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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:02:24,520 --> 00:02:29,520 "It seems to me that if one wants to be a serious artist today, 4 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:33,560 and create an original little niche for oneself, 5 00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:36,920 or at least ensure that one preserves 6 00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:40,160 the highest degree of innocence of character, 7 00:02:40,920 --> 00:02:45,760 one must constantly immerse oneself in solitude. 8 00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:50,079 There is too much 9 00:02:50,160 --> 00:02:52,079 tittle-tattle. 10 00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:57,480 It is as if paintings were made like speculations on the stock markets, 11 00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:02,360 out of the friction among people eager for gain. 12 00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:08,560 The heart is an instrument which goes rusty if it isn't used. 13 00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:14,360 Is it possible to be a heartless artist?" 14 00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,000 I think what makes Degas fascinating 15 00:03:55,079 --> 00:04:00,200 and really very alive to a 21st-century audience 16 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:07,000 is that he is more interested in process than in the end result. 17 00:04:10,440 --> 00:04:13,920 We wanted to ensure that this exhibition of Degas 18 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:15,240 was like no other. 19 00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:17,600 We also wanted to explore fresh themes 20 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:20,720 and look at Degas' work in a slightly different angle. 21 00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:25,800 You can see his kind of, the intellectual understanding 22 00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:27,440 that underpins his work. 23 00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:32,400 Particularly his curiosity for the work of earlier ages. 24 00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:38,760 He's certainly moved very much into the light as a personality. 25 00:04:43,880 --> 00:04:48,120 Degas, I think, cultivated an "unknowability". 26 00:04:48,200 --> 00:04:52,000 He disliked people writing about him and his art. 27 00:04:52,080 --> 00:04:57,640 And much of his art that we see today was never intended to be seen. 28 00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:00,040 It came from his studio after his death. 29 00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:06,360 I think Degas was quite a strategist 30 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:09,440 in terms of his relationship to his audience 31 00:05:09,520 --> 00:05:11,720 and his market. 32 00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:15,120 It's like he wanted to keep all the work around him. 33 00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:17,800 And work quietly away on this thing, 34 00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:21,240 I really think of as his research, you know. 35 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:27,160 It's like he hones the body of work, his focus on particular subjects 36 00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:30,160 to a narrower and narrower extreme, 37 00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:33,120 in order to push through into some new territory. 38 00:05:34,760 --> 00:05:37,760 You know, honestly, when I circle back to the group 39 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:40,000 of ambitious 19th-century French painters, 40 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:42,360 I do often keep coming back to Degas. 41 00:05:42,440 --> 00:05:45,080 He is endlessly surprising 42 00:05:45,159 --> 00:05:47,760 and infinite in his experimentation 43 00:05:47,840 --> 00:05:50,800 and his experimental spirit in all of the media. 44 00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:54,240 A little bit of poetry and sculpture, and again in printmaking. 45 00:05:54,320 --> 00:05:58,320 An absolutely amazing printmaker. Pastel painting, oil painting. 46 00:06:11,880 --> 00:06:13,320 Degas is quite innovative 47 00:06:13,400 --> 00:06:17,760 because he really brings us into a, kind of, an intimate scene, 48 00:06:17,840 --> 00:06:21,680 so you feel part of the picture by being in front of it, 49 00:06:21,760 --> 00:06:25,720 and almost participating as a viewer to the scene. 50 00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:28,800 And what he paints is so fresh. 51 00:06:28,880 --> 00:06:30,640 That can only bring, 52 00:06:30,720 --> 00:06:33,320 first of all, I think it can only bring you happiness. 53 00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,760 And it's always amazing to look at Degas' pictures 54 00:06:36,840 --> 00:06:40,200 because Degas women are not pretty or beautiful, 55 00:06:40,280 --> 00:06:42,360 well prepared, 56 00:06:42,440 --> 00:06:45,840 they are just here as touch of colours, of shapes. 57 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:51,600 It's almost like a way that Degas can use the form, the shapes, the colours 58 00:06:51,680 --> 00:06:53,080 and put them all together. 59 00:06:53,680 --> 00:06:55,680 It seems really important to him 60 00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:58,400 that he took these risks with accepted practice. 61 00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:03,360 Putting at risk the physical integrity of the work at times. 62 00:07:03,440 --> 00:07:06,720 And I think he was very modern in that respect. 63 00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:12,400 Any exhibition about an artist is just a beginning. 64 00:07:12,480 --> 00:07:15,920 You start with a structure, you have things that you want to show. 65 00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:18,400 You have ideas that you want to articulate. 66 00:07:18,480 --> 00:07:22,680 But it's in the process of the installation, 67 00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:28,800 and often during the course of the exhibition, that you learn so much more. 68 00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:34,240 The way one work speaks to another becomes very telling 69 00:07:34,320 --> 00:07:38,920 and sheds a lot more light on Degas' practice and his process. 