Edgar Degas - Possible un Américain?

It's not all that far fetched that Edgar Degas might not have become one of the founding Impressionists painters of France. Instead, Edgar could very well have ended up as a failed post-Civil War American cotton merchant working in New Orleans. Edgar's brothers, René and Achille, did indeed leave Paris for the Mississippi delta and, yes, ended up as failed post-Civil War cotton merchants working in New Orleans. Edgar, by that time, had become a quite successful painter in Paris and had to help bail his brothers out by selling some of his paintings. If we go by what he wrote, he was quite irritated about it.

Edgar's family was a bit snobbish as evidenced by their preferred spelling of the family name as "de Gas". In France a "de" before the last name proper indicated a family was of the nobility, much like the German "von". Although the nobility had been abolished by the Revolution in 1790, it had been restored by Napoleon in 1808 and solidified further by the Bourbon kings starting with Louis XVIII. The trouble was that Edgar's family was not of the nobility, never had been, and their "patent" documenting their exalted rank was bogus. For his part and after he left home, Edgar quit the pretense and reverted to using the more egalitarian Degas.

Purists like to point out that Americans mispronounce Edgar's last name. Inevitably they say "day-GAH" or perhaps "DAY-gah". In French, though, it is rendered closer to "deu-GAH". Still in America when talking to Americans,"DAY-gah" or "day-GAH" are fine, just as are "migh-kel-AN-ge-lo" and "van GO" (unless, of course, you're talking about Degas). But when you get down to it, any name spoken with a foreign accent is being mispronounced to some degree.

Edgar's most direct connection with America was his mom, Marie-Célestine Musson. Marie-Célestine was (literally) a Creole belle, born in New Orleans in 1815. But her family moved to Paris when she was still a young girl. There she married Auguste - quote - "de Gas" - unquote - in 1832, and Edgar, their first kid, was born in 1834.

Marie-Célestine's brother, Micheal returned to the Mississippi delta to get into the cotton business. René and Achille, who we mentioned as Edgar's brothers, secured a loan from their dad's bank and joined their uncle in America's most continental city. Edgar did visit New Orleans in 1872 and painted a portrait of his brothers and uncle in their Louisiana office. Although French was commonly spoken among polite society - particularly polite Creole society - Edgar got homesick easily and returned to France after a few months.

As with so many artists beginning with Michelangelo and going to, well, to Degas, we read that the father sternly opposed the son's ambition to become an artist. According to Edgar's niece, things got so techy chez Degas that Edgar left home and was reduced to living in an attic room while he studied art. But he persevered and with his natural ability was soon producing paintings that were accepted in the government sponsored exhibition, the Salon.

Well, a good story is not always the true story, and the facts suggest Edgar and his dad met each other half way. As soon as Edgar graduated from secondary school, he was granted permission to copy paintings in the Louvre and other museums around Paris. He passed the lengthy examination for the baccalauréat and enrolled for a term at the law school. However, he discontinued his studies after a semester and enrolled at the École des Beaux Artes where he studied with the famous (and successful) painter, Leon Bonnat. Since the École was one of the most selective art schools in the world, Edgar must have had some encouragement and support (moral and monetary) from his family. So most likely Auguste asked Edgar to give law school a try, and if he didn't like it, then he could study art.

Edgar was probably the best draftsman of the Impressionists - or as they first called themselves, Artists, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc., Incorporated. We can go further and say that in overall drawing ability in the history of French art, Edgar is arguably second only to one of his heroes, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. "Ingres", by the way, is pronounced "ANG-re" with the "ang" rhyming with a nasal "dang" and the "re" virtually silent.) So if you say "anger" and barely pronounce (or leave off) the last syllable, you're pretty close.

You might read on the Fount of All Knowledge (i. e., the Internet) that Edgar studied with Ingres. Well, that's not quite true. He was influenced by the elder painter, certainly, and even met him. Edouard Valinçon, the father of Edgar's fellow art student, Paul, had purchased The Bather, now at the Louvre, from Ingres. Ingres wanted to borrow it back for an exhibit which was being held in an old exhibition hall which posed a fire hazard. Edouard didn't want to risk losing an original Ingre, so he told Jean-Auguste that he couldn't use the painting. But Edgar told Edouard you couldn't refuse Ingres the right to borrow back one of his own paintings, for crying out loud. So Edouard and Edgar headed off to Ingres studio to tell the artist that Edouard had changed his mind. Edgar shook hands with his idol who gave him some advice which Edgar didn't report quite the same way each time he told it. But as they were about to leave, Ingres took a headlong spill on the floor and lay there immobile. Edgar ran to fetch Madame Ingres since the Ingres' apartment was just a couple of blocks from the studio. But when they got back, the elderly painter seemed fine.

