Picture Preview: Degas and the Italians in Paris

1 Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli, c.1865
Degas’ sister Thérèse married her first cousin, Edmondo Morbilli, son of an impoverished Duchess. Degas painted two portraits of the couple: the first, soon after their marriage, was to show a happily pregnant Thérèse, but she lost the baby before Degas had finished. The artist scraped the paint away from around his sister’s skirts and never completed the work. This Boston portrait, made a year or two later, clearly shows the tensions that have driven a wedge between the couple, caused by their continued childlessness and financial strain.

5 Manet Seated, Turned to the Right, c.1864-8
Degas considered himself superior to most of his fellow artists, with the possible exception of Manet. The two were close, sharing the same models, and often quoted each other pictorially. “He was greater than we thought” was Degas’ typically back-handed tribute to the artist after his death. This etching marked a significant departure for Degas, whose previous portraits had been more formally arranged. The casual seated pose was common in photographic studios of the time, and the artist was to use it in many later portraits such as that of Diego Martelli. This is an early state of the etching, where the dark mass of Manet’s upper body seems to float above the bare floor. A top hat was added in the next state, sitting on the floor to the left of the chair, anchoring the composition. In an even later state it was again removed. Behind the artist we can see the backs of stretched canvasses, but it is not clear whether Manet is in his own studio or in Degas’.

10 The Song Rehearsal, 1872-3
Degas’ mother Celestine Musson was born in New Orleans, where her father had made his fortune in the cotton trade. Two of Degas’ cousins, Estelle and Désirée, fled the American Civil War in 1863 and while in France they became particularly well-acquainted with Degas’ brother, René. After their return René and his other brother Achille set up De Gas Brothers, Importers of Wine, in New Orleans, and René married his now blind cousin, Estelle. Degas, never much of a traveller, was persuaded to visit the family in 1872 where he painted this lively picture of René, Estelle and Désirée enjoying one of their regular musical evenings. The artist found the heat and harsh light too much for him, however, and couldn’t wait to get back home to his life of routine.

12 Portrait of Rose Caron, c.1892
Degas was infatuated with the peasant’s daughter-turned-opera singer, Rose Caron, who was renowned for her ‘Aztec’ beauty. Over six years he went to see her perform the opera Sigurd a total of 38 times, and he dedicated a sonnet to her, eulogising “The diadem gilding the pink pallor”, an apt description of this shimmering painting. “How well she is able,” Degas wrote to a friend, “to raise those divinely thin arms, holding them aloft for a long time, without affectation, for ages and then lower them gradually!” The artist only met the singer once, at a dinner party, and could not contain his excitement.

25 The Dance Examination, c.1879
Degas rarely showed dancers performing, or race horses racing, but preferred to depict them milling about unselfconsciously before or after the main event. Here, two ballerinas are limbering up for an audition at the Paris Opéra, their hopeful mothers fussing around their skirts. Most dancers came from working class families, and the mother on the left, “with the mug of an old concierge” according to one critic of the time, was probably modelled by Degas’ devoted housekeeper, Sabine Neyt. The cluster of figures in one corner, the vertiginous view point, and the diagonal lines of the floor are clear references to Japanese print-making, while the artist also flouts western conventions by boldly cropping the figure of the dancer on the right. This painting was exhibited at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1880, where critics complained that the girls’ movements were clumsy.

32 After the Bath, c.1899-1905
Nudes form roughly one fifth of Degas’ output, and the artist made no apology for returning to the theme repeatedly. “It is essential to do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times,” the artist insisted. Although Degas had a strong working knowledge of classical painting, his approach to the nude was revolutionary, creating voyeuristic snapshots of ordinary women in their most private washtub moments. It is debatable whether these incandescent pastels are misogynistic invasions of privacy or sympathetic forays into genuine womanhood, but they are irresistibly beautiful. Degas treated women according to their social class, and claimed to be interested in “the human animal occupied with itself”. The high up view points, allowing us to look down on the nudes, suggest a subservient role for the women, but on the other hand there is none of that implicit eroticism so often seen in classical nudes. These women are alone, modest and absorbed by routine, and many of the pastels were in fact bought by women.

36 La Coiffure, after 1896
When Degas depicted women having their hair brushed in the late 1870s they were invariably prostitutes and women of ill repute, but during the 1890s he returned to the subject without attaching to it the same stigma. The theme did contain a potent paradox, however, bearing the dual message of banal routine and sexual frisson. The task of brushing the fashionably long hair of Degas’ day was not a pleasant one, and its sheer physicality is visible in this painting from Oslo. Hair brushing also has a long literary history as a symbol of sexuality, as seen for example in Titian’s Lady at her Toilet. It has been said that this particular image, like a classical relief sculpture, contains a whiff of Greek tragedy, suggesting some elemental exchange between the two women.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 14.12.03