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Lot Essay
We thank Prof. Theodore Reff for kindly providing some of the information used in the following note.
On 26 September 1890, Degas and the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartholomé hired a horse and a small carriage known as a tilbury, and set out from Paris on a leisurely jaunt through the countryside en route to Burgundy (fig. 1). The artist enjoyed the sights along the way - the outdoor distances might have provided some rest for his ailing eyes - and he wrote to his friend Ludovic Halévy about the local table fare they enjoyed each evening. Their destination was the village of Diénay, near Dijon, where his friend the print-maker Georges Jeanniot had a modest chateau with a small studio and an etching press. They arrived on 7 October, and, immediately after dinner, examined the studio and its equipment. As Jeanniot later recalled in a memoir, Degas was pleased, and exclaimed, 'Perfect... I have been wanting for so long to make a series of monotypes!' (quoted in R. Kendall, op. cit., p. 146).
Degas made his previous landscape monotypes during the late 1870s (Janis, nos. 263-273). He might well have set out for Diénay with the idea of making landscapes once again, and the pleasure of the journey no doubt encouraged him to begin a new series on this theme. In less than a week, during his stay in Diénay, he made the first group of new landscape monotypes, in a larger format than those he had done a decade earlier, amounting to nearly three dozen in all. Using a brush, a cloth pad and even his fingers, he spread oil colours diluted to the liquid consistency of ink on the metal plates. Jeanniot described the genesis of these works: 'With his strong but beautifully-shaped fingers, his hands grasped the objects, the tools of genius, handling them with a strange skill and little by little one could see emerging on the metal surface a small valley, a sky, white houses, fruit trees with black branches, birches and oaks, ruts full of water after a recent downpour, orangey clouds dispersing in an animated sky, above the red and green earth... Bartholomé would recognize the places they had gone through...' (ibid.).
From each plate Degas normally would have Jeanniot pull two proofs, which the artist might leave alone, or rework; as Jeanniot recalled, 'Then he would ask for some pastels to finish off the prints and it is here, even more than in the making of the proof, that I would admire his taste, his imagination and the freshness of his memories' (ibid.). His use of pastel was no less innovative and idiosyncratic than his monotype technique - in addition to applying the pastels in their customary dry stick form, he would spray or even steam the pastel on the paper and then use a brush on the liquefied pigments. in those cases where two proofs were made, the process of reworking would normally result in a pair of variant, 'cognate' images, which might be clearly related to each other, or in some cases, less visibly so.
Degas returned to Paris around 20 October. This trip had invigorated him, and certainly inspired his work; during the next couple of years he continued to travel, often by rail, and make landscape pastel/monotypes when back in his Paris studio. Following the first series done in Diénay, listed as the 'A' group in Kendall's Appendix 1 to his Degas Landscapes catalogue (ibid., pp. 273-274), Degas added new works to the less numerous 'B' group, which share and are identifiable by their slightly smaller plate size. The present Paysage, not listed in Janis or in Kendall's Appendices, but mentioned by the latter in his text, belongs to this second group. Lemoisne (op. cit.) apparently did not know this work first hand; he catalogued it simply as a pastel, not realising it was done over a monotype, and he misdated it.
Degas told Halévy in September 1892 that these most recent landscapes were 'the fruits of my travels this summer. I stood at the door of the railway carriage, and looked around vaguely. That gave me the idea of doing some landscapes' (R. Kendall, op. cit., p. 150). Degas was so pleased with his landscape pastel/monotypes that he allowed Durand-Ruel to exhibit a selection of twenty-five of them in his gallery. Degas was usually averse to presentation of this kind, and this would be his first such sizable personal show ever. The exhibition took place in late September 1892.
The artist dedicated the present Paysage to Georges Charpentier (1846-1901), who published an illustrated journal, La Vie moderne, and brought out editions of the Naturalist writers Daudet, Flaubert, the Goncourt brothers, Maupassant and Zola. Charpentier also possessed two other works that Degas likewise dedicated to him, a second landscape pastel/monotype (Lemoisne, no. 632; Kendall Appendix 2, no. 6; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Neuchâtel) and a drawing, Femme s'essuyant, circa 1898. He also owned a pastel, Danseuse tirant son maillot, 1882-1885 (Lemoisne, no. 716). Kendall has suggested that Charpentier acquired these works in the late 1890s, but notes that he is recorded as having dined with Degas in 1892, around the time that the artist executed the landscapes, and again in 1894 (ibid., p. 289, note 54). Both of Charpentier's landscapes show a row of trees lining the top of a hill; however, they do not appear to have stemmed from the same monotype plate, and indeed, no cognate image has been identified for the present Paysage.
(fig. 1) Degas and Bartholomé, traveling in their tilbury, early autumn, 1890.
© Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
On 26 September 1890, Degas and the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartholomé hired a horse and a small carriage known as a tilbury, and set out from Paris on a leisurely jaunt through the countryside en route to Burgundy (fig. 1). The artist enjoyed the sights along the way - the outdoor distances might have provided some rest for his ailing eyes - and he wrote to his friend Ludovic Halévy about the local table fare they enjoyed each evening. Their destination was the village of Diénay, near Dijon, where his friend the print-maker Georges Jeanniot had a modest chateau with a small studio and an etching press. They arrived on 7 October, and, immediately after dinner, examined the studio and its equipment. As Jeanniot later recalled in a memoir, Degas was pleased, and exclaimed, 'Perfect... I have been wanting for so long to make a series of monotypes!' (quoted in R. Kendall, op. cit., p. 146).
Degas made his previous landscape monotypes during the late 1870s (Janis, nos. 263-273). He might well have set out for Diénay with the idea of making landscapes once again, and the pleasure of the journey no doubt encouraged him to begin a new series on this theme. In less than a week, during his stay in Diénay, he made the first group of new landscape monotypes, in a larger format than those he had done a decade earlier, amounting to nearly three dozen in all. Using a brush, a cloth pad and even his fingers, he spread oil colours diluted to the liquid consistency of ink on the metal plates. Jeanniot described the genesis of these works: 'With his strong but beautifully-shaped fingers, his hands grasped the objects, the tools of genius, handling them with a strange skill and little by little one could see emerging on the metal surface a small valley, a sky, white houses, fruit trees with black branches, birches and oaks, ruts full of water after a recent downpour, orangey clouds dispersing in an animated sky, above the red and green earth... Bartholomé would recognize the places they had gone through...' (ibid.).
From each plate Degas normally would have Jeanniot pull two proofs, which the artist might leave alone, or rework; as Jeanniot recalled, 'Then he would ask for some pastels to finish off the prints and it is here, even more than in the making of the proof, that I would admire his taste, his imagination and the freshness of his memories' (ibid.). His use of pastel was no less innovative and idiosyncratic than his monotype technique - in addition to applying the pastels in their customary dry stick form, he would spray or even steam the pastel on the paper and then use a brush on the liquefied pigments. in those cases where two proofs were made, the process of reworking would normally result in a pair of variant, 'cognate' images, which might be clearly related to each other, or in some cases, less visibly so.
Degas returned to Paris around 20 October. This trip had invigorated him, and certainly inspired his work; during the next couple of years he continued to travel, often by rail, and make landscape pastel/monotypes when back in his Paris studio. Following the first series done in Diénay, listed as the 'A' group in Kendall's Appendix 1 to his Degas Landscapes catalogue (ibid., pp. 273-274), Degas added new works to the less numerous 'B' group, which share and are identifiable by their slightly smaller plate size. The present Paysage, not listed in Janis or in Kendall's Appendices, but mentioned by the latter in his text, belongs to this second group. Lemoisne (op. cit.) apparently did not know this work first hand; he catalogued it simply as a pastel, not realising it was done over a monotype, and he misdated it.
Degas told Halévy in September 1892 that these most recent landscapes were 'the fruits of my travels this summer. I stood at the door of the railway carriage, and looked around vaguely. That gave me the idea of doing some landscapes' (R. Kendall, op. cit., p. 150). Degas was so pleased with his landscape pastel/monotypes that he allowed Durand-Ruel to exhibit a selection of twenty-five of them in his gallery. Degas was usually averse to presentation of this kind, and this would be his first such sizable personal show ever. The exhibition took place in late September 1892.
The artist dedicated the present Paysage to Georges Charpentier (1846-1901), who published an illustrated journal, La Vie moderne, and brought out editions of the Naturalist writers Daudet, Flaubert, the Goncourt brothers, Maupassant and Zola. Charpentier also possessed two other works that Degas likewise dedicated to him, a second landscape pastel/monotype (Lemoisne, no. 632; Kendall Appendix 2, no. 6; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Neuchâtel) and a drawing, Femme s'essuyant, circa 1898. He also owned a pastel, Danseuse tirant son maillot, 1882-1885 (Lemoisne, no. 716). Kendall has suggested that Charpentier acquired these works in the late 1890s, but notes that he is recorded as having dined with Degas in 1892, around the time that the artist executed the landscapes, and again in 1894 (ibid., p. 289, note 54). Both of Charpentier's landscapes show a row of trees lining the top of a hill; however, they do not appear to have stemmed from the same monotype plate, and indeed, no cognate image has been identified for the present Paysage.
(fig. 1) Degas and Bartholomé, traveling in their tilbury, early autumn, 1890.
© Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.