K., 264
Schoeller, 3 1 1
Scott and Fowles, New York, 374, 375
Seidlitz, Waldemar von, 154, 311
Seligmann, Jacques, Paris and New York,
26, 40, 71, 75, 77, no, 202, 304, 325,
33^ 352, 374, 375, 377, 3®8
Senn, Olivier, 28
Sevadjian, S., 362
Shaw, Rue W., 363
Shchukin, Ivan, 266
Shchukin, Serghei, 137, 139
Shepherd Gallery, New York, 8
Sherwood, Mrs. Ruth Dunbar, 250
Sickert, Walter, 124, 229, 264
Sickert, Mrs. Walter (Ellen Cobden-
Sickert), 124, 229, 264
Silberberg, Max, 3 1 1
Silberman, E. and A., Galleries, New York,
35i
Simmons, Mrs. Elsie Gassatt Stewart, 219
Simon, Norton, 229
Snayers, 389
Sonnenschein, Robert, II, 131, 132
Soutzo, Prince Gregoire, 13
Spencer-Churchill, Lord Ivor Charles, 261
Spingold, Mr. and Mrs. Nate, 285
Sprayregen, Mr. and Mrs. Morris, 312
Stendahl, Earl, 338
Stewart, Mrs. W. Plunkett (nee Cassatt),
219
Straus, Herbert N., 116
Strauss, Jules, 362
Strolin, Alfred, 215
Sutton, James F., 256
Svensk-Fransk Konstgalleriet, Stock-
holm, 39
Takahata Art Salon, Ltd., Osaka, 277
Tannahill, Robert H., no, 113
Tanner, 316
Tarica, Paris, 377
Texbraun, Galerie, Paris, 329
Thannhauser, Justin K., Lucerne and
New York, 308, 336
Thaw, E. V., and Co., New York, 171,
250, 363
Tiguel, 267
Tiss ot , James Jacques ,154
Toll, Paul, Stockholm, 39
Tooth, Arthur, and Sons, Ltd. , London,
228, 229, 275, 362
Tretyakov Gallery, State, Moscow, 363
Trotti, Galerie, Paris, 82, 344
Tunick, David, New York, 13, 192, 264,
296
Turner, Percy Moore, 238
Umeda Gallery, Osaka, 277
Una, Paris, 230
Valentine Gallery, New York, 375
Valery, Francois, 332, 334
Valery, Paul, 88, 89, 332, 333, 334
Valery, Mme Paul (neejeannie Go-
billard), 88, 89, 90
Valpincon, Hortense, see Fourchy, Mme
Jacques
Valpingon, M. and Mme Paul, 101
Van Houten, 367
Van Wisselingh, E. J. , and Co. , Amster-
dam, 155
Vever, Henri, 107
Viau, Dr. Georges, 43, 191, 201, 202,
241, 250, 259, 282, 289, 310, 325, 326,
327, 342
Vignier, Charles, 149
Vollard, Ambroise, Paris, 2, 26, 40, 71,
77, no, 150, 181, 184, 248, 268, 315,
3i6, 337, 339, 34i, 345, 346, 347, 350,
353, 364, 368, 369, 371, 374, 375, 377,
378, 383, 385, 39i
Wad a, Kyuzaemon, 82
Wagram, Alexandre Berthier, Prince de,
263
Wagstaff, Samuel, Jr., 340
Wallis, 106
Wallis, Hal, 242
Watson- Webb, Mrs. James, 306
Wear, Mrs. William Potter, 219
Weil, Andre, 18, 44, 326
Weill, David, see David- Weill, David
Weiller, Mme Lazare, 83
Weiller, Paul-Louis, 83
Wertheimer, Anne, 211
Wertheimer, Otto, 171
Wertheimer, Galerie, Paris, 19
Westcott, Barbara, 296
Weyhe Gallery, New York, 348
Whitney, Helen Hay, 304
Whitney, John Hay, 237, 304
Whittemore, J. H., 84, no, 164, 204
Whittemore, J. H., Co., Naugatuck,
Conn., 84, 204
Widener, Dr. A., 389
Widener, Joseph E., 305
Widener, Mrs. Peter A., 215
Widener, P. A. B., 305
Wiggin, Albert Henry, 294
Wildenstein and Co., Paris, London, and
New York, 26, 63, 64, 88, 10 1, 108,
109, 141, 142, 144, 145, 202, 256, 267,
268, 312, 319, 325
Willems, George, 338
Winkel and Magnussen, Copenhagen,
259, 344
Winterbotham, Mrs. John H., 363
Wintersteen, Mrs. John, 177
Wolf, H., 298
Workman, Mrs. R. A., 201
Wurstemberger de Rutte, Mme de, 141
Yamanaka and Co., New York, 255
Zacks, Sam and Ayala, 387
Zinser, Richard, 295
622
General Index
Page numbers are in roman type and refer to material in
the footnotes as well as to the texts. Catalogue numbers
and figures are so designated. The index does not include
references to contemporary authors, critics, exhibitions,
or museums. The lists of exhibitions and selected refer-
ences have not been indexed. For the provenances, see
the Index of Former Owners, pages 621-22. (General
Index compiled by Susan Bradford.)
Abadie, Emile, 208, 209, 218, 219, 220; portrait of, 208,
209; fig. 104
Abbe Constantin, V (Halevy, L.), 211, 280
About, Edmond, 38, 123
Academy, The (London), 378
Academy of Music, Paris, 328
Achard, Amedee, 125
Adam, Paul, 367, 445-46
Africaine, V (Meyerbeer), 431
Agnew, Thomas, 186, 188
Ajalbert, Jean, 395"9o\ 445, 44<5
Albert, Alfred, 90
Alcazar-d'Ete, Paris, 290, 378, 435
Alexandre, Arsene, 35, 36, 98, 143-44, 296, 3l8> 399.
411, 502-503, 504
Alix, Harry, 202
Altes, Henry, 148, 161; portraits of, 161, 170, 178; cat.
no. 161
Amaury-Duval, Eugene-Emmanuel, 37
American Art Association, New York, 335
American Art Galleries, New York, 384
Amour de VArt, L\ 318
Anderson, J. A., 202
Andre, Albert, 35
Andre, Edmond, 286
Andre, Mile, 286
Andre, Mme Eugene Frederic {nee Alquie), 193
Andrea del Sarto, 107
Andree, Ellen (Mme Henri Dumont), 147, 285, 286,
288, 318; photographs of, 285; figs. 140, 142; por-
traits of, 261, 284-86, 318, 320, 396; cat. nos. 171,
172, 205; fig. 149
Angello, Mme, 395
Angrand, Charles, 392
Animal Locomotion (Muy bridge), 375, 386, 448, 459,
462; photographs from, figs. 256, 258, 259
Antoine, Andre, 285
A rebours (Huysmans), 379
Ariste, see Claretie, Jules
Arnoux, Charles- Albert d\ see Bertall
Art Decoratif, L\ 345
Art et les Artistes, V, 148
Arthur, T.G., 396
Artiste, V, 145, 175, 198, 214, 216, 217, 346, 364
Artistes Independants, Paris, 363
Art modeme, V, 219, 378
Art Monthly Review and Photographic Portfolio, 215
Art Notebook, 386
Art Nouveau style, 501-502
Assommoir, V (Zola), 208, 209, 218, 223
Astruc, Elie-Aristide, 164, 166; photograph of, 166;
fig. 90; portrait of, 164, 166; cat. no. 99
Astruc, Gabriel, 164, 166
Astruc, Zacharie, 42, 179, 492; portrait of (Manet), 179;
fig. 91
Auber, Esprit, 189-90; Fra Diavolo, 190
Au bonheur des dames (Zola), 397
Aude, Felix-Andre, 488
Aulanier, Abbe, 50
Aurier, Georges- Albert (Luc Le Flaneur), 363, 369, 391
Bacchiacca, 76
Bachoux, Berthe Marie, seejeantaud, Mme Charles
Baigneres, Arthur, 188, 202, 204, 205, 214
Balfour, Joe, 55, 181, 192; portrait of, 181, 192; cat.
nos. in, 120
Balfour, Lazare David, 192
Balfour, Mrs. Lazare David (nee Estelle Musson), 181,
192; see also De Gas, Mme Rene
Ballu, Robert, 198
Balzac, Honore de, 123, 301; Fille aux yeux dy or, ha,
301
Banti, Cristiano, 39, 82
Barazzetti, S., 168, 410
Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules, 301
Barbizon school, 42-43, 221, 370
Barnes, Edward Alan, 382, 539; photographs by, figs.
169, 189, 191
Barrias, Felix-Joseph, 48, 153; Exiles of Tiberius, The, 36
Barthelemy, Jean-Jacques: Voyage du jeune Anachprsis en
Grece, 98, 100
Bartholome, Albert, 358, 376, 489, 502, 534, 535; birth
of, 137; in Burgundy with Degas, 481, 486, 502, 504,
534; casting of Degas's sculpture and, 344, 350, 351,
352> 433, 586, 609, 610; correspondence from Degas,
29, 344, 377, 378, 379, 382, 384, 388, 391, 392, 393,
455, 459, 469, 482, 487, 506, 534; correspondence to
Lafond, 344, 491, 494-95, 496; at Degas's funeral,
498; estrangement from Degas, 494-95; friendship
with Degas, 137, 170, 377, 455, 481, 490, 492, 497,
502, 609, 610; influenced by Degas, 372, 455; photo-
graphs by, 542; figs. 270, 284; photographs of (Degas),
140, 312; fig. 75; portrait of, 148, 379; cat. no. 327; as
sculptor, 137, 386, 455; second marriage of, 494; sup-
port from Degas, 386, 455; works by: Monument to
the Dead, Pere-Lachaise cemetery, 534; Tomb qfPerie
Bartholome, 455, 534, 535; fig. 253
Bartholome, Mme Albert (nee Perie de Fleury), 386,
393, 402, 455, 534, 535; portraits of, 148, 379, 455,
534; cat. nos. 276, 327; tomb of (Albert Bartholome),
455, 534, 535; % 253
Bartholome, Mme Albert (nee Florence Letessier), 494
Barye, Antoine Louis: Bear Playing in Its Trough, 470
Bat, The (London), 446, 453
Baudelaire, Charles, 140, 301, 445, 448; Femmes damnees,
301; Lesbos, 301; Salon de i8$g, 154
Baudot, Jeanne, 335, 549
Bazille, Frederic, 42, 58, 134, 151, 561, 563
Beauchamp, Mme de, 52
Beaucousin, Edmond, 51
Beaugrand, Leontine, 457
Beauregard, Angele, 51
Beauregard, Gabrielle, 51
Beaux- Arts Illustres, Les, 202, 219, 310
Becat, Emilie, 292, 438; portraits of, 292-93, 326,
437-38; cat. nos. 176, 264
Beliard, Edouard, 198
Bell, Carrie, 181; portrait of, 181; cat. no. 11 1
Bell, William Alexander, 54, 186; portrait of, 186; cat.
no. 115
Bell, Mrs. William Alexander (nee Mathilde Musson),
54, 181, 189; portrait of, 189; cat. no. 117
Bellelli, Enrichetta, see Dembowska, Baronne Ercole
Federico
Bellelli, Baron Gennaro, 44, 51, 53, 77, 137; correspon-
dence to: Edouard Degas, 32; Degas, 52; death of,
55, 120; in exile, 24, 39, 47, 80; marriage of, 47; por-
traits of, 23, 53, 77-82; cat. no. 20; figs. 35, 36; rela-
tionship with Baronne Bellelli, 81, 82; relationship
with Degas, 80
Bellelli, Baroness Gennaro (nee Laura Degas), 51, 52,
53, 80, 253; correspondence to Degas, 51, 77, 81-82,
121; emotional state of, 81-82; marriage of, 47; por-
traits of, 23, 44, 52, 77-82; cat. nos. 20, 23; fig. 36;
relationship with Gennaro Bellelli, 81, 82; relation-
ship with Degas, 24, 75, 81-82, 85, 86
Bellelli, Giovanna, 47, 57, 82, 120; portraits of, 23, 38,
49, 77-82, 120-21; cat. nos. 20, 22, 24, 65; figs. 35,
36, 64
Bellelli, Giulia, 48, 80, 82, 120; portraits of, 23, 77-82,
120-21; cat. nos. 20, 21, 25, 65; figs. 35, 36, 64
Bellet d'Arros, 199, 200
Bellini, Gentile (attr. to): Giovanni and Gentile Bellini,
112
Bellino, A., 274
Belloir, 198
Benedite, Leonce, 69, 70, 188, 345
Benner, Emmanuel, 246
Benner, Jean, 246
Benoist, Antoine, 343
Beraldi, Henri, 305, 323
Beraudiere, Comte de la, 381
Bergamasco, C, photograph by, 239; fig. 120
Bergerat, Emile, 205
Bergson, Henri, 482
Bernard, Emile, 388, 392, 438
Bernay, Rosette, 432
Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 127, 223, 363
Bernini, Gianlorenzo, 348
Bernstein, Carl, 288, 289
Bertall (Charles-Albert d' Arnoux), 201, 216, 217
Bertillon, Jacques, 208
Bertrand, 36
Bertrand, Eugene, 487
Besnard, Albert, 169, 567
Beugniet, Adrien, 219
Biblioteca historica (Diodorus Siculus), 90
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, 23-24, 36, 48, 483, 568,
569
Bien Public, Le, 198
Bing, Marcel, 145
Biot, Alice, 432
Bischoffsheim, Ferdinand, 222
Bizet, Georges, 256, 278; Carmen, 278
Bizet, Mme Georges (nee Genevieve Halevy; later Mme
Emile Straus), 255, 256
Blaizot, Auguste, 280, 281, 284
Blanc, Charles, 71
Blanche, Dr., 394
Blanche, Jacques-Emile, 394, 541; correspondence from
Degas, 377; correspondence to Fantin-Latour, 42,
358, 359, 375; friendship with Degas, 382, 486; meet-
. ing with Degas, 375; as painter, 375; photograph of
(Barnes?), fig. 189; portrait of, 382; fig. 190; recollec-
tions of Degas, 42, 90, 379; recollections of Manet,
142, 379; writing on Degas, 35, 374
Blanche, Mme (?), photograph of (Barnes), fig. 189
Bland, John, 5 1 , 80
Blavet, Emile, 197
Blavot, Marie-Elisabeth, see Cave, Mme Edmond
Blemont, Emile (Emile Petitdidier), 257
Blondel, Spire, 345, 346
Bolatre, M., 317; portrait of, 317; cat. no. 203
623
Boldini, Giovanni, 82, 312, 372, 392, 541; Edgar Degas,
392; fig. 204
Bonnard, Pierre, 546, 606
Bonnat, Leon, 161, 246, 375, 498; estrangement from
Degas, 103; exhibition of the work of, 376; friend-
ships: with Degas, 38, 42, 88; with Moreau, 39; in
Italy, 38, 53, 65, 153; portraits of, 40, 42, 102-103;
cat. no. 43; fig. 53; self-portrait by, 103; style and
technique of, 70, 88; work by: Mother Bonnat with
Two Orphans, 82; fig. 39
Bonvin, Francois, 134
Botta, P. E., 92
Botticelli, Sandro, 80; Birth of Venus, 255
Bouchardon, Edme, 347
Boucher, Francois, 263
Boudin, Eugene, 154, 495
Bouguereau, William-Adolphe, 70, 89
Boulanger, Clement, 279
Boulanger, Mme Clement, see Cave, Mme Edmond
Bourgeois, Pauline, 219, 310, 331
Boussod, Emile, 372
Boussod et Valadon, Paris, 363, 370, 372, 375, 386, 387,
389, 390, 391, 394, 402, 417, 418, 453, 565
Boussod, Manzi, Joyant et Cie, Paris, 493
Bouts, Dirk, 551
Bozzi, Signora, 254
Bracquemond, Felix, 42, 145, 304, 305; as artist, 324;
collaboration on proposed journal with Degas, 26,
218, 316, 318, 437, 495; correspondence from Degas,
199, 218, 305, 316, 317, 370, 372, 495; printmaking
and, 128; Realism and, 212; Societe des Aquafortistes
and, 54
Bracquemond, Marie, 26, 324
Brame, Hector, Paris, 325, 326, 363, 458, 494, 495
Brancusi, Constantin: Muse, 455; Portrait of Mile Pogany,
455
Brandon, Edouard, 42, 50, 174, 213. 222
Braquaval, Louis, 344, 492, 542, 556-57, 566, 567, 594
Braquaval, Mme Louis, 492, 542
Braquaval, Loulou, 566
Brassai', 296
Breguet, Abraham Louis, 538
Breguet, Louis, 249, 538
Breguet, Louise, see Halevy, Mme Ludovic
Breguet family, 42, 48, 189
Breton, Mme Louis, 170
Brinquant, Marguerite Claire, see Valpincpn, Mme Paul
Bronzino (Agnolo Tori), 23, 63
Broutelle, M. de, 102
Bulletin des Musees de France, 142, 171
Burtey, Julie, 132; portrait of (?), 132-33; cat. no. 76
Burty, Madeleine, see Haviland, Mme Charles
Burty, Philippe, 71, 174, 197, 198, 201, 207, 212, 213,
227, 343, 39i, 412
Busnach, William, 431
Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 86
Cabanel, Alexandre, 375; Birth of Venus, The, 415, 453;
fig. 251
Cadart, Paris, 54
Cafe de la Nouvelle-Athenes, Paris, 220, 285, 286, 288,
312, 363
Cafe des Ambassadeurs, Paris, 290, 292, 294, 438, 439
Cafe des Batignolles, Paris, 124
Cafe Guerbois, Paris, 35, 42, 45, 57, 135, 140, 309
Caillebotte, Gustave, 198, 218, 316, 334, 385; bequest
of, 274, 334, 491, 492; collaboration on proposed
journal with Degas, 305; as collector, 274, 303,
334-35; correspondence from Degas, 201, 316; corre-
spondence to Pissarro, 198, 220, 363, 376; death of,
335; estrangement from Degas, 218, 220, 363, 376
Caldara, Polidoro (Polidoro da Caravaggio; attr. to):
Group of Women Arguing, 99; fig. 48
Callias, Mme Hector de (Nina), 140, 161; see also
Villard, Nina de
Callot, Jacques, 71; Sommeil, 301
Cahaire, La (Mirbeau), 384
Cambon, Charles-Antoine, 90
Camentron, Paris, see Martin et Camentron, Paris
Camondo, Comte Isaac de, 166, 191, 221, 227, 428
Camus, Dr., 170
Camus, Mme, 142, 155, 170; portrait of, 58, 59; fig. 26
Caqueray, Vicomtesse de (nee Anne Fevre), 320, 496
Carafa, see Primicile Carafa
Cardon, Emile, 198, 213
Carjat, Etienne, portrait-carte by, 435; fig. 240
Carmen (Bizet), 278
Carnegie Institute Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, 492
Caron, Rose, 382, 390, 393, 455, 481, 486, 487, 532-
34; engraving of, 532; fig. 298; portraits of, 455,
532- 34, 559; cat. nos. 276, 326
Carpaccio, Vittore, 40, 51, 80
Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste, 136
Carriere, Eugene, 169
Cassatt, Alexander, 305, 335, 337, 375, 384, 389, 459,
553, 56i
Cassatt, Katherine, 219, 305, 335, 553, 561
Cassatt, Lydia, 262, 321, 377, 378, 440; portraits of,
322, 440; cat. no. 266; fig. 150
Cassatt, Mary, 151, 217, 262, 320, 322, 370, 377, 459,
561, 610; admiration for Degas, 236, 320; admired by
Degas, 320; aquatints by, 416; as art consultant to the
Havemeyers, 191, 258, 324, 344, 350, 396, 472; as
artist, 324-25; collaboration on proposed journal, Le
four et la Nuit, with Degas, 26, 201, 218, 304-305,
320, 437, 442; as collector, 370, 372, 385, 389, 443;
collectors of the work of, 289, 385, 392, 442, 525;
correspondence from: Degas, 258, 259; Jeanne Fevre,
351, 610; correspondence to: Paul Durand-Ruel, 322,
324, 344, 352, 443; Jeanne Fevre, 352; Louisine Have-
meyer, 236, 320-21, 325, 337, 35i~52, 372, 385, 444,
472, 496, 497, 561, 563, 606, 610; at Degas's funeral,
498; estrangement from Degas, 389, 443; exchange of
paintings with Degas, 385; exhibitions of the work of,
98, 201, 320, 385, 392, 525; friendships: with Degas,
320, 378, 389, 392, 393, 396, 442, 443, 496, 497; with
Jeanne Fevre, 350, 351; with Louisine Havemeyer,
216, 337, 511; Impressionism and, 320, 376; influ-
enced by Degas, 372, 416; meetings: with Degas,
259; with Louisine Havemeyer, 259; as model, 396,
440, 442; poetry by Degas dedicated to, 390, 533;
portraits of, 318, 320-24, 440, 442-43; cat. nos. 204-
208, 266-268; fig. 149; printmaking and, 201; recol-
lections of Degas, 177, 561; sale of Degas works by,
324, 442-43; support for Degas, 320, 335, 350, 351-
52, 384, 443, 527; support from Degas, 442, 606;
works by: Girl Arranging Her Hair, 385, 442, 525,
527; fig. 297; Self-Portrait, 396; fig. 209; Young Woman
in Black, 325
Cassatt, Robert, 335, 375
Castagnary, Jules-Antoine, 42, 79, 82, 120, 198; Salon
de 1866, 136
Castelbajac, Marquis de, 112
Cave, Albert, 278-79, 382, 487; photographs of,
figs. 189, 199; portraits of, 278-80, 382; cat. no. 166;
fig. 190
Cave, Edmond, 279
Cave, Mme Edmond (nee Marie-Elisabeth Blavot), 279
Cazin, Jean-Charles, 202, 3 10
Cecioni, Adriano, 312
Cecioni, Enrico, 227
Cennini, Cennino, 465
Centennale d'art jrancais exhibition, Grand Palais, Paris,
494
Certains (Huysmans), 391
Ceruti, Giacomo Antonio, 70
Cezanne, Paul, 89, 212, 369, 448, 550, 556; at the Cafe
Guerbois, 42; death of, 495; Degas as collector of, 31,
363, 392, 490, 491, 493, 554, 557; exhibitions of the
work of, 392, 490, 495, 544, 554; works by: Bather
beside the River, 557; "Green, Yellow, and Red Ap-
ples," 491; Man with the Pipe, The, 544; fig. 305;
Three Bathers, 372; fig. 172; "Three Pears," 491
Chabrier, Emmanuel, 161; portrait of, 161, 162; cat.
