Edgar Degas, impressionist or modernist?

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was born in Paris, son of banker Augustin De Gas. At 11 Degas enrolled in Lycée Louis-le-Grand, graduating in 1853. He was painting seriously and by 18, his bedroom became an artist's studio. He began making copies in the Louvre, but his father wanted him to study. So Degas enrolled in Law at Paris Uni in Nov 1853 but was bored by his studies there. In 1855, Degas met Jean Auguste Ingres whom he revered. In Ap that year, the young man enrolled at Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he studied drawing & flourished. In Jul 1856 Degas moved to Italy for 3 years, copying Renaissance art.

After returning home, Degas continued copying paintings at the Louvre, still remained a keen copyist. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages, attracting little attention. Although he exhibited annually in the Salon in the next 4 years, he submitted no more history paintings and his Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey (1866 Salon) signalled his new commitment to modernity. The change in his art was influenced by Édouard Manet who he met in the Louvre.

Degas, Cotton Office in New Orleans, 

1873, Wiki

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When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, defending Paris. During rifle training, his eyes were damaged. Post-war Degas enjoyed a long stay (from 1872) in New Orleans LA where his brother René and other relatives lived. One of Degas' New Orleans works, depicting the Cotton Exchange at New Orleans, won positive notice in France. Note it was his only work purchased by a museum during his lifetime!

Impressionism emerged in the 1860s, and grew in part from the realism of men like Courbet and Corot. The Impressionists painted the realities of the world using notable colours, concentrating mainly on light effects. Degas hurt the Impressionists when he constantly belittled their en plein air art. He was anti-Impressionism just like the critics who reviewed their shows, saying: What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; I know nothing of spontaneity. See his Parisian scenes, off-centre compositions, experiments with colour & form, and friendship with key Impressionists.

Degas returned to Paris in 1873. Alas his father died and in settling the estate, it was found that brother René had amassed huge business debts. To preserve the family name, Degas was forced to sell his house and a collection of art he’d inherited. He suddenly found himself dependent on his own art sales for income. By now very unhappy with the Salon, Degas joined forces with a group of young artists who were organising an Independent Art Society. Their first Impressionist Exhibitions started in 1874. The Impressionists later held 7 additional shows, until 1886.

Degas’ distinct style showed his respect for the old masters and his admiration for Ingres and Eugène Delacroix. And he liked the vigorous realism of popular illustrators. When he became famous for horses and dancers, his treatment of traditional historical subjects became less idealised. Degas already showed the mature style that he would later develop more, by cropping subjects awkwardly and by choosing unusual views. By late 1860s, Degas had shifted from his initial history paintings to contemporary life.

 
The artist organised the shows and displayed his style in all of them, despite conflicting with other group members. He had little in common with Monet & other landscape artists whom he mocked for painting outside. Conservative socially, he disliked the scandal created by the shows, plus the publicity that his colleagues sought. He rejected the name Impressionist that the press popularised, and his insistence on having traditional artists in the shows annoyed the group, disbanding in 1886. As his financial situation improved via selling his own works, he was keen to collect works by artists eg old master El Greco, and moderns eg Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Artists he idolised, Ingres & Delacroix, were well represented.

The Ballet Class, c1875

Wiki

Degas became isolated, due partly to his belief that an artist could have no personal life. The Dreyfus Affair (1894->) brought his anti-Semitism to the fore and he separated from all his Jewish friends. His interest in portraiture led him to study the ways in which peoples’ social stature and employment type were revealed in their features, posture & dress. In Portraits At the Stock Exchange 1879, he anti-Semitically showed a group of Jewish businessmen. With his athletic dancers and solid laundresses painting, he revealed their occupations by their dress, activities and body type.

His subject matter & his technique changed. The dark palette displaying Dutch art’s influence gave way to colour use and bold brush strokes. Place de la Concorde 1875 “froze” to portray them accurately, seeing movement. The changes to his palette, brushwork & composition displayed the influence that both Impressionism’s & photography’s natural images had.

Jockeys, 1881

all that's good

Race horses, 1884

Jockeys in the Rain, 1886

While visiting a childhood friend in Normandy, Degas made his first studies of horses. Then his treatment of traditional historical subjects became idealised. Degas did racing scenes throughout his career, using his horses and jockeys from one picture to the next. All the figures had been in earlier works and some of the poses were quite distinguished. The prancing mount and rider derived from Benozzo Gozzoli's Journey in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi Florence, which Degas copied earlier. Yet this picture was unusual for its medium—pastel, colouring the sky and landscape, & giving a warm undertone in front. Race course scenes allowed Degas to depict horses and riders in a modern context.

