“IL Y A SELON MOI, DEUX ÉLÉMENTS DANS UNE ŒUVRE:
L’ÉLÉMENT RÉEL, QUI EST LA NATURE, ET L’ÉLÉMENT
INDIVIDUEL, QUI EST L’HOMME”
_ZOLA_
JEAN FRANÇOIS RAFFAËLLI joined the Impressionist movement late, and did
not commence to exhibit with the other members of the group until 1880,
when he sent a canvas to the gallery in the Rue des Pyramides. He had
clearly grasped the trend and scope of the idea, but cannot be classed
altogether with the other members of the group as a “Luminarist.” This
may be due to many causes apparent in his work. He is not a painter for
the love of painting itself, and does not revel in colour for colour’s
sake. He is no analyst of the shimmering effects of a summer’s sun. That
side of Impressionism has never appealed to him. Yet his right to be
numbered amongst them is assured, for, in spirit, he is one of the first
of the school.
Raffaëlli is the historian of the “banlieue” of Paris. His street scenes
are typical, life-like, and modern, and they will be treasured in future
years as veritable documents of the daily existence of the great city.
He wanders through the dreary “no man’s land” outside the
fortifications, and transfers to his block the most vivid portraits of
the nondescript characters who swarm through that gaunt wilderness. He
is a man of much mental refinement, who has had to struggle for every
inch of the artistic success which now surrounds him. Richly endowed by
nature, he had no resources to fall back upon save his determination to
conquer. In a few words M. Geffroy sums up the opening of this curious
career.
Raffaëlli has had many employments, has been engaged in many trades, has
searched the town for work. He has been in an office, has sung bass at
the Théâtre Lyrique, has chanted psalms in a church choir, and at the
same time painted under the tuition of Gérôme at the École des
Beaux-Arts. He travelled through Europe, penetrating even so far as
Algeria, working in each town as he stopped. Returning to Paris he
exhibited landscapes founded upon the studies he had accumulated in his
portfolio, some pictures of the Louis XIII. style, some portraits, a
view of the Opera. Suddenly he opened his eyes to a sight nobody had
seen before, disdained by the whole world, subjects which had never
reached the dignity of an entrance in art circles. He became the
recorder of the suburbs of Paris and their wandering inhabitants.
For years he experimented endeavouring to produce a medium best suited
to his temperament. In the solid paint crayons we have an addition to
the working tools of the artist which is of notable importance. This is
not his only gift to France, for it is he who practically resuscitated
the beautiful but dying art of etching in colours. In this work he was
ably seconded by Miss Mary Cassatt. He is not only an artist but an
actor, a musician, an orator, a sculptor, an etcher, a pastellist, an
illustrator, and a man of letters. He is a fine example of the pioneer
temperament. No sooner is success achieved in one branch of energy than
he is in chase of another idea. One day he is trying to invent a perfect
oil-crayon; the next, and colour etching is his sole ambition. He draws
the elegant “mondaine” of the Boulevards, and then sallies out to study
the frowsy denizens of the “banlieue.” In this quarter he found
congenial subjects for a series of little masterpieces.
Amidst these wretched surroundings, warehouses, factories, wooden sheds
ruinous and dilapidated, refuse heaps, brick-kilns, homes of the
outcasts and cut-throats of the metropolis, Raffaëlli discovered a rich
mine of material hitherto entirely unworked. The district is peculiar to
Paris, and owes its existence to the clear half-mile of view required
around the useless fortifications. This territory has, in mining phrase,
been “jumped” by the penniless. Upon it squat the failures, the
drunkards, the thieves, all the vicious under-life of the city. The
artist revealed this world to the unsuspecting citizens. He lived in it,
studied it day by day, and is a greater authority than the “sergots”
upon the manners and customs of a neighbourhood which even the police
shun. Such a blot upon the fair page of so magnificent a capital is
rapidly being wiped away, but Raffaëlli has immortalised in his etchings
and drawings some of the poetic atmosphere which enveloped these legions
of the damned.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Braun, Clement & Co._
NOTRE DAME · J. F. RAFFAËLLI
]
[Illustration:
J. F. RAFFAËLLI
]
During the course of a long and strenuous career, Raffaëlli has received
many decorations. He is of the Legion of Honour, besides having received
numerous medals and awards from foreign exhibitions. He is represented
adequately in the Luxembourg, and many continental galleries. He enjoys
the admiration and friendship of a host of connoisseurs throughout the
world. His studio is most pleasant. Facing the broad green sweeps of the
boulevard by the fortifications, in the Rue de Courcelles, it occupies a
large area on the ground floor, having been built over a spacious
courtyard surrounded by banks of foliage and flowers. The predominant
note is that of cheerfulness. The decoration is bright and restful, the
ruling colours being delicate shades of yellow and blue. The usual
theatrical adornments of a French studio are absent; there are no
oriental carpets and rugs, no armour, no antique furniture, so dear to
the heart of the Gallic painter. In this atelier the master holds
periodical conferences, exhibitions, and friendly gatherings. Upon these
occasions one will meet the cleverest men in Paris, for Raffaëlli is a
celebrated conversationalist as well as a famous artist.