Edgar was such an early Impressionist he was almost not an Impressionist at all. He was only two years younger than Edouard Manet, whom is not normally considered an Impressionist. Edouard was certainly a friend of and influential with the mostly younger artists, but was more mainstream and preferred to submit his work (sometimes successfully) to the Salon. Edouard did not ever exhibit with Impressionists, although always invited to do so. However, some of Edouard's paintings sure as heck look like he was an Impressionists, and we leave it to the reader to decide if it walks like an Impressionist, sounds like an Impressionist, and paints like an Impressionist, well then, ....

Edgar, on the other hand, had his paintings in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, and he became more and more involved in the organization and deciding how the group should operate. Unfortunately, he had a bit of a fractious personality which eventually ended up alienating just about everyone. Soon he tried to dictate who and who was not allowed in. He was rabid in his insistence that only "secessionist" - that is those who refused to submit to the Salon - could join in their shows and would go into spittle flinging diatribes about money-grubbing opportunists like Monet, Renoir, Sisley - not to mention Manet - who had works submitted to and sometimes accepted by the Salon. But what caused a final split with Edgar and a lot of the Impressionists was political, not artistic. On October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain, was arrested for treason on completely trumped up and fabricated charges and incarcerated on Devil's Island. Edgar sided with the anti-Dreyfusards which unfortunately aligned him with the rising tide of anti-Semitism in late nineteenth century Europe. Edgar's statements on the subject completely flabbergasted people like Renoir and Monet and permanently severed any ties he had with Camille Pissarro, whose father was Jewish.

Whether it was his connections with America or not, Edgar did not see the new artistic movement limited by any national boundaries. So he invited the American Mary Cassatt to show some paintings. Mary was a quite proper lady from Philadelphia and in some ways very conventional. She was also unpretentious and would archly inform those who used a French pronunciation when greeting her that her name was "Cas-SATT" with a resounding double-t and a short American "a". Mary's paintings had begun attracting attention when she went to study in Italy. In France she had to arrange private lessons with Jean-Leone Gerome, probably the top French academic painter of the time, because as a woman she was not eligible for the all-male École. But women could submit to the Salon and the first painting she submitted was accepted. But Mary's style and subject matter were clearly in line with what Edgar and his friends liked, and Edgar asked her to exhibit in the Third Impressionist Exhibit of 1877. That was also the first exhibit where they dropped the "Incorporated" stuff and called themselves Impressionists.

Mary, we should point out, was not the first woman of the bunch. That honor went to Bertha Morisot. Bertha was French and her name is pronounced "BER-ta more-is-OH". Berta, who married Manet's brother, produced paintings are every bit as good as those of Monet, Edgar, and the rest. Like many of the Impressionists, she came from a comfortable middle class family and had studied with the famous landscape painter Camille Corot. Camille was very popular in his time, so popular that Arthur Conan Doyle gave him a plug in the second Sherlock Holmes novel, the Sign of Four.

Edgar's most famous pictures are his ballet dancers, which are probably followed in popularity by his pastels of women taking baths. But as he aged, and his eyesight failed, Edgar moved to sculpture. He, himself, never had anything cast in bronze, and the only sculpture he personally exhibited was listed in the catalog as, Le Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans (statuette en cire) , that is, "The Little Dancer of fourteen years (statuette in wax).

Originally Edgar's planned to exhibit the Little Dancer at the Fifth Impressionist Exhibit of 1880. But it wasn't completed by the opening date, yet Edgar still set up the (empty) glass case. Of course the critics had fun, and one sarcastically praised the work for its admirable simplicity. So by displaying a statue that wasn't there, Edgar may have begun the tradition of unintentional self-parody that crops up in today's modern art. He certainly ushered in a new era of wise-acre criticism later adopted by Igor Stravinsky, when he said he hoped composers of songs like John Cage's totally silent opus 4' 33" would soon be producing "works of major length."

But even after the statue was really exhibited the next year, critics said the sculpture was ugly, and that Degas made the girl look like a monkey or an Aztec (at the time was a derogatory characterization). The reviews were so horrible, Edgar finally said à l'enfer avec les critiques and continued his sculpture in private. Today most people look at the Little Dancer and see a nice sculpture of a young ballerina in Position #4. So what the ruckus was about?

From sketches and Edgar's notes, we know the sculpture was an accurate likeness of Marie Genevieve van Goethem, a dancing student at the Paris Opera. Like many of the dancers of the time, she was from a poor family, and she undoubtedly posed for Edgar to make some extra money (virtually all Impressionists worked with paid models). We also know that much of the condescension Edgar encountered for his work was at least partly due to the attitude Parisians had toward performers in general and ballerinas in particular.

Although nowadays professional performers are lionized as heroes, in Edgar's day, there was still a strong attitude that while a performance might be high art, the performers were simply low level fainéants, not worthy of respect. The younger dancers seen scampering about the Opera were dismissed as "Opera rats" and the older dancers, whether in ballet or the music halls, were regarded more like the chorus girls were in the Roaring Twenties. At best they were irresponsible gold diggers hoping to latch onto some rich sugar daddy and at worst ... well, we won't get into that.