no. 97
Challaire, Mme, 182
Champfleury, Jules, 58, 309
Chapu, Henri, 38, 39, 52, 53, 65, 70, 103, 153
Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon, 202
Charles I (king of England), 348
Charpentier, Georges, 397
Charpentier, Mme Georges, 417
Charry, Paul de, 220
Chasseriau, Theodore, 38, 120; Two Sisters, 120; fig. 65
Chateaubriand, Francois-Rene, Vicomte de, 86
Chaumelin, Marius, 188
Chausson, Ernest, 169, 541
Cheramy, Paul-Arthur, 387, 486, 487
Cherfils, Alphonse, 122, 185, 188, 217, 389, 394
Cherfils, Christian: Coeurs, 389
Chesneau, Ernest, 157, 175, 198, 227
Chevalier, Frederic, 216, 286
Chevreul, Michel-Eugene, 198
Chialiva, Jules, 593, 594
Chialiva, Luigi, 81, 145, 496, 593, 594
Chocquet, Victor, 494
Christie's, London, 391
Chronique des Arts, La, 3 10
Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosite, La, 202, 210, 345
Cicerale, Francesco Cardone di, 254
Cicerale, Marchesa di, see Montejasi, Duchessa di
Ciceri, Pierre Luc Charles, 172
Cid, Le (Massenet), 532
Cigale, La (Halevy, L., and Meilhac), 216, 487
Cimabue, 140
Claretie, Jules, 198, 199, 201, 202, 213, 215, 216, 220,
223, 258, 259, 280, 292, 296, 343
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellee), 50, 71; Landscape with
the Nymph Egeria, 153
Claus, Jenny, 145
Clauzet, Paris, 372, 381
Clere, Camille, 50, 70
Clermont, Hermann de, 188
Clesinger, Auguste: Woman Bitten by a Snake, 415, 470
Closier, Zoe, 376, 410, 490, 497, 554
Clouet, Francois, 23, 44-45, 91, 118, 179
Cochin, Denys, 254
Cocteau, Jean, 574
Coeurs (Cherfils, C), 389
Cojfret de santal, Le (Cros, C), 218
Cogniet, Leon, 48; Tintoretto Painting His Dead
Daughter, 36
Coiombier, Marie, 135
Colvin, Sydney, 157, 176
Combats de Francoise Dm Quesnoy, Les (Duranty), 145,
309, 3io
Constable, John, 262
Constitutional, Le, 188, 345
Copenhagen Art Society, 392
Coquiot, Gustave, 175, 290, 295, 414
Cornu, Pierre, 137
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille, 38, 51, 54, 134, 153, 179,
221, 317, 363, 503, 542; Spring, The, 148
Correggio (Antonio Allegri), 40, 50
Cortelli, Leopoldo, 54
Cortissoz, Royal, 473, 609
Cotinaud, M., 380
Courbet, Gustave, 58, 104, 154, 363, 375; exhibitions of
the work of, 56, 57, 134, 358, 359; influence on Degas,
42, 43, 82, 136, 301, 358, 415; Pavilion du Realisme
of, 56, 57; works by: After Dinner at Omans, 82; Ate-
lier, V, 554; Bonjour, Monsier Courbet, 105; Portrait of
fo, 415; Sleep, 301; fig. 143; Trellis, The, 116; fig. 61;
Woman with a Parrot, 561
Courcy, Frederic Chariot de, see De Courcy, Frederic
Chariot
Courtier de France, Le, 289
Courtivron, Marquis de, 135
Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, 130
Cremieux, Hector, 278
Cri de Paris, 88
Critic, The (New York), 384
Croquis parisiens, 365
Cros, Charles, 218, 343; Coffret de santal, Le, 218
Cros, Henry, 343, 345
Cuvelier, Joseph, 58, 138
624
Daily Graphic, The, engraving from, 378; fig. 182
Daly, Cesar, 124
Dalligny, Auguste, 208
Dante Alighieri, 40, 256; Divine Comedy, 49, 86
Darde, Melina, 329, 339
Darwin, Charles, 200, 208, 211; Expressions of the Emo-
tions in Man and Animals, The, 205; illustration for a
review of, fig. 100
Daubigny, Charles, 509
Daudet, Alphonse, 438
Daumier, Honore, 82, 88, 122, 205, 249, 288, 438, 542,
577; Crispin and Scapin (Scapin and Silvestre), 271;
fig. 136; Man of Property, A, 82; fig. 37
David, Jacques-Louis, 88, 453-54; Death of Joseph Bara,
48, 453-54
David- Weill, David, 161, 280
Davis, Erwin, 378
Dax, Pierre, 214
Debussy, Claude: Pelleas et Melisande, 169
Decap, Paris, 69
De Courcy, Alexandre Frederic Chariot, 50, 51, 52, 53
De Dreux, Alfred, 43, 46, 10 1, 102
De Gas, Achille (brother), 26, 42, 48, 54, 62, 64, 155,
212, 214; birth of, 47; correspondence to: Auguste De
Gas, 53, 54; Degas, 157; Michel Musson, 215; Mus-
son family, 57; death of, 488, 542, 556-57; financial
situation of, 26, 215; in Geneva, 384, 394, 487; inher-
itances of, 212, 213, 252; naval career of, 51, 52, 53,
59, 64; in New Orleans, 26, 64, 541; portraits of, 44,
48, 64-65, 186, 188; cat. nos. 4, 115; fig. 29
Degas, Achille (uncle), 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 74, 212, 213,
222, 252, 253
De Gas, Auguste, 35, 41, 64, 86, 107, 122, 154, 161,
221; advice and support for Degas, 37, 43, 51, 52, 71,
80-81, 87, 88, 171; art preferences of, 37, 52, 87, 88;
business of, 26, 212, 251; as collector, 155; correspon-
dence from: Achille De Gas, 53, 54; Degas, 79;
Soutzo, 52, 87; correspondence to: Degas, 36, 40, 43,
51, 52, 71, 77, 80-81, 82, 87, 88, 107, 137; Therese
De Gas (Mme Morbilli), 59, 168; Edmondo Morbilli,
118; Michel Musson, 40, 54, 55, 118; death of, 26,
171, 212, 222, 253; estate of, 157, 171, 212, 214;
friendships of, 37, 49, 51, 71; gatherings at the home
of, 140, 161, 170-71; marriage of, 47; portraits of:
(anonymous miniaturist), 47; fig. 12; (Degas), 44, 62
169-71, 534; cat. no. 102; fig. 299
De Gas, Mme Auguste (nee Marie Celestine Musson),
24, 47; portrait of (anonymous miniaturist), 47;
fig. 12
Degas, Edouard, 32, 47, 54, 56, 58, 74, 75, 251, 252;
portrait of, 50; fig. 16
Degas, Mme Edouard (nee Candida Primicile Carafa),
57, 251-52
Degas, Henri, 47, 212, 213, 218, 252, 253, 305; portrait
of, 251-52, 254; cat. no. 145
Degas, Hilaire, 24, 44, 47, 50, 51, 54, 72, 74, 80, 82,
171, 251; portraits of, 38, 50, 72-74, 82; cat. nos. 15,
20; residence of, Naples, figs, 14, 15
Degas, Mme Hilaire (nee Giovanna Aurora Teresa
Freppa), 47, 75
Degas, Hilaire Germain Edgar (before 1874, De Gas)
abstract elements in the work of, 262, 481, 482, 502,
504, 506, 516, 518, 552, 560, 565, 570, 591-92, 601
admiration for: Cassatt, 320; Gauguin, 390, 486, 568
admired by: Cassatt, 236, 320; Gauguin, 230; Pissar-
ro, 378; Poujaud, 170; Puvis de Chavannes, 107;
Renoir, 296, 358
advice from: Auguste De Gas, 37, 43, 51, 52, 71,
80-81, 87, 88, 171; Manet, 90, 140; Soutzo, 49;
Tissot, 144-45, 146
aesthetic philosophy of, 87, 112, 153, 154, 205, 244,
256, 266, 280, 289, 314, 344, 367-68, 369, 410,
484-85, 491, 502, 504, 516, 561, 594, 610
allegory in the work of, 45, 105-107, 556
ambiguity in the work of, 43, 46, 100, 130, 146, 148,
209, 411, 433, 453, 482, 483, 484, 505, 516, 520,
534, 541, 544, 549, 579, 596
anti-Semitism and, 166, 316, 318, 484, 492-93, 494
apartments of, see Degas, studios and apartments of
in the army, 58, 166-67, 249
art dealers of, 219, 372, 381, 431; Bernheim-Jeune,
Paris, 363; Hector Brame, Paris, 363, 458; Clauzet,
Paris, 372, 381; Charles Deschamps, London, 185,
212, 213, 214, 216, 221, 222, 234, 244, 286; Paul
Durand-Ruel, Paris, 67, 77, 80, 102, 144, 145, 146,
212, 221, 222, 223, 232, 269, 280, 324, 325, 326,
337, 343-44, 35°, 354, 3^3, 370-7L 372, 375, 383,
425, 459, 502, 503, 550 (see also Durand-Ruel,
Paul, Degas works sold to); Theo van Gogh
(Boussod et Valadon, Paris), 182, 363, 370, 372,
386, 387, 388, 389, 391, 392, 393, 402; Alphonse
Portier, Paris, 372, 381, 386; Ambroise Vollard,
Paris, 363, 375, 550; manipulative relations with,
370, 381, 385
artistic development of, 32, 38, 40-41, 44, 45, 70,
148, 164, 168, 211, 364-65, 366, 368-69, 405, 416,
429, 448, 475, 481-82, 484-85, 504, 518, 586
artistic goals and ambitions of, 60, 100, 186, 188-89,
197, 204-205, 247, 264, 363, 396, 453, 470, 561
art market and, 26, 57, 146, 193, 201, 221, 222, 225,
259, 274, 363, 370, 371, 372, 375, 388, 402, 511,
581
atelier sales (posthumous), 67, 77, 88, 91, 98, 99, 105,
117, 127, 134, 140, 145, 161, 175, 188, 254, 272,
276, 280, 351, 411, 456, 471, 561
bachelorhood of, 363, 432; see also Degas, women
and
bathers, 231, 255-57, 259, 271, 303-308, 366, 367,
368-70, 372, 385, 411, 4H-23, 429, 443-54,
464-73, 499-501, 516-27, 531, 545-52, 554,
556-60, 593-602
birth of, 47
brothel scenes, 258, 259, 296-303, 411, 413, 414, 416,
419, 445
cafe and cafe-concert scenes, 201, 205, 206, 216, 258,
259, 261, 274, 286-96, 326, 365, 435-39
at the Cafe Guerbois, 35, 42, 45, 57, 135, 140, 309
caricature in the work of, 115, 122, 206, 239, 292,
296, 411, 606
chiaroscuro effects in the work of, 71, 172, 303, 308,
409, 412, 425; in photography, 538
classicism in the work of, 28, 29, 262, 366, 368, 421,
453, 517, 572, 596, 598
as collector, 26, 122, 363; of Cassatt, 385, 442, 525; of
Cezanne, 31, 363, 392, 490, 491, 493, 554, 557; of
Courbet, 554; of Cuyp, 494; of Delacroix, 31, 170,
393, 458, 482, 489, 490, 508; of Gauguin, 383, 390,
417, 488, 489, 557, 568; of van Gogh, 394, 490,
491; of Goya, 106; of El Greco, 31, 489, 492; of
handkerchiefs, 26, 506; of Ingres, 31, 381, 491,
506; of Japanese prints, 322; of Manet, 140, 170,
379, 388, 489; of Menzel, 219, 331; of Pissarro,
212; of walking sticks, 26, 491
collectors of the work of (see also Index of Former
Owners, 621), 159, 201, 263, 504; Mme Angello,
395; T. G. Arthur, 396; Bellino, 274; Blaizot, 280;
Hector Brame, 325; Brandon, 42, 50, 174, 222;
Caillebotte, 274, 303; Camondo, 191; Alexander
Cassatt, 335, 337, 375; Mary Cassatt, 385, 389;
Cheramy, 387; David- Weill, 280; Desire Dihau,
161; Doria, 244; Doucet, 345; Drake del Castillo,
340; Dupuis, 182; Joseph Durand-Ruel, 263; Du-
ranty, 242; Ephrussi, 288, 289; Faure, 146, 157,
212, 221-23 (see also Degas, Faure's commissioned
works and); Gauguin, 383, 390, 392, 417; Guerin,
280; the Havemeyers, 122, 258, 259, 324, 325, 326,
328, 335, 343-44, 345, 350, 351, 352, 396, 472,
511; Haviland, 346; Henraux, 594; Hill, 214, 244,
286, 288; Hoschede, 212; Huth, 176, 222; Lerolle,
28, 377, 380, 386, 402-403, 517, 518; Marx, 345,
453; Matisse, 553; May, 226-27, 230, 317; Monet,
308, 381; Mulbacher, 226; Mrs. Potter Palmer,
527; Picasso, 31, 284, 296; Pissarro, 376; van Praet,
57; Puvis de Chavannes, 263; Renoir, 296; Alexis
Rouart (brother of Henri), 249, 397; Henri Rouart,
354, 397; Shchukin, 244; Sickert, 225, 232, 355;
Vollard, 415, 601; manipulative relations with, 370,
381, 385
color in the work of (palette), 87, 142, 155, 168,
176-77, 181, 184, 189, 365, 367, 369, 402, 406,
435, 449, 451, 453, 457~58, 465, 4^8, 471, 473,
475, 476, 481-82, 5", 545, 551-52, 554, 5^8, 573,
574, 604
compositions of the work of, 25, 102, 106-107, 124,
158, 159, 161, 162, 181, 188, 189, 204, 232, 234,
236, 246-47, 249, 250, 254, 264, 266, 268, 277,
279, 283, 294, 300, 303, 314, 321-22, 329, 338-39,
356, 364-65, 366, 396, 397, 411, 417, 430, 451,
471, 476, 579
conservation of work, concern over, 185, 186,
201-202, 214, 244, 286
copied by: Bernard, 438; Gauguin, 230, 417-18
copies, 35, 43, 71, 87-88, 112, 457; of Assyrian art,
88; of Gentile Bellini (attr. to), 112; of Botticelli,
255; of Bronzino, 63; at Cabinet des Estampes,
Bibliotheque Nationale, 36, 48; of classical (an-
cient) subjects, 88, 91, 231, 347; of Clouet, 91; of
Cranach, 130; of Daumier, 88; of David, 48, 88,
453-54; of Delacroix, 53, 87, 88, 457-58, 499; cat.
no. 278; of Egyptian art, 88; of Etruscan sculpture,
358; of 15th- and 16th-century Italian work, 36,
75, 88, 457; of Flandrin, 37; of Gauguin, 417; of
Gericault, 101; of Giorgione, 51, 56; of Gozzoli,
52, 268, 509; of Ingres, 48, 61, 88, 465, 474; in
Italy, 49, 50, 51; of Leonardo da Vinci, 76; cat.
no. 18; at the Louvre, 36, 48, 54, 56, 57, 87; of Man-
tegna, 87-88, 232, 457; cat. no. 27; of Meissonier,
55, 88, 124; of Menzel, 88, 231, 457; of Michelan-
gelo (as copied by Raimondi), 470; of Muybridge,
459, 460, 462; of Persian miniatures, 548-49; of
Poussin, 89; cat. no. 28; of Raphael, 48; of Signo-
relli, 51, 91; of Soutzo, 49, 71; of Tissot, 130; of
Titian, 105; of Velazquez, 54, 140; of Veronese, 51;
of Whistler, 56, 88, 136
correspondence from: Gennaro Bellelli, 52; Laura
Bellelli, 51, 77, 81-82, 121; Champfleury, 58;
Achille De Gas (brother), 157; Achille Degas (un-
cle), 51, 52, 74; Auguste De Gas, 36, 40, 43, 51,
52, 71, 77, 80-81, 82, 87, 88, 107, 137; Hilaire De-
gas, 50, 72, 74; Rene De Gas, 53, 75; Therese De
Gas (Mme Morbilli), 118; Lambertini, 53; Manet,
57, 140, 154, 155; Edmondo Morbilli, 53, 74, 87,
118; Moreau, 44, 45; Alfred Niaudet, 59; Pissarro,
223; Tissot, 54, 59, 91, 130, 140; Tourny, 23, 50,
51, 53, 71, 92; Whistler, 486
correspondence to: Albert Bartholome, 29, 344, 377,
378, 379, 382, 384, 388, 391, 392, 393, 455, 459,
469, 482, 487, 506, 534; Mme Albert Bartholome
(Perie), 403; Blanche, 377; Boldini, 392; Bracque-
mond, 199, 218, 305, 316, 317, 370, 372, 495; Bra-
quaval, 344, 556-57, 566, 594; Caillebotte, 201,
316; Mary Cassatt, 258, 259; Chapu, 65; Cornu,
137; Achille Degas (uncle), 53; Auguste De Gas,
79; Lucie Degas (Mme Guerrero de Balde), 376,
489; Marguerite De Gas (Mme Fevre), 502; The-
rese De Gas (Mme Morbilli), 214, 249, 250, 494,
495; Deschamps, 185, 201, 214, 215, 221, 222, 234,
236, 244, 286; Mme De Nittis, 274, 380; Desire Di-
hau, 60, 182; Paul Durand-Ruel, 370-71, 372, 375,
376, 380, 381, 383, 489, 495; Faure, 212, 216, 222,
223, 234, 265, 266, 267, 269, 386, 424, 426, 428,
459; Henri Fevre, 223; Jeanne Fevre, 495; Mme de
Fleury, 379, 534; Frolich, 60, 182, 188, 192; Guil-
lemet, 219; Ludovic Halevy, 64, 216, 219, 281,
372, 380, 382, 487, 489, 490, 502, 538; Mme Ludo-
vic Halevy, 492, 493, 496, 502; Hecht, 175; Lafond,
391, 494; Lecoeur, 185; Leenhoff, 381; Legros, 59;
Lepic, 392; Lerolle, 28, 29, 292, 378, 435; Mallarme,
389; Eugene Manet, 379; Julie Manet (Mme Ernest
Rouart), 491; Maus, 391; Monet, 393; Moreau, 40,
51, 52, 80, 82; Berthe Morisot, 318, 379; Michel
Musson, 55; Pissarro, 199, 568; Poujaud, 177, 481,
495; Alexis Rouart (brother of Henri), 344, 492,
495, 496, 566, °04; Alexis Rouart (son of Henri),
625
604; Henri Rouart, 60, 182, 186, 255, 376, 378,
492, 493, 542, 543; Louis Rouart, 494; Tasset, 489,
542; Thornley, 389; Tissot, 59, 60, 130, 140, 142,
157, 176, 180, 181, 186, 188, 197, 212, 214, 221,
222, 269, 370, 372; Valadon, 494; Valernes, 112,
486, 499; Hortense Valpin<jon (Mme Fourchy),
495, 603
criticism of, see writings on
criticism of Salon by, 42, 58
critics, works ignored by, 42, 79, 107, 134, 136, 157,
180, 312, 318, 561, 563
Cubism, reaction to, 3 1
daily (modern) life, scenes of, 25, 43, 45-46, 10 1-
102, 202, 204, 206, 207-208, 212, 259, 280, 284,
286, 290, 411, 437
dancers (ballet scenes), 26, 29, 46, 161, 164, 171-78,
205, 206, 207, 209-n, 225-45, 259, 271-78, 328-
57, 365, 368, 407-409, 429, 430-34, 473-77, 484,
508, 510— 11, 512-15, 527-29, 568-93; frieze-
format rehearsals, 405-406, 409, 475, 510-11, 575;
nude, 499, 510, 579, 590, 592; painted on fans,
324-25, 327; photographs of, 568-70; Russian,
482, 484, 565, 581-85
death of, 80, 498
depressions of, 28, 29, 53, 85, 216, 312, 378, 379,
392, 481, 492, 496, 543, 544, 592
distemper, as medium used by, 200-201, 202, 365
dogs, hatred of, 285
as draftsman vs. painter, 180, 227, 369, 457
drawing and line, importance to the work of, 36,
243, 246, 303, 367-68, 369, 410, 482, 484, 499
drawings, album of, reproduced (Degas: vingt dessins),
90, 97, 105, 107, 117, 124, 276, 493, 548
as Duranty's executor, 219, 309
eclecticism of, 42-43, 88, 90-91
emotional power of the work of, 483, 485
equilibrium and, 23-26, 28-29, 3 1-32
essence, as medium used by, 26, 176, 192, 225, 227,
243
estrangements from: Bartholome, 494-95; Bonnat,
103; Caillebotte, 218, 220, 363, 376; Mary Cassatt,
389, 443; Rene De Gas, 26, 28, 217, 376, 541-42;
Gauguin, 376, 381, 383; Lucie Degas (Mme Guer-
rero de Balde), 252; Halevy family, 492, 493, 496,
535, 537, 538, 566; Lamothe, 53; Manet, 141, 142;
George Moore, 486; Moreau, 40-41, 42, 57, 91;
Pissarro, 384, 495; Renoir, 334, 335
etchings by, 71-72, 128, 199-200, 215, 281, 294-96,
304-307, 322-24, 411; for Le Jour et la Nuit, 199,
, 201, 262, 437, 442; reworked in pastel, 323, 437,
439, 440
eyesight (failing) of, 59, 60, 145, 181, 184, 189, 212,
214, 312, 344, 377, 481, 484, 488, 519, 568, 569,
592, 594
exchange of works with Mary Cassatt, 385; Gauguin,
383; Manet, 140-42
exhibition installation, views on, 58, 197, 198, 199
exhibitions of the work of: in Amsterdam, 3 89; in
Brussels, 42, 57, 381; in Chicago, 394; in England,
286, 355; in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Fogg Art
Museum), 496; in France, 185, 215, 2i6;in Glas-
gow, 387, 396; Impressionist, see Impressionism,
exhibitions; in London, 59, 60, 157, 171, 212, 213,
214, 223, 226, 234, 244, 269, 270, 288, 376, 377-
78, 396, 397, 488, 495; in New York, 217, 258,
335, 371, 378, 382, 384, 386, 432, 437, 442; one-
man, 482, 488, 496, 502; in Paris, 161, 168, 184,
214, 309, 323, 380, 386, 387, 390, 391, 417, 418,
488, 491, 493, 494, 502, 504; in Pittsburgh, 492;
posthumous, 105, 161, 164, 168, 182, 184, 433,
455, 482, 609; proposed, 244; at the Salon, 42, 80,
86, 309, 371; (1865), 42, 45, 55, 105, 107; (1866),
56, 79, 123, 365, 561; (1867), 42, 56, 79, 80, 81,
120; (1868), 57, 133, 134, 135, 136; (1869), 44, 57;
(1870), 88, 149; (1871), 161
facial characteristics used in the work of, 205-206,
208, 209, 211, 435
failures of, 88
family relationships of, 23, 24, 26, 37, 41, 50, 54, 55,
62, 63, 72, 74, 75, 80, 8I-82, IO6, Il8, 122,
180-81, 214, 215, 217, 222, 252, 253, 358, 376
fans painted by, 26, 201, 318, 322, 324-27, 349, 378
Faure's commissioned works and, 26, 164, 171, 212,
216, 221-22, 223, 234, 236, 263, 266, 269, 370,
381, 404, 424-25, 426, 428
fictional characters based on, 216, 309, 384
financial situation of, 26, 28, 42, 43, 81, 199, 201,
214, 215, 216, 222, 252, 259, 305, 335, 363, 364,
375, 380, 384, 385, 489
framing the work of, 198, 199, 383, 454
friendships, 38, 42, 143, 161, 246, 247, 363, 378; with
Bartholome, 137, 170, 377, 455, 481, 490, 492,
497, 502, 609, 610; with Blanche, 382, 486; with
Bonnat, 38, 42, 103; with Brandon, 42, 50; with
Braquaval, 344, 566; with Breguet family, 42, 249;
with Burty, 207, 213, 343, 412; with Rose Caron,
532-33; with Mary Cassatt, 320, 378, 389, 392,
393, 396, 442, 443, 496, 497; with Albert Cave,
279, 382, 487; with Chapu, 39; with Cheramy,
487; with Cherfils, 122, 185, 217, 389, 394; with
Claretie, 292; with Cochin, 254; with Cuvelier, 58;
with De Courcy, 52, 53; with De Nittis, 380; with
Desboutin, 258, 286; with Desire Dihau, 23, 54;
with Marie Dihau, 264; with Duranty, 35, 140,
197, 309, 331; with Ephrussi, 289; with Fantin-
Latour, 42; with Faure, 424; with Gervex, 382; with
Daniel Halevy, 98, 382, 535, 539; with Ludovic
Halevy, 36, 42, 47, 172, 207, 249, 278, 280, 282,
378, 382, 542; with Mme Ludovic Halevy, 538;
with Halevy family, 535; with Henner, 42; with
Jeanniot, 492, 502, 566; with Koenigswarter, 52,
53, 85; with Lafond, 122, 340, 351, 389, 394, 487;
with Lepic, 205, 257; with Lerolle, 256, 377, 403,
435, 517; with Levy, 38, 52, 137; with Mallarme,
536; with Edouard Manet, 35, 41, 42, 57, 60, 112,
128, 140-42, 221; with Julie Manet (Mme Ernest
Rouart), 490, 492; with Martelli, 3 12; with Mo-
reau, 40, 41; with Berthe Morisot, 489; with Mo-
risot family, 42, 149; with Niaudet, 42, 47, 378;
withPaulin, 82, 351; with Poujaud, 144, 169, 170,
541; with Renoir, 490, 494; with Rosanno, 419;
with Alexis Rouart (brother of Henri), 170, 249,
250, 495; with Henri Rouart, 42, 166, 170, 247,
249, 250, 271, 331, 495, 542, 543; with Rouart
family, 250, 604; with Sickert, 382, 440; with Ste-
vens, 41, 112, 140; with Tasset, 483, 542; with Tis-
sot, 41, 42, 112, 130; with Tourny, 38, 39, 71, 92;
with Valernes, 42, 112, 487; with Valery, 35; with
Hortense Valpingon (Mme Fourchy), 409, 506;
with Paul Valpin^on, 47, 48; with Valpinqon fami-
ly, 41, 42, 61, 101, 115, 157, 506; with Verhaeren,
536; with Whistler, 42
generosity of, 310, 316-17, 331, 372, 380
genre scenes by, 43, 70, 145, 147-48, 164, 192, 443,
525, 531-35, 552, 603
gouache, as medium used by, 200, 201, 202, 365
health problems of, 481, 489, 492, 495, 497-98
history paintings by, 35, 43, 45, 86-87, 89-92,
98-100, 105, 106, 136, 161
horses, 137-39, 388, 459, 460-62
horses and riders, see Degas, racecourses and racing
scenes
humor in the work of, 239, 296, 299-300, 365, 366,
399, 411, 414, 419, 426-27, 428, 432, 531
illustrations: for La famille Cardinal (Halevy, L.), 175,
258, 270, 280-84, 475*, f°r Madame et Monsieur Car-
dinal (Halevy, L.), 199; for Tiroir de laque, Le (Mal-
larme), 281
imagination, increasing role in the work of, 369, 405,
482, 502, 505, 565, 568, 580, 592
Impressionism and, 202, 204, 217, 363, 376, 502; see
also Degas, as Independant
Impressionist label, as impedance to understanding
work of, 198
as Independant, 98, 220, 309, 324, 363; see also
Degas, Impressionism and
influenced by: Andrea del Sarto, 107; Assyrian art, 90,
92; Bonnat, 82; Botticelli, 80; Bronzino, 23; Car-
paccio, 40, 80; Chasseriau, 38; Claude Lorrain,
153; Clouet, 23, 118; Corot, 38, 153; Correggio,
40; Courbet, 42, 43, 82, 136, 301, 358, 415; Dau-
mier, 82, 122, 249, 271, 288; De Dreux, 46, 101,
102; Delacroix, 38, 40, 42, 45, 86, 87, 89, 112, 153,
249, 257, 453, 458, 482; Duranty, 35; Dutch paint-
ing, 38, 177, 236; van Dyck, 23-24, 38, 52, 80, 82;
England and English painting, 43, 46, 56, 10 1,
102, 147, 153, 157-58, 563; Flandrin, 37, 38, 40,
97; Gavarni, 249, 296; Genga, 87; Gericault, 46,
101, 102; German painting, 132; Giorgione, 80;
Goya, 82; Gozzoli, 508; El Greco, 318; Greek clas-
sicism, 100; Guys, 296; Hiroshige, 266, 322; Hol-
bein, 23, 82; Ingres, 23, 36, 38, 42, 55, 61, 63, 64,
82, 130, 134, 151, 153, 155, 238, 249, 255, 301,
445, 465, 482, 486, 493, 496, 499; Italian art, 40,
91, 107, 130; Japanese printmakers, 130, 188, 249,
266, 279, 296, 299, 322, 325, 365; Lamothe, 36, 37,
40, 43; Maineri, 107; Manet, 35, 45, 368, 561;
Mantegna, 80, 86, 87, 232; Meissonier, 43, 124;
Menzel, 217, 270, 331; Michelangelo, 40, 527; Mo-
reau, 38, 39, 40, 65, 70, 80, 81, 85, 87, 89, 91, 97,
98-99, 101, 102, 103, 153, 470; Muybridge, 368,
375, 448, 459, 460, 462, 464, 474, 509; Persian art,
90, 482, 511; Piero della Francesca, 91; Pisanello,
91; Poussin, 35, 89; Puvis de Chavannes, 90, 415;
Raphael, 40, 112; Rembrandt, 71, 80, 412; Rosso,
524; Rubens, 38; Seurat, 465; Soutzo, 38; Tissot,