70 00:09:36,040 --> 00:09:38,040 The Fitzwilliam museum is fortunate 71 00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:41,520 in that it has the largest and most representative collection 72 00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:44,480 of works by Degas in any British institution. 73 00:09:45,520 --> 00:09:48,560 This is largely due to a particular series of collectors 74 00:09:48,640 --> 00:09:51,440 who generously gave works by Degas 75 00:09:51,520 --> 00:09:53,840 in a variety of media. 76 00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:57,800 Thus we can show not just paintings and pastels and drawings, 77 00:09:57,880 --> 00:10:02,120 but we can show prints of a variety of traditions, monotypes. 78 00:10:02,200 --> 00:10:07,040 And we also have, as well as bronze sculpture by Degas, 79 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:10,120 we have actually three original wax statuettes. 80 00:11:06,840 --> 00:11:10,080 The Fitzwilliam Museum was founded in 1816 81 00:11:10,160 --> 00:11:13,520 from the will of Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam, 82 00:11:13,600 --> 00:11:16,920 and is the principal museum of art and archaeology 83 00:11:17,040 --> 00:11:19,080 of the University of Cambridge in England. 84 00:11:23,520 --> 00:11:27,040 The great strengths of the collection are, I suppose, Western painting, 85 00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:28,920 old master painting and prints. 86 00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:32,040 But also, we have extraordinary illuminated manuscripts, 87 00:11:32,120 --> 00:11:35,480 musical scores, and archival material. 88 00:11:39,880 --> 00:11:42,320 The collections of the museum, I sometimes describe them 89 00:11:42,400 --> 00:11:44,160 as a sort of a miniature Louvre. 90 00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:48,160 Very good Egyptian, Greek, Roman antiquities. 91 00:11:57,440 --> 00:12:01,840 furniture, silver, ceramics, 92 00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:03,160 glass. 93 00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:05,760 And strange things, like an armoury. 94 00:12:11,560 --> 00:12:15,120 Upstairs, we have a very fine and representative collection 95 00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:16,440 of Western painting. 96 00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:21,720 The tradition is to display the pictures alongside sculpture, furniture, 97 00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:23,560 and decorative arts of the period, 98 00:12:23,640 --> 00:12:25,640 so they form almost like a, kind of, 99 00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:27,840 the atmosphere is rather like a country house. 100 00:12:27,920 --> 00:12:31,360 Indeed, from the earliest period, from the 1930s, 101 00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:35,280 it was intended that the museum should be a civilising place 102 00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:40,440 for the students and other visitors to, kind of, take inspiration from. 103 00:12:40,520 --> 00:12:44,320 In every sense of the word, it's a very sort of encyclopaedic museum. 104 00:12:49,160 --> 00:12:51,360 The main idea behind the conception of the show 105 00:12:51,440 --> 00:12:56,120 was unashamedly to profile Cambridge's amazing collections of work by Degas. 106 00:12:59,280 --> 00:13:02,240 The subtitle of the exhibition, "Passion for Perfection", 107 00:13:02,320 --> 00:13:06,680 is drawn from Ambroise Vollard's recollections of Degas 108 00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:09,880 and in the context that he said it, 109 00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:16,080 he really meant it defensively to respond to those who had thought 110 00:13:16,160 --> 00:13:17,760 that Degas was somebody who, 111 00:13:17,840 --> 00:13:20,920 in treating the same subject again and again, 112 00:13:21,040 --> 00:13:23,160 or a variance of the same composition, 113 00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,440 that there was some lack of imagination. 114 00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:32,520 No, Vollard said, it was because he was driven by a passion for perfection 115 00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:36,360 as part of what he called "an ongoing pictorial research". 116 00:13:37,240 --> 00:13:41,000 In the context of the exhibition, that statement really is a question mark. 117 00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:43,240 Was this what drove Degas? 118 00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:47,440 Or was it, as some other of his contemporaries said, 119 00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:51,000 a neurotic inability to satisfy himself? 120 00:13:52,280 --> 00:13:55,360 Or, a century after his death, 121 00:13:55,440 --> 00:13:59,000 was it really something that we can now align more 122 00:13:59,080 --> 00:14:02,480 with what we associate with certain types of modern art 123 00:14:02,560 --> 00:14:08,880 and the non finito, this lack of need, or lack of will to finish, 124 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:12,280 to ever find anything that's complete. 125 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:21,040 "A certain picture of Degas exists, 126 00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:23,320 almost legendary, mythical. 127 00:14:24,120 --> 00:14:27,120 It is the artist as a recluse, 128 00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:29,720 voluntarily leading a churlish life. 129 00:14:29,800 --> 00:14:34,800 Always working, searching, almost always dissatisfied. 130 00:14:35,640 --> 00:14:38,840 He kept the greater part of his art hidden in boxes 131 00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:41,360 out of which he scarcely ever took anything, 132 00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:44,880 except what he was forced to sell to enable him to live. 133 00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:49,520 Degas was not one of those oral improvisers 134 00:14:49,600 --> 00:14:52,360 whose inspiration dries up at the sight of a pen. 135 00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:55,640 He spoke as he wrote, 136 00:14:55,720 --> 00:14:59,240 with the same sparkling and savoury power, 137 00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:01,120 the same clarity. 