Laundry Girls Ironing, 1884

WikiArt

When he painted  working women eg milliners & laundresses, his treatment of traditional historical subjects became less idealised. Portrait of Mlle Fiocre in Ballet La Source, in the 1868 Salon, was his first major work to introduce his favourite models: dancers. In many later paintings, dancers were shown backstage or rehearsing, focusing on their status as working professionals. Degas also began to paint café life. He urged other artists to paint real life instead of traditional mythological or historical art, and his few literary scenes were modern. By the later 1870s Degas had mastered not only the traditional oils, but also pastels. The dry medium enabled him to reconcile his interest in line and in expressive colour. In the mid-1870s he returned to etching and less traditional printmaking.

These changes in media engendered the paintings that Degas would produce in later life. Degas began to draw and paint women drying themselves with towels, combing their hair and bathing. The backgrounds are simplified.

Except for his skilled draftsmanship and obsession with figures, the art created in his late life period bore little resemblance to his early era. Ironically the works created after the heyday of the Impressionist movement that most obviously used the colouristic techniques of Impressionism. Certain features of Degas's work remained for life. He always painted indoors, working IN his studio using models. The figure remained his primary subject; his landscapes were produced from memory or imagination. His works were prepared, calculated, practised and developed in stages.

Public reception of Degas' work included both admiration to contempt. As a promising artist in the conventional mode, Degas had a few works accepted in the Salon in the early years. These works received praise from some French critics. But Degas soon joined forces with the Impressionists and rejected the rigid rules, judgements, and elitism of the Salon. The Salon had initially rejected the experimentalism of the Impressionists.

Degas' work was controversial, but in time t was admired for its draftsmanship. The nudes Degas exhibited in the 8th Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 produced "the most concentrated body of critical writing on the artist in his lifetime. ... The overall reaction was positive and laudatory." Little Dancer of Fourteen Years was probably his most controversial piece, with some critics said they saw ugliness.

He was seen as a key artist late in life, esp by his great admirer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; it was his lively creation of daily activities and his bold colours that urged him into late Impressionism. But his paintings, pastels, drawings & sculptures weren’t intended for exhibition. Degas had no formal pupils, although he did influence painters like Mary Cassatt & Walter Sickert. He was working more, only ceasing his art in 1912. With demolition of his home, he spent the last years of his life, single and nearly blind, wandering Paris streets. Degas died in 1917. His paintings were discovered only after post-death, now prominently displayed in important museums.

Images of death in the Victorian era

The idea of photographing the dead might be seen as morbid today but it made perfect sense to Victorians. Readers might like to find Audrey Linkman's book Photography and Death, published by Reaktion Books in 2011.

Most photographs of a recently deceased person were taken by professionals, and were kept at home in the same way as all other family photographs were kept – mounted on the wall or inserted into family photo albums. But why did they have the deceased photos taken at all? Ordinary Victorian families could not have afforded dozens of photographs. So the post-mortem photograph was often the only image the family would ever have of their loved parent, sibling or child. There was little choice - if families did not record the person’s image just before he/she was buried, how would they properly memorialise their loved one?

A little girl in mourning clothes standing close to her younger, deceased sibling.

Norwich, N.Y.

Photo credit: Etsy

In the examples I've seen, the portraits were posed peacefully. The person may have suffered terrible pain for months or years, but appeared as peaceful as he/she had before the suffering set in. Linkman noted that at least for people who died within a familial context, the picture reminded the family that their loved one was truly at rest.

With high mortality rates in childhood, the photos filled a painful void. They honoured the loved relative and seemed to have been part of the healing process for the survivors.

Postmortem photography of the dead, esp children, was also an obsession for late C19th Americans. Bereaved families wanting to keep a memory of a lost child would have a photo made of the child lying in its coffin. Some of these photos were given to family members and friends, or appeared on memorial cards announcing the child’s death. Or these photos could be on one side of memento mori lockets and brooches, with the other side containing a lock of hair. These lockets were emotional keepsakes post death.

Photography and Death is important as it revealed the significance of images that might make modern families queasy. We may respond with equanimity when the deceased person lay on a bed with the eyes closed, as if asleep. But often the formally dressed body was seated erect on a couch, playing with toys, surrounded by flowers or propped up between live people. Daily Oddities noted that the dead eyes were "open"; this was done either by propping the subject’s eyes open or painting pupils onto the photo-graphic print. And many early images had a rosy tint added to the corpse's cheeks. The book’s strength was that it placed these rather uncomfortable images within the context of changing cultural attitudes towards death and loss.

