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Lot Essay
As the paradigmatic painter of modern life among the Impressionists, Edgar Degas focused on scenes of urban entertainment and concentrated especially on images of the ballet. He portrayed almost every step and setting in the process from practice to performance. His numerous works in myriad media-paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints-almost relentlessly detail the ritual training in rehearsal rooms, the expectant preparations in the wings, and the realization of the dancers' efforts in the final performance, as in the present work. On stage, Degas' dancers are often seen from angles which evoke specific locations within the theater, whether from the audience or the orchestra in front, theater boxes above, or the wings at either side. From each vantage point, Degas often allows individuals ancillary to the performance--musicians, spectators, or admirers--to intrude into the scenes (fig. 1). The present work is, therefore, exceptional in its sole concentration on a group of select dancers near the end of their performance.
Degas' unequivocal obsession with dance--the pictures of this subject comprise more than half of the artist's total output--has led scholars to suggest parallels between the artist's activities in creating a canvas and the dancer's exertions in preparing a performance. According to Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, for example:
The dance was supremely and self-evidently an art of the body. It was also chaste, artificial, and the upshot of rigorous preparation and practice. Repetition took place in the dance studio tirelessly. It was not improvised but practiced in the most extreme sense, to the point of pain and deformation. When a dancer returned to a position again she was like a model taking a pose; but also like a painter, making a drawing, repeating it, tracing it, learning it by heart. And when she performed, her performance was effortless in its appearance, filled with an abstract joy (R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, New York, 1988, p. 159).
Degas understood that the essential artificiality of theater mirrored that of painting and provided a constant foil: ". . . for Degas the theater was more than a subject for naturalistic description but, because of its metaphoric relationship to pictures, it offered an opportunity for thinking about pictures in new ways" (ibid., p. 159). Degas is well-known for his peculiar perspectives and forceful fragmentation of the human body, tendencies which characterize his dance pictures and evidence his endless experimentation with pictorial formats. However, Degas' dance pictures in particular initiated another type of experimentation for the artist, this time with disparate artistic media.
As early as 1874, Degas began his experiments with the technique of monotype, and the first composition that he produced established an intersection between his ballet scenes and this new technique, which he favored for the next decade. This initial image (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., circa 1874-75), co-signed by his friend Ludovic Lepic who introduced him to this process, is an image of Jules Perrot, the dance master who appears in many of Degas' paintings (fig. 2). Degas' experimentation with monotypes overlapped his engagement in printmaking, which became, for him, a similarly collaborative process, especially in his work with fellow Impressionists Mary Cassatt and Camille Pissarro on the journal Le Jour et la Nuit, whose title refers to the black-and-white format of prints.
The monotype technique is similar to printmaking as it involves pulling an impression from a drawing in printer's ink on a metal plate. However, because only one or two impressions may be pulled from a single plate before the inked ground is entirely removed, monotypes are more analoguous to drawings than to prints, as the artist himself reiterates in the description of his monotypes as "dessins fait avec l'encre grasse et imprimé" (drawings made with greasy ink and put through a press) (quoted in E. P. Janis, Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue & Checklist, exh. cat., Cambridge, Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, 1968, p. xvii). Each impression, even in an addition of two, is a unique work.
Degas' monotype images result from one of two methods, which he occasionally combined on a single plate. He executed monotypes either by an additive approach in which an oily ink is applied to a blank plate with a brush or a rag ("light-field manner") or by a subtractive process in which ink is removed with similar tools from a plate entirely covered in a layer of ink ("dark-field manner"). The latter method is apparent in the present work, but with either method, the technique is rapid and direct and encourages flexibility and improvisation. The present work is the second of two impressions pulled from a single plate.
As Eugenia Parry Janis has written about the first impression of this monotype (fig. 3):
The dark field manner is particularly advantageous in the portrayal of theatrical effects and stage light. The black ink ground itself can represent the dark stage without the artist's having to define a stage space. In this monotype, the black ink, flat and velvety, is analogous to the stage. Diagonal striations of ink indicate a sharply inclined floor. The dancers, even the kneeling one, relate in a very limited representational way to the floor, which appears to press up behind them. There is no believable floor for them to stand on when they finish their leaps. Rather, they flutter over the black ground with tight, compact little gestures, as if supported by strings from above. Nothing "real" intrudes into this monotype; the effect is of hermetic theatrical illusion (ibid., catalogue no. 4).