138 00:15:01,200 --> 00:15:05,280 Down to the last brief, sad notes of the final years, 139 00:15:05,360 --> 00:15:11,680 there still persists the old vivacity, the character, the line." 140 00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:17,720 What we know about him, we know through sometimes friends, 141 00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:19,880 sometimes acquaintances, second-hand, 142 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:23,800 and he was the master of the epigram. 143 00:15:23,880 --> 00:15:30,400 He tended to make pronouncements that, on analysis, don't quite fit. 144 00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:36,560 So, those sorts of things make him very easily misunderstood. 145 00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:44,360 "It is true, isn't it, my dear Moreau, 146 00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:48,600 that there is a way of making light, beauty, feeling, 147 00:15:48,680 --> 00:15:53,440 line and colour out of a lot of love for what one does, 148 00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:56,400 out of the desire to learn 149 00:15:56,480 --> 00:16:01,800 and a deep conviction of the excellence of painting, as Vasari said?" 150 00:17:01,680 --> 00:17:05,880 Edgar Degas was born in Paris to an upper middle class family 151 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:08,440 and was the eldest of five children. 152 00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:13,119 When he became an adult, he changed his name from De Gas 153 00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:15,720 back to its original form, Degas, 154 00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:18,200 believing it to be less pretentious. 155 00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:23,280 Degas' father, Auguste, came from merchant gentry 156 00:17:23,359 --> 00:17:27,440 and ran a small family bank, established in Naples and Florence. 157 00:17:28,119 --> 00:17:30,760 Degas' mother, Celestine Musson, 158 00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:34,200 was a French Creole born in New Orleans. 159 00:17:34,280 --> 00:17:37,040 She died when Degas was only 13. 160 00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:42,360 Degas, from the age of about 11, 161 00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:46,840 became a boarder at one of the most prestigious schools in Paris, 162 00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:49,520 the Lyc?e Louis le Grand, 163 00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:55,200 and it was there that he met some of the young men who would be lifelong friends. 164 00:17:55,280 --> 00:17:57,400 He was also there when he first learned, 165 00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:00,760 as part of a very well-funded, 166 00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:03,000 both practical, but intellectual background, 167 00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:04,720 part of that, he learned to draw 168 00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:07,920 from casts, but also from engravings. 169 00:18:09,320 --> 00:18:12,160 And the year that he graduated, 170 00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:16,760 also signed on to become a copyist in the Biblioth?que nationale, 171 00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:20,000 then called the Biblioth?que imp?riale, and in the Louvre. 172 00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:27,320 He was originally intended by his father to go in for a career in law 173 00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:29,480 and he signed on to do that, 174 00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:32,560 but actually never, ever, went anywhere with it. 175 00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:39,640 And by 1855, he then passes the exams and enters the ?cole des beaux-arts, 176 00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:42,920 as a student of one of the most prestigious art schools in Paris, 177 00:18:43,040 --> 00:18:44,400 and perhaps in Europe. 178 00:18:48,080 --> 00:18:52,560 "I asked Degas, how is a painter to learn his m?tier? 179 00:18:53,480 --> 00:18:57,920 'He should copy the masters, and recopy them', he replied. 180 00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:03,160 'And after he has given every evidence of being a good copyist, 181 00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:08,280 he might then reasonably be allowed to do a radish, perhaps, from nature.'" 182 00:19:11,880 --> 00:19:15,440 Degas' earliest hero was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 183 00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:16,720 the great draughtsman, 184 00:19:16,800 --> 00:19:19,720 who was one of the most distinguished artists 185 00:19:19,800 --> 00:19:21,680 in mid-19th-century France, 186 00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:24,320 along, of course, with his great rival, Delacroix. 187 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:39,840 What was very marking for Degas, was that he actually met Ingres. 188 00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:45,400 He met him in 1855 through a school friend, really, 189 00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:49,760 whose father owned what is now called The Valpin?on Bather, 190 00:19:49,840 --> 00:19:54,640 a beautiful curvaceous view of the back of a lady, 191 00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:58,120 apparently in an Oriental bathing setting. 192 00:19:58,200 --> 00:20:03,600 Very interesting that it's a bather that Degas found most compelling 193 00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:05,840 in Ingres' work. 194 00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:13,440 He would repeat to others and write down what Ingres had said to him 195 00:20:13,520 --> 00:20:15,320 when he was an aspiring artist, 196 00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:19,400 "To draw lines, young man, to draw lots of lines, 197 00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,040 and that's the way you'll become a great artist." 198 00:20:22,120 --> 00:20:27,160 And it's unquestionable that Degas did become, like... 199 00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:29,920 like Ingres, one of the greatest draughtsmen, 200 00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:31,920 certainly of the 19th century. 201 00:20:36,200 --> 00:20:38,040 "I was at his house once. 202 00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:41,400 I had a letter of introduction to him. 203 00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:45,240 I can't tell you how excited I was at the prospect. 