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Updated: May 31, 2025
But they are also marvellous pictorial studies which, in spite of the special, anecdotal subjects, rise to the level of grand painting through sheer power of draughtsmanship and charm of tone. Degas has the special quality of giving the precise sensation of the third dimension.
The second, a back view, full of the malformations of forty years, of children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas' genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has rendered the nude again an artistic possibility.
Leaving on one side the more subtle apprehensions which we call "spiritual," even the pictures of the old Chinese draughtsmen and the modern impressionists, of Watteau and of Turner, of Manet, Degas, and Cezanne; the poems of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitman these, and countless others, assure you that their creators have enjoyed direct communion, not with some vague world of fancy, but with a visible natural order which you have never known.
I have said how vain it is to class artistic temperaments under a title imposed upon them generally by circumstances and dates, rather than by their own free will. The study of Degas will furnish additional proof for it. Classed with the Impressionists, this master participates in their ideas in the sphere of composition, rather than in that of colour.
The achievements in art most distinctive of the present age the paintings of Courbet, Whistler, Degas, for instance proclaim the same creative principle, the unsubstantiality of substance, the immateriality of matter, the mutability of all that seems most fixed, the unreality of all things, save that which was once the emblem of unreality, the play of line and colour, and their impression upon the retina of the eye.
While these superior folk are wrangling about Dégas and Mallarmé, about 'style' and 'distinction, he is doing the work of the world. There is nothing in life so much exaggerated as the importance of art. If it were all wiped off the surface of the earth to-morrow, the world would scarcely miss it.
It may be presumed that, had they wished to do so, Manet and Degas could have admirably illustrated certain contemporary novels, and Renoir could have produced a masterpiece in commenting, say, upon Verlaine's Fêtes Galantes.
He was a brilliant raconteur, and, as Degas said, was at one time as well known in Paris as Garibaldi, red shirt and all. The truth is, Manet, after being forced with his back to the wall, became the active combatant in the duel with press and public. He was unhappy if people on the boulevard did not turn to look at him.
His vigorous colouring links him to Monticelli, and his drawing to Degas. As to M. Simon Bussy who, following Alphonse Legros's example, is about to make an enviable position for himself in England, he is an artist of pure blood. His landscapes and his figures have the distinction and rare tone of M. Whistler, besides the characteristic acuteness of Degas.
In her meagre thwarted forms application could freely be made of the supple incisive drawing which bends to and flows with the character that drawing of which Ingres was the supreme patron, and of which Degas is the sole inheritor. Until a few years ago Chavannes never sold a picture.
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