Degas has a temperament strangely different from that of Raffaëlli, and,
although always classed with the Impressionists, he stands apart from
the recognised group. He has never endeavoured to transmit the
impression of atmosphere, and work “en plein air” does not attract him.
He has, however, profited much by the teaching of the Impressionists,
particularly in relation to the use of radiant colour, for at one time
he painted in greys which were closely allied to black. He exhibited
continually with the other men in the early days of the movement, and
proved a genius both in suggestion and organisation.
Hilaire Germain Edgard Degas was born in Paris, July 19, 1834. He
entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1855, studying under Lamothe and
also having Ingres for a master. He made his first appearance at the
Salon of 1865 with a pastel entitled _War in the Middle Ages_. In 1866
he contributed the _Steeplechase_, the first of his series devoted to
scenes of modern life. In 1867 he exhibited _Family Portraits_, in 1868
the portrait of a ballet-dancer, and during 1869 and 1870 some further
portraits which closed his connection with official art, for he never
sent contributions to the Salon again. In his early work he did not
confine his brush to subjects of daily actuality, such compositions as
_Semiramis Building the Walls of Babylon_ and _Spartan Youths Wrestling_
being far removed both in style and _genre_ from later work. During the
sixties his canvases were classical in spirit as well as in subject. He
had a strong feeling for the Primitives together with Fra Angelico, and
much of his work conveyed a reminiscence of Holbein. A Realist from the
beginning, the _Interior of an American Cotton-Broker’s Office_, painted
in 1860, shows that his temperament has never radically changed. This
canvas, now in the museum at Pau, is minutely exact in all its details.
It is Realism but emotionless, without atmosphere and lacking all
feeling. It shows too that forty-three years ago the artist was
acquiring that facility of hand which has placed him at the head of
modern draughtsmen.
Degas exhibited in company with Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists
generally, at five exhibitions, namely 1874, 1876, 1878, 1879 and 1880.
In the last-named year he exhibited a series of portraits of criminals,
and commenced to model figures of dancers in wax. In December 1884 he
showed some racecourse scenes, and at the last exhibition of the
Impressionists in 1886 exhibited studies of the nude, jockeys,
washerwomen, and other characters of modern life. He has worked with the
etcher’s needle, and also in lithography, his subjects being generally
confined to theatrical life and incidents noticeable on the Parisian
boulevards.
The characteristic of Degas personally is mystery. He now refuses to
exhibit his works, he shuts his door to all visitors. Like most artists
he detests writers, and there is a legend that he successfully grappled
with one enterprising but unwelcome interviewer and dropped the
unfortunate critic down a flight of stairs. This proves how thoroughly
his principles are carried out in practice. “I think that literature has
only done harm to art,” he said once to George Moore. “You puff out the
artist with vanity, you inculcate the taste for notoriety, and that is
all; you do not advance public taste by one jot. Notwithstanding all
your scribbling it never was in a worse state than it is at present. You
do not even help us to sell our pictures. A man buys a picture, not
because he read an article in a newspaper, but because a friend, who he
thinks knows something about pictures, told him it would be worth twice
as much ten years hence as it is worth to-day.”
With these strong views one can understand the attitude of Degas to the
art world in general. It was a very different attitude from that of
Manet who gloried in the fight. “Do you remember,” Degas said once to
George Moore (who quotes the conversation in his “Impressions and
Opinions”), “how Manet used to turn on me when I wouldn’t send my
pictures to the Salon? He would say, ‘You, Degas, you are above the
level of the sea, but for my part, if I get into an omnibus and some one
doesn’t say, “M. Manet, how are you, where are you going?” I am
disappointed, for I know then that I am not famous.’” This conversation
reveals in a curious manner the differing characters of the two men;
Manet with that attractive vanity so often to be found in the artistic
temperament, Degas, a satiric misanthrope analysing the degraded types
which make up the gay life of Paris.
[Illustration:
DANCING GIRL FASTENING HER SHOE · EDGAR DEGAS
]
The work of Degas may be sorted into four main groups—the racing series,
the theatrical studies, the drawings of the nude, and a few landscapes.
From many points of view the scenes of the _coulisses_ come first.