204 00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:49,080 To think of meeting the great Ingres! 205 00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:53,360 Just as I was leaving, he was taken with a dizzy spell 206 00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,480 and began to reel. 207 00:20:56,320 --> 00:21:00,520 Fortunately, I was near enough to catch him before he fell." 208 00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:07,600 Degas lasted for not more than a couple of terms 209 00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:12,880 before he really took his art training into his own hands, 210 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:15,800 and went to spend three years in Italy. 211 00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,720 "If one wants to travel alone, 212 00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:47,800 one must visit areas full of works of art. 213 00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:56,360 Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature. 214 00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:05,120 I feel remorse for having seen so many beautiful things already. 215 00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:12,440 Everything breathes an atmosphere of prayer. 216 00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,640 Everything is beautiful. 217 00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:18,440 The details. The whole. 218 00:22:19,120 --> 00:22:21,840 I would rather do nothing 219 00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:25,720 than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything. 220 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:29,480 My memories will do better." 221 00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:43,040 Through his travels in Italy, 222 00:22:43,120 --> 00:22:47,280 Degas encountered a wide range of classical antiquities, 223 00:22:47,360 --> 00:22:51,360 in the form of sculpture, mosaics, and wall paintings, 224 00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:53,400 as well as works by the most celebrated 225 00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:55,880 painters and sculptors of the Renaissance, 226 00:22:56,000 --> 00:22:59,280 making copies in notebooks as an aide-m?moire. 227 00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:10,480 When he returned to Paris in 1860, 228 00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:15,200 Degas found a spacious studio and started to work intensely. 229 00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:21,840 He made many careful drawings of historic paintings and sculptures, 230 00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:25,200 often frequenting the Louvre and other institutions. 231 00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:30,560 He began a series of large paintings with historical subject matter 232 00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:35,200 that demonstrated a developing fusion of traditional observation 233 00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:36,840 and his own ideas. 234 00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:46,760 I think he felt ambitious on behalf 235 00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:49,640 of this tradition that dated back to the 17th century. 236 00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:53,480 And the feeling that he was getting and that many of the critics 237 00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:56,240 and the young artists were getting in the 1860s 238 00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:58,800 that that tradition was kind of petering out 239 00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:01,040 and that there was something called "modernity" 240 00:24:01,120 --> 00:24:05,480 that required a new form and a new kind of visual expression, 241 00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:08,440 that Degas was committed to meeting this challenge. 242 00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:13,280 It's very interesting to wonder about what his life was like at that stage. 243 00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:15,560 His family is terribly worried about him. 244 00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:18,240 He doesn't get out, he's in the studio all the time. 245 00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:19,600 He has no life. 246 00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,840 He is focusing very rigorously 247 00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,920 on trying to produce works which will make him a name. 248 00:24:43,120 --> 00:24:45,640 It was around this time that he started painting 249 00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:49,320 one of his early masterpieces, The Bellelli Family, 250 00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:53,240 a group portrait of his aunt Laure and her family in Italy. 251 00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:57,880 Laure is dressed in black and mourning the death of her father, 252 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,440 shown in a portrait on the back wall. 253 00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:05,480 The Baron Bellelli is a journalist in exile for his nationalist views 254 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,520 and sits apart with his back to us. 255 00:25:08,600 --> 00:25:13,000 Their daughters, Giulia and Giovanna, are poised around their mother. 256 00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,240 When you're talking about a portrait, there's bound to be 257 00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:23,200 a degree of realism or naturalism or whatever you want to call it. 258 00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:27,680 He's introducing, intentionally, 259 00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:31,240 the sense of conflict in the family relations, 260 00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,720 which normally, in portraiture, you would gloss over. 261 00:25:35,120 --> 00:25:38,440 You would not want to alert your audience 262 00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:43,200 to the fact that there are clearly tensions between husband and wife. 263 00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,880 And he clearly sympathises with his aunt, 264 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,840 the standing family female figure. 