Mourning locket, 

photo from Carter's

Why did many of these photos look as if they were taken in the family’s front parlour? An interesting aside to the familial context came from mental_floss. The parlour/death room was an important part of funerary rituals for the Victorian era, the place where deceased family members were laid out before the burial. In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, many funerals were still taking place at home until slowly, by WW1, most funerals started to take place in funeral homes. As the professional funeral parlour came into vogue, the home parlour was quickly rebranded a “living room”. A 1910 issue of Ladies Home Journal declared that for Americans at least, the death room would become a term of the past.

For Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders,  WW1 also brought an end to elaborate Victorian-style mourning rituals. The huge numbers of soldiers who died and were buried overseas, as well as the resultant collective grief, made individual displays of mourning at home seem inappropriate.

Linkman acknowledged that for violent deaths, the situation was very different. In Western Europe, young men were clearly sent off to war whenever their nation required it. In Eastern Europe, pogrom massacres were a constant feature of life. I am assuming that families would not have been comforted by images of massacred brothers and sons, even assuming they could retrieve the bodies distant from home.

Millais, portrait of the late Cecil Webb, 

1887, NGV

One last thought about the momentos that provided a kind of therapy and a physical remembrance. Ordinary working families might have relied on a locket containing hair of the deceased or a ring. The National Gallery of Victoria has a portrait of an Australian child who died in 1886, painted by the British artist John Everett Millais in 1887. This beautiful and sombre memorial was presumably painted from a photo, sent to Britain by the grieving parents. It was expensive.

Photos may have made the death images more lifelike, but examine a funerary monument from the mid C18th. The wax head and body of Sarah Hare (1689-1744)  was placed in a mahogany box in Stow Bardolph church, Norfolk. She had instructed her family as follows: "I desire to have my face and hands made in wax with a piece of crimson satin thrown like a garment in a picture, hair upon my head and put in a case of mahogany with a glass before." So it may be assumed that the fabrics were taken from Hare's own clothing and the corset was the one she wore in life.

Although wax memorials like this were rare, it seemed to function for the mid C18th Hare family just as the Victorian death photos did 100+ years later.

Sarah Hare funerary monument, 1744

Hare Chapel, Stow Bardolph Church, Norfolk

Excellent photos can be found in Victorian History,  History and traditions of England,  Daily Oddities, Histatic and Mental Floss. Thank you to William Clements Library.

The best Art History texts to read

ARTNEWS ass­emb­led a list of 11 must-haves books that cover art history, from class­ical antiquity to now. Art history is a flexible discipline, subject to revisions as things change. Below I have included the books I know and found excellent.

Gombrich

The Story of Art

1. Penelope & Davies et al, Janson’s History of Art For 60+ years, Horst Janson’s large book was the key text for first Art History courses, promising a wide overview of painting, sc­ulpture and architecture from earliest history on. For the most part, only women artists were criticised. $250.

But a 2006 revision largely wrote Janson out of his own book, though the title remained. Works cited as masterpieces eg James Whistler Whis­t­ler’s Mother (1871) were ignored, while  ignored arts (photo-graphy, decorative arts) were added. As were female artists. And it replaced Janson’s focus on the male artist as genius with a more comprehensive reading that considers race, class and gender. Though this most recent edition (2013) is now old, it remains useful.

2. Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss et al, Art Since 1900 Compiled by contributors associated with October, the art-critical quarterly known for its dense writing, Art Since 1900 was published in 2005 as a corrective to st­and­ard art histories, while being aimed at a broad­er readership. Now published as a 2-volume set, the book retains Oc­t­ober’s thorny attit­ude; it is sceptical of the notion that art em­bodies indiv­idual ex­p­res­sions that transcend time. So the book does­n’t follow the develop­ment of modernism, anti-modern­ism and post-modernism through movements or artists. Rather it treats C20th art to a textual deconstruction with short essays tied to cultural or hist­oric­al events for each year 1900-2003, starting with the publication of Sig­mund Freud’s Interpret­ation of Dreams. $160

3. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists.  Vasari (1511-74)’s biographies of the Italian Renaissance’s key players introduced the concept of art history we know. Many of his subjects were his near contempor­aries, making the text a primary source for studying the era that ushered in art’s Western tradition. First published in 1550, Lives covers the period bracketed by Cimabue (1240–1302) and Mich­elangelo (1475–1564) and is prefaced with a gen­eral treatise on ar­chitecture, sculpture and painting. Later historians faulted Vas­ari for being too focused on Florence’s and Rome’s artists, though the book was enlarged in 1568 to include Venetian artists like Tit­ian. But while Lives didn’t look beyond Italy, its influence sp­read rap­idly in Europe, the first translation being in the Dutch Republic (1604).