This illusion is even more successful in the present work, to which Degas has added pastel. In this second version, Degas not only creates a more complex composition through his inclusion of several more dancers and his indication of stage scenery, but he also reproduces more successfully the unusual effects of stage lighting. Applied over the contrasting black monotype, the pastel tones become dramatically luminescent and project both an intense illumination and a heightened theatricality.
Degas' dazzling colors demonstrate his knowledge of contemporary color theory, and his later combinations often introduce stunning juxtapositions (fig. 4). In the present work, the delicate pinks of the dancers' costumes vibrate against the bright greens, all alongside Degas' striking introduction of orange highlights in the left corner of the composition. As John Rewald has recognized:
Resorting to ever more vibrant color effects, he found in his pastels a means to unify line and color. While every pastel stroke became a color accent, its function in the whole was often not different from that of the Impressionist brushstoke. His pastels became multicolored fireworks . . . [creating] a texture that glittered with hatchings (J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, p. 566).
Both the captivating quality revealed in the seductive surfaces of Degas' pastels and the dancers' positions evident in the present work--the two on the right seem poised, if somewhat comically, in mid--leap-recall two stanzas from one of the artist's own sonnets on the subject of dancers:
And her feet of satin embroider like the needle
Patterns of pleasure. The capering girl
Tries my poor eyes as they try to pursue her.
Because of a trifle, as always, the lovely mystery ceases.
In jumping she draws up her legs overmuch.
It's the jump of a frog in the ponds of Cythera.
(J.N. Degas, "Huits Sonnets d'Edgar Degas", Paris, 1946, p. 43, quoted in C. Armstong, Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of Edgar Degas, Chicago and London, 1991, p. 63).
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Danseuse au Bouquet (Dancer with Bouquet), circa 1877, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
(fig. 2) Edgar Degas, Examen de Dance (The Dance Class), 1874, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, 1986.
(fig. 3) Edgar Degas, Scène de Ballet, circa 1878-80. Collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
(fig. 4) Edgar Degas, Trois Danseuses, c. 1896. Private Collection.
Degas' unequivocal obsession with dance--the pictures of this subject comprise more than half of the artist's total output--has led scholars to suggest parallels between the artist's activities in creating a canvas and the dancer's exertions in preparing a performance. According to Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, for example:
The dance was supremely and self-evidently an art of the body. It was also chaste, artificial, and the upshot of rigorous preparation and practice. Repetition took place in the dance studio tirelessly. It was not improvised but practiced in the most extreme sense, to the point of pain and deformation. When a dancer returned to a position again she was like a model taking a pose; but also like a painter, making a drawing, repeating it, tracing it, learning it by heart. And when she performed, her performance was effortless in its appearance, filled with an abstract joy (R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, New York, 1988, p. 159).
Degas understood that the essential artificiality of theater mirrored that of painting and provided a constant foil: ". . . for Degas the theater was more than a subject for naturalistic description but, because of its metaphoric relationship to pictures, it offered an opportunity for thinking about pictures in new ways" (ibid., p. 159). Degas is well-known for his peculiar perspectives and forceful fragmentation of the human body, tendencies which characterize his dance pictures and evidence his endless experimentation with pictorial formats. However, Degas' dance pictures in particular initiated another type of experimentation for the artist, this time with disparate artistic media.
As early as 1874, Degas began his experiments with the technique of monotype, and the first composition that he produced established an intersection between his ballet scenes and this new technique, which he favored for the next decade. This initial image (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., circa 1874-75), co-signed by his friend Ludovic Lepic who introduced him to this process, is an image of Jules Perrot, the dance master who appears in many of Degas' paintings (fig. 2). Degas' experimentation with monotypes overlapped his engagement in printmaking, which became, for him, a similarly collaborative process, especially in his work with fellow Impressionists Mary Cassatt and Camille Pissarro on the journal Le Jour et la Nuit, whose title refers to the black-and-white format of prints.