265 00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:51,560 Whereas his uncle 266 00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:53,480 has his back to us. 267 00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,640 And I think that what's radical about this painting, 268 00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:02,400 as both a family composition, but also a portrait, 269 00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:07,200 is the way in which Degas chooses to highlight 270 00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,400 not the happy family, 271 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:12,160 but actually to suggest to us 272 00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:16,800 that there's something really quite unpleasant going on here. 273 00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:21,120 The main female figure, his aunt, 274 00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:25,360 is on one side of the canvas and then it divides in two. 275 00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:30,000 And on the right side of the canvas, is the uncle. 276 00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:34,280 And the younger daughter, who is clearly divided 277 00:26:34,360 --> 00:26:39,680 between her mother and her father, who sort of bridges that gap. 278 00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:43,400 But basically, it's a painting of two halves. 279 00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:47,240 Various gazes in the painting are obviously really quite crucial. 280 00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:51,160 The only engagement is with one of the children, visually. 281 00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:52,640 Eye contact. 282 00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:57,040 So the sense of unease is very powerful. 283 00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:09,640 "Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, 284 00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:12,520 being sure, above all, to give their faces 285 00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:15,120 the same kind of expression as their bodies. 286 00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,600 Thus, if laughter typifies an individual, 287 00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:21,160 make her laugh. 288 00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:23,080 There are, of course, 289 00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:28,520 feelings which one can not convey out of propriety, 290 00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:33,040 as portraits are not intended for us painters alone." 291 00:27:37,360 --> 00:27:42,400 "He recalls the manner ingenious of Holbein in his portraits. 292 00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:45,560 And nowhere more strictly than in his portrait of his father 293 00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:49,280 listening to Pagans, the celebrated singer and guitarist. 294 00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:56,680 The musician sits in the foreground singing out of the picture. 295 00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,880 Upon the black clothes, the yellow instrument 296 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:02,840 is drawn sharply. 297 00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:07,880 The square jaws, the prominent nostrils, the large eyes, 298 00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:12,160 in a word, all the racial characteristics of the Southern singer, 299 00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:16,360 are set down with that incisive, that merciless force, 300 00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:18,280 which is Holbein." 301 00:28:22,360 --> 00:28:24,560 Until the mid-1860s, 302 00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:29,160 copying provided Degas with one of the most direct ways of observing 303 00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:31,360 and developing his skills as an artist. 304 00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,800 But he also repeatedly emphasised the importance of being able 305 00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,840 to draw on a well-trained visual memory bank. 306 00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:43,320 Versed in literature and the classics, 307 00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,360 Degas embarked on a series of history paintings 308 00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,200 that included Young Spartans Exercising, 309 00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,480 and the curious Alexander and Bucephalus, 310 00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:58,040 which remained unfinished and unresolved. 311 00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:01,680 Then, in 1865, he completed 312 00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,000 Scene of War in the Middle Ages, 313 00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:08,240 and submitted to the Acad?mie des beaux-arts' Annual Salon. 314 00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:27,480 It's a very curious thing to have submitted as your salon debut. 315 00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:32,640 Of all these attempts at painting subjects on historical themes, 316 00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:36,880 some of them on a vast scale, almost two metres wide, 317 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:41,680 he only ever exhibited one of them, the Scene of War in the Middle Ages. 318 00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:45,840 It's an oil painting, but it doesn't look like an oil painting 319 00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:47,040 as we know it. 320 00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,600 It's an oil painting using a medium of essence 321 00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,480 where the oil is sort of diluted to a point with white spirit 322 00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,800 that he then applies it to paper, not to canvas. 323 00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,160 And it sinks in and creates this incredibly opaque quality 324 00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:05,000 so it's more like a fresco painting, or even like a pastel, 325 00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,200 which he, in fact, exhibited in a room of pastels. 