Janson's History of Art: The Western Tradition

by Davies & Hofrichter, 2015

5. HH Arnason, History of Modern Art (1968) It has 650+ daunting pages, but ever since its appearance it has served as the essential account of C20th art. The book begins with C19th Paris when artists like Manet, Monet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Seurat and Cezanne created the first modernism. It contin­ues by recounting the major move­ments: Cubism, Dada, Bauhaus, Surr­ealism, Abstract Express­ionism and Pop Art that impacted the past 100 years of painting, scul­pture and architecture. Using good illust­rations and clear lang­uage, read the story of a rev­olutionary era that trans­formed our thinking about the world and art’s place in it. History of Modern Art is often updated.

6.  Ernest Gombrich The Story of Art, 1950 He noted there was real­ly no such thing as Art; there were only artists. Thus he set the tone of what has become one of art history’s most pop­ular works. Avoiding sweeping discussions of movements, Gombrich focused on individual works of art and the figures behind them. Ex­cept for a few divers­ions into ancient and tribal art, this invar­iab­ly meant Western, male paint­ers. Still Gombrich took a re­mark­able stance for an art historian by maintaining that art his­tory can obscure, as well as clarify the experience of art by relaying inf­or­m­ation unnecessary to the act of seeing. Linking artists as diverse as Raphael and Cez­anne across time, Gombrich insists that they all faced similar chal­lenges in their work. Their intentions matter.

7. Phaidon eds, The Art Book Smart and lavishly produced, this directory of artists across history is valuable. Ranging from the Middle Ages on, the book features 500 artists, each given a lush treatment: a full-colour reproduction of a key work printed with breath-taking det­ail. Each entry has a brief text with a clear career over­view of the artist. Since the artists are pres­ented alphabet­ic­ally, meet unexpected juxtapositions of eras and styles eg one pairing C17th Dutch painter Hendrick ter Brugghen and contemporary Frenchman Daniel Buren. Though The Art Book loves painting, it also covers sculpture, photo­gr­aphy & installations.

Vasari,

Lives of the Artists

8. Richard Shone and Jean-Paul Stonard eds., Books that Shaped Art History: From Gombrich & Greenberg to Alpers & Krauss While an art history book about art history books is self-referential, this compilation of essays covering C20th milestones is a reminder of how closely de­velopments in art are tied to changes. Linking a wide-ranging group of leading sch­olars & curators, The Books that Shaped Art History examines 12 volumes that introduced critical con­cepts understand, starting with Relig­ious Art in C13th France by Émile Mâle in 1898. An early study of medieval art, Mâle’s book was one of the first to use icon­ography to unlock the mean­ing of images. Heinrich Wölfflin’s Princ­iples of Art History (1915) form­ulated the now common method of comparing artworks on style. The Books that Shaped Art History looks closely at how writing has shaped art and vice versa. 

**

To read the books I was not familiar with, go to ARTnews September 7, 2023:

Mary Beard and John Henderson, Classical Art: From Greece to Rome; 

Sharon F Patton, African-American Art; 

Charles Harrison and Paul Wood eds, Art in Theory 1900–2000; and 

Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art and Society)

Beautiful Madeira Islands near Portugal

Madeira (under blue spot), Portugal and Morocco

Wiki

Madeira’s written history started in 1418. It was then the navigators led by João Gonçalves Zarco sighted, after days afloat on the high seas, a small island that saved them from tragedy, a safe harbour they named Porto Santo Island. Next year, 1419, they reached Madeira Island.

Navigators Tristão Vaz Teixeira, Bartolomeu Perestrelo & João Gonçalves Zarco became the first settlers. Portuguese King John I (1357–1433) ordered the colonisation process in 1425 with people of modest means, ex-prisoners of Portugal and some lower nobility. Other settlers were peasant farmers and fishermen hoping for better prospects after the bubonic plagues ravaging Europe. To develop agriculture, settlers cleared parts of the dense forest with long lasting fires.

King John I statue in Lisbon

Wiki

Madeira's settlement history showed its clear potential. The islands were in a perfect geographical location, quickly making it an international point of connection, with fertile volcanic soils & subtropical climate all year. During colonis-ation, some crops were introduced that became central to Madeira's history. Sugar cane brought great economic wealth to the region. Madeira began planting sugarcane, a rare spice then, in c1450 and quickly became a large exporter of sugarcane and a popular sugar stop for European traders. From C16th, the islands were established as one of the most famous sugar producers in the world: White Gold. The use of slave labour in sugar cultivation was launched on a small production model in Madeira in 1452, the earliest place to use slave labour for sugar. This was due to its proximity to Africa’s coast, 400 km to the Canary Islands and c520 km to Morocco; but c1000 km from Portugal!

