Edgar Degas (1834- 1917)

I have been reading up on Impressionism for the past few weeks (Essential Impressionists, ed Hurrel Karen,© Parragon, 2000 and Artchive.com) – a style of painting favoured by a group of artists, who preferred painting outdoors in plein-air, recording the changing conditions of light and atmosphere, as well as their individual sensations before nature. The emphasis was on the over-all visual impression, stamped on the senses by a transitory visual experience – my favourite is undeniably Claude Monet, whose Giverny: Spring(1900) and The Japanese Bridge (1900) stole my breath away and made me itch to own it…I’ll never afford it in this lifetime, I know – but I’ve promised myself that my foyer shall boast a replication/poster one day.

But this post isn’t about Monet, it’s about Degas. Edgar Degas, acknowledged as the master of drawing human figures. Before I started studying Impressionism, I wasn’t really fond of nudes, per se. But Degas’ nudes are something else all together. Beauty personified. The ultimate compliment paid to the woman. Voyeuristic. Passionate. Objective. Real. Brilliant. Sensual. Sensuous.

Rejecting the idea of formal beauty as seen in the Salon nudes with their rosy nipple et al, he was often seen as a misogynist. "Why do you paint women so ugly, Monsieur Degas?" some hostess unwisely asked him. "Parce que la femme en general est laide, madame, " growled back Degas, in his characteristic Great Bear style.("Because, madam, women in general are ugly." )

This couldn’t be further from the truth; all you have to do to discover Degas’ true feelings is to take a look at his nudes, painted in the 1880s and 1890s. Some critics still find them "clinical," because they seem to be done from a point outside the model's awareness, as though she did not know he was there and were not, actually, posing. This is partly true. The series of ‘Key-Hole’ bathers, which caused a scandalous uproar in gentile Parisian society, showed the woman at her toilette, and was exhibited at the 8th Impressionist exhibition in 1886. In this series, Degas painted the woman as he viewed her from his vantage point at the key-hole, as a voyeur.

Critic J.K Huysman said “It seems as though [Degas]…has determined to retaliate and fling in the face of the century the worst insult he can devise, overturning that cherished idol, woman, degrading her by showing her actually in her bath, in the most humiliating postures of her toilette.” Despite all the criticism and flak the series earned itself, over half the paintings were sold before the exhibition opened. What could, after all, be more appealing to the eyes, the senses?

Degas himself described the woman, as the “human creature preoccupied with itself, a cat that licks itself.” Later he admitted that “Perhaps I have treated women too much as animals” (I chewed and ruminated and masticated over these statements, trying to be offended, but ended up struck by the sheer sensuality of the words. And they say the man was impotent? Well, the passion his contemporary women lost out on, the art world gained – big time!)


I found some of the nudes online:-











Monet’s work will definitely grace my home one day; but I hope to have one of these as well – though for that I’m going to have to find one helluva tolerant husband (not that difficult. I’m sure few guys would object to having a Nude to admire on a daily basis ;-)) and even more tolerant in-laws! (Now that’s going to be a task – can’t imagine too many in-laws being happy with the prospect of putting up a nude – art or not, nude it is!)