The art and artifice of Edgar Degas

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Alexander Adams reflects on the varied work of Edgar Degas

‘Art is artifice, that is to say something deceitful. It must contrive to give the impression of nature by false means, but it must appear true.’

So said Degas, the most technically diverse and adventurous of the Impressionists. This is unsurprising as Edgar Degas (1834–1917), a founder member of the Impressionist group, was classically trained, went to copy the Old Masters in Rome and claimed ‘no art is less spontaneous than mine’. He had a foot in both traditionalist and radical camps. A recent exhibition in Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (closed 1 September) explored the artist’s myriad methods and materials without losing sight of the artistic achievement.

It has been hard to avoid Degas exhibitions in the last couple of years, with shows in London, Paris, Boston, Washington DC all seeking to present new aspects of the artist’s craft. This display drew on Copenhagen’s holdings, with an impressive selection of foreign loans. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek has one of only five complete sets of bronze sculptures of 74 models and one finished sculptures that were in the artist’s studio at the time of his death.

This exhibition presented 159 pieces, including art by masters Degas admired and collected by Ingres, Delacroix and Daumier. The former two provided contemporaneous links to the Old Master tradition Degas esteemed. Daumier used scenes of everyday life in dramatic compositions and displayed a vigorous drawing style, aspects which were relevant to Degas. The Danish exhibition benefited greatly from research conducted for the 2011 exhibition centred on Two Dancers at the Barre (1895–1900), at the Phillips Collection, Washington DC. 

The artist had a habit of tracing designs and using outlines as the starting points for variations. This is demonstrated by the Washington Two Dancers at the Barre and related drawings, which travelled to Denmark. Monet worked on haystacks, water-lilies and cathedral facades so that they could be exhibited together showing a sequential progression during different weather and light conditions. Degas exhibited little and clearly considered his pictures as discrete images. Another example of making variations is the way he made drawings over monoprints in pastel, combining media in unorthodox ways, turning black and white images into colour ones.

As curator Line Clausen Pedersen puts it, ‘Degas’ ability to change between techniques […] play[s] a crucial role in his development and the emancipation of the traditional drawing technique towards a “free” and original style’. Further she suggests that ‘by imitating reality so extremely, Degas shows that he can do without it’.

There were some surprises. One was that although the artist’s worsening eyesight led to a coarsening of his work – or more accurately, forced him to accentuate extremes of colour and tone in order to discern forms as he worked – Degas was still capable of great subtlety as late as 1905–7. A pastel Toilette has careful graduations of shade even though it also displays the heavy, emphatic contours of the late style. 

There were a few display issues that detracted from the exhibition. For example, one picture lost a couple of inches to shadow because of raking overhead light. This is a common problem with deep-moulded frames. Another problem was the showing of darkly patinated bronzes against a dark blue wall. In other cases, ultramarine walls succeeded in making highly keyed pastels burn sparklingly.

One wall had graphs charting the frequency of motifs and techniques plotted against a timeline of Degas’s career. This initially seems a refreshing and informative way of presenting Degas’s art. On reflection, doubts intrude.

The graph approach is flawed for several reasons. Firstly, it is unhelpful because quantitative graphs tend to imply that a high output of certain subjects entails importance of a subject/technique for the artist over and above the artist simply having more ideas, time or impetus to produce art at these times. And what exactly is one to do with this information?

Secondly, dating Degas is notoriously difficult. Even experts have to settle for approximate dates. Degas dated few works, exhibited little commercially and did not keep exact (or even rough) records of his output, meaning there are few contemporaneous sources to assist dating. Thirdly, Degas – as this exhibition makes abundantly clear – worked and reworked paintings and pastels over extended periods of time, sometimes with lengthy periods of inactivity in the middle, so how can any particular work to be dated for the purposes of a graph? Should one go by start date, finish date or a mean date at the centre of the creation period? Though such graphs are thought provoking they cannot – in this case at least – be scientific, filled as they are with unknowns and imponderables and based on approximate methodology.  

Although the exhibition has closed the impressive catalogue was produced in English and Danish versions and makes a useful addition to the body of Degas literature. [See Editor's notes, right.]

Degas’ Method by Line Clausen Pedersen is published by Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, English language, paperback, 313pp. fully illustrated, 249 DKR. ISBN 9788774523321.