130; Titian, 40; Veronese, 40, 86, 88, 440;
Whistler, 43
influence of, 363, 364, 372, 374
influence on: Bartholome, 372, 455; Boldini, 372;
Mary Cassatt, 372, 416; De Nittis, 284, 372, 380;
Duranty, 44, 198; Forain, 372, 437; Gauguin, 230,
368, 372, 417; Gervex, 308; Manet, 124, 368; Pi-
casso, 296, 302; Raffaelli, 372; Seurat, 372, 437;
Sickert, 372; Toulouse-Lautrec, 372, 437, 439, 495;
Zandomeneghi, 372; Zola, 223
inheritances of, 212, 213, 252
interiors, 25, 506-508
jockeys, see Degas, racecourses and racing scenes
journal proposed by (see Jour et la Nuit, Le)
landscapes, 38, 43, 57, i53~55, 259, 363, 413, 464,
482-83, 486, 488, 502-506, 566-68
large-scale works of, 41, 79, 86, 130, 371, 400, 407,
408, 423, 514, 519, 521, 558, 561, 573
laundresses, 205, 223-24, 365, 424-29, 531
as law student, 36
Lepic, collaborations with, 257, 258, 260
at Lepic's modeling session, 328
lesbianism in the work of, 301
life drawings by, 38, 65-67
light in the work of, 25, 26, 28, 29, 74, 146, 164, 172,
175, 189, 224, 230, 234, 236, 247, 271, 272, 292,
303, 307-308, 339, 340, 353-54, 399, 4", 415,
416, 420, 425, 433, 437-38, 511, 515, 5i9» 534,
572, 591, 592
literary sources for the work of, 25, 86, 90, 98, 101,
145-46, 148, 202, 203, 482, 524
lithographic reproductions of the work of (Thornley),
292, 331, 354, 387, 389, 417, 565
lithographs by, 288, 292-93, 486, 499-501; reworked
with pastel, 437-38
love affairs of, 54, 81, 130, 146, 538
at Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris, 36, 47, 64, 98, 166,
249, 278, 538
medals and honors, dislike of, 609
meeting with: Blanche, 375; Cassatt, 259; Paul
Durand-Ruel, 370; Duranty, 309, 310; Ingres, 36,
48, 61; Manet, 42, 54, 128, 140; Menzel, 57; Mo-
reau, 39, 50
melancholy and gravity of the late work of, 481, 483,
484-85, 508, 511, 544-45, 554, 572, 587, 589, 590,
591, 592, 602, 603, 606
at Menil-Hubert, Normandy (the Valpinqons), see
Degas, travels in France, Menil-Hubert
626
metaphorical associations of mediums used by, 201
milliners, 364, 365, 395-401, 429, 430, 606
as a mime, 23
misogyny of, 385; see also Degas, women and
models used for the work of, 102, 144, 147, 148, 157,
161, 175, 176, 228, 239, 241-42, 248, 252, 255,
262, 285, 286, 288, 296, 305, 318, 320, 321, 328,
329, 331, 337, 339. 342, 346-47, 348, 349, 355,
35<5, 358, 396, 4H, 446, 489, 516
modernism of the work of, 28, 35, 87, 100, 175, 185,
189, 203-204, 206-207, 223, 286, 288, 343, 374,
411, 443, 453, 455-56, 470
Monet's Water Lilies, reaction to, 3 1
monographs on: (Lafond), 340, 350-51, 389; (Le-
moisne), 43, 61, 70, 71, 102, 124, 153, 159, 160,
181, 364-65, 594, 604
monotypes, 205, 215, 257-62, 264, 280-85, 296-303,
304, 307-309, 468; bathers, 307-308, 411-21,
422-23, 445; brothel scenes, 296-303, 411, 414,
419, 445; dark-field, 258, 259, 260, 261, 271, 304,
308, 411, 413, 415, 416, 420; first, 257-62; first im-
pressions as transfer lithographs, 258, 261, 285;
formats used, 259, 260, 271, 274, 296, 339; as il-
lustrations, 280-84; innovative, 199, 201, 257, 271,
304; as inventor of, 199, 257, 258; landscape, 363,
482-83, 486, 502-506, 566; with Lepic's supervi-
sion, 257, 258, 260; light-field, 258, 259, 261, 280,
304; pastelized, 201, 258, 259, 260, 271, 274, 282,
283, 292, 303, 307, 308, 369, 411, 412, 413, 414,
415, 417, 419, 420, 421, 422, 502, 503, 504, 519;
techniques, 201, 258, 259, 271, 283, 284, 299, 300,
304, 307, 411, 413, 414, 416, 417, 502, 504
Morisot exhibition organized by, 491
mourning, series on, 253-54, 358
movement, synthesism of, in the work of, 43 3 , 460,
482, 516, 518, 559-60, 564
museum, visits to the, series on, 429, 440
music and, 254, 331
musicians, 169-171, 178-79, 189-90, 331-32, 333
mystery in the work of, 501, 574, 601
Naturalism and, 197, 207, 363, 364
naturalism in the work of, 254, 296, 343
nature, views on, 202-203, 256, 280
notebooks, 36, 481; drawings in, 23, 36, 37, 48, 49,
50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63, 66, 70, 87, 88,
96, 97, 101, 105, 106, 107, 115, 120, 121, 124, 130,
132, 134, 136, 142, 144, 146, 148, 149, 153, 157,
162, 171, 175, 189, 199, 205-206, 208, 219, 228,
240, 244, 255, 264, 265, 266, 286, 292, 293, 296,
312, 320, 322, 339, 346, 348, 358, 382, 405, 406,
426, 438, 458, 465, 531, 533, 559, 593; writings in,
23-24, 28, 36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51, 57,
68, 70, 87, 88, 90, 99, 101, 105, 112, 116, 130, 142,
146, 148, 154, 155, 158, 167, 171, 172, 188, 190,
199, 204-205, 213, 217, 227, 239, 244, 253, 254,
255, 256, 262, 270, 280, 286, 310, 314, 316, 318,
320, 322, 340, 342, 346, 347, 358, 377, 392, 432,
448, 458, 459, 49i, 493, 5ii, 566
nudes, 107, 259, 271, 308, 309, 349, 364, 368, 411,
414, 419, 463-64, 482, 499, 510, 544-45, 579, 590,
593-94; see also Degas, bathers; brothels
orchestras, 161-64, 269-70
at the Opera, 134, 171, 363, 375, 381, 382, 383, 384,
385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394,
481, 486, 487, 532
palette of, see color
pastel: over etchings, 323, 437, 439, 440; over litho-
graphs, 437-38; over monotypes, 201, 258, 259,
260, 271, 274, 282, 283, 292, 303, 307, 308, 369,
411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 417, 419, 420, 421, 502,
503, 504, 519; preference for, 365; squared for
transfer, 333, 408, 563; techniques, 155, 200-201,
202, 331, 339, 366-67, 369, 408, 435, 437, 443,
446, 451, 453, 465, 468, 471, 475-76, 527, 53i,
564, 565, 580, 581, 588, 593, 597-98
perspective in the work of, 158, 181, 188, 189, 204,
339, 448, 482, 483, 506
photographs by, 483, 489, 490, 491, 492, 535-42,
548, 549, 566, 568-70; Tasset's assistance with,
483, 489, 542, 569
photographs of, 23, 105, 392, 506; frontispiece; figs. 9,
55, 169, 189, 191, 203, 270, 282, 284, 285, 287;
(Degas), 140, 541; cat. nos. 333, 334; figs. 75, 272,
273
photographs, work derived from, 134, 239, 261, 323,
459, 460, 462, 483, 509, 542
photography, influence of, 121, 204, 356, 396, 463;
see also Degas, influenced by Muybridge
poetry dedicated to, 218, 343, 389
poetry (sonnets) written by, 390, 434, 532-33
portraits by, 43-45, 70, 71, 1 14-16, 117, 127, 132-33,
148, 239, 246-55, 258-59, 261, 270, 278-79, 284-
86, 292, 309-24, 435, 456-57, 603; of criminals,
208-209; double, 112, 118, 120, 140-42, 164, 166,
169-71, 252, 279; experimental, 189, 252, 254;
family, 41, 43~44, 5°, 55, 60, 62-64, 72-75, 77-
85, 104, 118-21, 155-57, 169-71, 180-81, 182,
186, 189, 192, 251-54; of friends, 122, 130, 140-
43, 149-53, 161-62, 168-71, 382, 542-44, 604;
genre, 532; group, 161-62, 166-68, 185-86, 188;
in interiors, 122, 130, 443; on a lampshade, 318; of
painters, 44, 102-103, 105, 1 12-14, 128-29, 130-
32, 140-43, 170, 440, 442-43; photographic, 483,
490, 492, 535-42; sculptural, 455
portraits of: (Boldini), 392; fig. 204; (Desboutin),
figs. 106, 108; (Forain), figs. 93, 115; (Galletti), 70;
(Moreau), 70; figs. 17, 18; (Paulin), 495
prices for the work of, 23, 82, 127, 185, 191, 212,
217, 222, 223, 232, 278, 280, 324, 352, 359, 375,
376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 385, 386, 387,
388-89, 391, 392, 393, 394, 397, 428, 459, 493
"primitivism" in the work of, 91, 161
printmaking and, 26, 38, 71, 128; see also Degas,
etchings; lithographs; monotypes
prostitutes, 206, 288, 289, 516; see also brothels
psychology in the work of, 81, 148, 236, 241, 247,
252, 254, 298, 321, 339, 579
racecourses and racing scenes, 45, 101-102, 123-27,
138, 153, i57-6o, 192-93, 264-69, 339, 364, 365,
368, 402-405, 423, 430, 459, 508, 509, 511,
560-65
Realist amibitions of, 105, 197, 198-99, 201,
202-205, 211, 212, 213, 363, 366
realism in the work of, 105, 136, 185, 209, 271, 274,
289, 343, 432-33, 443, 445, 470, 594, 603
Realist-Impressionist factions fostered by, 198-99,
218, 220, 375, 376, 381, 383, 384
reconciliations with: Rene De Gas, 492, 542, 556-57;
Gauguin, 386; Halevy family, 496
references to early work, in the late work of, 400,
448, 453, 463-64, 470, 474, 508, 5", 517-18, 531,
534, 548, 551, 554, 557, 558, 561, 563, 603, 606
religious paintings by, 43, 67-68
reproductions of the work of (engravings by Dujardin),
281; (engraving by Manzi), 90, 97, 105, 107, 117,
124, 276, 493, 548
reputation of, as burgeoning artist, 26, 41-42
reviews of the work of, 82, 123, 125, 185, 186, 198,
244, 260, 286, 289, 329, 343, 365, 376, 377, 378,
385, 396, 397, 432-33, 445, 446, 451, 503; About,
123; Adam, 367, 445-46; Ajalbert, 395-96, 445,
446; Alexandre, 502-503, 504; Aurier (Luc Le Fla-
neur), 363, 369, 391; Baigneres, 202, 204, 214; Be-
liard, 198; Bergeret, 205; Bertall, 216, 217; Burty,
174, 198, 201, 207, 213, 227; Cardon, 213; Casta-
gnary, 42, 79, 120, 213; Charry, 220; Chesneau,
157, 227; Chevalier, 286; Claretie, 199, 213, 216,
220, 258, 280, 296, 343; Colvin, 157, 176; Dal-
ligny, 208; Dax, 214; Duranty, 198, 202, 309, 310,
363; Enault, 186; Ephrussi, 208, 288, 329, 337,
338, 342; Feneon, 363, 368, 369, 387, 395, 417,
430, 443, 446, 556; Henry Fevre, 443; Fourcaud,
274; R.G., 482, 503; Geffroy, 208, 211, 365-66,
368, 446, 453; Goetschy, 98, 301, 342-43, 35°;
Gonse, 202; Havard, 198, 202, 217; Hermel, 446-
47; d'Hervilly, 213; Huysmans, 202, 205, 206, 210,
214, 219, 220, 243, 337-38, 343, 345, 368, 437,
446; Jacques (pseudonym), 271, 274; Lafenestre,
202, 216; Leroy, 213, 318; Leude, 205; Lostalot,
198, 217, 3I0i Comtesse Louise, 208, 211;
MacColl, 288; Maillard, 216; Mantz, 206, 209,
211, 216, 220, 278, 289, 343; Martelli, 312; Andre
Michel, 35; Mirbeau, 368, 395, 446; de Mont,
210-11; Montifaud, 174; Moore, 288, 445; Navery,
135, 136; Poncetton, 82; Porcheron, 248; Pothey,
214, 271, 289, 428; Riviere, 204, 206, 274, 278,
289; Sebillot, 310, 325; Silvestre, 124, 185, 204,
206-207, 213, 214, 219, 301, 310, 312, 366; Syene,
364; Thiebault-Sisson, 350, 352; Trianon, 211, 343;
Villard, 209, 220, 343, 354; Wolff, 185, 220; Zola,
42, 134, 135, 136, 146, 185-86
rivalry with Manet, 102, 140, 368, 372
rugs, love of, 482
sarcasm of, 42, 100, 140, 285, 309, 316, 372, 414
satire and irony in the work of, 206, 207, 300, 541
science and technology, interest in harnessing, to
serve art, 197-98, 200-201, 205-206
sculpture: bathers, 444, 469-70, 472, 524, 552,
559-60, 595, 598; casting of, 344, 350-52, 433,
469-70, 474, 527, 528, 586, 594; dancers, 209-11,
342-45, 349-52, 433-34, 473-74, 515, 527-29,
586-87, 609-10; genre, 552; horses, 137-40, 388,
460-62; portrait busts, 379, 380, 455, 490; relief,
358
self-confidence and security of, 363
self-doubt and uncertainty of, 36, 38, 112, 137, 216
self-portraits by, 38, 41, 43, 61, 70-72, 104-105,
1 12-14, 116, 170; photographs, 140, 541; cat. nos.
333, 334; figs- 75, 272, 273
sexuality in the work of, 365, 415, 417, 433, 548-49,
55i
sexuality of, 23, 296, 388, 446, 492, 543
Societe Anonyme des Artistes and, 212-13, 214, 218,
363, 376, 386
still lifes, 43, 311
as student, 35, 36-37, 47, 48, 61, 74, 103, 130, 153,
166, 249, 278, 538
studios and apartments of, 40, 41, 52, 53, 56, 59, 60,
77, 85, 144, 212, 214, 216, 289, 363, 376, 387, 393,
442, 481, 496, 506, 516, 522
support for: Bartholome, 372, 386, 455; Mary Cas-
satt, 372, 442, 606; Gauguin, 488; Berthe Morisot,
606; Toulouse-Lautrec, 487; Suzanne Valadon, 606;
younger artists, 31, 372
support from: Mary Cassatt, 320, 335, 350, 351-52,
384, 443, 527; Duranty, 363
surrealist quality in the work of, 127
style of, 35, 36, 38, 74, 117, 130, 142, 164, 184, 186,
198, 223-24, 225, 236, 238, 246, 247-48, 249-50,
253-54, 255, 277, 331, 338, 339, 364-65, 366, 368,
369, 371-72, 374, 408, 411, 417, 448, 483, 5io,
511, 522, 544-45, 561
Symbolism and, 363, 364, 369, 482, 536
techniques and working methods of, 230, 364-65;
drawings, 29, 107, 314, 421-22, 443-44, 459,
463-64, 468, 559, 561, 577, 585, 593; drawings
squared for transfer, 68, 150, 160, 238, 239, 241,
242, 244, 312, 313, 468, 563, 574; enlarging work
with strips of paper or canvas, 164, 202, 246, 271,
272, 292, 310, 317, 321-22, 335, 421, 438, 446,
501, 565, 597, 599, 602, 606; experimentation with
new and innovative techniques, 25, 40, 199-202,
209-10, 257, 271, 304, 365, 524, 527, 535; litho-
graphs, 499; mixing of pigment, 202; with models,
516; monotypes, see Degas, monotypes, tech-
niques; of painting, 25-26, 124, 134, 154, 168, 192,
227, 254, 288, 424, 426, 427-28, 476, 546, 547,
574, 588; pastels, see Degas, pastel, techniques;
pastels squared for transfer, 333, 408, 563; photog-
raphy, 535-36, 538, 568-69; printmaking, 26, 199,
305, 437; reworkings and alterations, 41, 61,
62-63, 80, 97, 98, 99, 102, 142, 145, 146, 160, 162,
176, 181, 223, 227, 230, 234, 236, 254, 256, 266,
268, 272, 288, 305, 337, 340, 343, 400, 404, 405,
627
409, 428, 433, 448, 510, 511, 534, 561; sculpture,
134. 137, 138, 209-10, 347, 349, 455, 474, 515,
524, 527; tracings, 425, 468, 501, 522, 548, 559,
5<5i, 565, 577, 578, 580, 581, 593-94, 597, 600, 603;
traditional mediums, revitalization of, 200-202
temper of, 198, 263, 334, 370
theatricality of the work of, 483-84, 511, 513, 515
travel in Belgium: Brussels, 57, 393, 551
travel in England, 193; London, 41, 59, 214, 226
travel in France: Alsace, 495; Argentan, 157; Aries, 48;
Avignon, 48, 487, 502; Bagnoles-de-rOrne, 136;
Belfort, 495; Besanqon, 495; Boulogne-sur-Mer,
57, 154; Bourg-en-Bresse, 41, 55, 106, 181, 182;
Bourges, 487; Burgundy, 363, 481, 486, 502, 504,
534; Camembert, 54; Carpentras, 487, 491, 502;
Cauterets, 389, 392, 394, 487, 491, 502; Clermont-
Ferrand, 487, 561; Colmar, 495; Dienay, 464, 488,
502, 504; Dieppe, 380, 382, 440, 539; Dijon, 502;
Epinal, 495; Etretat, 57, 153, 154, 377; Exmes,
101, 106, 266; Gerardmer, 495; Grenoble, 487, 502;
Haras du Pin, 54, 153; Lac du Bourget, 52; La
Queue-en-Brie, 495, 496, 604; Lourdes, 389;
Lyons, 37, 48, 74; Macon, 52; Menil-Hubert, Nor-
mandy, 23, 29, 41, 54, 59, 101, 106, 115, 136, 153,
157, 168, 216, 378, 379, 380, 409, 483, 487, 506-
508, 603; Montauban, 492; Mont-Cenis, 52; Mont-
Dore, 123, 137, 489, 494; Mont Saint-Michel, 382;
Nancy, 495; Nimes, 48; Normandy, 502; Ornans,
495; Parame, 371, 382-83, 431; Pau, 389, 394, 487,
502; Pontarlier, 495; Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, 52;
Saint- Valery-sur-Somme, 10 1, 154, 484, 489, 493,
505, 566-68; Sete, 48; Touraine, 214; Tours, 487;
Valence, 487; Villers-sur-Mer, 57, 153, 154
travel in Germany: Munster, 495
travel in Italy, 35, 38, 41, 49-52, 63, 64, 65, 71, 85,
91, 153, 213; Arezzo, 91; Florence, 39, 50, 51, 53,
76, 77, 79, 80-81, 92, 137, 213, 312; Genoa, 52,
82, 213; Livorno, 52, 53; Naples, 38, 39, 49, 50,
53, 54, 72, 75, 80, 105, 153, 213, 215, 250, 252,
253» 254, 384, 495; Pisa, 52, 213; Posilipo, 53;
Rome, 38, 49, 50-51, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69-70, 71,
72, 97, 10 1, 103, 153, 174; San Rocco di Capodi-
monte (near Naples), 50, 72, 74; Siena, 52; Turin,
52, 212
travel in Morocco: Tangier, 392, 482
travel in Spain: Cadiz, 392; Granada, 392; Madrid,
392
travel in Switzerland: Geneva, 377, 384, 394, 487,
502; Interlaken, 488; Lausanne, 502; Ouchy, 377;
Veyrier, 377; Zurich, 377
travel in the United States: New Orleans, 26, 41, 59,
60, 77, 157, 180-83, 184-86, 188-89, 192, 197,
204, 205, 249, 255, 541; New York, 60
"ugliness" in models appreciated by, 44, 114, 182,
211, 255
unfinished work by, 41, 45, 86, 104, 134, 151,
180-81, 188, 212, 256, 369, 422, 424, 432, 443,
551. 553, 554, 557, 574, 602
at the Valpinqons, see Degas, travel in France, Menil-
Hubert
violin lessons of, 54, 178
Vollard's album reproducing the work of, 550
withdrawal from Parisian art community, 363, 372,
377. 391, 481
women and, 49, 57, 140, 146, 182, 206, 255, 368,
440, 606
works given or donated by, 71, 74, 134, 219, 223,
263, 264, 278, 281, 282, 310, 325, 331, 371, 383,
407, 410, 417, 432, 504* 54i
works in public collections, 26, 82, 90, 161, 164, 169,
185, 188, 193, 217, 227, 274, 317, 491, 502
writings on, 23, 35, 58, 62, 70, 77, 79, 81, 89, 98,
105, 143-44, U6, !54, J58, 161, 164, 168, 169,
175, 182, 184, 191, 215, 223, 277, 278, 305, 323,
355. 391. 4io, 411, 428, 458, 482-83, 485, 486,
490, 491, 493, 495, 496, 497, 502, 516, 535"3<5,
538, 539, 556, 574
Zola's L'Oeuvre, reaction to, 384
Degas, Hilaire Germaine Edgar: works by
"Absinthe, L\" see In a Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker)
Achille De Gas (IV:i2i.c), 44, 64-65; cat. no. 4
Achille De Gas as a Naval Ensign (L30), 64; fig. 29
Actresses in Their Dressing Rooms (BR97), 437
Actress in Her Dressing Room (RS50), 305
Admiration (J184), 296, 300-301, 411, 416, 465; cat.
no. 186
After the Bath, 593, 594-95; cat. no. 380
After the Bath, 550; fig. 311
After the Bath (L717), 29, 366, 368, 420, 421, 422,
472, 521; cat. no. 253; fig. 171; detail of, fig. 7
After the Bath (L815), 380
After the Bath (L1204), 595; fig. 332
After the Bath (L1231), 127, 483, 544-45, 548, 549,
550, 551-52, 554; cat. no. 342
After the Bath (L1232), 548; fig. 309
After the Bath (L1234), 483, 544"45, 548, 549, 550-51;
cat. no. 341
After the Bath (L1335), 482, 516, 517-18; cat. no. 311
After the Bath (L1382), 601-602; cat. no. 387
After the Bath (RS66.III), 499, 500-501, 522, 596;
cat. no. 295
After the Bath (RS66.V), 499, 501, 522, 596; cat.
no. 296
After the Bath (T25), photograph, 483, 548, 549, 551;
cat. no. 340
After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Feet (11:307), 602;
cat. no 388
After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Hair (L1424), 593-
94, 596-98; cat, no. 383
After the Bath, Woman Drying Her Neck (L1306), 465,
482, 516, 520; cat. no. 314
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself (111:290), 547~48;
fig. 308
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself (L1117), 544~45,
547-48; cat. no. 339
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself (L1380), 593~94,
600, 601; cat. no. 386
Albert Bartholome and Degas, 140; fig. 75
Alexander and Bucephalus (L92), 89
Alexis Rouart (BR139), 489, 543-44; fig. 304 "Portrait
d'homme assis tenant son chapeau" (L102), 393
Apple Pickers, The (RI), 137, 252, 320, 358-59, 376,
604; cat. no. 231; study for, fig. 168
Arabesque (L418), 354
"Arlequin et danseuse" (L771 or L817), 381
At Saint- Valery-sur-Somme (L1215), 484, 566-67; cat.
no. 355
Attente, V (L698), 407
At the Ballet (L577), 356-58: cat. no. 230
At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (L8 14), 295, 371, 380,
382, 435, 437, 439; cat. no. 265
At the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (RS49.III and RS49. V),
294-96", 305, 437, 439; cat. nos. 178, 179
At the Louvre (L581), 32, 318, 320-22, 323, 377, 442;
cat. no. 206
At the Milliner's {L682), 247, 375, 377, 385, 395~97,
442, 489; cat. no. 232
At the Milliner's (L683), 375, 377, 378, 397, 400, 606;
fig. 179
At the Milliner's (L693), 396, 397, 400; fig. 208
At the Milliner's (L729), 389, 397~99, 400, 430; cat.
no. 233; lithograph after (Thornley), 389; fig. 200
At the Milliner's (L827), 288, 397; fig. 210
At the Milliner's (L833), 400; fig. 212
At the Milliner's (L834), 400; fig. 211
At the Milliner's (L1318), 400, 603, 606; cat. no. 392
At the Races (L77), 102: fig. 52
At the Races (L495), 264; cat. no. 155
At the Races (L503), 461
At the Races in the Countryside (L281), 60, 115, 138,
157-58, 160, 168, 212, 221, 222, 266; cat. no. 95
At the Races: The Start (L76), 102, 404; fig. 51
At the Racetrack (L184), 124, 129, 263, 266, 268
At the Seashore (J264), 257, 261-62; cat no. 152
At the Seashore (L406), 256, 257, 261-62, 264, 308
At the Theater, Woman with a Fan (L580), 356; fig. 166
At the Washbasin {L1199), 289
Attila, after Delacroix, 458
"Avant le depart," 394
Ballet, The (L476), 271, 356; fig. 137
Ballet at the Paris Opera (L513), 259, 270, 274
Ballet Dancer in Position, Facing Three-Quarters Front,
A (L328), 242
Ballet from "Robert le Diable," The (L294), 59, 161,
164, 171-74, 221, 222, 223, 269, 270, 272, 382,
384, 428, 431, 487; cat. no. 103; studies for, cat.
nos. 104, 105
Ballet from "Robert be Diable," The (L391), 171, 221,
222, 266, 269-70, 272, 384, 431, 487; cat. no. 159
"Ballet Girls" (L425), 391
Ballet Master, The (Ji), 240, 257, 258, 259, 260; cat.
no. 150
Ballet Rehearsal (L365), 216-17, 258, 260; fig. 130
Ballet Rehearsal (L1107), 407, 408, 510, 511; fig. 289
Ballet Rehearsal on Stage (L340), 225, 226, 227, 228,
230, 231, 232, 236; cat. no. 123
Ballet Scene (L425), 213
Ballet Scene (L470), 271
Ballet Scene (L1459), 576, 578-79. 59i; %. 330
Ballet (The Star), (L491), 199, 258, 259, 274-76, 325,
354; cat. no. 163
Ballet (The Star), (L601), 259
"Banquier, Le," see Sulking
Bath, The (L1010), 387, 417, 418, 420; fig. 197
Bath, The (L1029), 472, 544, 545~4<5; cat. no. 337
Bather (111:337- 1), 554, 556-57, 558-59; cat. no. 348
Bather Drying Her Legs (L1383), 593~94, 599, 600,
601; cat. no. 385
Bather Drying Herself (L856), 501-502; cat. no. 297
Bather Drying Herself (L917), 599, 600; fig. 334
Bathers (IV:254>, 423, 556, 558, 559; fig. 314
Bathers, The (J262), 261
Bathers {L1071), 554, 556-57, 559; cat. no. 346
Bathers (L1079), 557, 558; fig. 312
Bather Seated on the Ground, Combing Her Hair
(L1073), 554, 556-57, 559; cat. no. 347
Battle of Poitiers, The (BR83), after Delacroix, 88,
457-58; cat. no. 278
Before the Ballet (L500), 475, 476
Before the Ballet (L530), 407, 433; fig. 236
Before the Race (BR no), 402; fig. 213
Before the Race (L317), 160, 221, 222, 223, 464; fig. 87
Before the Race (L679), 388, 402, 403, 404; cat. no. 237
Before the Race (L702), 364, 377, 402, 430-404, 563;
cat. no. 236
Before the Race (L755), 565; fig. 320
Before the Race (L757), 430
Before the Race (L878), 379, 508, 511; fig. 291
Before the Race (L889), 102, 404; fig. 217
Before the Race (Vollard 1914, pi. LXXXIV), 402;
fig. 214
Before the Start (L761), 464
Behind the Scenes (L1274), 483, 570, 573, 574; fig. 325
Bellelli Family, The (L64), 81, 155; fig. 36
Bellelli Family, The (or Family Portrait) (L79), 23-24,
25, 26, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 53, 56, 74. 76, 77-85.