326 00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,160 That painting was one which, of course, 327 00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,480 held a great deal of importance for Degas. 328 00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,120 We know that he kept it in his studio, he didn't sell it. 329 00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,440 It was completely overlooked by critics. 330 00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:22,760 It's a strange painting. 331 00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:28,000 It's a painting in which you can see the elements he studied very carefully 332 00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:34,000 and they're placed all over, not the canvas, but the piece of paper. 333 00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:38,920 And it's got this very odd, deep-frozen effect, 334 00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:43,280 which for a subject which is about rape, pillage, 335 00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,640 setting fire to an entire town in the background, 336 00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,280 is an extraordinary approach to treating any theme, 337 00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:52,360 never mind one of such violence. 338 00:31:21,560 --> 00:31:27,760 In 1862, Degas met Manet, ?douard Manet, at the Louvre. 339 00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:30,280 They were both working as copyists. 340 00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:33,600 And they had a very interesting dynamic, 341 00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:40,040 a very friendly at times and, in the end, very unfriendly relationship, 342 00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:42,560 and a sort of competitive relationship. 343 00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:47,360 Manet really introduced him to the circle of artists 344 00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,600 that we now think of as the Impressionists 345 00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:54,560 in the caf? scenes of the 9th arrondissement, 346 00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:57,280 so artists like Pissarro, 347 00:31:57,360 --> 00:31:58,720 Renoir, 348 00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:00,520 and Monet. 349 00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,240 "From the first meeting, Manet invited me to join him 350 00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:10,160 every evening in a caf? at the Batignolles 351 00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:13,640 where he and his friends would gather to talk at the end of a day 352 00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:15,560 spent at their studios. 353 00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:19,680 I would meet there Fantin-Latour and C?zanne, 354 00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:23,160 Degas, who arrived shortly afterwards from Italy, 355 00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:25,240 the art critic Duranty, 356 00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:28,560 Emile Zola who was just starting off in the literary world, 357 00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:30,360 and a number of others. 358 00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,640 I would take Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. 359 00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:37,440 There was nothing more interesting than these discussions 360 00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,600 with their perpetual differences of opinion. 361 00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:44,640 Our minds and souls were stimulated." 362 00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:50,360 It's there, too, that Degas meets a lot of writers, 363 00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:56,840 writers who would be supportive of the Realist movement to which he subscribed. 364 00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:02,560 Realism, with a capital R, at the time was an artistic movement 365 00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:09,320 which had begun around 1848 with artists like Millet and Courbet, 366 00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:13,360 taken up then by the great artist Manet, 367 00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:17,720 who was already working in a more Realist style 368 00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:21,800 when Degas was still working in history painting, effectively. 369 00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:28,320 I think the trouble with categories like Realism, 370 00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:31,240 Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, 371 00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:36,240 in a way they're very convenient for us historically, looking back, 372 00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,880 and for organising exhibitions and so forth, 373 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:41,400 but actually at the time, 374 00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:46,560 the whole issue would have been much more nuanced and complex. 375 00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:52,640 Degas saw himself as an independent, rather than an Impressionist. 376 00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:58,280 He didn't like the title "Impressionist" that got associated, 377 00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:04,360 in 1874 and thereafter, with the Impressionist exhibitions. 378 00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,320 He wanted the group to be called "the Independents". 379 00:34:08,199 --> 00:34:11,719 Impressionism tends to be associated with outdoors, 380 00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:14,520 landscape painting, plein air, 381 00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:21,679 with immediacy, with direct painting, with no changes, with spontaneity, 382 00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:26,280 which of course is, in itself, in fact really problematic. 