Superb in draughtsmanship, they represent the life of the theatre in a
way it has never been represented before. In one we see shivering girls
rehearsing upon a cold cheerless stage lit by a few gas jets; in another
the _première danseuse_ quivering upon tiptoe amidst the frenzied
plaudits of an excited audience. Degas reproduces the atmosphere with a
marvellous precision, which only those engaged in the busy turmoil
behind the curtain can fully judge. Upon these _scènes de théâtre_ will
rest his fame, for humankind is never likely to tire of such vivid
renderings of a life always fascinating to the outside world.
Degas is not a countryman, and cannot be classed amongst sportsmen, or
lovers of horseflesh. His jockeys and racehorses are highly extolled,
but with animals he has not always succeeded. It is not sufficient to be
a great artist in order to convey convincing impressions of sporting
scenes. An artist must have the whole spirit of sport thoroughly
engrained in his nature before he can properly represent it. Apart from
the city, Degas is out of his element, and this is very apparent in the
landscapes he has painted during the last eight years. The glamour of
the fields and hedges does not touch his soul. Rural life he finds dull,
and naturally his essays in landscape painting are somewhat painful. He
has not the temperament which can faithfully interpret the poetry of the
countryside, and is more at home in the purlieus of the opera or upon
the asphalte of the boulevards.
Degas is a realist, and his subjects are for the most part exceedingly
trivial in selection. After racehorses and ballet-dancers, he loves to
depict buxom ladies of the lower classes engaged in personal ablution.
It is extraordinary that the pupil of Ingres, the painter of _La
source_, should create such appalling creatures. The most plausible
apology comes from Mr. George Moore. The nude, he writes, has become
well-nigh incapable of artistic treatment. Even the more naïve are
beginning to see that the well-known nymph exhibiting her beauty by the
borders of a stream can be endured no longer. Let the artist strive as
he will, he will not escape the conventional; he is running an
impossible race. Broad harmonies of colour are hardly to be thought of;
the gracious mystery of human emotion is out of all question—he must
rely on whatever measure of elegant drawing he can include in his
delineation of arms, neck, and thigh; and who in sheer beauty has a new
word to say? Since Gainsborough and Ingres, all have failed to infuse
new life into the worn-out theme. But cynicism was the great means of
eloquence of the Middle Ages; and with cynicism Degas has again rendered
the nude an artistic possibility. The critic then describes these works
in most sympathetic phrases. Three coarse women, middle-aged and
deformed by toil, are perhaps the most wonderful. One sponges herself in
a tin bath; another passes a rough nightdress over her lumpy shoulders,
and the touching ugliness of this poor human creature goes straight to
the heart. Then follows a long series conceived in the same spirit.
“Hitherto,” says Degas, “the nude has always been represented in poses
which presuppose an audience, but these women of mine are honest, simple
folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their
physical condition.” In another phrase he gives you his point of view,
“it is as if you looked through a keyhole.”
Descendant of Poussin and Ingres (when Ingres fell down in the fit from
which he never recovered, it was his pupil who carried him out of his
studio), Degas worships drawing, and line is with him a cult. Japanese
art has helped to mould his style, as it influenced many of the
Impressionists. His oil-paintings, though for the most part correct in
draughtsmanship, are frequently wiry and academic in technique. Colour
was never his strong point, and it is in his pastels that we find the
achievement of his life. In a masterly essay on this artist, Thèodore
Duret writes: “Degas has proved once more that, with genius, subject is
a secondary matter, merely its opportunity, one may say. It is out of
itself, out of its inner consciousness, that the poetry and the beauty
discovered in its production are drawn. His work will thus remain one of
the most powerful, the most complete, and the most instinct with
vitality amongst that of the masters of the nineteenth century.”
Of Degas personally little is known. He comes of an old bourgeoise
family, and at one time it is said that he possessed considerable
financial means, which he sacrificed in order to save a brother from
financial disaster. Although seventy years of age he still works with
excessive labour at the art over which he has gained such a mastery.
Scorning wealth, publicity, and popularity, he lives a life of complete
isolation, dispensing with friends, able to more than hold his own
against enemies.
[Illustration:
DANCING GIRL · E. DEGAS
]
He has had two pupils whose names stand out prominently in the art of
to-day, the American artist Miss Mary Cassatt (referred to elsewhere in
this volume) and the caricaturist Forain. Degas has always had a bitter
wit, the dread of his contemporaries, and many of his sayings have
passed into history. During the height of the battle which raged around
the Impressionists during the seventies, he remarked concerning the
academic painters and critics: “On nous fusille, mais on fouille nos
poches,” or, in other words, “They cover us with injuries, yet they make
use of our ideas.” In him Whistler met his match. “My dear friend,” he
said once to that great artist, “you conduct yourself in life just as if
you had no talent at all.” Upon another occasion, speaking of Whistler
when the latter was having a number of photographic portraits taken, he
observed sarcastically, “You cannot talk to him; he throws his cloak
around him—and goes off to the photographer.” It was not likely that two
such spirits would appreciate each other.