86, 103, 120, 130, 155, 253, 320, 423, 508; cat.
no. 20; detail of, fig. 1; studies for, cat. nos. 21-25;
fig- 36
Billiard Room at Menil-Hubert, The (L1115), 32, 483,
487, 506, 507, 508, 511; cat. no. 302
Birth of Venus (IV .99. b), after Botticelli, 255
"Blanchisseuse, La," 221
"Blanchisseuse" {L216?), 494
"Blanchisseuse" (RS48), 382, 437
"Bouderie," see Sulking
Box at the Opera, The (L584), 375, 376, 378; fig. 178
Boy in Blue (BR24a), 62
Breakfast after the Bath, The (L724), 482, 516, 520-22;
cat. no. 315
Breakfast after the Bath (L1152), 518; fig. 294
Brothel Scene (J68), 296, 298-99, 411; cat. no. 183
Carabet (L404), 258, 259, 292, 437; fig. 128
Cabaret Singer (L539), 289
628
Cafe-concert O25), fig- I29
Cafe-concert at the Ambassadeurs (L405), 258, 292
Cafe-concert Singer (111:393), 355, 435; fig- 239
Candaules's Wife (BR8), 48
Candaules's Wife (unrealized), 48
Cardinal Sisters Talking to Their Admirers, The (J226),
282-84; cat. no. 169
Celestine, Daughter of Marguerite De Gas Fevre, in Her
Bath, 57, 496; fig. 24
"Chanteuse," 379
"Chanteuse" (RS49), 437
Chanteuse en scene (L372?), 437
Charles Haas, 535; fig. 300
"Chevaux," 381
"Chevaux au pre," 221
"Chevaux de courses" (L767), 379
Children on a Doorstep (New Orleans) (L309), 60, 180-
81; cat. no. in
"Choeur d'opera," 271
Chorus, The (L420), 199, 258, 270-71, 335; cat.
no. 160
Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret, after Delacroix, 458
Cliffs at the Edge of the Sea (L199), 154, 155; cat.
no. 92
Coiffure, The (L1127), 127, 531, 554, 606; cat. no. 345
Coiffure, The (L1128), 553-54, 606; cat. no. 344
"Coin de salon," 375
Collector of Prints , The (L138), 44, 56, 120, 122-23,
249; cat. no. 66
Collectors, The (L647), 122
"Conversation, La" (L774), 378
Conversation (L864), 148, 379, 53 1, 534~35", cat.
no. 327
Conversation at the Milliner's, The (L774), 400
Cotton Merchants in New Orleans (L321), 181, 186,
188-89, 192, 279, 372; cat. no. 116
"Course" (L850?), 381
"Cour d'une maison (Nouvelle-Orleans)," see Children
on a Doorstep (New Orleans)
Criminal Physiognomy (L638 and L639), 208, 209, 211,
220; fig. 104
Crucifixion, The (L194), after Mantegna, 35, 86, 87-
89, 232; cat. no. 27
Curtain, The (L652), 271
Dance Class (L297), 174-75, J76, 214, 222, 331; cat.
no. 106
Dance Class, The (L341), 26, 32, 214, 228, 234, 236,
238, 240-41, 242, 243, 244, 331, 391; cat. no. 129
Dance Class, The (L397), 26, 212, 221, 222, 234, 236,
240, 242-43, 244, 274, 325, 335; cat. no. 130; de-
tail of, fig. 4
Dance Class, The (L398), 214, 232, 234, 244, 276,
337, 39i; cat. no. 128
Dance Class, The (L479), 33L 335~37, 347, 359, 375,
384; cat. no. 219
Dance Class at the Opera (L298), 32, 35, 59, 60, 174,
175-78, 222, 239, 331, 387; cat. no. 107; studies
for, cat. nos. 108, 109
Dance Lesson, The (L396), 259, 260
Dance Lesson, The (L625), 339, 405; fig. 218
Dance Master I (L 3 67bis), 32, 238-39, 240; cat.no. 132
Dance Master II (I V:206. a), 32, 234, 238; cat. no. 131
Dancer (III: 156. 1), 212
Dancer (111:267), 574; fig. 327
Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper, 234, 241-42, 243; cat.
no. 135
Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper (L325), 212
Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper (L699), 383
Dancer at the Bane, 328; fig. 152
Dancer at the Bane (11:352), 335; fig. 156
Dancer at the Bane (111:133.4), 276, 278; fig. 139
Dancer at the Bane (L421), 278
Dancer at the Footlights (BR77), 272
Dancer Bowing (L490), 354, 355
Dancer from the Corps de Ballet (T27), 483, 568-69,
570, 573; cat. no. 357
Dancer from the Corps de Ballet (T28), 483, 568-69,
573; fig. 322
Dancer from the Corps de Ballet (T34), 483, 568-69,
573; fig. 323
Dancer in a Tutu (111:83.2), 230-31; fig. 118
Dancer in Her Dressing Room (L497), 353; fig. 163
Dancer in Her Dressing Room (L529), 244
Dancer in Her Dressing Room (L561), 219, 353; fig. 116
Dancer in Profile Turned to the Right (111:341. 1), 240-
41, 242; cat. no. 134
Dancer in the Role of Harlequin (RXLVIII), 432, 433-
35, 455; cat. no. 262
Dancer Jules Penot, The (111:157.2), 234, 236, 239-40,
260; fig. 121
Dancer Leaving Her Dressing Room (L644), 206, 353—
54; cat. no. 228; fig. 103
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (RIL),
527-28; cat. no. 321
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (RXLV),
610
Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot (RLX):
bronze, 528, 529; cat. no. 323; wax, 528, 529, 609;
cat. no. 322
Dancer Moving Forward, Arms Raised (RXXIV), 473
Dancer Moving Forward, Arms Raised (RXXVI), 473
Dancer Onstage with a Bouquet (L515), 164, 271-72;
cat. no. 161
Dancer Posing for a Photograph (L447), 227, 244-45,
247, 574; cat. no. 139
Dancer Putting on Her Stockings (RLVII), 560
Dancer Ready to Dance, the Right Foot Forward
(RXLVI), 473
Dancer Resting (L560), 329, 331; cat. no. 214
Dancer Resting (L573), 331; cat. no. 215
Dancer Resting (L659), 340; fig. 157
Dancer Rubbing Her Knee, see Dancer in the Role of
Harlequin
Dancers (L617), 221, 222, 223, 378; fig. 181
Dancers (L1311), 572; fig. 324
Dancers (L1312), 364, 568-69, 572-73, 574; cat.
no. 359
Dancers, The (L1344), 483, 573, 574; fig. 326
Dancers (L1352), 483, 568-69, 573-74; cat. no. 360
Dancers (L1430), 568-69, 580, 587; cat. no. 366
Dancers at the Bane (L409X 32, 276, 277, 278, 497,
587; cat. no. 164
Dancers at the Bane (L460), 328
Dancers at the Bane (L807), 587, 588-89; cat. no. 375
Dancers at the Bane (L808), 587, 588; cat. no. 374
Dancers at Their Toilette (The Dance Examination)
(L576), 282, 317, 329, 337-39; cat. no. 220
Dancers Backstage (L1024), 476
Dancers Climbing the Stairs (L894), 389; fig. 198
Dancer Seated (L299), 176, 178; cat. no. 109
Dancers Exercising (L924), 476
Dancers in a Practice Room (1.324), 242
Dancers in Blue (L1014), 475, 515, 568-69, 570-72;
cat. no. 358
Dancers in the Rehearsal Room, with a Double Bass
(L905), 405-407, 409; cat. no. 239; lithograph after,
406; fig. 219
Dancers in the Studio (L768), 575, 576; fig. 328
Dancers in the Wings (L585), 202; fig. 97
Dancers in the Wings (L880), 475; fig. 267
Dancers on the Stage (L578), 356; fig. 167
Dancers on the Stage (L720), 380, 387, 430; cat.
no. 259
Dancers on the Stage (L1460), 568-69, 576, 578-79;
cat. no. 364
Dancers on the Stage (L1461), 568-69, 576-77, 579;
cat. no. 363
Dancers, Pink and Green (L1013), 369, 475-76, 515,
570; cat. no. 293
Dancers, Pink and Green (L1149), 337, 446, 508, 512-
13, 5H, 515, 580; cat. no. 307
Dancers Practicing at the Bane (L408), 23, 32, 249, 276,
277-78, 472; cat. no. 165
Dancers Preparing for the Ballet (L512), 214, 476;
fig. 109
Dancers Resting (L343), 212, 234, 241, 242; fig. 122
Dancers Resting (L563), 325
Dancer Standing (L300), 176, 177; cat. no. 108
Dancer Stretching (L910), 406, 407, 409; cat. no. 242
Dancer with a Bouquet (111:398), 354, 355; fig. 165
Dancer with a Bouquet Bowing (L474), 272, 274, 321,
354, 431, 457; cat. no. 162
Dancer with a Fan (L823), 339, 342, 370, 375; cat.
no. 222
Dancer with Arms behind Her Head (L402), 225, 228,
231-32, 407; cat. no. 127
Dancer with Bouquets (L1264), 423
Dancer with Red Stockings (L760), 384, 432-33; cat.
no. 261
Dance School (L399), 317
Dancing Lesson, The (L820), 335, 339"4i, 342, 406,
510; cat. no. 221
Daniel Halevy (T13), photograph, 535, 539, 542; cat.
no. 331
"Danseuse, La" (L574), 378
"Danseuse" (L735?), 386
"Danseuse avant l'exercise," 392
"Danseuse bleue," 391
"Danseuse bleue et contrebasse," 391
"Danseuse et arlequin" (L1033), 380
"Danseuse rouge," 391
"Danseuses," 381
"Danseuses, Les," 378
"Danseuses" (L7i6bis), 381
"Danseuses" (L783?), 388
"Danseuses" (RS47), 382
"Danseuses, baisser du rideau" (L575), 206; fig. 103
"Danseuses, contrebasses," 391
"Danseuses, orchestre," 393
"Danseuses repetition," 393
"Danseuses roses, Les," 164, 221
"Danseuses sous un arbre" (L486), 386
"Dans les coulisses: chanteuse guettant son entree"
(L715), 219, 375
Dante and Virgil (L34), 40, 50, 52, 256; fig. 11
"D'apres M. Soutzo 15 fevrier 1856," notebook
drawing, 49, 71; fig. 13
Daughter of Jephthah, The (L94), 35, 41, 45, 79, 81,
85-87, 88, 89, 91, 99, 106, 107, 423; cat. no. 26
David and Goliath (L114), 50
Death of Joseph Bara (L8), after David, 454
Degas Looking at the Statue "Fillette pleurant, " by Albert
Bartholome (T58; attr. to Degas), fig. 272
Degas, with Mme. Ludovic Halevy (?) Reading the News-
paper (T37; attr. to Degas), fig. 273
"Deux danseuses," 391
Developer, The (Mme Ludovic Halevy, Reclining) (T15),
photograph, 538
Diego Martelli (L519), 217, 250, 254, 310, 312, 313,
400, 443; cat. no. 201; studies for, cat. no. 200;
fig- 147
Diego Martelli (L520), 250, 254, 310, 312, 313, 314,
316, 443; cat. no. 202; studies for, cat. no. 200; fig.
148
"Disderi photog.," notebook drawing, 121; fig. 66
Drapery (RF15538), 91, 96; cat. no. 38
Drapery (RF22615), 91, 93; cat. no. 32
Dressed Dancer at Rest, Hands on Her Hips (RLII), 446,
473, 508, 515; cat. no. 309
Duchessa di Montejasi, The (BR53), 254; fig. 125
Duchessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters Elena and
Camilla, The (L637), 252-54; cat. no. 146
Duchessa Morbilli di Sant'Angelo a Frosolone, nee Rose
Degas, The (L5obis), 44, 74-75; cat. no. 16
Edmond Duranty (L517), 147, 254, 309-1 1, 312, 313,
318; fig. 146; studies for, cat. nos. 198, 199
Edmondo Morbilli, 44, 118, 120; cat. no. 64
Edouard Degas (RF22998), 50; fig. 16
Edouard Manet Seated (II:2io.2), 128, 129, 130; cat. no. 73
Edouard Manet Seated, Turned to the Right (RS18.I), 44,
112, 128, 130; cat. no. 72
Elie Halevy and Mme Ludovic Halevy in Degas's Living
Room, photograph, 385, 442; fig. 196
Ellen Andree (J238), 259, 284-86; cat. no. 171
629
Emma Dobigny (L198), 147, 148-49; cat. no. 86
Entombment, after Delacroix, 458
Entrance of the Masked Dancers (L527), 271
Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, The (BR35),
after Delacroix, 457, 499
"Essai de decoration, detrempe," 318
"Etude d'anglaise" (L951HS?), 393
"Etude de femme" (L952?), 393
Eugenie Fiocre, 57, 134; fig. 71
Eugenie Fiocre, 134; fig. 72
Eugenie Fiocre (IV:96.b), 134; fig. 73
Evariste de Valernes (L177), 57
Factory Smoke (J269), 257, 262; cat. no. 153
Fallen Jockey (L141), 123, 335, 365, 423, 459, 558,
561-63; cat. no. 351
False Start, The (L258), 59, 124, 126, 147, 160, 212,
222, 266; fig. 69
Family Portrait, see Bellelli Family, The
Fanatics of Tangier, The (BR143), after Delacroix, 457
Fan: Ballet Scene from the Opera "Sigurd" (L595), 382,
431, 533; fig. 188
Fan: Dancers (L566), 324-25; cat. no. 209
Fan: The Ballet (L457), 325-26; cat. no. 210
Fan: The Cafe-concert Singer (L459), 218, 326-27, 370;
cat. no. 211
Fan: The Farandole (1.557), 327» 43 1 ; cat. no. 212
"Femme a sa toilette," 381
"Femme a sa toilette" (L883), 381
"Femme debout, au livre," 320
"Femme faisant sa toilette," 375
"Femmes appuyees sur une rampe" (L879), 378
"Femmes regardant la mer" (L879), 377
Fireside, The (J159), 259, 309, 411, 412; cat. no. 197
First Arabesque Penchee (RXXXIX): bronze, 586, 587;
cat. no. 373; wax, 586; cat. no. 372
Four Dancers (L1267), 423, 424, 483, 573-74, 576;
fig. 271
Four Dancers in the Studio {L769), 575-76; fig. 329
Four Heads of Women (RS27), 285
Four Jockeys (L446), 464
Four Jockeys (L762), 464
Four Studies of a Dancer (III: 341-2), 342, 345, 34<5-47i
cat. no. 223
Four Studies of a Jockey (L158), 26, 124, 126-27, 256,
264; cat. no. 70
Four Studies of the Head of a Young Girl, 66-67, 23 1;
cat. no. 8
Fourth Position Front, on the Left Leg (RLV): bronze,
473-74; cat. no. 291; wax, 473-74; cat. no. 290
Frieze of Dancers (L1144), 407, 423, 509, 570
Gabrielle Diot (L1009), 392; fig. 205
General Mellinet and Chief Rabbi Astruc {L288), 164,
166, 288; cat. no. 99
Gentlemen's Race: Before the Start, The (L101), 45, 54,
98, 101-102, 262, 377, 380, 404; cat. no. 42
Giovanna Bellelli, 81, 84; cat. no. 24
Giovanna Bellelli (RF16585), 81, 83; cat. no. 22
Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli (III: 156.3). 120; fig. 64
Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli (L65), 81, 120; fig. 35
Giovanna and Giulia Bellelli (L126), 56, 79, 82,
120-21, 122, 142; cat. no. 65
Giovanni and Gentile Bellini (L59), after Gentile
Bellini, 112
Girl in Red (L336), 148
Giulia Bellelli (L69), 81, 85; cat. no. 25
Giulia Bellelli (RF11689), 81, 83; cat. no. 21
"Grand champ de courses," 164, 221
Grande Arabesque, Third Time (First Study), see First
Arabesque Penchee
"Grandes blanchisseuses, Les," 164, 221
Green Dancer, The (Dancers on the Stage) (L572), 206,
354-56; cat. no. 229; fig. 103
Group of Dancers (L770), 568-69, 575~76, 577* 578,
579; cat. no. 362
Hacking to the Race (L764), 340, 508, 509; cat. no. 304
Harlequin (L817), 371, 380, 381, 431, 432, 433; fig- 237
Harlequin (L818), 371-72, 381, 383, 431-32, 433; cat.
no. 260
Head of a Young Girl (RF15525), 91, 92-93; cat. no. 30
Helene Hertel (1:313), 55, 114, 1 17-18; cat. no. 62
Helene Rouart {L869), 250, 253, 371, 384, 400, 423;
fig. 192
Helene Rouart (L870), 384
Helene Rouart (L87obis), 384
Helene Rouart (L871), 384
Henriette Taschereau, Jules Taschereau, Mathilde Niaudet,
Jeanne Niaudet, and Mme Alfred Niaudet (T17), pho-
tograph, 536; fig. 302
Henri Rouart (L1177), 251, 544; fig. 306
Henri Rouart and His Daughter Helene (L424), 249-50,
251, 254, 543; cat. no. 143
Henri Rouart and His Son Alexis (L1176), 489, 542-44,
604; cat. no. 336
Henri Rouart in Front of His Factory (L373), 250-51,
262, 310, 544; cat. no. 144
Hilaire Degas (L27), 38, 44, 50, 72-74; cat. no. 15
Horse at a Trough (RII), 134, 137, 138-39; cat. no. 79
Horse at Rest (RIII): bronze, 139; cat. no. 81; wax,
138, 139; cat. no. 80; X-radiograph of, fig. 74
Horseback Riding {L117), 193, 335
Horse Balking (RIX), 459, 460-61, 462; cat. no. 280
Horse Clearing an Obstacle, see Horse Balking
Horses in a Landscape (L50), 153
Horses in the Field (L289) ,59, 221, 222, 223, 262
Horse Walking (RIV), 462 -
Horse with Attendants of Semiramis, A (RF15530), 91,
94; cat. no. 33
Horse with Head Lowered (RXII), 461
Horse with Jockey in Profile (III: 130.1), 459; cat. no.
279
Hortense Valpincon, 32, 377, 378, 409-10; cat. no. 243
Hortense Valpincon (L206), 32, 157, 168-69, 409; cat.
no. 101
Hortense Valpincon (L722), 409, 410; fig. 221
Idleness (J 102), 296
In a Brothel Salon (J82), 260, 296, 297, 411; cat.
no. 181
In a Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker) (L393), 147, 214,
216, 244, 252, 285, 286-88, 289, 396, 427, 488; cat.
no. 172
In a Rehearsal Room (L941), 406, 407, 408, 409, 508,
510-11, 592; cat. no. 305
Interior (or The Rape) (L348), 24, 25, 26, 46, 124, 132,
143-46, 148, 169, 309, 310, 496, 508, 558; cat. no.
84; detail of, fig. 2; studies for, figs. 77, 78
Interior at Menil-Hubert (L312), 483, 506, 508, 525;
cat. no. 303
Interior of the Morisot Sitting Room (RF29881), 41, 150,
151, 153; cat. no. 91
In the Corridor (J223), 281
In the Omnibus (J236), 284; cat. no. 170
Invalid, The (L316), 182, 184-85, 386; cat. no. 114
James Tissot (L175), 32, 44, 105, 112, 122, 124,
128, 130-32, 142; cat. no. 75
Jeantaud, Linet, and Laine (L287), 59, 166-68, 248; cat.
no. 100
Jet Earring, The (J243), 257, 259, 261, 299; cat.
no. 151
Jockey (111:354-1), 56"4; fig- 319
Jockey (L986), 464
Jockey, The (L1001), 389, 459; fig. 201
Jockeys (L596), 384
Jockeys (L767), 379
"Jockeys and Horses in Action," 376
Jockeys at the Start (III: 178. 2), 402; fig. 215
Jockeys before the Race (L649), 124, 160, 378; fig. 180
Jockey Seen from Behind (BR126), 464
Jockey Seen in Profile (L665), 459; fig. 257
Journey of the Magi, The (IV:9i.b), detail after Goz-
zoli, 268, 509; figs. 134, 288
Jules Perrot (L364), 213, 234, 236, 239-40, 246; cat.
no. 133
Julie Burtey(?) (11:347), 132-33; cat. no. 76
Julie Burtey{?) (L108), 132; fig. 70
Landscape (BR 134), 413; fig. 224
Landscape (J309), 482, 502-503, 506; cat. no. 301
Landscape (L1044), 482, 502-503, 504; cat. no. 298
Landscape (called Burgundy Landscape) (C201), 482,
502-503, 504; cat. no. 299
Landscape (called Cape Homu near Saint- Valery-sur-
Somme) (J295), 482, 502-503, 505; cat. no. 300
Landscape with Cows (L633), 464; cat. no. 283
Laundresses Carrying Linen in Town (L410), 250, 256,
366, 603; fig. 336
Laura Bellelli (RF11688), 81, 84; cat. no. 23
Leaving the Bath (RS42), 26, 199-200, 303, 304-307,
411; cat. nos. 192-194; fig. 96
Leaving the Paddock (L107), 221, 222, 223
Leon Bonnat (Lin), 103; fig. 53
Leon Bonnat (L150), 40, 42, 102-103; cat. no. 43
Little Dressing Room, The (RS41), 390, 411
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, The (RXX; bronze),
98, 208, 209-11, 329, 337, 342-43, 346", 347,
349-53, 355, 399, 435, 45 1, 4^9, 470, 473, 586,
609; cat. no. 227
Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, The (RXX; wax),
218, 219, 220, 342-46, 347, 350-51, 352, 363, 610;
figs. 105, 158; photographs of, in 1919, figs. 159,
160; studies for, cat. nos. 223-226; figs. 161, 162
Little Girl Practicing at the Barre, 328; cat. no. 213
Little Milliners, The (L681), 249, 375, 376, 385, 395,
397, 606; fig. 207
Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste De Gas (L256), 44, 62,
169-71, 178; cat. no. 102
Ludovic Halevy, photograph, 250, 535, 537, 542; cat.
no. 328
Ludovic Halevy Finds Mme Cardinal in the Dressing
Room (J212), 271, 280, 281-82, 284, 535; cat.
no. 167
Mme Alexis Rouart (111:303), 495, 603, 604; cat.no. 390
Mme Alexis Rouart and Her Children (L1450), 495, 603,
604; cat. no. 391
Mme Camus in Red (L271), 58, 59; fig. 26
Mme de Rutte (L369), 246-47; cat. no. 141
Mme Edmondo Morbilli, nee Therese De Gas (L255), 44,
63, 118, 155-57, 171, 178, 508; cat. no. 94
Mme Gaujelin (L165), 44, 56, 57, 132, 216; fig. 25
Mme Henri Rouart (L766bis), 379
Mme Jeantaud before a Mirror (L371), 167, 247-49, 3 10;
cat. no. 142
Mme Ludovic Halevy, photographs, 535, 538; cat.
nos. 329, 330
Mme Ludovic Halevy and Her Son Daniel (T16), photo-
graph, fig. 277
Mme Meredith Howland, photograph, 535; fig. 301
Mme Michel Musson and Her Daughters Estelle and
Desiree (BR43), 55, 182; fig. 22
Mme Paul Valpincon, 115; fig. 60
Mme Rene De Gas (L313), 184
Mme Theodore Gobillard, nee Yves Morisot (L213), 41,
57, 142, 143, 149-53, 249. 250, 317; cat. no. 87;
studies for, cat. nos. 88, 89, 91
Mme Theodore Gobillard, nee Yves Morisot (L214), 41,
58, 149, 151, 155; cat. no. 90
Mile Becat (L372), 437
Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (BR121), 292,
380, 435, 437-38; cat. no. 264
Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs (RS31), 26, 28,
292-93, 326, 420, 437; cat. no. 176; detail of, fig. 5
Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs: Three Motifs
(RS30), 438
Mile Dembowska (IV:98.a), 77; cat. no. 19
Mile Fiocre in the Ballet "La Source" (L146), 42, 56, 57,
130, 133-36, *37, H&> 431, 448; cat. no. 77; study
for, cat. no. 78
Mile La La at the Cirque Fernando (L522), 32, 204, 205,
217; fig. 98
Mile Malo (Mile Mallot?) (L444), 37<5; fig. 107
Mile Sallandry (L813), 380; fig. 185
Mile Sa//e(L868), 384, 385
Male Bather (IV:84.b), copy after Raimondi (after
Michelangelo), 470; fig. 265
Mallarme and Paule Gobillard (Til), 535, 539~40; cat.
no. 332
63O
Mante Family, The (L971), 339, 387
Mante Family, The (L972), 339, 387
Marcellin Desboutin (or Man with a Pipe) (D55), 288;
fig. 141
"Mare with Colt," 222
Mary Cassatt (L796), 322, 324, 442-43; cat. no. 268
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre (L582), 318, 322
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery
(RS51), 305, 318, 320, 322-23, 442; fig. 114
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery
(L583), 32, 323, 437, 440, 442; cat. no. 266
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery
(RS52.XV-XVI), 32, 279, 318, 320, 322-24, 440,
442; cat. nos. 207, 208; study for, fig. 151
Massacre at Chios, after Delacroix, 458
Masseuse, The (RLXXIII), 552-53; cat. no. 343
Mathilde Niaudet, Jeanne Niaudet, Daniel Halevy, Hen-
riette Taschereau, Ludovic Halevy, and Elie Halevy
(T18), photograph, 536; fig. 303
Meet, The (L119), 193; fig. 92
"Mere de la danseuse, La," 387
Milliner, The (L705), 397, 399, 400, 435; cat. no. 234
Milliner, The (L1023), 400
Millinery Shop, The (L832), 371, 397, 400-401, 406,
423, 426, 429; cat. no. 235
Minerva Chasing Vice from the Garden of Virtue
(BR 144), after Mantegna. 88
Mirabeau and Dreux-Breze, after Delacroix, 458
Misfortunes of the City of Orleans, The, see Scene of
War in the Middle Ages
"Modiste," 248
M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli (L131), 118; fig. 63
M. and Mme Edmondo Morbilli (L164), 44, 63, 118-20,
142, 155, 168, 170; cat. no. 63; study for, cat.
no. 64
M. and Mme Edouard Manet (L127), 140-42; cat.
no. 82
M. and Mme Paul Valpincon, 115, 157; fig. 84
Morning Bath, The (L877), 308, 366, 385, 445-46,
448; cat. no. 270
Morning Bath, The (L1028), 470, 472, 482, 516, 527,
545; cat. no. 320
"Musiciens, Les," 221
Name Day of the Madam, The (L549), 296-97, 300,
411; cat. no. 180
Nude Dancer with Her Head in Her Hands (L615), 407,
408, 409, 510; cat. no. 241
Nude Dancer with Upraised Arms (IV: 141. b), 474-75;
cat. no. 292
Nude Drying Herself (11:269), 482, 516, 522-23, 524;
cat. no. 316
Nude Drying Herself (111:347), 307, 308, 445; fig. 144
Nude Torso (J158), 468
Nude Woman (RF12261), 91, 107, 108, 309; cat. no. 48
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair (BR115), 256, 369,
415, 451, 464-65, 468; cat. no. 285
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair (J156), 271, 411, 415,
445, 465; cat. no. 247
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair (L848), 372, 465;
fig- 175
Nude Woman Combing Her Hair (L849), 256, 415,
464-65; cat. no. 284
Nude Woman Crouching (RF 15488), 91, 93, 448; cat.
no. 31
Nude Woman Drying Her Arm (L793), 468; fig. 263
Nude Woman Drying Her Arm (L794), 468-69; cat.
no. 286
Nude Woman Drying Her Feet (L1137), 482, 516, 518;
cat. no. 312
Nude Woman Drying Her Foot (L874), 448, 449, 450;
cat. no. 273
Nude Woman Drying Her Foot (L875), 448, 449; cat.
no. 272
Nude Woman Drying Herself (BR82), 379, 385; fig. 195
Nude Woman Drying Herself (L886), 369, 472-73; cat.
no. 289
Nude Woman Drying Herself (L9 51), 77, 369, 371, 400,
422-24; cat. no. 255
Nude Woman Drying Herself (L 1423 bis), 593~94» 596,
597, 598; cat. no. 382
Nude Woman Having Her Hair Combed (L847), 366,
412, 413, 446, 451-53, 465; cat. no. 274; litho-
graph after (Thornley), 453; fig. 249
Nude Woman Holding a Bow (RF15522), 107; fig. 56
Nude Woman Kneeling (L1008), 387
Nude Woman Leaning Forward (RF15514), 557; fig. 313
Nude Woman Lying on a Divan (L921), 519; fig. 296
Nude Woman Lying on Her Back (RF12271), 91, 107,
no; cat. no. 54
Nude Woman Lying on Her Back (RF12833), 91, 107,
no; cat. no. 52
Nude Woman Lying on Her Back (RF15519), 91, 107,
108, 296, 309; cat. no. 47
Nude Woman Lying on Her Stomach (L1401), 482, 516,
519; cat. no. 313
Nude Woman Lying on Her Stomach (RF 12267), 91.