Marie's later life would have made the Parisian uppercrust nod their heads and say, "Je vous l'avais bien dit!" She began missing her rehearsals at the Opera with appropriate fines being deducted from her pay. Finally in July 1882 she was dismissed altogether. She then became a fixture of Paris's night life, hanging around the Martyrs Tavern and the Rat Mort ("Dead Rat") night club - neither a particularly respectable establishment. We know Marie's older sister, Antoinette was arrested at Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat) for trying to steal 700 francs from a - well - from a "gentleman" of her acquaintance. There are also references to Marie getting pinched for picking a man's pocket. The story about Marie, though, may be confusing her with her sister. Antoinette got three months in jail. We don't know what happened to Marie.

On the other hand, stereotypes are never a particularly useful glass to view the world. Marie's other sister, the younger Charlotte, was also a dance student at the Opera. She stayed there for fifty years, first as a dancer, then a soloist and teacher, and finally as Professor of Dance. She retired in 1933.

Edgar made the model from wax. The skirt was real cloth as was the shirt, and the hair was a wig of human hair. Both the hair and shirt are now wax coated. Analysis of the wax shows a similarity with the wax of the body and so some historians think the hair and shirt were coated by Degas. Others, though, have suspected the hair and shirt were coated by the foundry that made the bronze casts after Edgar died.

Unlike statues by Rodin and many other sculptors whose - quote - "originals" - unquote - are casts and carvings fashioned by hired specialists, you can actually see the real original that Edgar made with his own hands. It's in National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. and if you see the statue in another museum it's probably one those 28 casts authorized by the family.

Edgar, we learn, said he didn't want the statue cast in bronze, and modern connoisseurs have cited the aesthetic and artistic advantage Edgar's choice of wax in rendering the skin texture and tone. Some even pooh-pooh the idea that it should ever have been cast in bronze. On the other hand, Edgar was certainly aware of the practical advantages of using wax for a work he was pursuing part time and probably had little chance of selling. True, the more commonly used waterbased clay is more user friendly but has to be kept moist. So if you leave Paris in August for your four week holiday, you may come back to find your model dried out and unworkable. Also clay can also be easily damaged, and even when allowed to air-dry carefully, unless it is fired it remains extremely fragile and sometimes seems to break if you just sneeze in the next room.

Wax, although not as flexible (to use the artsy term) as clay, was definitely better for Edgar. Waxes can also be worked with varying degrees of warming - some just by holding it in your hands - and can be left indefinitely and returned to at any time. Most modeling waxes also cool to a non-brittle solid, and can be easily repaired if damaged.

Everyone figured that Edgar's statues - he produced over 150 sculptures of which 74 remained reasonably intact - were destroyed in casting after his death. Even if the models weren't used directly in the lost wax process, making the molds sometimes breaks the originals up so they are just thrown away. But in 1955, someone came across Edgar's originals in the foundry storage. Eventually they were sold at auction.

By the time Edgar died in 1917, impressionism was fashionable, and his paintings were selling for quite respectable sums. In fact, in 1912 Edgar had the singular honor of seeing one of his painting sold for what was then the highest price ever paid for a work of a living artist. Of course, Edgar had sold the painting long before and so received nothing in any subsequent transactions. Reporters went to the old artist, now blind, and asked him how it felt to be so honored. Edgar's reply should have surprised no one. He felt, he said, like a thoroughbred who, after winning yet another race, was returned to the stable to receive the same old bag of oats.

References

Degas : His Life, Times and Work, Roy McMullen, Secker and Warburg (1985). Possibly the definitive biography although there are others more recent.

Degas/Martin Legacy, http://www.degaslegacy.com/index.html. A website about Edgar's family by some of Edgar's American family.

"Degas' Dancers Have Stories to Tell", Mary Louise Shumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 12, 2005. An article with some information about Marie Van Goetham and her sisters.

A History of European Art, Instructor: William Kloss, 48 Lectures

A History of Impressionism, Instructor: Richard Brettell, 24 Lectures

These are two DVD courses from The Teaching Company which have specific information about Edgar as well as many other artists and their works. The individual lectures are one half hour, informative, and well presented. From these courses you understand why lectures were so popular in the 19th century and still should be.

"Edgar Degas: La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans", Private Life of a Masterpiece, Season 3, BBC, 2003). From the series about masterpieces by famous artists. This series provides information you don't often get from books about the artists as it focuses on the life of the work from its inception (and even conception) to the present day. It also has the drawback of TV shows in that the information is brief and supporting information for statements absent or vague.

The conclusion of the consultants was the wax on the hair and shirt was placed by Degas. On the other hand some art historians say the hair and shirt were real, implying that the wax was a later addition. Personally CooperToons thinks that since the dress was (and is) clothm it would have been more keeping in with the spirit of the work to have the hair and shirt real as well. But we don't know what Edgar's opinion so we'll leave it at that.