Degas is a pessimist. He has always been a realist, and the realist in
this troubled world cannot look through rosy spectacles; acute pessimism
becomes the natural result, especially when a great city is the venue.
He is the analyst and ironist of the Impressionist group, with whom he
has a sympathy of temperament rather than a sympathy of technique. At
the present moment there are few artists better known in Paris, yet few
who have received so small an amount of official acknowledgment. He has
never received an official commission, has refused all decorations, his
chief works are to be found in foreign countries. Yet an enthusiastic
French critic has summed up the opinion of the art world of France in
the striking phrase, “Degas is one of the greatest draughtsmen who have
ever lived.”
Ten years ago, when the writer was a student in Paris, the name of
Toulouse-Lautrec was known only in connection with various daring and
flamboyant posters advertising the exotic attractions of the “Moulin
Rouge” and the “Divan Japonais,” and also through extraordinary sketches
which appeared from time to time in Aristide Bruant’s feuilleton “Le
Mirliton.” Now and again one found a sketch, with his signature, pinned
up in an artistic cabaret of the Batignolles quarter. Few had seen him,
nobody seemed to have any wish to discover his whereabouts. In the
studios he was almost invariably spoken of with contempt as half a fool.
He was celebrated in a way, and yet unknown.
He was by no means a fool, for few men have possessed a brighter
intellect. His semi-retirance and evident reluctance to appear amidst
the crowd were partly owing to a temperament of ultra-refinement, and
still more directly the result of a terrible personal misfortune. The
story of his life is romantic.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born in 1864 at Albi, a scion of an
ancient and illustrious family. His father, the Count de
Toulouse-Lautrec, was a wealthy country gentleman, of sporting tastes, a
splendid horseman, a crack shot, a sculptor, and a person of most
violent and impulsive temper. The son inherited many of his father’s
qualities. Generations of ancestors accustomed to the beauties and
refinements of such a life in the country had developed at last an
artist of peculiar sensibilities. These natural gifts were carefully
cultivated, and the boy became a professional artist, who, although he
possessed gifts of the most extreme refinement, became through the irony
of fate primarily famous amongst his countrymen as a designer of street
posters and comic sketches. Those who knew him superficially could not
comprehend how his delicate and extraordinary exterior could cover such
excellent qualities of heart, such delicacy of spirit. He met with scant
respect and few patrons. Happily he was not dependent upon his brush for
the means of existence, and his works, when they sold, fetched but
little. After his sad and untimely death, the most insignificant
sketches were eagerly disputed for and changed hands at large prices.
Physically Toulouse-Lautrec was a weak man, of a highly-developed
nervous temperament, with a brain too active for its frail tenement. To
such a nature all excess proves fatal, although it is generally such
natures that seek excess. In his infancy the artist had the unlucky
mischance to break both his legs, and these, badly set, left him
malformed for life, a dwarf. Thoroughly embittered, his proud and
sensitive soul could not endure the inquisitive stares of the curious
with which he was invariably greeted, and for the most part he lived a
very solitary life. “Je suis une demi-bouteille,” he would often say to
his friends in sarcastic reference to his own unhappy condition.
[Illustration:
CAFÉ SCENE ON THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE · E. DEGAS
]
He drowned his griefs, as many have done before, keeping in his studio
huge stocks of the most fiery spirits and liqueurs, from which he
compounded wonderful “cocktails” for the benefit of himself and his
friends. It is not surprising that first came the madhouse and then
premature death completed this tragedy. Of an excitable temperament he
found much pleasure in resorts such as the “Moulin Rouge.” Taverns,
theatres, and the circus, found in him a constant patron. These were his
schools; and hundreds, one may say thousands of sketches are the result
of such teaching. He loved horses as his ancestors had done before him,
and he studied their attitudes at the circus, sketching them in barbaric
trappings and in eccentric poses. The smell of the sawdust always
inspired him. The sketches here reproduced illustrate this phase of his
career.
M. Princeteau, the designer of sporting scenes, influenced Lautrec’s
style, and became his intimate friend. Forain also counts for something
in his development, whilst Pissarro and Renoir were frequent visitors to
and critics of the young Impressionist. Perhaps of all men Degas
inspired him most, and at times he undoubtedly copied the methods of
that master. With serious study he had little to do. He worked in the
atelier-Bonnat in 1883, and later on in the atelier-Cormont, where he
continued the study of the nude; yet it was only after he had complete
liberty and was entirely free from scholastic influence that his style
began to form. Then his strong individuality displayed itself, and he
became Toulouse-Lautrec as we know him.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
BABY’S TOILET · MARY CASSATT
]