107, 108; cat. no. 5 1
Nude Woman Lying on Her Stomach (RF 12274), 91,
107, no, 453; cat. no. 57
Nude Woman Pulling on Her Chemise (BR113), 380,
385, 414, 417, 554; fig- 186
Nude Woman Reclining (L752), 412; fig. 223
Nude Woman Reclining on a Chaise Longue (J137), 259,
297, 303, 411, 412, 413; cat. no. 244
Nude Woman Scratching Herself (J135), 303, 411, 413;
cat. no. 245
Nude Woman Seated (RF12265), 91, 107, 108; cat.no. 50
Nude Woman Seen From Behind, Climbing into a Chariot
(RF15486), 470; fig. 266
Nude Woman Standing Drying Herself (RS61.IV), 482,
499-500, 522, 596, 602; cat. no. 294
Nude Woman Stretching (BR157), 446; fig. 245
Nude Woman Wiping Her Feet (J127), 259, 411,
414-15, 420, 445; cat. no. 246
Nude Woman Wiping Her Feet (L836), 414; fig. 225
Nuns Dancing (111:364.1), 172, 173, 270; cat. no. 104
Nuns Dancing (IIL364.2), 172, 174, 270; cat. no. 105
Nurse, The (L314), 184
Odette De Gas, the Artist's Niece (T55), fig. 283
Old Italian Woman, The (L29), 49, 69, 70; fig. 3 1
Orchestra Musicians (L295), 46, 161, 164, 171, 212,
221, 223, 228, 270, 272; cat. no. 98
Orchestra of the Opera, The (L186), 23, 31, 35, 41, 43,
4<5> 54. 59. 161-62, 164, 170, 175, 178, 186, 270;
cat. no. 97; X-radiograph of, fig. 89
Orchestra of the Opera, The (L187), 162; fig. 88
"Orchestre, L\" 221
"Orchestre de Robert le Diable, L\" see Ballet from
"Robert le Diable," The, 164, 221
Ovid among the Scythians, after Delacroix, 458
Pagans and Degas' s Father (L345), 171, 534; fig. 299
"Pas de deux" (L297), 391
Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople and His Attendants
(IV:9i.b), after Gozzoli, 268; fig. 134
Pauline and Virginie Conversing with Admirers ( J218),
280, 282-83, 284; cat. no. 168
Paul Poujaud, Mme Arthur Fontaine, and Degas (T9),
535, 541, 603; cat. no. 334
Paul Valpincon (L99), 148; fig. 20
Peasant Girls Bathing in the Sea toward Evening (L377),
255-57; cat. no. 149
Pedicure, The {L323), 191-92; cat. no. 120
Petit dejeuner apres le bain, Le (L1150), 518
Petit dejeuner apres le bain, Le (L1151), 518
Pietd, after Delacroix, 458
Plague at Ashdod, The (IV:85.a), after Poussin, 89
"Portrait de femme" (L923), 392
"Portrait de M. Roman" (L133), 393
"Portrait d'homme," 392
Portrait of a Bearded Man (J232), 284
Portrait of a Dancer at Her Lesson (The Dance Lesson)
(L450), 333, 334-35; cat. no. 218; study for, cat.
no. 217
Portrait of a Man (L145), 44, 127; cat. no. 71
Portrait of a Woman (Mme Bartholome?) (RXXIX),
455-56; cat. no. 276
Portrait of a Woman (Rosita Mauri?) (L897), 386,
456-57; cat. no. 277
Portrait of a Young Woman (IV: 114. a), after Leonardo
da Vinci (formerly attr. to), 76; fig. 33
Portrait of a Young Woman (L53), after Leonardo da
Vinci (formerly attr. to), 76; cat. no. 18
Portrait of Friends in the Wings (Ludovic Halivy and Al-
bert Cave) (L526), 32, 250, 278-80, 282, 321, 535;
cat. no. 166
"Portrait of Mile Hertal," see Helene Hertel
Portrait of Tourny (RS5), 71, 412
Portrait of Zacharian (L831), 385
Portraits at the Stock Exchange {L499), 316-18; cat.
no. 203
Portraits in a Frieze (L532), 318, 320, 321, 322, 345,
378; fig. 149
Portraits in an Office (New Orleans) (L320), 43, 44,
180, 181, 184, 185-88, 189, 192, 214, 216, 217,
236, 331, 380, 389, 494; cat. no. 115
Prancing Horse (RXVI), 461
Program for the Soiree Artistique (RS54), 379
"Quatre chevaux de course" (L446), 388
"Racecourse, The," 221, 223
Racecourse, Amateur Jockeys, The (L461), 221, 222, 263,
265, 266-67, 268, 269, 424, 428; cat. no. 157
Racehorses (BRIII), 461
Racehorses (L387), 160, 265, 266, 268-69; cat. no. 158
Racehorses (L597), 461
Racehorses (L756), 29, 31, 565; cat. no. 353; detail of,
fig. 8
Racehorses at Longchamp {L3 3 4), 124, 159-60, 264-65,
266, 268, 464, 496, 564; cat. no. 96
Racehorses before the Stands (L262), 25-26, 29, 43,
124-27, 140, 159, 160, 192, 212, 221, 222; cat.
no. 68; detail of, fig. 3; studies for, cat. nos. 69, 70
Racehorses in a Landscape (L1145), 488, 508, 511-12,
565; cat. no. 306
Rape, The, see Interior
Rape of the Sabine Women, The (L273), after Poussin, 89
Reader (J 139), 259
Reader (J141), 259
Rearing Horse (RXIII): bronze, 459, 461, 462-63, 564;
cat. no. 281; wax, 462; fig. 260
Reclining Bather (L854), 453-55; cat. no. 275
Reclining Bather (L855), 454; fig. 252
Reclining Nude Holding a Cup (L1229), 260
"Rehearsal, A," see Rehearsal before the Ballet
Rehearsal, The (L430), 232, 239, 282, 338, 339;
fig. 119
Rehearsal, The (L537), 331; fig. 154
Rehearsal before the Ballet (L362), 214, 244, 391
Rehearsal of the Ballet on the Stage, The (L400), 214,
225, 226, 227-29, 230-31, 232, 240, 242, 260, 391,
476, 494: cat. no. 124
Rehearsal on the Stage, The (L498), 225-28, 230, 232,
317, 476; cat. no. 125
Rehearsal Room, The {L996), 568-69, 574-75, 576,
592; cat. no. 361
Reluctant Client, The (J86), 32, 296, 299-300, 411;
cat. no. 185
Rene De Gas (L6), 37, 44, 48, 62-63, 74, 116; cat.
no. 2; study for, fig. 28
Rene De Gas (T52), photograph, 535, 541-42, 549;
cat. no. 335
Renoir and Mallarme (T12), photograph, 535, 536,
540-41; cat. no. 333
Resting (J83), 296, 298-99, 411; cat. no. 182
Return of the Herd, The (L1213), 484, 539, 566-67,
568; cat. no. 356
Rider in a Red Coat (BR66), 192-93; cat. no. 121
Roman Beggar Woman (L28), 40, 44, 49, 69-70; cat.
no. 11
Rose Caron (L862), 455, 486, 531, 53^-34; cat.
no. 326
Runaway Horse (IV:234.c), 561; fig. 318
Runaway Horse (IV:24i.a), 123, 137, 563; cat. no. 67
Russian Dancer (L1184), 484, 581, 584, 585; cat.
no. 369
631
Russian Dancers (L1182), 484, 581, 585; cat. no. 367
Russian Dancers (L1183), 484, 581, 585; cat. no. 368
Russian Dancers (L1187), 484, 581, 584, 585; cat.
no. 370
Saint John the Baptist (IV:70.a and IV:70.b), 48, 49,
$o, 67-68, 75; cat. no. 10
"Saint John the Baptist and the Angel," 48, 49, 50, 67
Saint John the Baptist and the Angel (L20), 48, 49, 50, 75
"Scene d* opera: danseuses" (L556), 378
"Scene d'opera: danseuses" (L564), 378
"Scene d'opera: danseuses" (L567), 378
Scene of War in the Middle Ages (L124), 35, 42, 45, 55,
89-90, 99, 105-11, 123, 193, 255, 296, 309, 453,
463, 464, 474. 548, 551. 554, 557. 558, 559; cat.
no. 45; studies for, cat. nos. 46-57; figs. 56, 313
Schoolgirl, The (RLXXIV), 320, 609
Seascape (L226), 154, 155; cat. no. 93
Seated Bather Drying Her Left Hip (RLXIX), 472, 552,
593-94. 595-9<5; cat. no. 381
Seated Bather Drying Herself (L13 40), 482, 516,
523-24; cat. no. 317
Seated Dancer, 193, 236, 242-43; cat. no. 136
Seated Dancer in Profile (III: 13 2. 3), 230-31, 242; cat.
no. 126
Seated Male Nude (IV:83.c), 65, 66; cat. no. 7
Seated Nude Dancer (L1409), 592; cat. no. 378
Self-Portrait (L5), 35, 37, 3 8, 44, 48, 61-62, 70, 71,
104, 112; cat. no. 1
Self-Portrait (RF 24232), 112, 114; cat. no. 59
Self-Portrait (RS8.II), 70, 71-72; cat. no. 13
Self-Portrait (RS8.III), 70, 71-72; cat. no. 14
Self-Portrait: Degas Lifting His Hat (L105), 44, 61,
104-105, 121; cat. no. 44
Self-Portrait in a Soft Hat (L37), 61, 70-7 1, 112, 124;
cat. no. 12
Self-Portrait with Evariste de Valernes (L116), 38, 61,
112-14, 116, 121, 130, 170, 499; cat. no. 58; study
for, cat. no. 59; X-radiograph of, fig. 58
Seminude Woman Lying on Her Back (RF12834), 91,
107, no; cat. no. 53
Semiramis Building Babylon (L82), 35, 36, 40-41.
45-46, 53, 54, 75. 79. 86, 87, 89-96, 97, 99, 101,
105, 106, 107, 130, 134, 136, 155, 448, 470; cat.
no. 29; studies for, cat. nos. 30-38; figs. 42-45,
266
Singer in Green, The (L772), 355, 378, 435~37; cat.
no. 263
Six Friends at Dieppe (L824), 382, 385; fig. 190
Song of the Dog, The (L380), 261, 290-92, 378, 435,
437; cat. no. 175
Song Rehearsal, The (L3 31), 142, 189-91, 192, 508;
cat. no. 117; studies for, cat. nos. 118, 119
"Sortie du pesage," 221
Spanish Dancer (RXLVII), 473, 610
Spanish Dancer (RLXVI), 473
Splinter, The (L1089), 387
Standing Bather (BR112), 421-22, 472; cat. no. 254
Standing Dancer (111:335.2), 514; fig. 292
Standing Dancer Seen from Behind (RF4038), 234, 236,
242, 243, 475; cat. no. 137
Standing Male Nude (IV: 108. a), 65, 66; cat. no. 6
Standing Nude Woman (RF15516), 91, 107, no; cat.
no. 55
Standing Nude Woman (RF15517), 91, 107, no; cat.
no. 56
Standing Woman, Draped (RF15502), 91, 94; cat.
no. 36
Standing Woman, Draped, Seen from Behind (RF15485),
91, 96; cat. no. 37
Star, The (L598), 327
"Start," 380
"Start of the Race, Essence Drawing, The," 160
Steeplechase, The (L140), 56, 79, 123, 137, 266, 365,
375, 459, 5^i, 563J figs- 67, 316; studies for, cat.
no. 67; fig. 23
Studies of Two Dancers (111:223), 408; fig. 220
Studio Interior with "The Steeplechase" (L142), 561;
fig. 317
Study of the Bather (111:82.2), 443, 444; fig. 244
Study of a Bow (L9o8bis), 406, 407; cat. no. 240
Study of a Dancer with Arms Raised (111:338.2), 244,
260; fig. 123
Study of a Draped Figure, 75; cat. no. 17
Study of a Jockey (111:98.2), 404-405, 463; cat. no. 238
Study of a Jockey (III: 128. 1), 265; fig. 132
Study of a Jockey (IV:274.2), 266; fig. 133
Study of an Old Man Seated (IV:97.e), 65; cat. no. 5
Study of a Nude (L1233), 483, 545, 548, 549, 550;
fig- 3io
Study of a Nude Girl (IV:289.a), 257; fig. 127
Study of a Nude on Horseback (III:i3 1.2), 369, 404, 459,
463-64, 474; cat. no. 282
Study of a Nude on Horseback (RF15506), 463, 474;
fig. 261
Study of Helene Rouart (L866), 384
Study of Nudes (L148), 134, 137; cat. no. 78
Study of Seated Nude Dancers (111:248), 510; fig. 290
Sulking (L335), 45, 69, 146-48, 221, 222, 223, 534,
563; cat. no. 85; study for, fig. 79; X-radiograph
of, fig. 80
Supper at the Ball (L190), after Menzel, 217, 231, 457;
fig- ii3
"Sur la scene," 376
"Tete de femme," 381
"Tete de femme, etude" (L370), 394
Therese De Gas, 44, 63-64, 118; cat. no. 3
Therese De Gas (L109), 55, 104: fig. 54
Three Ballet Dancers ( J9), 259
Three Dancers (L1446), 595
Three Dancers in the Wings (BR91), 475; fig. 268
Three Jockeys (11:270), 565; fig. 321
Three Jockeys (L763), 364, 403, 462, 464, 563-64; cat.
no. 352
Three Nude Dancers (RF29941), 568-69, 579, 587,
590; cat. no. 365
Three Nude Dancers at Rest (RS59), 510
Three Russian Dancers (111:286), 484, 581, 585; cat.
no. 371
Three Studies of a Dancer in Fourth Position (L586ter),
342, 345, 347-48; cat. no. 224
Three Studies of a Dancer's Head (L593), 354; fig. 164
Three Studies of a Jockey (L157), 160, 264; fig. 86
Three Studies of a Mounted Jockey (111:354.2), 160;
fig. 85
Three Studies of a Nude (111:369), 345, 349, 350; fig. 161
Toilette, The (L547), 258, 260
Toilette after the Bath, The (L1085), 501; fig. 286
Triumph of Flora, The (IV:8o.c), after Poussin, 89; cat.
no. 28
"Trois danseuses" (L1208), 393
Tub, The (J151), 259, 307-308, 411, 423, 445; cat.
no. 195
Tub, The (RXXVII): bronze, 391, 469-70; cat.
no. 287; wax, 470; fig. 264
Two Bathers in the Grass (L1081), 554, 556-57, 559,
560; cat. no. 350
Two Dancers (111:209.2), 476; fig. 269
Two Dancers (L559), 329; fig. 153
Two Dancers (L599), 342, 345, 348-49, 37$; cat.
no. 225
Two Dancers (L1005), 193, 236, 243-44, 349, 407;
cat. no. 138
Two Dancers in Green Skirts (L1195), 337, 446, 488,
508, 513, SH-i$> 531, 579; cat. no. 308
Two Dancers in the Dressing Room (BR89), 337
Two Dancers on a Bench (L1256), 590, 591-92; cat,
no. 377
Two Dancers Resting (L1258), 590
Two Dancers Resting (L1465), 592-93; cat. no. 379
Two Dancers with Yellow Bodices (L1408), 592; fig. 331
Two Nude Dancers on a Bench, 590; cat. no. 376
Two Nude Women Standing (RF15505), 91, 107, 108;
cat. no. 49
Two Performers at a Cafe-Concert (L458), 437
Two Studies for Music Hall Singers (L504), 294; cat.
no. 177
Two Studies of a Dancer (111:2 13), 276; fig. 138
Two Studies of a Groom (L382), 264-65; cat. no. 156
Two Studies of Mary Cassatt at the Louvre (BR 105),
318, 320, 322, 345, 442; cat. no. 204
Two Studies of the Head of a Man (IV:67), 67; cat. no. 9
Two Women (J117), 296, 301, 411; cat. no. 187
Two Women in Brown Dresses (L778), 400
Uncle and Niece (Henri Degas and His Niece Lucie
Degas) (L394), 251-52, 254; cat. no. 145
Unidentified Couple, fig. 278
Vesuvius {J310), 503
Vesuvius (L1052), 503
Victoria Dubourg {L137), 122, 132, 142-43; cat. no 83
View of Naples Seen through a Window (L48), 49, 153
View of Rome (L47DIS), 153
View of Saint- Valery-sur-Somme (BR 150), 484, 566-67;
cat. no. 354
Violinist, The (III:i6i.i), 331-32, 333; cat. no 216
Violinist, The (IV:247.b), 333; fig. 155
Violinist, The (BR99), 218, 333, 335
Violinist, The (L451), 333; cat. no. 217
Violinist and Young Woman Holding Sheet Music (L274),
178-79, 189; cat. no. no
Visit to the Museum, The (L464), 440, 442; fig. 243
Visit to the Museum, The (L465), 28, 29, 440-42; cat.
no. 267; detail of, fig. 6
Waiting ( J91), 296, 302, 411; cat. no. 188
Waiting (J103), 302-303; cat. no. 189
Waiting (second version) (J65), 296, 299, 411; cat.
no. 184
Washbasin, The (J147), 271, 411, 416; cat. no. 248
Washbasin, The (L966), 416, 420; fig. 226
Washerwomen and Horses (L1418), 603; cat. no. 389
Woman Arranging Her Hair (RL), 593-94, 598-99; cat.
no. 384
Woman at Her Bath (L1119), 544-45, 546-47; cat.
no. 338
Woman at Her Toilette {L749), 300
Woman at Her Toilette (L890), 258, 259, 260, 307, 308,
381, 411, 445; fig. 145
Woman at Her Toilette (L1421), 495, 600-601, 602;
fig. 335
Woman at Her Toilette (L1426), 596-97; fig- 333
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (L765), 367, 379, 385,
447; fig- 183
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (L816), 324, 367, 372,
380, 385, 421, 443-44, 446, 447, 448, 45 1, 472;
cat. no 269
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (L872), 372, 384, 385,
421, 446-48; cat. no. 271
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (L876), 387, 417, 447;
fig. 247
Woman Bathing in a Shallow Tub (L1097), 447, 448;
fig- 246
Woman before a Mirror (L983), 416, 448; fig. 248
Woman Drying Herself (Lni3bis), 547, 548; fig. 307
Woman Getting Up (J 167), 303
Woman Going to Bed (J 129), 303
Woman Going to Bed (J134), 303
Woman Going to Bed (J 166), 303
Woman Holding a Horse's Bridle (RF15490), 91, 94; cat.
no. 35
Woman in a Bath Sponging Her Leg (J119), 259, 308,
419; fig- 229
Woman in a Bath Sponging Her Leg (L728), 308, 411,
419-20; cat. no. 251
Woman in a Cafe (L417), 288-89; cat. no. 173
Woman in a Mauve Dress and Straw Hat (L651), 318
Woman in a Tub (L738), 447, 517-18; fig. 293
Woman in a Tub (L766), 278
Woman in Street Clothes (BR104), 318, 320, 345; cat.
no. 205
Woman Ironing (111:269), 224; fig. 117
Woman Ironing (L276), 223, 375, 428-29; cat. no. 258
Woman Ironing (L277), 429; fig. 235
Woman Ironing (L356), 180, 212, 221, 223-25,
425-26, 531; cat. no. 122
Woman Ironing (L361), 428
632
Woman Ironing (L685), 221, 222, 370, 375, 424-26,
531; cat. no. 256
Woman Ironing (L846), 375, 425, 531-32; cat. no. 325
Woman Leaning near a Vase of Flowers (Mme Paul
Valpincon?) (L125), 55, 112, 1 14-17, 121, 157, 168,
182, 387, 400; cat. no. 60; study for, cat. no. 61
Woman Leaving Her Bath, 417; fig. 228
Woman Leaving Her Bath (J121), 411, 417, 445^ cat.
no. 249
Woman Leaving Her Bath (J176), 260, 303, 304, 420;
cat. no. 191
Woman Leaving Her Bath (L422), 199, 258, 260,
303-304, 308, 411, 420, 421, 445; cat. no. 190
Woman Leaving Her Bath (L891), 387, 411, 417-19;
cat. no. 250
Woman on a Sofa (L363), 213, 246; cat. no. 140
Woman on a Terrace (or Young Woman and Ibis) {L87),
38, 49, 91, 96-97; cat- no- 39
Woman Reading a Catalogue (111:150.2), 318, 322; fig.
150
Woman Rubbing Her Back with a Sponge, Torso (RLI),
610
Woman Seated in an Armchair, Drying Under Her Left
Arm (RLXXII), 482, 516, 524-25, 552; cat. no.
Woman Seated in an Armchair, Sewing (RF29292), 53;
fig. 19
Woman Seen from Behind, Climbing into a Chariot
(RF15515), 91, 94, 470; cat. no. 34
Woman Singing (111:404.1), 189, 190; cat. no. 118
Woman Sponging Her Knee (L718), 421, 422, 472; fig.
231
Woman Sponging Her Knee (L719), 421, 422, 472; fig.
230
Woman Standing in Her Bath (J 12 5), 411, 420-21, 445,
472; cat. no. 252
Woman Standing in the Street {J216), fig. no
Woman Stepping into a Bath (Li03ibis), 369, 470-72,
473; cat. no. 288
Woman Taken Unawares (RLIV), 309, 554, 556-57,
559-60; cat. no. 349
Woman Turning Off Her Lamp ( J13 1), 303
Woman Washing Her Left Leg (RLXVIII), 560
Woman with a Bandage (L275), 182, 184; cat. no. 113
Woman with a Dog (J 164), 303
Woman with a Dog (L746), 303
Woman with an Umbrella (L463), 254-55; cat. no. 147;
X-rachograph of, fig. 126
Woman with a Towel (L1148), 488, 516, 531, 547; cat.
no. 324
Woman with a Vase of Flowers (L305), 59, 181-82, 184,
189, 192, 246; cat. no. 112
Woman with Chrysanthemums, see Woman Leaning near
a Vase of Flowers (Mme Paul Valpincon?)
Woman with Field Glasses (L268), 129, 219, 262-63,
331; fig. 131
Woman with Field Glasses (L269), 262-63
Woman with Field Glasses (L431), 129, 262-63, 266;
cat. no. 154
Women before the Stands (L259), 124, 126; cat. no. 69
Women by a Fireplace, 259, 308, 309, 411, 412; cat. no.
196
Women Combing Their Hair {L3 76), 255-56, 257, 372,
415, 464; cat. no. 148; fig. 173
Women Ironing (L686), 221, 222, 426, 428; fig. 232
Women Ironing (L687), 428; fig. 233
Women Ironing (L785), 426-28; cat. no. 257
Women Ironing (L786), 428; fig. 234
Women on the Terrace of a Cafe in the Evening (L419),
199, 232, 258, 259, 286, 288, 289-90, 292, 335; cat.
no. 174
Young Girl Braiding Her Hair (L1146), 482, 488, 516,
525. 527, 531, 537, 547, 554; cat. no. 319
Young Spartan Girl (RF11691), 100-101; cat. no. 41
Young Spartans (L70), 35, 41, 45, 79, 86, 89, 90, 91,
98-101, 105, 218, 343, 474; cat. no. 40; studies for,
cat. no. 41; fig. 49
Young Spartans (L71), 99; fig. 50
Young Woman and Ibis, see Woman on a Terrace
Young Woman Arranging a Bouquet (L306), 182
Young Woman Combing Her Hair (L93o), 256, 415, 482,
516, 517; cat. no. 310
Young Woman Lying on a Chaise Longue {L1402), 519;
fig. 295
Young Woman Standing (111:404.2), 189, 191; cat.
no. 119
Young Woman with Field Glasses (L179), 129-30, 262;
cat. no. 74
De Gas, Jeanne, 182
Degas, Laura, see Bellelli, Baroness Gennaro
Degas, Lucie, see Guerrero de Balde, Marchesa Edoardo
De Gas, Marguerite, see Fevre, Mme Henri
De Gas, Odette, photograph of (Degas), fig. 283
De Gas, Pierre, 181; portrait of, 181; cat. no. in
De Gas, Rene (after 1900, de Gas), 55, 63, 82, 104, 161,
181, 320, 380, 553; archival material donated to Bib-
liotheque Nationale by, 23-24, 483, 568; birth of, 47,
62; casting of Degas's sculpture and, 350, 351; corre-
spondence, 176; correspondence from Therese De
Gas (Mme Morbilli), 53; correspondence to: Estelle
Musson De Gas, 189; Degas, 53, 75; Lafond, 497;
Michel Musson, 40, 41, 54, 59, 118, 155, 179; Mus-
son family, 40, 41, 54, 55, 59; desertion of family by,
26, 217, 541; estate of, 77, 118; estrangement from
Degas, 26, 28, 217, 376, 541-42; financial situation
of, 26, 214, 215, 222; inheritance of, 212; as journal-
ist, 542; in Naples, 53; in New Orleans, 26, 55, 64,
181, 182, 184; in Paris, 59, 215; photograph attr. to,
frontispiece; photograph by, fig. 282; photograph of
(Degas), 541-42, 549; cat. no. 335; portraits of, 37,
44, 62-63, 74, 116, 186, 188, 189; cat. nos. 2, 115,
117; fig. 28; press clippings collected by, 82, 88; rec-
onciliation with Degas, 492, 542, 556-57; at Saint-
Valery-sur-Somme, 493, 566
De Gas, Mme Rene (nee Estelle Musson), 26, 55, 57,
106, 181, 182, 184, 189, 192, 380, 541; portraits of,
55, 184, 189; cat. nos. 113, 117; fig. 22
Degas, Rene-George, 54, 251, 252
Degas, Rose, see Morbilli, Duchessa Giuseppe
Degas, Stephanie (Stefanina; Fanny), see Montejasi, Du-
chessa Gioacchino di
De Gas, Therese, see Morbilli, Mme Edmondo
De Gas bank, Paris, 147, 222
De Gas Brothers, New Orleans, 64
Degas Danse Dessin (Valery), 484, 542-43
Degas: dix pieces sur la danse d'Opera (Degas: Ten Works
on Dance from the Opera), proposed exhibition, 244
De Gas Musson, Odile, 57, 181, 184; portrait of, 181;
cat. no. in
Degas Padre e Figli, Naples, 47
Degas: vingt dessins, 1 861-1896, 90, 97, 105, 107, 117,
124, 276, 493, 548; drawing from, cat. no. 164
De Gregorio, Marco, 213
Delacroix, Eugene, 37, 52, 98, 279, 568; collectors of
the work of, 31, 170, 221, 249, 363, 393, 458, 482,
489, 491, 508; copied by Degas, 53, 87, 88, 457-58,
499; death of, 55; exhibitions of the work of, 40, 53,
381, 458; influence on Degas, 38, 40, 42, 45, 86, 87,
89, 112, 153, 249, 257, 453, 458, 482; works by: Apol-
lo Conquers the Serpent Python, 87; Attila, 458; Baron
Schwiter, 393, 489; fig. 206; Battle of Nancy, The,
sketch for, 458; Battle of Poitiers, The, sketch for, 457,
458; fig. 255; Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret, 53, 458;
Death of Sardanapalus, The, 257, 483; Entombment,
458; Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, The,
457, 499; Fanatics of Tangier, The, 457; Massacre at Chios,
458; Mirabeau and Dreux-Breze, 53, 458; Ovid among
the Scythians, 458; Pieta, 87, 458; Women of Algiers, 42
Delaunay, Elie, 38, 49, 50, 51-52, 54, 65, 70, 88, 103,
130, 153
Delibes, Leo, 133
Delteil, Loys, 295, 305
Dembowska, Baroness Ercole Federico (nee Enrichetta
Bellelli), 77
Dembowska, Mile, 77; portrait of, 77; cat. no. 19
Dembowski, Baron Ercole Federico, 77
Demin, Giovanni, 98
Denis, Maurice, 36, 368, 369
DeNittis, Giuseppe, 170, 201, 212, 213, 216, 227, 259,
311, 312, 372, 376, 380; In Fiacre, 284
DeNittis, Mme Giuseppe (Leontine), 170, 214, 215,
216, 259, 274, 380
Desboutin, Marcellin, 147, 199, 213, 214, 215, 258, 259,
285, 286, 288, 312; Degas Reading, fig. 106; Edgar
Degas (or Degas in a Hat), fig. 108; portraits of, 259,
261, 285, 286, 288; cat. no. 172; fig. 141
Deschamps, Charles W., 185, 201, 212, 213, 214, 215,
216, 221, 222, 234, 236, 244, 286
Destouches, Alexandre, 97
Detaille, Edouard, 375
Deux Pigeons, Les (Messager), ballet, 457
Devau<;ay, Mme, 63, 118
Deveria, Achille: "Minna and Brenda," 301
Diaghilev, Sergey Pavlovich, 496, 581
Dickens, Charles, 137
Diderot, Denis, 201, 202
Dietz-Monnin, Mme, 252, 254, 305
Dihau, Desire, 23, 31, 32, 41, 54, 60, 161, 173, 182,
264; portraits of: (Degas), 31, 41, 46, 161-62, 164,
170, 178, 186, 270; cat. nos. 97, 103, 159; (Toulouse-
Lautrec), 23, 31, 32
Dihau, Marie, 31, 161, 162, 170, 178, 264
D'Indy, Vincent, 169
Diodorus Siculus: Biblioteca historica, 90
Divine Comedy (Dante), 49, 86
Dobigny, Emma, 147, 148, 248; portrait of, 147,
148-49; cat. no. 86
Doidalses (after): Crouching Aphrodite, 446
Don Giovanni (Mozart), 270, 431
Doria collection, 244
Doucet, Jacques, 345
Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell's, London, 377-78, 397
Drake del Castillo, J., 340
Dreyfus, Alfred, 489, 492, 493, 494, 495, 535
Dreyfus Affair, 29, 166, 318, 484, 492-93, 495, 496,
537, 566, 606
Dubois, Paul: Eve, 348; Saint fohn the Baptist as a Child,
68; fig. 30
Dubois, Theodore, 327; Farandole, La, 327, 431
Dubourg, Victoria (Mme Henri Fantin-Latour), 142,
143; portrait of, 122, 132, 142-43; cat. no. 83
Ducros, Mme, 51, 53
Duhamel, A., 263
Dujardin, 281
Du Lau, 492
Dumas fils, Alexandre, 343
Dumay (or Demay), Mile, 326
Dumont, 48
Dumont, Henri, 285
Dumont, Mme Henri, see Andree, Ellen
Duparc, Henri, 169
Dupont-Ferrier, Gustave, 36, 100
Dupre, Giovanni: Dead Abel, 470
Dupuis, 182
Durand-Greville, Emile, 79, 90, 105
Durand-Ruel, Georges, 351, 498
Durand-Ruel, Jeanne Marie Aimee, 488
Durand-Ruel, Joseph, 263, 472, 473, 494, 498, 561, 609
Durand-Ruel, Marie-Therese, 488
Durand-Ruel, Paul, 175, 191, 221, 488; as art dealer,
127, 334, 335, 458, 491; of Mary Cassatt, 370; of
Daumier, 271; of Degas, 67, 80, 102, 144, 145, 146,
212, 221, 222, 223, 232, 269, 280, 324, 325, 326, 337,
343-44, 350, 354, 3^3, 370-71, 372, 375, 383, 425,
459, 502, 503, 550 (see also Durand-Ruel, Degas
works sold to; see also Index of Former Owners); of
Impressionists, 371, 372, 381, 384; of Monet, 370,
371; of Realists, 370; as art patron, 369; as collector,
257, 352; correspondence from: Mary Cassatt, 322,
324, 344, 352, 443; Degas, 370-71, 372, 375, 370,
380, 381, 383, 489, 495; H. O. Havemeyer, 192; Mo-
net, 371; Pissarro, 378; correspondence to D. C.
