DOI issue:
No. 302 (May 1918)
DOI article:Mourey, Gabriel: Edgar Degas
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21356#0140
Edgar Degas
alertness of brush or pencil, with marvellous
expressiveness, he has caught by surprise, in
aU their intimacy, the attitudes, the gestures,
the movements of modern Woman at her toilet.
Exquisite, perfect things, of infinite variety and
richness, all aquiver with life, and recalling
at times certain of the masterpieces of the
greatest Japanese artists. From the technical
point of view they are real tours de force, the fore-
shortening in some cases being of such prodigious
skill as to make one of opinion that nobody in
the whole history of art can have been his
superior in this respect.
Degas, of course, was very far from being an
imaginative artist; truth to tell, imagination
was the one gift he most conspicuously lacked.
Shall we blame him on that account ? Who
would dare to do so without committing an in-
justice ? As well might one reproach Watteau
because he did not look on nature and on life
with the eyes of Michael Angelo, or Vermeer of
Delft, on the ground that his conception of art
was not that of Raphael!
Quite wrongly, too many people persist in
regarding Degas as an Impressionist, for the
simple reason that he was the friend of most of
the painters of that group, and, taking part in
the same exhibitions, fought, side by side with
them, the good fight against the conventional
art of the School. As we have seen, Degas, both
in form and by temperament, ,as by the nature
of his studies and by his aesthetic leanings, and,
finally and especially, by his very technique,
was the absolute opposite of an Impressionist.
He always aimed at synthesis, whereas the
Impressionists were too often content to limit
themselves to analysis. I say this not to
dispraise them, but simply state the fact.
Edgar Degas died in Paris on September 25,
1917; he was born in 1834. With him, it may
indeed be declared, vanishes one of the greatest
painters that France has produced.
[The illustrations to the foregoing article in-
clude three works by Degas which formed part
of the collection of the late Sir William Eden
"LE DEFILI!" {By courtesy of MM. Durand-Ruet) BY H. G. E. DEGAS
134
alertness of brush or pencil, with marvellous
expressiveness, he has caught by surprise, in
aU their intimacy, the attitudes, the gestures,
the movements of modern Woman at her toilet.
Exquisite, perfect things, of infinite variety and
richness, all aquiver with life, and recalling
at times certain of the masterpieces of the
greatest Japanese artists. From the technical
point of view they are real tours de force, the fore-
shortening in some cases being of such prodigious
skill as to make one of opinion that nobody in
the whole history of art can have been his
superior in this respect.
Degas, of course, was very far from being an
imaginative artist; truth to tell, imagination
was the one gift he most conspicuously lacked.
Shall we blame him on that account ? Who
would dare to do so without committing an in-
justice ? As well might one reproach Watteau
because he did not look on nature and on life
with the eyes of Michael Angelo, or Vermeer of
Delft, on the ground that his conception of art
was not that of Raphael!
Quite wrongly, too many people persist in
regarding Degas as an Impressionist, for the
simple reason that he was the friend of most of
the painters of that group, and, taking part in
the same exhibitions, fought, side by side with
them, the good fight against the conventional
art of the School. As we have seen, Degas, both
in form and by temperament, ,as by the nature
of his studies and by his aesthetic leanings, and,
finally and especially, by his very technique,
was the absolute opposite of an Impressionist.
He always aimed at synthesis, whereas the
Impressionists were too often content to limit
themselves to analysis. I say this not to
dispraise them, but simply state the fact.
Edgar Degas died in Paris on September 25,
1917; he was born in 1834. With him, it may
indeed be declared, vanishes one of the greatest
painters that France has produced.
[The illustrations to the foregoing article in-
clude three works by Degas which formed part
of the collection of the late Sir William Eden
"LE DEFILI!" {By courtesy of MM. Durand-Ruet) BY H. G. E. DEGAS
134