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It was painted early in the sixties, probably about the same period as the Luxembourg picture, when the effects of his Spanish travel were wearing off, and Paris was beginning to command his art. Manet used to say, "When Degas was painting Semiramis I was painting modern Paris." It would have been more true to have said modern Spain. For it was in Spain that Manet found his inspiration.
Has the world slept for two thousand years? Is Degas the first artist? Was Aristotle the first critic, and is Mr. George Moore the second? As a white pigeon cuts the blue, and every opinion of him shines as burnished agate in the live air, things shape themselves somewhat. I begin to see that Art is, and that men have been, and shall be, but never are.
"The subject you've started," said he, "is of course, to me, the most interesting. Please develop your thesis." "Well then, your pictures are good, strong, thorough stuff, with sentiment yes, just enough sentiment to keep them from the brutality of Degas or the sensualism of Latouche. Whereas you, yourself, seem to have no sentiment." "I? No sentiment! Oh, Bobby, this is too much!
Their works have become types through which we apperceive and appreciate the world: we see French landscapes as Lorrain and Corot saw them, peasants after the fashion of Millet, the stage after Degas. In vain men have prophesied limits to the victorious advance of art.
There is nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. "Degas was painting 'Semiramis' when I was painting 'Modern Paris," says Manet.
He made friends with Degas, Cézanne, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet, Guillaumin, and Manet. He called himself an amateur and a "Sunday painter," but as he was received on terms of equality with these famous artists it may be presumed that, autodidact as he was, his versatile talent for it literally was versatile did not escape their scrutiny.
And we, a little envious of those who did once see Grisi plain, always shall find solace in this pretty picture of her; holding it to be, for all the artificiality of its convention, as much more real as it is prettier than the stringent ballet-girls of Degas. What monster have we here? Who is he that sprawls thus, ventrirotund, against the huge oozing wine-skin?
Having determined the century of France's artistic period we will ask where we shall place it amongst the artist period of the past. Comparison with Greece, Italy, or Venice is manifestly impossible; the names of Rembrandt, Hals, Ruysdael, Peter de Hoogh, Terburg, and Cuyp give us pause. We remember the names of Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Millet, and Degas.
Not having attained the scientific drawing which one finds in Degas's, they have a grace and a brilliancy which Degas's nudes have never known. If his rare portraits of men are inferior to those of his rivals, his women's portraits have a frequently superior distinction. His great modern compositions are equal to the most beautiful works by Manet and Degas.
Daumier was the artistic progenitor of the Caran d'Aches, the Forains who was it that called Forain "Degas en caricature"? Willettes, and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a political pamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a pictorial muck-raker of genius. His mockery of the classic in art was later paralleled by Offenbach in La Belle Hélène. But there were other sides to his genius.
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