Thomson, 503; Degas works sold to, 42, 59, 102,
146, 157, 160, 161, 164, 171, 174, 176, 184, 212, 219,
633
22i, 222, 223, 232, 2&3> 266, 324» 325> 359, 369-70,
371, 375-76, 377, 378, 379, 38o, 381, 382, 385, 386,
38% 388-89, 391, 392, 393, 394, 395, 397, 402, 425,
428, 431, 459, 504, 510, 511, 518, 573, 581; exhibi-
tions organized by, 59, 335, 371, 376, 377, 381, 384,
386, 391, 397, 495; financial situation of, 212, 222,
370, 372, 376, 380, 402; journal of, 174; meeting with
Degas, 370; memoirs of, 221, 232
Durand-Ruel (Gallery), London, 212, 217, 221, 222,
223, 270
Durand-Ruel (Gallery), New York, 387, 394, 504
Durand-Ruel (Gallery), Paris, 77, 430; archives of, 132,
232, 323, 335, 355, 370, 375, 435, 442, 521; exhibi-
tions at, 31, 214, 309, 323, 391, 488, 491, 502, 504;
see also Durand-Ruel, Paul
Duranty, Edmond, 57, 145, 217, 309-11, 312, 314; art
criticism by, 197, 198, 201, 202, 205, 209, 210, 217,
219, 309—10, 363; at the Cafe Guerbois, 42; as collec-
tor, 242; correspondence from Valernes, 112; death
of, 219, 310, 331; friendships, 343; with Degas, 35,
140, 197, 309, 331; with Manet, 140, 309; influenced
by Degas, 44, 198; influence on Degas, 35; meeting
with Degas, 309, 3 10; as model for Degas, 147; por-
traits of: (Degas), 217, 254, 310-11, 312, 313, 318,
331, 443; cat. no. 198; fig. 146; (Valernes), 112; post-
humous sale to benefit companion of, 219, 263, 310,
317, 331; Realism and, 197, 199, 201; support for
Degas, 363; works by: Combats de Franqoise Du Ques-
noy, Les, 145, 309, 310; Malheurs d'Henriette Gerard,
Les, 309; Nouvelle peinture, La, 44, 45, 112, 198,
309-10, 321; Peintre Louis Martin, Le, 89, 309; "Sur la
physionomie," 205, 208; as writer, 42, 57, 58, 136,
146, 205, 208, 311
Dureau, Albert Edouard Louis, 488
Diirer, Albrecht, 71
Duret, Theodore, 58, 219, 489
Dyck, Anthony van, 23, 24, 38, 52, 71, 80, 82, 348;
Paola Adomo, 23, 24, 32
Echo Universel, L\ 188, 214
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 35, 37, 48, 49, 56, 61, 103,
r 130, 177, 379, 381, 393, 458
Ecole Poly technique, Paris, 249
Edwards, Edwin, 145
Eiffel Tower, Paris, 391
Elder, Louisine, see Havemeyer, Mrs. Henry Osborne
Electeur Libre, V, 58
Eleventh. Annual Exhibition of the American Water-color
Society, New York, 217
Enault, Louis, 186
Ephrussi, Charles, 208, 288, 289, 329, 337, 338, 343,
381
Esprit Modeme, V, 214
Estampe et VAffiche, L\ 493
Estampe Modeme, L\ 148
Esther Swooning before Ahasuerus, 18th-century tapestry,
506
Evenement, L\ 347
Evenement Illustre, V, 134, 145, 218
Exposition Universelle, Paris: (1855), 37, 40, 48, 61,
465; (1867), 43, 46, 56, 57, 147; (1878), 312; (1889),
363, 391, 458
Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals, The
(Darwin), 205; illustration for a review of, fig. 100
Eyck, Jan van: Amolfmi Wedding, 545
Fabbri, Egisto, 263
Faculte de Droit, Paris, 36, 48
Falzacappa, Conte Vincenzo, 117
Falzacappa, Contessa Vincenzo (nee Helene Hertel),
114, 117; portrait of, 1 17-18; cat. no. 62
Famille Cardinal, La (Halevy, L.), 258, 280, 537; illustra-
tions for: (Degas), 258, 270, 280-84, 475; cat.
nos. 167-169; (Mas), 280
Fantin-Latour, Henri, 56, 71, 89, 140, 142, 177, 310,
358; as artist, 103, 128, 162; at the Cafe Guerbois, 42;
correspondence from: Blanche, 42, 358, 359, 375;
Manet, 42, 57, 136, 155; correspondence to Whistler,
124; death of, 142, 143; exhibition of the work of,
563; friendships of, 42, 149; as student, 48
Fantin-Latour, Mme Henri, see Dubourg, Victoria
Farandole, La (Dubois), 327, 431
Faure, Jean-Baptiste: as collector, 157, 213, 221-223,
301, 317; correspondence from Degas, 212, 216, 222,
223, 234, 265, 266, 267, 269, 386, 424, 426, 428, 459;
Degas works commissioned and bought by, 26, 146,
157, 160, 164, 171, 212, 216, 221-23, 234> 236, 263,
266, 269, 370, 381, 404, 424-25, 426, 428; friend-
ships: with Degas, 424; with Meyerbeer, 269; as singer,
26, 221, 236, 269, 270; tribute to, from Degas, 236;
work by: Notice sur la collection J.-B. Faure, 222
Femmes damnees (Baudelaire), 301
Feneon, Felix, 168, 363, 368, 369, 387, 395, 417, 430,
443, 446, 556
Ferretti, Raffaello, photograph by, 251; fig. 124
Fevre, Anne, see Caqueray, Vicomtesse de
Fevre, Celestine, 129, 496; portrait of, 57; fig. 24
Fevre, Gabriel, 350
Fevre, Henri, 26, 55, 59, 118, 212, 215, 223, 249
Fevre, Mme Henri (nee Marguerite De Gas), 59, 63, 82,
320, 358, 375; birth of, 47; in Buenos Aires, 26, 391;
correspondence from Degas, 502; correspondence to:
Michel Musson, 54, 55, 118, 155; Musson family, 55;
death of, 490, 538, 542; death of daughter, 358, 359;
financial situation of, 215; friendship with Mme Lu-
dovic Halevy, 538; marriage of, 55, 118; as musician,
44, 118, 189; in Naples, 53; portraits of, 44, 62, 129
Fevre, Henry, 443
Fevre, Jeanne: casting of Degas's sculpture and, 350,
351, 352, 610; as collector, 88, 350, 566-67; corre-
spondence to Mary Cassatt, 351, 610; correspondence
from: Mary Cassatt, 352; Degas, 495; at Degas's fu-
neral, 498; friendship with Mary Cassatt, 350, 351; as
nurse for ailing Degas, 497; recollections of Degas,
87, 90, 100, 129, 189, 320, 486, 487, 489, 496, 503
Fevre, Madeline Marie Pauline, 88
Fevre, Marie, 358
Fevre family, 118, 320
Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones, 101
Fifth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists, London,
60, 157
Figaro, Le, 185, 220, 309, 457, 492
Figaro Artistique, Le, 162
Figaro Illustre, Le, 148
Fille aux yeux d'or, La (Balzac), 301
Fille de Jephte, La (Vigny), 86
Fille Elisa, La (de Goncourt, E.), 296
Fin de Paris, La (Maizeroy), 123
Fiocre, Eugenie, 134, 135-36; portraits of: (Carpeaux),
136; (Degas), 130, 133-36; cat. no. 77; figs. 71-73;
(Winterhalter), 136
Fiocre, Louise, 135
Fisher-Unwin, Mrs. T., 355
Flandrin, Auguste: Woman in Green, 74; fig. 32
Flandrin, E., 92
Flandrin, Hippolyte, 36, 37, 38, 40, 48; Dreaming, 97;
%. 47
Flaubert, Gustave, 90, 280; Education sentimentale, L\
438; Salammbo, 90, 92, 534
Flavigny, Comtesse de (nee Moitessier), 493
Fleury, Mme de, 379, 534
Fleury, Perie de, see Bartholome, Mme Albert
Fleury family, 393
Florian, Jean-Pierre Claris de: Jumeaux de Bergame, Les,
43i, 432
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge,
496
Fonta, Mile, 172
Fontaine, Mme Arthur (nee Marie Escudier), 541; pho-
tograph of (Degas), 541; cat. no. 334
Forain, Jean-Louis, 218, 305, 324, 365, 372, 392, 437,
485, 487, 494, 498; Attentiveness (Portrait of Edgar
Degas), fig. 93; On the Lookout for a Star (Portrait of
Degas), fig. 115
Forain, Mme Jean-Louis, 487
Fortnightly Review, 368
Fourcaud, Louis de, 274
Fourchy, Jacques, 168, 432; photograph of, 23, 506;
fig. 287
Fourchy, Mme Jacques (nee Hortense Valpinqon), 157,
168, 371, 409, 410, 432, 495, 506, 603; photograph
of, 23, 506; fig. 287; portraits of, 157, 168-69, 378,
379, 380, 409-10; cat. nos. 101, 243
Fourth Exhibition of the Society of French Artists, London,
59
Fra Diavolo (Auber), 190
Fragonard, Jean-Honore: Young Girl Making Her Dog
Dance on Her Bed, 303
France, La, 35, 368, 370
Franciabigio: Portrait of a Young Man (formerly attr. to
Raphael), 48
Francis II (king of Naples), 53
Franck (Francois de Villecholles), photograph by, 285;
fig. 140
Franco-Prussian War, 58, 59, 164, 166-67, 171, 249
Frederick III (Frederick the Wise; elector of Saxony),
130, 132
Freischutz, Le (Weber), 532
French Academy, Rome, 35, 38, 40, 49, 50, 65, 69, 70
Freppa, Giovanna Aurora Teresa, see Degas, Mme
Hilaire
Frolich, Lorentz, 60, 182, 188, 192
Fuller, Loie, 579
Gaillard, Ferdinand, 38, 51
Gaite-Rochechouart, Theatre, Paris, 292
Galerie Boussod et Valadon, Paris, see Boussod et Vala-
don, Paris
Galerie Bulloz, Paris, 346
Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, see Durand-Ruel (Gallery),
Paris
Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 161, 168, 184, 274, 318,
380, 386, 494, 496
Galerie Hebrard, Paris, 433; see also Hebrard, A. -A.
Gallay, Nerine, 432
Galletti, Stefano, 38, 39, 53, 70
Gallimard, Paul, 281
Garbo, RafFaellino del, 75
Gard, 161, 175; portraits of, 161; cat. no. 97
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 53
Gauguin, Paul, 91, 383; admired by Degas, 390, 486,
568; as collector, 383, 390, 392; collectors of the work
of, 182, 363, 390, 417, 488, 489, 539, 557, 568; copies
of Degas, 417-18; fig. 227; correspondence from
Theo van Gogh, 390; correspondence to: Bernard,
392; Mme Gauguin, 383, 549; Pissarro, 230, 375,
376, 381; Schuffeneker, 390; death of, 368, 495; es-
trangement from Degas, 376, 381, 383; exchange of
works with Degas, 383; exhibitions of the work of,
98, 417, 488, 554; Impressionism and, 376, 381; influ-
enced by Degas, 230, 368, 372, 417; reconciliation
with Degas, 386; support from Degas, 488; style of,
417; Symbolism and, 369; works by: Day of the God,
The, 489, 557; fig. 275; Moon and the Earth, The, 488;
fig. 274; Spirit of the Dead Watching, The, 549; Sfi//
Life with Mandolin, 383; Still Life with Sunflowers, 390;
fig. 202; Te Fare (La Maison), 568; Two Bathers, 417;
Two Breton Girls in a Meadow, 390; writing on Degas,
368
Gaujelin (or Gozelin), Josephine, 175, 176; portrait of,
135
Gaulois, Le, 218, 274, 305
Gautier, Theophile, 172, 240
Gavarni, Paul, 249, 296
Gavet, Emile, 201
Gazette, La, 188
Gazette des Amateurs, 214, 243
Gazette des Beaux- Arts, 70, 202, 205, 217, 219, 288, 311,
339, 345, 368, 435, 459; etching from (Gilbert), 435;
fig. 238
Geffroy, Gustave, 208, 211, 365-66, 368, 446, 453
Genga, Girolamo, 87
634
George, Waldemar, 102, 103
Gericault, Theodore, 46, 10 1, 102, 125
Gerome, Jean-Leon, 45, 91, 100, 375
Gervex, Henri, 382, 498; portrait of, 382; fig. 190;
Rolla, 285, 308
Gey met (printer), 199
Gilbert, Rene: Portrait of Mile Sanlaville of the Opera, 434;
fig. 238
Gil Bias, 384
Gille, Philippe, 327
Gille, Pierre, 208, 209, 218
Gillot (printer), 199
Gimpel, Rene (Paris and London), 31, 32, 281
Gioli, Francesco, 312
Gioli, Matilde, 312
Giorgione da Castelfranco, 51, 56, 80
Giornale Artistico, II, 227
Giotto (Giotto di Bondone), 46, 57, 140
Giraud, Eugene: Jardin de la marraine, Le, 263
Giselle (Adam), ballet, 239, 240
Glasgow Herald, The, 396
Glasgow Institute of the Arts, 396
Glasgow International Exhibition, Scotland, 387
Gleyre, Charles, 48
Gobillard, Jeannie, see Valery, Mme Paul
Gobillard, Paule, 489, 492, 493, 539, 540; photograph
of (Degas), 539-40; cat. no. 332
Gobillard, Theodore, 149
Gobillard, Mme Theodore (nee Yves Morisot), 58, 149-
50, 489, 539; portraits of, 57, I49~53, 155, 249, 250,
3 17; cat. nos. 87-90
Goblin Market (Rossetti, C), 301; illustration for (Ros-
setti, D. G.), 301
Goethem, Antoinette van, 346, 347
Goethem, Louise-Josephine van, 346, 347
Goethem, Marie van, 329, 331, 337, 342, 345, 34*5-47,
348, 349, 350, 355, 356, 399, 435, 45i
Goetschy, Gustave, 98, 198, 208, 301, 342-43, 350
Gogh, Theo van, 389; as art dealer, 182, 372, 387, 388,
390, 392, 393, 402, 417; Boussod et Valadon and,
372, 386, 387, 391, 394, 402, 417 cnce to:
Gauguin, 390; Vincent van Gogh, 392; death of, 394;
exhibitions arranged by, 387, 402, 417, 509
Gogh, Vincent van, 372, 386, 388, 392, 394, 465, 490,
509; Still Life, 394; "Two Heads of Dried Sunflow-
ers," 491; Two Sunflowers, 394
Gogh, Wilhelmina (Wil) van, 392
Goncourt, Edmond de, 130, 170, 171, 202, 212, 232,
303, 346, 365, 399; Fille Elisa, La, 296; Madame Ger-
vaisais, 70; Manette Salomon, 203, 223, 224
Goncourt, Jules de, 130, 202, 303; Madame Gervaisais,
70; Manette Salomon, 203, 223, 224
Gonse, Louis, 79, 202, 343
Gonse, Mme J. H., 118
Gonzales, Eva, 58
Goudezki, Jean, 32
Gouffe, Achille Henri Victor, 161; portraits of, 161, 162;
cat. no. 97
Gouffe, Albert Achille Auguste, 161
Gounod, Charles-Franqois, 172; Polyeucte, 457
Goupil et Cie, Paris, 217; see also Boussod et Valadon,
Paris
Gout, Jean-Nicholas Joseph, 161; portrait of, 161; cat.
no. 97
Goya, Francisco de, 82, 216, 296; Disasters of War, 106;
Family of Charles IV, The, 82; fig. 38; Nude Maja, 453
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 52, 508; Journey of the Magi, The,
268, 509
Grafton Galleries, London, 488, 495
Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siecle (Larousse),
201, 218, 280, 281
Grand Palais, Paris, 494
Graphic, The, 204; wood engraving from, fig. 99
Grappe, Georges, 143
Greco, El (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), 31, 318, 542;
Saint Dominique, 492; Saint Ildefonso, 489; fig. 276
Greuze, Jean-Baptiste: Broken Pitcher, 146
Grisi, Carlotta, 239
Grolier Club exhibition, New York, 455
Gsell, Paul, 609
Guerin, Edmond, 170
Guerin, Marcel, 145, 169-70, 254; as collector, 280;
correspondence from Poujaud, 146, 278, 541; recol-
lections of Degas, 63, 157, 161-62, 171, 188, 221,
222, 223, 305, 370; recollections of Manet, 142; writ-
ing on Degas, 74, 79, 169-70, 266-67, 346, 426, 428,
432, 459, 469, 470, 541
Gueroult, Georges, 459
Guerrero de Balde, Marquis Edoardo, 252
Guerrero de Balde, Marchesa Edoardo (nee Lucie
Degas), 28, 57, 320, 358, 375, 384; birth of, 56, 251;
correspondence from Degas, 376, 489; death of, 252,
496; estrangements: from Degas, 252; from Edmon-
do and Mme Morbilli, 252; guardians of, 252, 375;
inheritances of, 213, 218, 252; marriage of, 252; in
Paris, 358, 375; photographs of, 251, 384; figs. 124,
193; portrait of, 251-52, 254; cat. no. 145
Guerrero de Balde, Tommaso, 50
Guiffrey, Jules, 159
Guillaume, Eugene, 52
Guillaumin, Armand, 381, 392
Guillemet, Antoine, 219
Guillemet, Marguerite, 539
Guitry, Sacha, 285; photograph by, fig. 285
Guys, Constantin, 296
Haas, Charles, 487, 492; photographs of: fig. 199;
(Degas), 535; fig. 300
Hainl, Georges, 171
Halevy, Daniel, 134, 270, 384, 496, 539, 568; as collec-
tor, 568; diary of, 249, 274, 289, 492-93, 539; friend-
ship with Degas, 98, 382; photographs of: (Barnes),
539; fig- 189; (Degas), 535, 537, 539, 542; cat. no.