The monotype technique is similar to printmaking as it involves pulling an impression from a drawing in printer's ink on a metal plate. However, because only one or two impressions may be pulled from a single plate before the inked ground is entirely removed, monotypes are more analoguous to drawings than to prints, as the artist himself reiterates in the description of his monotypes as "dessins fait avec l'encre grasse et imprimé" (drawings made with greasy ink and put through a press) (quoted in E. P. Janis, Degas Monotypes: Essay, Catalogue & Checklist, exh. cat., Cambridge, Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, 1968, p. xvii). Each impression, even in an addition of two, is a unique work.
Degas' monotype images result from one of two methods, which he occasionally combined on a single plate. He executed monotypes either by an additive approach in which an oily ink is applied to a blank plate with a brush or a rag ("light-field manner") or by a subtractive process in which ink is removed with similar tools from a plate entirely covered in a layer of ink ("dark-field manner"). The latter method is apparent in the present work, but with either method, the technique is rapid and direct and encourages flexibility and improvisation. The present work is the second of two impressions pulled from a single plate.
As Eugenia Parry Janis has written about the first impression of this monotype (fig. 3):
The dark field manner is particularly advantageous in the portrayal of theatrical effects and stage light. The black ink ground itself can represent the dark stage without the artist's having to define a stage space. In this monotype, the black ink, flat and velvety, is analogous to the stage. Diagonal striations of ink indicate a sharply inclined floor. The dancers, even the kneeling one, relate in a very limited representational way to the floor, which appears to press up behind them. There is no believable floor for them to stand on when they finish their leaps. Rather, they flutter over the black ground with tight, compact little gestures, as if supported by strings from above. Nothing "real" intrudes into this monotype; the effect is of hermetic theatrical illusion (ibid., catalogue no. 4).
This illusion is even more successful in the present work, to which Degas has added pastel. In this second version, Degas not only creates a more complex composition through his inclusion of several more dancers and his indication of stage scenery, but he also reproduces more successfully the unusual effects of stage lighting. Applied over the contrasting black monotype, the pastel tones become dramatically luminescent and project both an intense illumination and a heightened theatricality.
Degas' dazzling colors demonstrate his knowledge of contemporary color theory, and his later combinations often introduce stunning juxtapositions (fig. 4). In the present work, the delicate pinks of the dancers' costumes vibrate against the bright greens, all alongside Degas' striking introduction of orange highlights in the left corner of the composition. As John Rewald has recognized:
Resorting to ever more vibrant color effects, he found in his pastels a means to unify line and color. While every pastel stroke became a color accent, its function in the whole was often not different from that of the Impressionist brushstoke. His pastels became multicolored fireworks . . . [creating] a texture that glittered with hatchings (J. Rewald, The History of Impressionism, New York, 1973, p. 566).
Both the captivating quality revealed in the seductive surfaces of Degas' pastels and the dancers' positions evident in the present work--the two on the right seem poised, if somewhat comically, in mid--leap-recall two stanzas from one of the artist's own sonnets on the subject of dancers:
And her feet of satin embroider like the needle
Patterns of pleasure. The capering girl
Tries my poor eyes as they try to pursue her.
Because of a trifle, as always, the lovely mystery ceases.
In jumping she draws up her legs overmuch.
It's the jump of a frog in the ponds of Cythera.
(J.N. Degas, "Huits Sonnets d'Edgar Degas", Paris, 1946, p. 43, quoted in C. Armstong, Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of Edgar Degas, Chicago and London, 1991, p. 63).
(fig. 1) Edgar Degas, Danseuse au Bouquet (Dancer with Bouquet), circa 1877, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
(fig. 2) Edgar Degas, Examen de Dance (The Dance Class), 1874, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, 1986.
(fig. 3) Edgar Degas, Scène de Ballet, circa 1878-80. Collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
(fig. 4) Edgar Degas, Trois Danseuses, c. 1896. Private Collection.