The cultivation of sugarcane continued until most production moved to Brasil. Then fishing & vegetables were the main products for Madeirans. But in order to develop Madeira's agriculture, it was essential to thin out the dense forest and to build many levadas-aqueducts. They brought water from the island’s wet north to the dry parts in the south. Today there are 2,170 km+ of levadas still used for water transport, hydroelectric power & popular walking trails with great views. Already in 17th & C18ths, Madeira's history was marked by a new culture that boosted the economy.

Madeira was marginally involved in both world wars. There were a handful of German attacks in WW1, during which Germany declared war on Portugal on Mar 1916. In WW2, Portugal was neutral but did agree to take in Gibraltarian humanitarian refugees, until the war’s end.

Madeira gained political autonomy in 1976 after the 1974 Carnation Revolution, when a military coup ended Portugal’s endless dictatorship. Today Madeira’s population = c256,000 people, the majority of whom live on Madeira island and 5,000 people living on Porto Santo island. Of those on Madeira, almost half (105,795) live in the capital, Funchal. The population is almost entirely Catholic (96%) and tourism makes up c30% of the Madeiran GDP.

Old Town Funchal

Museum of Wine and Vine, tasting room

 

With 600+ years of history, this Atlantic archipelago protects a vast collection of monuments, churches, museums and other cultural spaces. Madeira's heritage stands out for its undeniable historical relevance. Walking in the streets of Madeira's towns and cities means enjoying direct contact with that heritage. It is a journey into the past through different architectural styles, historic spaces or artworks from the eras. Among Madeira's heritage, see King Manuel I late Gothic relics, military or modern architecture. And valuable paintings, photos, sculptures, jewellery, furniture and porcelain found in the chapels, churches, cathedrals, forts, palaces, old estates, museums or cultural centres.

The capital city, Funchal, is central to Madeira's cultural heritage. Wander down the streets of this European city to enjoy its rich heritage eg art pieces from 7 museums. These artefacts were chosen for their history and their relationship with Madeira. All the museums are ideal for exploring the archipelago's history, identity and traditions but also for discovering the region's natural wealth. 

Madeira Island vineyards

The special wine produced is globally acclaimed still, and although Madeira is mostly made with red grapes, white grapes are also common. Since C17th, Madeira’s main export has been wine, used in many traditional Portuguese dishes. In Santana municipality on Madeira’s north coast, the Museum of Wine and Vine is housed in an old restored cellar, examining wine’s complex production process. Three wine presses have been restored in the cellar, offering visitors the chance to inspect these traditional spaces and utensils used in viticulture. Additionally the Museum also has an explanatory section on the cycles of the vine. Note the Museum includes a shop for buying traditional products!

The Solar do Aposento is a traditional, wealthy house preserved in the Madeiran architectural tradition. Built mid C18th in Ponta Delgada, this agricultural property’s building came with out-buildings; the ground floor was occupied by wine stores, next to a wine press. So visiting Solar do Aposento means witnessing island life in 18th & C19ths.  Recently the site gained a small chapel and extensions near the kitchen. The interior explores various decorative styles. Most of the furniture are of C19th Madeiran origin, with pieces in mahogany and chestnut wood, like contemporary English furniture. And also Portuguese furniture from the late 18th and C19ths. And see important paintings and sculptures eg the C17th oil painting of Our Lady with Child and a polychrome, gilded upholstered wooden sculpture of St Anthony (mid-C17th). Also see a carved and gilded wooden mirror from Queen Donna Maria I (1734–1816).

Funchal family houses and beach rental houses

The Madeira Story Centre explains the archipelago’s rich history. Situated near the cable car station in central Funchal, the Centre teaches via an exhibition of authentic historical objects and interactive multi-media equipment. The Museum’s halls are organised in themes: Volcanic Origins; Legends of Discovery; Discovery of Madeira; Turmoil and Trade; Strategic Island; Madeira Development; After Navigation; and Exploring Madeira. From volcanic genesis to pirate attacks, going through the Centre suits the entire family. See the panoramic terrace, to scan Funchal city and to taste the local cuisine.

Madeira Flower Festival

each year in April-May

Beyond Madeira

The paradisal nature of the two Atlantic islands became famous around the world. Some of the European aristocracy, attracted by the therapeutic properties of this Eden, began to take up temporary residence here. Madeira flourished with tourism, and still does today.