331; figs. 277, 303; portrait of, 382; fig. 190; recollec-
tions of Degas, 23, 36, 44, 58, 88, 98, 134, 155, 270,
384, 482, 485, 486, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 495,
496, 497, 500, 502, 516-17, 524, 535-36, 538, 539,
568; work by: My Friend Degas, 535, 539
Halevy, Mme Daniel, 496
Halevy, Elie, 493, 496, 539; photographs of: (Barnes),
539; fig. 189; (Degas), 536; figs. 196, 303
Halevy, Mme Elie, 496
Halevy, Genevieve, see Bizet, Mme Georges; Straus,
Mme Emile
Halevy, Ludovic, 81, 172, 208, 256, 285, 377, 535; birth
of, 47, 537; as collector, 292; correspondence from
Degas, 64, 216, 219, 281, 372, 380, 382, 487, 489,
490, 502, 538; death of, 496; diary of, 279, 280;
friendship with Degas, 36, 42, 47, 172, 207, 249, 278,
280, 282, 378, 382, 542; illustrations of the writings
of, 199, 258, 270, 280-84; cat. nos. 167-169; photo-
graphs of: (Barnes), fig. 189; (Degas), 536, 537, 542;
cat. no. 328; figs. 273, 303; portraits of, 278-80,
281- 82, 321, 382; cat. nos. 166, 167; fig. 190; pseu-
donym used by, 280; as public administrator, 278;
works by: Abbe Constantin, V, 211, 280; Cigale, La
(with Meilhac), 216, 487; Famille Cardinal, La, 258,
270, 280-84, 475, 537; "Madame Cardinal," 58, 175,
211, 280; Madame et Monsieur Cardinal, 199, 280;
"Monsieur Cardinal," 175, 270, 280, 281-82; Petites
Cardinal, Les, 172, 280; "Petites Cardinal, Les," 280,
282- 83; as writer, 58, 135, 175, 207, 216, 258, 270,
274, 278, 486, 487, 537, 575
Halevy, Mme Ludovic (nee Louise Breguet), 81, 189,
249, 349, 377, 378, 498, 516; admiration and support
for Degas, 281; correspondence from Degas, 492,
493, 496, 502; friendships: with Degas, 538; with
Marguerite De Gas (Mme Fevre), 538; photographs
of (Degas), 535, 538; cat. nos. 329, 330; figs. 196,
273, 277
Halevy family, 48, 380, 382, 486, 490, 499, 502, 516,
531; estrangement from Degas, 492, 493, 496, 535,
537, 538, 566; photograph sessions with, 535; recon-
ciliation with Degas, 496
Haussmann, Baron Georges-Eugene, 45, 92
Havard, Henry, 198, 202, 217
Havemeyer, Henry Osborne, 191, 192, 216, 325, 335,
• 5ii
Havemeyer, Mrs. Henry Osborne (nee Louisine Elder),
29, 437, 606; Mary Cassatt as art consultant to, 191,
258, 324, 344, 350, 396, 472; as collector, 122, 216,
258, 259, 324, 325, 326, 328, 335, 343-44, 345, 350,
351, 352, 464, 472; see also Index of Former Owners;
correspondence from Mary Cassatt, 236, 320-21,
325, 337, 351-52, 372, 385, 444, 472, 496, 497, 561,
563, 606, 610; friendship with Mary Cassatt, 216,
337, 511; marriage of, 216; meeting with Mary Cas-
satt, 259; memoirs of, 258, 259, 320, 343~44, 35°
Haviland, Charles, 346
Haviland, Mme Charles (nee Madeleine Burty), 343,
346
Hayashi sale, New York, 472
Hebert, Ernest, 70
Hebrard, A. -A., 358, 433, 474, 586, 609, 610; foundry
of, 350, 351, 352, 609
Hecht, Albert, 172, 175; portraits of, 270; cat. nos. 103,
159
Heffernan, Jo, 415
Helleu, Paul, 541; Alexis Rouart, fig. 281
Henner, Jean-Jacques, 38, 42, 53, 70, 79-80, 88, 103,
248
Henraux, Lucien, 594
Henriot, 254
Henry, Charles, 457
Henry VIII (Saint-Saens), 532
Herald Tribune, 88
Hermel, Maurice, 446-47
Herring, J. E, 147, 534, 563; Steeplechase Cracks, 147, 534
Hertel, Charles, 117
Hertel, Mme Charles (nee Charlotte Matern), 114, 117
Hertel, Helene, see Falzacappa, Contessa Vincenzo
Hervilly, Ernest d\ 213
Hill, Captain Henry, 214, 244, 286, 288, 391
Hiroshige, 266, 322
Hoefer, Ferdinand, 90
Hokusai, 322
Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 23, 82
Hoschede, Ernest, 212
Hotel Drouot, Paris, 171, 182, 381, 437, 458, 491
Howland, Meredith, 487; photograph of (Degas), 492,
535; fig- 301
Hugues, Mile, 176, 177
Huth, Louis, 176, 222
Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 202, 205, 206, 209, 210, 214,
220, 243, 310, 337-38, 343, 365, 368, 395, 446, 458;
A rebours, 379; Art Modeme, V, 219, 378; Certains,
391; Marthe: histoire d'une fille, 296
Illustrated London News, 225, 226
Illustration, V, 327, 328, 459, 532; engraving from,
fig. 298
Impressionism (Impressionists), 204, 294; collectors of,
221, 317; Degas and, 198, 202, 204, 217, 363, 376,
502; dissension among members of, 198-99, 218,
220, 376, 381, 384; organization of exhibitions by
Degas, 26, 197, 198, 199, 212, 213, 216, 217, 218,
220, 363, 375, 384; first (1874), 157, 174, 197, 212-13,
225, 227, 234; second (1876), 180, 181, 185, 197, 214,
223, 234, 243, 248, 257, 286, 309, 317, 425, 428; third
(1877), 198, 199, 201, 202, 205, 206, 216, 225, 257,
258, 259, 262, 271, 274, 278, 280, 286, 289, 292, 296,
303, 308, 368, 411, 420, 437, 445; fourth (1879), 124,
198, 202, 217, 244, 256, 279, 310, 312, 316, 318, 322,
324, 325, 33i, 334, 335, 349, 353, 366, 603; fifth
(1880), 98, 197, 199, 218, 288, 300, 305, 310, 318,
329, 337, 339, 342, 350, 375, 45 1; sixth (1881), 198,
207-208, 211, 220, 288, 342, 343, 350, 363, 437, 476,
610; seventh (1882), 375, 376; eighth (1886), 367,
368, 369, 372, 384-85, 39i, 395, 397, 411, 4H, 417,
420, 421, 442, 443, 445, 446, 449, 45 1, 453, 465, 5*7,
525, 554, 556; members of, 249; Realism vs., 198;
writings on, 215, 312; Zola, as foes of, 185-86
635
"Impressionists and Edouard Manet, The" (Mallarme),
215
Impressionniste, V, 274, 278
Independance Beige, V, 213, 224
Independants, 98, 220, 309, 324, 363; see also Impres-
sionism
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 37, 40, 52, 89, 133,
279, 448, 453; aesthetic philosophy of, 499; collectors
of the work of, 31, 36, 363, 381, 491, 493, 506; copied
by Degas, 48, 61, 88, 465, 474; death of, 56; as direc-
tor of French Academy, Rome, 65; exhibitions of the
work of, 37, 55, 56, 346, 465, 482, 496; influence on
Degas, 23, 36, 38, 42, 55, 61, 63, 64, 82, 130, 134,
151, 153, 155, 238, 249, 255, 301, 445, 465, 482, 486,
493, 496\ 499; meeting with Degas, 36, 48, 61; museum
of the work of, 492; portraits by, 37-38, 118; primi-
tivism in the work of, 91; works by: Apotheosis of Ho-
mer, 382; Archangel Raphael, 474; Bather (Valpincon
Bather), 465; fig. 262; Comtesse d'Haussonville, The,
118, 155; fig. 83; Homer and His Guide, 55; Jacques-
Louis Leblanc, 491; fig. 279; Mme Jacques-Louis
Leblanc, 491; fig. 280; Mme Moitessier, 55; Oedipus and
the Sphinx, 381; fig. 187; Self-Portrait, 61, 112; fig. 27;
Turkish Bath, The, 55; fig. 21
Ingres, Mme, 492
Interstate Industrial Exposition, Chicago, 394
Jablochkoff, 197, 198
Jaccaci, Auguste R, 145
Jacques (pseudonym), 271, 274
James, William, 482
Jamot, Paul, 54, 79, 81, 90, 102, 105, 161, 188, 189,
191, 253, 254, 428, 453, 454
Jeanniot, Pierre-Georges, 328; exhibition of the work
of, 492; friendship with Degas, 492, 502, 566; recol-
lections of Degas, 369, 465, 482, 486, 502, 503, 552;
visits from Degas, 464, 486, 488, 502, 504
Jeantaud, Charles, 157, 167, 247; portrait of, 166-68;
cat. no. 100
Jeantaud, Mme Charles (nee Berthe Marie Bachoux),
247, 248; portraits of: (Degas), 167, 247-49, 3I0i cat-
no. 142; (Henner), 248
Jongkind, Johan Barthold, 134
Jour et la Nuit, Le, proposed print journal, 26, 199, 201,
218, 219, 262, 295, 304-305, 316, 320, 437, 442, 495
Journal des Debats, 92, 539
Journal des Debats Politiques et Litteraires, 3 5
Journal Ojficiel, 173
Joyant, Maurice, 394
Jumeaux de Bergame, Les: ballet (Lajarte), 371, 382-83,
431-32, 433, 434; opera comique (Lecocq), 431-32,
433; play (Florian), 431
Khalil-Bey, 301
Kirail, Paul, 208, 218; portrait of, 209; fig. 104
Kiyonaga, 322
Kleist, Heinrich von, 270
Klinger, Max, 289, 355
Knobloch, Michel, 208, 209, 218
Koenigswarter, Antoine, 51, 52, 53, 85, 87
Korrigane, La, ballet (Widor), 457
Kunst und Kiinstler, 368
La Caze, Louis, 37, 122, 155, 412, 451
Lacheurie, Eugene, 40, 52
Lafenestre, Georges, 198, 202, 216
Laffon, Juliette, 248
Lafond, Paul, 114, 175, 185, 391, 534; correspondence
from: Bartholome, 344, 491, 494-95, 496", Degas,
391, 494; Rene De Gas, 497; Paulin, 82, 495, 497-98;
friendship with Degas, 122, 340, 351, 389, 394, 487;
monograph on Degas by, 340, 350-51, 389; recollec-
tions of Degas, 505
Lafond, Mme Paul, 340
Laforgue, Jules, 288-89
Laguillermie, Frederic Auguste, 160
Laine, Edouard, 167; portrait of, 166-68; cat. no. 100
Lajarte, Theodore de, 431, 432
Lambertini, Leopoldo, 38, 39, 53
Lamothe, Louis, 36; as artist, 48; death of, 57; estrange-
ment from Degas, 53; influence on Degas, 36, 37, 43;
lessening of influence on Degas, 40, 52; style of, 36,
40; as teacher, 35, 36, 43, 48, 52, 61, 74, 130, 153;
work by: Self Portrait, 38; fig. 10
Lancien, Zephrin-Joseph, 161; portrait of, 161; cat. no. 97
Lancret, Nicolas, 177
Lapauze, Henry, 65, 346
Larousse, Pierre, 100, 166; Grand dictionnaire universel du
XIXe siecle, 201, 218, 280, 281
Lathuille, Pere, 381
La Tour, Maurice Quentin de, 201, 202, 209
Laurent collection, 182, 435
Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 205
Layard, Sir A. H., 92
Lebey, Andre, 35
Lecocq, Charles, 431
Lecoeur, Charles, 185, 188, 217
Lecomte, Georges, 146
Lecoq de Boisbaudran, 48
Leenhoff, Leon, 381
Le Flaneur, Luc, see Aurier, Georges- Albert
Lefman, 199
Legouve: Medee, 28, 49
Legrand, Victor-Georges, 214
Legros, Alphonse, 57, 59, 128, 145, 212
Lemoinne, Catherine, 539; photographs of, figs. 189,
191
Lemoinne, Jean, 539
Lemoinne, Marie, 539; photographs of, figs. 189, 191
Lemoinne, Rose, 539; photographs of, 189, 191
Lemoisne, Paul- Andre, 57, 90, 181, 184; catalogue
(monograph) on Degas by, 43, 61, 70, 71, 102, 124,
153, 159, 160, 181, 364-6.5, 594, 604; writings on
Degas, 62, 120, 137, 145, 148, 154, 158, 161, 174,
175, 182, 192, 221, 225, 246, 262, 278, 289, 303, 317,
318, 339, 358, 396, 594
Leonardo da Vinci, 76; Portrait of a Young Woman (for-
merly attr. to), 76; fig. 34
Lepic, Ludovic, 157, 167, 173, 175, 205, 247, 328, 384,
392; collaborations with Degas, 257, 258, 260; por-
traits of, 270, 284, 288; cat. no. 159
Lerolle, Christine, see Rouart, Mme Louis
Lerolle, Henry, 403; as artist, 26, 402; as collector, 28,
256, 377, 380, 386, 402-403, 517, 518; correspon-
dence from Degas, 28, 29, 292, 378, 435; at Degas's
funeral, 498; friendship with Degas, 256, 377, 403,
435, 517; marriage of, 541
Lerolle, Mme Henry (nee Madeleine Escudier), 403, 541
Lerolle, Yvonne, see Rouart, Mme Eugene
Leroy, Louis, 198, 213, 318
Lesbos (Baudelaire), 301
Lesin, 496
Letessier, Florence, see Bartholome, Mme Albert
Letter to Youth (Zola), 493
Leude, Jean de la, 205
Levert, Jean-Baptiste-Leopold, 212
Levy, Emile, 38, 40, 50, 51, 52, 54, 57, 137
Leys, Henri, 130
Liesville, Charles de, 343
Lignola, Marquis Ferdinando, 57
Life of Lycurgus (Plutarch), 98
Linet, Charles, 167
Linet, P., 167; portrait of, 166-68; cat. no. 100
Lionnet, Felix, 51
Lis, C. A., 179
Livaudais, John, 186; portrait of, 186; cat. no. 115
Lohengrin (Wagner), 532
Lora, Leon de, see Fourcaud, Louis de
Lostalot, Alfred de, 198, 217, 310
Louise, Comtesse, 208, 211
Louvre, Paris, 36, 48, 54, 57, 227, 317, 334, 393, 413,
451, 481, 502
Loye, Adele, 53
Luther, Martin, 132
Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris, 36, 47, 64, 98, 166, 249,
278, 538
Lyons school, 36, 38
Macchiaioli group, 3 12
MacColl, Dugald S., 288
Machault, Francois-Paul, 316
Mcllhenny, Henry, 352
"Madame Cardinal" (Halevy, L.), 58, 175, 211, 280
Madame et Monsieur Cardinal (Halevy, L.), 280; illustra-
tions for: (Degas), 199; (Morin), 280
Madame Gervaisais (de Goncourt, E. and J.), 70
Madeleine Ferat (Zola), 145
Magasin Pittoresque, 87
Magazine of Art, 399, 486
Maigrot, Henry, 280
Mail and Express, The (New York), 384, 433
Maillard, Charles, 216
Maillol, Aristide, 595
Maineri, 107
Maizeroy, Rene (pseudonym): Fin de Paris, La, 123
Malheurs d'Henriette Gerard, Les (Duranty), 309
Mallarme, Genevieve, 539, 541
Mallarme, Stephane, 390, 483, 484, 493, 588, 589; cor-
respondence from: Degas, 389; Julie Manet (Mme Er-
nest Rouart), 491; correspondence to Berthe Morisot,
390; death of, 494; friendships of, 489, 490, 502, 536,
539, 540-41; photographs of (Degas), 536, 539~4i;
cat. nos. 332, 333; poetry by, 540, 541; Symbolism
and, 536; works by: "Impressionists and Edouard
Manet, The," 215; Tiroir de laque, Le, 281; writing on
art, 205, 215
Mallarme, Mme Stephane (nee Maria-Christina Gerhard),
541
Mallot, Therese, 214
Malo, Mile, 376
Manet, Edouard, 59, 153, 170, 201, 370, 487; advice to
Degas, 90, 140; in the army, 58; artistic quotations
made by, 451; art market and, 57, 146, 193; at the
Cafe Guerbois, 42; collectors of the work of, 170, 221,
289, 317, 392, 539, 542; correspondence to: Degas, 57,
140, 154, 155; Fantin-Latour, 42, 57, 136, 155; Eva
Gonzales, 58; Berthe Morisot, 146; Zola, 142; death
of, 368, 378; estate of, 379; estrangement from Degas,
141, 142; exhibitions of the work of, 54, 57, 134, 150,
179, 37<5, 379, 381, 392, 561; friendships, 57, 140,
142, 143, 149, 161, 286; with Degas, 35, 41, 42, 57,
60, 112, 128, 140-42, 221; with Duranty, 140, 309;
influence on Degas, 35, 45, 368, 561; influenced by
Degas, 124, 368; landscapes by, 154; meeting with
Degas, 42, 54, 128, 140; models used by, 150, 285,
286; nudes by, 368; portraits of, 105, 128-29, 130,
140- 42; cat. nos. 72, 73, 82; printmaking and, 128;
rivalry with Degas, 102, 140, 368, 372; reputation of,
41, 42; sarcasm and maliciousness of, 99, 140, 146;
scenes of modern life, 102; tribute to, 381; works by:
Au Cafe, 286; Balcony, 150; Barricade, The, 379; Chez
le pere Lathuille, 286; Departure of the Folkestone Boat,
The, 379; fig. 184; Execution of the Emperor Maximilian,
489; Ham, The, 140, 388; Incident in the Bullring, 561,
563; Jeune femme blonde aux yeux bleus, 286; Jeune fille
dans unjardin (Marguerite [Guillemet] at Bellevue), 539;
Leaving the Bath, 379; Mme Manet at the Piano, 142;
fig. 76; Music Lesson, The, 179; fig. 91; Olympia, 201,
368, 393; Parisienne, La, 286; Pear, A, 388; Plums,
141- 42; Portrait of H. Vignaux, 379; Prune, La, 285;
Races at Longchamp, 124; Races in the Bois de Boulogne,
124; Tete de jeune fille, 286; Walnuts in a Salad Bowl,
142; Woman Bathing, 368; fig. 170; writings on, 134,
215, 216
Manet, Mme Edouard (nee Suzanne Leenhoff), 59, 141,
142, 170; portraits of: (Degas), 140-42; cat. no. 82;
(Manet), 142; fig. 76
Manet, Eugene, 222, 317, 368, 376, 379, 381, 487, 540
Manet, Mme Eugene, see Morisot, Berthe
Manet, Julie, see Rouart, Mme Ernest
Manet, Mme Auguste, 149
636
Manette Salomon (de Goncourt, E. and J.), 203, 223
Manifeste du symbolisme (Moreas), 384
Mante, Blanche, 347
Mantegna, Andrea, 80, 86, 457; Crucifixion, The, 87,
88, 232; fig. 40; Minerva Chasing Vice from the Garden
of Virtue, 88; Triumph of Caesar, The, 87
Mantz, Paul, 206, 209, 211, 216, 220, 278, 289, 343,
345
Manzi, Mme Luigi, 117
Manzi, Michel, 90, 97, 105, 117, 124, 493, 534, 548
Marcille, Eudoxe, 37, 122, 155
Marey, Etienne Jules, 137, 217, 375, 448, 459, 474
Mattel, Aline, 100
Martelli, Diego, 312; portraits of: (Degas), 217, 250,
312-16, 443; cat. nos. 200-202; figs. 147, 148;
(Zandomeneghi), 312
Marthe: histoire d'une fille (Huysmans), 296
Martin et Camentron, Paris, 489
Martinet, Achille, 71
Martinez, 175
Marz, Roger, 345, 453
Mary Stuart (Schiller), 48
Mas, Emile, 280
Masaccio: Expulsion of Adam and Eve, The, 558 ; fig. 315
Massenet, Jules: Cid, Le, 525; Roi de Lahore, Le, 272,
Massiac, Theodore, 206
Matern, Charlotte, see Hertel, Mme Charles
Mathieu, Oscar-Pierre, 89
Matisse, Henri, 39, 41, 91, 189, 553, 560, 602
Mauclair, Camille, 296
Maureau, Louis- Alphonse, 216
Mauri, Rosita, 274, 328, 457; photograph of: 457; fig. 254;
portrait of (?), 456-57; cat. no. 277
Maus, Octave, 391
May, Ernest, 226-27, 23°> 316-18; portrait of, 316-18;
cat. no. 203
May, Mme Ernest, 3 17
May, Etienne, 317
Medee (Legouve), 28, 49
Meier-Graefe, Julius, 191
Meilhac, Henri, 135, 278, 486; Cigale, La (with Halevy,
L.), 216, 487
Meissonier, Ernest, 43, 55, 88, 124, 137, 375, 459;
Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino, 124; fig. 68
Melida, Enrique, 161
Mellerio, Andre, 493
Mellinet, Generale Emile, 164, 166; portrait of, 164,
166; cat. no. 99
Memling, Hans, 551
Menier, Gaston, 170
Menzel, Adolf, 57, 88, 164, 191, 219, 270, 331; At the
Gymnase Theater, 270; Head of a Worker, Lit from
Below, 219; Supper at the Ball, 217, 231, 457; fig. 112;
Zerbrochene Krug, Der (von Kleist), frontispiece for,
270; fig. 135
Merante, Louis, 176, 239, 327, 431, 432; portrait of,
176; cat. no. 107
Mercure de France, 482, 502, 503
Merode, Comte de, 166
Messager, Andre-Charles-Prosper, 169
Meyer, Salvador, 182
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 269; Africaine, V, 431; Robert le
Diable, 171-72, 173, 269, 431, 487
Michel, Alice, 32, 296, 481, 516, 517, 528, 609
Michel, Andre, 35, 80, 82, 90
Michel, Olivier, 38
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 40, 470, 527
Michelet, Jules, 45
Michel-Levy, Henri, 130, 144, 417, 443
MUlais, John Everett, 144, 145, 146
Millaudon family, 51, 53, 180
Millet, Jean-Franqois, 201, 489, 542; Bouquet of Daisies,
116; fig. 62
Minkus, Ludwig, 133, 135
Mirbeau, Octave, 368, 370, 395, 446; Calvaire, La, 384
Moitessier (Vicomtesse Olivier de Bondy), 493
Monde lllustre, Le, 197, 208
Monet, Claude, 31, 198, 212, 220, 377, 385, 388, 491;
alienated by Degas, 198; art dealers of, 337, 370, 371,
372; artistic development of, 364; at the Cafe Guer-
bois, 42; as collector, 308, 381; collectors of the work
of, 182, 289; correspondence from Degas, 393; corre-
spondence to Durand-Ruel, 371; at Degas's funeral,
498; exhibitions of the work of, 31, 134, 198, 377,
386, 390, 563; Gare Saint-Lazare series, 262; Impres-
sionism and, 198; poplar series, 509; reviews of the
work of, 134, 198, 563; style of, 367, 369, 448, 476,
484; work by: Water Lilies, 3 1
"Monsieur Cardinal" (Halevy, L.), 175, 270, 280, 282;
illustrations for, 270, 281-82; cat. no. 167
Mont, Elie de, 210-11
Montaignac, J., 393, 489
Montalba, photographs by, 384, 457; figs. 193, 254
Montejasi, Duca Gioacchino di, 251
Montejasi, Duchessa Gioacchinadi {nee Stephanie Degas;
also Stefanina or Fanny), 53, 54, 75, 252, 253; por-
traits of, 252-54; cat. no. 146; fig. 125
Montesquiou, Conte Robert de, 493
Montezuma (pseudonym), 386
Montifaud, Marc de, 174
Moore, George, 90; estrangement from Degas, 486; re-
collections: of Degas, 92, 97, 100, 414, 446, 504, 516,
556; of Duranty, 310-11; of Manet, 90, 142; writings
on Degas, 225, 250, 277, 288, 396, 399, 406, 428,
445, 453
Moore, Henry, 590
Moore's Art Gallery, New York, 386
Morbilli, Alfredo, 47
Morbilli, Argia, 50
Morbilli, Duchessa Giuseppe {nee Rose Degas), 74-75,
253; portrait of, 44, 74-75; cat. no. 16
Morbilli, Edmondo, 55, 118, 217, 376, 541-42; birth of,
47; correspondence from: Auguste De Gas, 118; Mme
Morbilli (Therese De Gas), 358, 359, 375; correspon-
dence to: Degas, 53, 74, 87, 118; Mme Morbilli
(Therese De Gas), 376, 541-42; death of, 489; es-
trangement from Lucie Degas (Mme Guerrero de
Balde), 252; as guardian, 252; as invalid, 63, 488;
marriage of, 55, 118; in Paris, 118; portraits of, 44,
118-20, 155, 168, 170; cat. nos. 63, 64; fig. 63
Morbilli, Mme Edmondo {nee Therese De Gas), 50, 55,
82, 118, 155, 320; birth of, 47; correspondence from:
Auguste De Gas, 59, 168; Degas, 214, 249, 250, 494,
495; Edmondo Morbilli, 376, 542; correspondence to:
Degas, 118; Rene De Gas, 53; Edmondo Morbilli,
358, 359, 375; Mathilde Musson, 54; Sophie Niaudet,
50; death of, 496; estrangement from Lucie Degas
(Mme Guerrero de Balde), 252; financial situation of,
212, 375; as guardian, 252, 375; marriage of, 55, 118;
miscarriage of, 55, 118; in Naples, 53; in Paris, 359,
375, 376; portraits of, 44, 55, 62, 63-64, 104, 118-20,
155-57, 168, 170, 171; cat. nos. 3, 63, 94; figs. 54, 63;
in Switzerland, 488
Morbilli, Gustavo, 47, 75
Moreas, Jean: Manifeste du symbolisme, 384
Moreau, Gustave, 55, 56, 88, 97, 120, 151; copies by,
50, 52; correspondence from: De Courcy, 52; Degas,
40, 51, 52, 80, 82; Koenigswarter, 52, 53, 87; Lacheurie,
40, 52; Levy, 40, 50, 52; correspondence to: Degas,
44, 45; his parents, 38, 40, 50, 51, 65, 107; eclecticism
of, 40; estrangement from Degas, 40, 41, 42, 57, 91;
exhibition of the work of, 202; friendships of, 39, 40,
50, 51, 52; funeral of, 493; history paintings of, 45;
influence, 40; on Degas, 38, 39, 40, 65, 70, 80, 81,
85, 87, 89, 91, 97, 98-99, 101, 102, 103, 153, 470; in
Italy, 39-40, 50, 51, 52, 53, 65, 103; meeting with
Degas, 39, 50; portraits of Degas by, 70; figs. 17, 18;
portrait of, 40, 105, 128, 130, 142; reputation of, 42;
sculpture by, 470; Symbolism and, 379; as teacher,
39; technique and style of, 40, 202; works by: Edgar
Degas, fig. 17; Edgar Degas, fig. 18; Magi, The, 91,
detail of, fig. 46; Oedipus and the Sphinx, 42, 55;
Tyrtaeus Singing during the Battle, 87, 98; writing on
Degas, 107
Moreau le Jeune, Jean-Michel, 303
Moreau-Nelaton, Etienne, 58, 136, 155; as collector,
481, 495, 516, 594; recollections of Degas, 42, 54, 55,
57, 122, 124, 140, 141, 142, 495-9<5, 516, 594, 595;
recollections of Manet, 140, 141, 142
Morin, Edmond, 280
Morisot, Berthe (Mme Eugene Manet), 57, 146, 149,
150, 212, 324, 368, 399, 539, 540; collector of the
work of, 289; correspondence, 44, 57, 59, 140, 142,
143, 150, 151, 399, 489; correspondence from: Degas,
318, 379; Mallarme, 390; Manet, 146; Mme Morisot,
59; correspondence to: Julie Manet (Mme Ernest
Rouart), 489, 539; Edma Pontillon, 149; death of,
489, 539; exhibitions of the work of, 98, 151, 394,
491; friendships, 42, 140, 143, 149, 489, 540-41; as
Edouard Manet's executor, 379; Eugene Manet and,
368, 376, 381, 487; as model for Edouard Manet,
150; opinions of Degas, 149, 150; recollections of Degas,
44, 59", relationship with Degas, 149, 150, 151; sup-
port from Degas, 606; work by: Artist's Mother and
Sister, The, 150; fig. 82
Morisot, Edma, see Pontillon, Mme Adolphe
Morisot, Tiburce (father), 149
Morisot, Mme Tiburce {nee Thomas), 58, 59, 141, 149,
150; portrait of (Morisot, B.), 150; fig. 82
Morisot, Tiburce (son), 59, 149
Morisot, Yves, see Gobillard, Mme Theodore
Morisot family, 42, 134, 140
Morny, Due de, 278
Mortier (Mortje), Arnold, 327
Mulbacher, Gustave, 213, 226
Munch, Edvard, 592
Musee de Pau, 217
Musee de Saint-Germain, Paris, 205
Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, 55, 82, 90, 91, 105, 124,
161, 193, 274, 289, 491, 492, 502
Musee du Petit Palais, Paris, 248
Musee Ingres, Montauban, 492
Musee Retrospectif, Paris, 343
Musset, Alfred de, 43, 87, 105
Musson, Desiree, 55, 106, 118, 181; portraits of, 55,
182, 184, 189; cat. nos. 112, 114, 117; fig. 22
Musson, Estelle, see Balfour, Mrs. Lazare David; De
Gas, Mme Rene
Musson, Eugene, 52, 212
Musson, Gaston, 182
Musson, Germain, 47, 48
Musson, Henri, 214
Musson, Marie Celestine, see De Gas, Mme Auguste
Musson, Mathilde, see Bell, Mrs. William Alexander
Musson, Michel, 53, 55, 106, 180, 188; correspondence
from: Achille De Gas, 215; Auguste De Gas, 40, 54,
55, 118; Rene De Gas, 40, 41, 54, 59, 118, 155, 179;
Marguerite De Gas (Mme Fevre), 54, 55, 118, 155;
death of, 380; portrait of, 186; cat. no. 115
Musson, Mme Michel {nee Odile Longer), 55, 59, 106;
portrait of, 55; fig. 22
Musson family, 40, 41, 55, 57, 180
Muybridge, Eadweard, 265, 563, 564; influence on Degas,
368, 375, 448, 459, 460, 462, 464, 474, 509; photo-
graphic analysis of animal movements, 137, 199-200,
375, 386, 448, 459; photographs by, 459, 460, 462,
464; figs. 256, 258, 259; publication {Animal Locomo-
tion) on the research of, 375, 386, 448, 459, 462, 509;
review of the work of, 217
My Friend Degas (Halevy, D.), 535, 539; see also Halevy,
Daniel
Nabis, 155
Nana (Zola), 125, 219
Nanteuil, Paul: Vieille et les deux servantes, La, 301
Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), 130
Napoleon III (Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte), 45,
55, 56, 86, 112
Napoleon, Prince Jerome Bonaparte, 42, 55
Natanson, Misia, 31
Natanson, Thadee, 31
National, Le, 188
637
National Academy of Design, New York, 384
Naturalism, 197, 202-3, 207. 285, 309, 363, 365, 379,
384; see also Realism
Nature, La, 199, 208, 217, 459; advertisement in, 199;
fig- 95; illustration in, 206; fig. 102
Navery, Raoul de, 135, 136
Nederlandsche Etsclub, Amsterdam, 389
Nemea ou L' Amour Venge, ballet, 135
New York Times, 386
New York Tribune, 473, 609
Neyt, Sabine, 216, 219, 339, 376
Niaudet, Alfred, 42, 47, 48, 59, 378
Niaudet, Mme Alfred, 42, 535; photograph of (Degas),
536; fig. 302
Niaudet, Jeanne, 535; photographs of (Degas), 536;
figs. 302, 303
Niaudet, Mathilde, 535, 536; photographs of (Degas),
536; figs. 302, 303
Niaudet, Sophie, 50
Nieuwekerke, Alfred Emilien de, 343
Notice sur la collection J.-B. Fame (Faure), 222
Nouveau Larousse illustre, 532
Nouvelle peinture, La (Duranty), 44, 112, 198, 309, 310,
321
Nuitter, Charles, 133, 431
Occident, L\ 36
Ochse, Louise, 166
Oeuvre, V (Zola), 122, 384
Offenbach, Jacques, 278
Opera, Paris, 134, 161, 175, 212, 221, 239, 270, 327,
431, 487; see also Degas, at the Opera
Opera Comique, Paris, 431
Opinion, L\ 1B8
Opinion Nationale, L', 213, 214
Orangerie, Paris, 352
Ostade, Adriaen van, 71
Ottin, Auguste or Leon, 48
Pagans, Lorenzo, 59, 161, 169-70, 171; portraits of, 44,
62, 161, 169-71, 178, 534; cat. nos. 97, 102; fig. 299
Palazzolo, Albino, 351, 352, 609
Palizzi, Giuseppe: Animals at a Watering Place, 506
Pall Mall Gazette (London), 158, 176
Palmer, Mrs. Potter, 527
Pannini, Giovanni Paolo, 164
Parent, Mile, 161
Paris, 503, 504
Paris-guide, 125
Paris-Journal, 42, 58, 158, 175, 201, 208, 216, 227, 311
Pascal, Blaise: Provinciales, Les, 51, 80
Pater, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph, 177
Patti, Adelina, 221
Paulin, Paul, 82, 351, 495, 497-98
Pausanias, 100
Pavilion du Realisme, Paris, 56, 57
Payne, Colonel Oliver, H., 236
Pays, Le, 220
Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition, New York, 378
Peintre Louis Martin, Le (Duranty), 309
Peladan, Sir, 82
Pelleas et Melisande (Debussy), 169
Perronneau, Jean-Baptiste, 155
Perrot, Jules, 26, 234, 236, 239-40, 246, 260, 325; pho-
tograph of, 239; fig. 120; portraits of, 234, 236, 239-
40, 246, 260; cat. nos. 129, 133; fig. 121
Perugino, Pietro, 140
Petit, Pierre, photograph by, 166; fig. 90
Petitdidier, Emile, see Blemont, Emile
Petite Republique Francaise, La, 289, 364
Petites Cardinal, Les (Halevy, L.), 172, 280, 283; illustra-
tion for, 282-83; cat. no. 168; illustrations for (Mai-
grot), 280
Petit Palais, Paris, 105
Petit Parisien, Le, 542, 566
Picasso, Pablo, 31, 284, 296, 302, 550, 601; Two Women,
244
Pichat, Olivier: Grand Prix de Paris, 124
Picot, Franqois-Edouard, 38, 48
Piero della Francesca: Queen of Sheba Adoring the Holy
Wood, 91
Pierre, Constant, 162
Pilet, Louis-Marie, 161, 162, 170; portrait of, 161, 178;
cat. no. 97
Pillot, Adolphejean Desire, 161; portrait of (?), 161;
cat. no. 97
Piot-Normand, Alexandre, 161; portrait of, 161; cat. no. 97
Pirate (Scott), 301
Pisanello, Antonio: Saint George and the Princess, 91
Pissarro, Camille, 212, 217, 222, 312, 372; admiration
for Degas, 378; art dealer of, 337, 370; at the Cafe
Guerbois, 42; collaboration on proposed journal with
Degas, 26, 201, 218, 304-305, 437; as collector, 376,
386; collectors of the work of, 182, 212, 289, 312,
392; correspondence, 42, 217, 386, 492; correspon-
dence from: Caillebotte, 198, 220, 363, 376; Degas,
199, 568; Gauguin, 230, 375, 376, 381; correspon-
dence to: Degas, 223; Durand-Ruel, 378; Duret, 219;
Lucien Pissarro, 31-32, 378, 384, 386, 388, 389;
death of, 495; estrangement from Degas, 384, 495;
exhibitions of the work of, 98, 134, 198, 301, 324,
377, 386, 389, 392; fans painted by, 324; financial sit-
uation of, 386; framing the work of, 383; landscapes
by, 154; loyalty to Degas, 220; printmaking and, 201;
recollections of Degas, 43; reviews of the work of,
134, 198; style of, 367, 476, 509; work by: "Terrains
laboures pres d'Osny," 212
Pissarro, Lucien, 31-32, 378, 384, 386, 388, 389
Plume, La, 310, 326
Pluque, E., 176, 239
Plutarch: Life of Lycurgus, 98
Poe, Edgar Allan, 448
Polidoro da Caravaggio (Polidoro Caldara; attr. to): Group
of Women Arguing, 99; fig. 48
Polyeucte (Gounod), 457
Poncetton, Francois, 82
Pontillon, Mme Adolphe {nee Edma Morisot), 143, 149;
portrait of (Morisot, B.), 150; fig. 82
Pontormo, 76
Porcheron, Emile, 248
Porthioux, Mme Miron de, 155
Portier, Alphonse, 372, 381, 386
Pothey, Alexandre, 197, 214, 260, 271, 289, 428
Potocka, Mme {nee Pignatelli d'Aragon), 494
Poujaud, Paul, 144, 145, 146, 169, 170, 177, 278, 481,
495, 541; photograph of (Degas), 541; cat. no. 334
Poussin, Nicolas, 35; Assumption of the Virgin, The, 89;
Et in Arcadia Ego, 89; Plague at Ashdod, The, 89; Rape
of the Sabine Women, The, 89; Self-Portrait, 130;
Triumph of Flora, The, 89; fig. 41
Pradier, John, 51, 80
Praet, M. Van, 42, 57
Preault, Augustin: Ophelia, 470
Premsel's, Paris, 174, 222
Presse, La, 70, 214, 428
Prestidge, James, 186; portrait of, 186; cat. no. 115
Primicile Carafa, Camilla, 252; portraits of, 252-54; cat.
no. 146
Primicile Carafa, Candida, see Degas, Mme Edouard
Primicile Carafa, Elena, 252; portraits of, 252-54; cat.
no. 146
Primicile Carafa, Stefanina, see Montejasi, Duchessa
Gioacchino di
Primoli, Conte Giuseppe, photograph by, 392; fig. 203
Prins, Pierre, 145
Prix de Rome, 35, 37
Proust, Antonin, 142
Provinciales, Les (Pascal), 51, 80
Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre, 45, 90, 140, 149, 263, 376,
382, 415, 488; Bellum, 107; fig. 57; Hope, 148; fig. 81;
Young Women by the Seashore, 372; fig. 174
Raffaelli, Jean-Francois, 201, 218, 305, 365, 372, 376,
381, 498
Raimondi, Marcantonio, 71, 470
Ramel, Albert, 492
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), 40, 48, 50, 112, 140; Raphael
with a Friend, 112; fig. 59
Raphael, circle of, 343
Rappel, Le, 213, 257
Raunay, Jeanne, 292, 566
Rawlinson, Sir H. C, 92
Realism (Realists), 35, 69-70, 105, 136, 309, 384; ambi-
tions and goals of, 197, 198, 202-203; Courbet and, 56,
57; critics and, 198, 205, 209; Degas and, 105, 197,
198-99, 201, 202-205, 211, 212, 213, 363, 366;
Durand-Ruel as dealer of, 370; Impressionism vs.,
198; Naturalism and, 197; new generation of, 197;
science and technology as basis of, 198; see also
Naturalism
Realisme, Le, 309
Redon, Odilon, 379, 391
Redoute, 122
Regamey, Guillaume Urbain (?), 48
Reid, Alexander, London and Glasgow, 396
Reitlinger, 222
Rejane, Gabrielle, 305
Rembrandt van Rijn, 71, 80, 303, 412, 558; Bathsheba
with King David's Letter, 412, 451, 453; fig. 250;
Negress Lying Down, 412; fig. 222; Portrait of a Young
Woman (formerly attr. to), 76; fig. 34; Self-Portrait at a
Window, 412; Young Man in a Velvet Cap, 71
Renaissance, La, 482
Renan, Ernest, 45
Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 220, 234, 285, 370, 385, 491,
549; alienated by Degas, 198; anti-Semitism and, 493;
bequest from Caillebotte, 334; biography of (Jean
Renoir), 32, 539; at the Cafe Guerbois, 42; as collec-
tor, 296; compared to Degas, 560; estrangement from
Degas, 334, 335; exhibitions of the work of, 134, 377,
386; friendships of, 335, 489, 490, 494, 540-41; pho-
tograph of (Degas), 536, 540-41; cat. no. 333; recol-
lections of Degas, 32, 296, 343, 345, 351, 358; review
of the work of, 134; sale of Degas painting, repercus-
sions of, 334, 335; sculpture of, 560; style and devel-
opment of, 364, 367, 374, 474; works by: Bathers,
372; fig. 177; Dejeuner des canotiers, Le, 285; Fin du
dejeuner, La, 285; Yvonne and Christine Lerolle at the
Piano, 386, 403; fig. 216
Renoir, Jean, 32, 539
Renouvier, Jules, 343
Republique Francaise, La, 175, 213, 227
Reutlinger, 177
Revue Blanche, La, 606
Revue de Demain, La, 144
Revue de France, 292
Revue de Paris, 197
Revue Encyclopedique, 147, 368
Revue generale d' architecture, 124
Revue Hebdomadaire, La, 82
Revue Independante, La, 368, 387, 417, 430
Revue Liberate, 205
Revue Modeme et Naturaliste, La, 202, 206
Reyer, Ernest, 492, 531; Salammbo, 532, 533— 34; Sigurd,
382, 431, 481, 486, 532, 533
Ricard, Louis Gustave, 40, 44
Riccoboni, L., 431
Rillieux, Marie Celeste Vincent, 47
Ringel, Desire: Demi-monde, 343
Ristori, Adelaide, 28, 48, 49
Rivey, Arsene-Hippolyte, 234
Riviere, Georges, 112, 145, 204, 205, 206, 214, 274,
278, 289, 310, 316, 349
Riviere, Mile, 63, 118
Robbia, Andrea della, 358
Robbia, Luca della, 358
Robert, Leopold, 69
Robert le Diable (Meyerbeer), 171-72, 173. 269, 431, 487
Robinson, Theodore, 198
Rodin, Auguste, 527; Eve, 470; Gates of Hell, 548;
Thinker, 351
Roehn, Adolphe Eugene Gabriel or Jean Alphonse, 36
638
Roi de Lahore, Le (Massenet), 272, 431
Roma Artistica, 312
Roman, M., 144
Romanelli, Piero, 294
Romano, Giulio, 50
Romanticism, 172, 173
Ross, Denman W., 504
Rossano, Federico, 216, 419
Rossetti, Christina: Goblin Market, 301
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 301
Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio: Semiramis, 53, 90, 170;
William Tell 236
Rosso, Medardo, 456, 524
Rosso Fiorentino, 99
Rothschild, Baronne de, 118
Rouart, Alexis (brother of Henri Rouart), 305, 324, 494;
as collector, 249, 3 17, 397; correspondence from
Degas, 344, 492, 495, 496, 566, 604; as engineer, 249;
friendship with Degas, 170, 249, 250, 495
Rouart, Alexis H. (son of Henri Rouart), 363, 498, 604;
portraits of: (Degas), 542-44, 604; cat. no. 336; fig. 304;
(Helleu), fig. 281
Rouart, Mme Alexis H., 493, 604; portraits of, 495,
604; cat. nos, 390, 391
Rouart, Denis, 296, 331, 482-83, 520, 546
Rouart, Ernest, 61, 134, 136, 144, 145, 493, 494, 557
Rouart, Mme Ernest (nee Julie Manet), 403, 489, 494,
506, 536, 540; correspondence from: Degas, 491;
Berthe Morisot, 489, 539; correspondence to
Mallarme, 491; courtship of, 493, 494; death of
father, 487, 540; death of mother, 489, 539; friend-
ships, 490, 492, 493, 539, 540-41, 581; journal of,
335, 482, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494, 506, 536, 539,
567, 581, 584, 585; marriage of, 494
Rouart, Eugene, 494
Rouart, Mme Eugene (nee Yvonne Lerolle), 403, 494;
portrait of (Renoir), 403; fig. 216
Rouart, Helene (Mme Eugene Marin), 249, 250, 254;
portraits of, 249-50, 253, 384, 423, 543; cat. no. 143;
fig. 192
Rouart, Henri, 36, 249, 278, 328, 482, 487; in the army,
58, 166, 167; as artist, 148, 249, 250, 542; collabora-
tion on proposed journal with Degas, 218, 305; as
collector, 23, 213, 249, 271, 277, 278, 317, 33L 354,
389, 397, 497, 542; correspondence from Degas, 60,
182, 186, 255, 376, 378, 492, 493, 542, 543; death of,
496; diverse interests of, 249; friendships, 167, 542;
with Degas, 42, 166, 170, 247, 249, 250, 271, 331,
495, 542, 543; as inventor, 249, 542-43; portraits of:
(Degas), 142, 148, 249-51, 254, 310, 542-44, 604;
cat. nos. 143, 144, 336; fig. 306; (Rosso), 524;
Realism and, 212
Rouart, Mme Henri, 142, 247, 487
Rouart, Louis, 494, 495, 498
Rouart, Mme Louis (nee Christine Lerolle), 403, 495;
portrait of (Renoir), 403; fig. 216
Rouart, Madeline, 604
Rouault, Georges, 39, 41
Roujon, Henry, 345, 502
Rubens, Peter Paul, 38, 453
Rutte, Friedrich-Ludwig de, 246
Rutte, Mme Friedrich-Ludwig de, 246; portrait of,
246-47; cat. no. 141
Rutte, Paul de, 246
St. Albin, Paris, 431
Saint-Arroman, de, 144
Saint- Aubin, Gabriel de, 303
Saint-Leon, Arthur, 133, 135
Saint-Saens, Camille: Henri Vlll, 532
Saint- Victor, Paul de, 70
Salammbo (Flaubert), 90, 92, 534
Salammbo (Reyer), 532, 533~34
Salle, Mile, 455, 457
Salmon, 305
Salmon, Andre, 31
Salon, Paris, 42, 58, 86, 197, 248, 285, 301, 343, 470;
(1859), 40, 44, 45, 52, 130; (1861), 130, 132; (1864),
42, 55, 124, 5<5i; (1865), 42, 45, 55, 105, 107; (1866),
56, 79, 123, 124, 365, 561; (1867), 42, 56, 79, 80, 81,
120; (1868), 57, 133, 134, 135, I3<5; (1869), 44, 57,
142, 151, 309; (1870), 58, 149, 150, 151, 179, 309;
(1871), 161; (1876), 202, 316; (1878), 285; (1879), 197,
202; (1880), 202; (1881), 202; (1882), 376; (1883), 435;
(1899), 470
Salon de 18 $9 (Baudelaire), 154
Salon de 1866 (Castagnary), 136
Salon des Refuses, Paris, 42, 55, 561
Salvioni, 134
Sangalli, Rita, 457
Sanlaville, Marie, 328, 390, 432, 434, 457, 533; portrait
of (Gilbert), 434; fig. 238
Sarcey, Francisque, 167
ScherTer, Ary, 49
Schiller, Friedrich von: Mary Stuart, 48
Schnetz, Victor, 50, 65, 69-70
Schoeller, 161
Schoenewerk, Alexandre: Maid of Tarentum, The, 470
SchufFeneker, Emile, 390
Schwiter, Baron Louis- Auguste, 393, 489; portrait of
(Delacroix), 393, 489; fig. 206
Scientific Aesthetic, theory of, 457
scientific realism, see Realism
Scott, Sir Walter: Pirate, 301
Sebastiano del Piombo: Holy Family, 56
Sebillot, Paul, 310, 325
Sechan, Charles, 172
Second Annual Exhibition of the Society of French Artists,
London, 59
Seligmann, Jacques, 127
Semiramis (Rossini), 53, 90, 170
Sert, Jose-Maria, 498
Seurat, Georges, 369, 372, 374, 386, 389, 437, 448, 457,
465, 476; At the "Concert Europeen," 437; fig. 241;
Models, The (Lesposeuses), 372; fig. 176; Sunday After-
noon on the Island of La Grande-Jatte, A, 384, 385; fig. 194
Shchukin, Serghei, 244
Shunsho, 322
Sickert, Walter, 28, 225, 232, 355, 367-68, 372, 382,
440, 442; photograph of, fig. 189; portrait of, 382;
fig. 190
Sickert, Mrs. Walter (Ellen Cobden-Sickert), 355
Siecle, Le, 89, 213, 217
Signac, Paul, 386
Signorelli, Luca, 51, 91
Signorini, Telemaco, 213, 312
Sigurd (Reyer), 383, 431, 481, 486, 532, 533
Sikenobu, 322
Silvestre, Armand, 124, 185, 198, 204, 205, 206-207,
213, 214, 219, 301, 310, 312, 366
Sisley, Alfred, 42, 198, 212, 377, 385, 392
Societe Anonyme des Artistes, 212-13, 214, 218, 363,
376, 386
Societe* Bearnaise des Amis des Arts, Pau, 185, 215, 216
Societe des Aquafortistes, 54, 128
Societe des Artistes Franqais, Salon of the, 301
Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Salon of the, 301
Sodoma, II (Giovanni Bazzi): Alexander and Roxana, 50
Soleil, Le, 248
Soleniere, Eugene de, 486, 487, 534
Souquet, Louis, 161; portrait of, 161; cat. no. 97
Source, La (Minkus and Delibes), 56, 133-34, 135, 43 1
Soutzo, Prince Gregoire, 37, 38, 49, 51, 52, 54, 58, 71,
85, 87, 153
Spectator, 288
Standard, The (London), 363, 376, 377, 397
Stanford, Leland, 459
Stevens, Alfred, 41, 42, 57, 59, 112, 130, 140, 148, 149,
221, 285, 396; Song of Passion, 190
Stevens, Arthur (Brussels), 57, 212
Straus, Emile, photograph of, fig. 199
Straus, Mme Emile, 606; photograph of, fig. 199; see
also Bizet, Mme Georges
Studio: Journal of the Fine Arts, The, 433
"Sur la physionomie" (Duranty), 205, 208
Syene, F.-C. de (Arsene Houssaye), 364
Symbolism, 363, 3°4, 368, 369, 379, 384, 502, 536
Taglioni, Marie, 239
Taine, Hippolyte, 38, 70
Tallmeyer, Maurice, 494
Taschereau, Jules, 486, 535, 536; photographs of (Degas),
536, fig. 302
Taschereau, Mme Jules (Henriette), 535, 536; photographs
of (Degas), 536; figs. 302, 303
Tasset, 483, 489, 491, 542, 569
Temps, Le, 82, 214, 216, 220, 352
Testard, Maurice, 345
Theatre-Lyrique, Paris, 258
Theresa, see Valadon, Emma
Therese Raquin (Zola), 25, 145-46
Thiebault-Sisson, Francois, 79, 80, 123, 137, 350, 352,
561, 610
Thierry, Joseph Francois Desire, 90
Thiers, Adolphe, 38, 71
Third Annual Winter Exhibition, Brighton, England, 286
Thomson, D. C, 502, 503
Thore-Biirger (Wilhelm Burger), 412
Thornley, George William, 292, 331, 354, 387, 389, 417,
453, 565; At the Milliner's, after Degas, 389; fig. 200;
Nude Woman Having Her Hair Combed, after Degas,
453; fig. 249
Thousand and One Nights, The, 482, 524
Thuilleux, Marie Emma, see Dobigny, Emma
Tiroirde laque, Le (Mallarme), 281
Tissandier, Gaston, 217, 459
Tissot, James Jacques, 46, 54, 161, 212, 263, 370, 380;
advice to Degas, 144-45, 146; as artist, 42, 58, 124,
130, 132, 148, 396; as collector, 132; correspondence
from Degas, 59, 60, 130, 140, 142, 157, 176, 180,
181, 186, 188, 197, 212, 214, 221, 222, 269, 370, 372;
correspondence to Degas, 54, 59, 91, 130, 140; Degas
painting given to, 223; exiled in London, 59, 145,
157, 176; friendship with Degas, 41, 42, 112, 130; in-
fluence on Degas, 130; as model, 228; portrait of, 32,
105, 112, 122, 124, 128, 130-32, 142, 249; cat. no. 75;
works by: Afternoon Tea, 148; Dance of Death, The,
130; Martin Luther's Doubts, 132; Races at Longchamp,
124; Walk in the Snow, A, 130
Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), 40, 105, 118, 552, 558
Tom Jones (Fielding), 101
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 23, 31, 32, 372, 437, 439,
487, 494; Jane Avril at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, 439;
fig. 242
Tour du Monde, 130
Tourny, Joseph-Gabriel, 23, 38, 39, 50, 51, 52, 53, 71,
92, 412
Tourny, Mme Joseph-Gabriel, 23
Tourny, Leon, 48
Trianon, Henry, 211, 343
Tribune, The (New York), 384
Types de Paris, Les, 365
Ukiyo-e prints, 188
Univers Illustre, V, 208
Utamaro, 322
Valadon, Emma (Theresa), 261, 292, 378, 435; photo-
graph of, 435; fig. 240; portraits of, 291-92, 435~37i
cat. nos. 175, 263; fig. 239
Valadon, Suzanne, 494, 496, 606
Valernes, Evariste de, 42, 112, 134, 175, 486, 487, 491,
499, 544; portraits of, 38, 1 12-14, 116. 130, 170; cat.
no. 58
Valery, Paul, 35, 544; friendship with Degas, 35; marriage
of, 494; recollections of Degas, 23, 32, 35, 74, 92,
125, 305, 399, 484, 5io, 535, 541, 542-43, 574; work
by: Degas Danse Dessin, 484, 542-43; writings on
Degas, 459, 580
Valery, Mme Paul (nee Jeannie Gobillard), 489, 494,
539, 540
639
Valpincpn, Edouard, 36, 48, 465
Valpinqon, Henri, 157
Valpinqon, Hortense, see Fourchy, Mme Jacques
Valpinc.on, Melanie, 52
Valpincon, Paul, 36, 47, 48, 52, 157, 168, 409, 465,489, 506;
portraits of, 115, 138, 148, 157; cat. no. 95; figs. 20, 84
Valpincon, Mme Paul {nee Marguerite Claire Brinquant),
157, 168, 253, 506; portraits of, 11 5-16, 157, 168; cat.
no. 60; figs. 60, 84
Valpincon family, 41, 42, 54, 61, 101, 106, 115, 157,
216, 378, 379, 483, 487, 603; see also Degas, travel in
France, Menil-Hubert
Vapereau, Gustave, 166
Vauxcelles, Louis, 35
Velazquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y: Infanta Margarita,
54, HO
Verdi, Giuseppe, 133
Verhaeren, Emile, 536
Vermeer, Jan, 177
Veronese, Paolo, 40, 45, 50, 51, 80, 86, 88; Marriage at
Cana, The, 440
Viau, Dr. Georges, 102, 186
Vie artistique, La, 366
Vie Moderne, La, 124, 197, 205, 219, 301, 366
Vie Parisienne, La, 58, 278, 280
Vigny, Alfred, de, 87; Fille de Jephte, La, 86
Villard (Villars), Nine de (Mme Hector de Callias), 140,
161, 209, 220, 343, 345
XX, Les (Brussels), 363, 391
Vivarez, Henry, 197
Voleur Illustre, Le, 208
Vollard, Ambroise, 324, 415, 594; album of Degas's
drawings produced by, 415, 550; as art dealer, 127,
35i, 363, 375, 394, 488, 491, 493, 550, 601; as
champion of modem art, 550, 601; as collector, 415;
at Degas's funeral, 498; exhibitions at gallery of, 482,
490, 544, 554; recollections of Degas, 32, 88, 140-41,
155, 281, 296, 308, 334, 343, 345, 351, 358, 385, 481,
567, 594, 610; writing on Degas, 140-41
Voltaire, Le, 98
Voyage dujeune Anacharsis en Grece (Barthelemy),
98, 100
Vuillard, Edouard, 29
Wagner, Richard, 487; Lohengrin, 532
Walters, Henry, 458
Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 177
Weber, Carl Maria von: Freischutz, Le, 532
Weill, David, see David- Weill, David
Weyden, Rogier van der: Annunciation, 545
Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 23, 42, 43, 88, 124,
128, 145, 177, 376, 382, 486, 541; Symphony in White,
No. 3, 56, 136
White's Gallery, London, 376
Wildenstein, Georges, 54
Willems, Florent, 285
William Tell (Rossini), 236
Winterhalter, Franz Xaver, 136
Wolff, Albert, 185, 220
Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris,
exhibition, New York, 384
World's Fair, Paris (1889), see Exposition Universelle,
Paris
Yedda, Legende Japonaise (Metra), 272, 431
Zandomeneghi, Federico, 312, 372, 376, 470, 490, 498
Zerbrochene Krug, Der (von Kleist), 270; frontispiece for
(Menzel), 270; fig. 135
Zola, Emile, 57, 205, 449; as art critic, 42, 122-23, *34_
35, 136, 146, 185-86, 561; articles in support of
Dreyfus, 492, 493; at the Cafe Guerbois, 140, 309;
correspondence, 218; correspondence from Manet,
142; as Duranty's executor, 219; as foe of Impression-
ism, 185-86; influenced by Degas, 223; Naturalism
and, 202, 365; as novelist, 25, 122, 125, 145-46, 208,
218, 223, 384, 397; preface to Duranty catalogue by,
219; works by: Assommoir, V 208, 209, 218, 223; Au
bonheurdes dames, 397; Letter to Youth, 493; Madeleine
Ferat, 145; Nana, 125, 219; Oeuvre, U, 122, 384;
"Terre, La," 286; Therese Raquin, 25, 145-46
Photograph Credits
Except for the following, photographs have been
supplied by the owners or custodians of the works
reproduced; the courtesy of all is gratefully acknowl-
edged.
WORKS IN THE CATALOGUE
Allschwil-Basel, Hans Hinz 351
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum 127
Boston, Geoffrey Stein Studio 294
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 152, 194
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Art Muse-
ums (Fogg Art Museum) 378
Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art 8
Cologne, DuMont Buchverlag 19
Copenhagen, Ole Woldbye 11 1
Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art 259
Leipzig-Molkau, Gerhard Reinhold 154
Leningrad, Aurora Publishing 139
London, James Kirkman Ltd. 149
Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture 301
Narberth, Pa., Eric Mitchell 258
Nashville, Lyzon 260
New York, Giraudon/Art Resource 27
New York, Malcolm Varon for The Metropolitan
Museum of Art 114, 143, 317
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 71,
94, 112, 161, 175, 177, 202, 206, 215, 221, 228,
253, 270, 277, 307, 308, 332, 336, 339, 352, 356,
370, 386
New York, Pollitzer, Strong & Meyer 237
New York, Wildenstein and Co. , Inc. 3 19
Paris, Bulloz 391
Paris, Reunion des Musees Nationaux 24, 43, 146,
214, 34i
Paris, Studio Lourmel, Photo Routhier 230, 313, 360
Pau, Marie-Louise Perony 115
Planegg, Blauel-Artothek 98
Toronto, The Art Gallery of Ontario 383
Zurich, Foto-Studio H. Humm 28, 86, 158, 205,
278, 385
Zurich, Walter Drayer 361
COMPARATIVE FIGURES
Berlin, Walter Steinkopf Photographisches Atelier
112
Boston, Geoffrey Stein Studio 37
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Art Muse-
ums (Fogg Art Museum) 395
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago 100, 10 1, 103,
104
Chicago, John Crerar Library, University of Chicago
102
Chicago, The Newberry Library 99
Florence, Alinari 14, 15
Hamburg, Ralph Kleinhempel 248
London, Browse & Darby Ltd. 166
London, Christie's Colour Library 49
London, The Lefevre Gallery 245, 331
London, Tate Gallery 336
Merion Station, Pa., photograph 0 1988 by the
Barnes Foundation 176
New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc. 230, 268, 291
New York, Art Resource 34, 38, 315
New York, Barbara Mathes Gallery Inc. 223
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 75,
189, 196, 272
New York, Robert G. Osborne 228
New York, Sotheby's 33, 204
New York, Wildenstein and Co., Inc. 11, 234, 304
Ottawa, Karsh 9, 169, 270, 285
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada 12, 66, 95, 96,
97, 106, 108, 135, 141, 203
Ottawa, National Library of Canada 298
Paris, Durand-Ruel archives 86, 92, 117, 123, 133,
138, 151, 156, 159, 160, 167, 175, 211, 215, 220,
231, 232, 236, 244, 246, 247, 257, 263, 267, 290,
292, 294, 308, 318, 319, 321, 328, 329
Paris, Bulloz 143, 205
Paris, Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques
et des Sites, 0 Archives Photographiques, Paris/
S.P.A.D.E.M. 27, 53, 185, 296, 306
Paris, Giraudon 305
Paris, Robert Schmit 239
Saint Louis, Mo., Michael Shapiro 140, 142, 240
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art 122
Zurich, Foto-Studio H. Humm 149
Lois Dinnerstein 182
Provided by the authors 23, 24, 35, 39, 44, 47, 57,
60, 71, 72, 73, 78, 81, 90, 124, 147, 150, 161, 163
178, 179, 184, 188, 193, 195, 197, 199, 212, 214,
224, 225, 229, 235, 238, 252, 253, 254, 256, 258,
259, 284, 299, 317, 327
640
ISBN 0-87099-519-7
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