383 00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,719 But for Degas the opposite was the case. 384 00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,520 He was someone who was, 385 00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:37,239 not just because he was grounded in the academic tradition, 386 00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:43,600 but in terms of his personality, his... the artist he was, 387 00:34:43,679 --> 00:34:47,760 was someone for whom things were never finished. 388 00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:52,560 Things went on and on and on, he worked over and over and over. 389 00:34:52,639 --> 00:34:58,640 He said himself that no one was less spontaneous than he. 390 00:34:59,720 --> 00:35:03,680 In a sense, he's associated with the Impressionist group 391 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:09,040 for strategic reasons, for friendship reasons, 392 00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:14,720 for, in a sense, artistic avant-garde reasons, 393 00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:19,120 the sense that he was involved in a new movement. 394 00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:23,680 He had a lot of new things to say, so to associate himself with a group 395 00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,720 where he could exhibit and sell his work 396 00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:31,560 and make his name as a radical independent, 397 00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,840 was very convenient, was very useful. 398 00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,400 Degas made his first studies of horses in 1861 399 00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,880 while visiting Paul Valpin?on, a childhood friend in Normandy. 400 00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:12,680 Scene from the Steeplechase is a highly dramatic painting, 401 00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,080 depicting the perilous nature of what was a relatively new 402 00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:18,160 but dangerous sporting event. 403 00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:23,240 Like Manet, Degas chose a rather generic title 404 00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:26,800 as if he were merely documenting a scene in a realist way, 405 00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,480 drawing more emphasis to the drama and action. 406 00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:36,080 The first collectors must have been impressed 407 00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:39,200 by the way Degas put on the canvas 408 00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,880 the intensity of the instant and the freshness of the colours. 409 00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:49,720 It's bright green, nice, sweet pink, purple, 410 00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,520 very flashy colours, so it's almost like a fresh, new look 411 00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:56,760 on what one could be able to see at the time. 412 00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:58,480 When they are in a race, 413 00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:02,520 Degas always chooses the moment right after or right before the race, 414 00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:06,600 where you see the animal in preparation, 415 00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:09,520 where you are the spectator, 416 00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:12,560 without having them know that you're watching them. 417 00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:45,800 Degas makes a note to himself 418 00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:49,440 about the importance of painting his own time. 419 00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:53,520 That's very much a sort of leitmotif, if not battle cry, 420 00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,040 of artists at this period 421 00:38:56,120 --> 00:39:02,000 where he began to meet a number of musicians and composers 422 00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,080 who were attached to the Paris Opera, 423 00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:10,000 bassoon players and a Catalan composer called Dihau. 424 00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,760 And so, he was beginning to enter this world 425 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,280 which would provide much of the subject matter 426 00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:18,480 for the Degas that we now know. 427 00:39:22,040 --> 00:39:25,560 With the onset of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, 428 00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:31,000 Degas interrupted his artistic practice to volunteer for the National Guard. 429 00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:33,080 He was posted to Normandy, 430 00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:37,600 where training exercises revealed the poor state of his eyesight. 431 00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:41,760 He was re-assigned to Paris as a lieutenant in the Garrison Artillery 432 00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:45,520 until the French surrendered in 1871. 433 00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,680 "I have just had and still have 434 00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,720 a spot of weakness and trouble in my eyes. 435 00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:02,840 It caught me at Chatou by the edge of the water in full sunlight 436 00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:04,760 whilst I was doing a watercolour. 437 00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:06,760 It made me lose nearly three weeks, 438 00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:11,160 being unable to read or work or go out much, 439 00:40:11,240 --> 00:40:16,080 trembling all the time lest I should remain like that." 440 00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:52,520 I've never really had perfect eyesight, 441 00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:57,800 and from the age of about 12 was short-sighted, 442 00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:00,080 and then through a kind of adolescent vanity 443 00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:04,640 spent most of my teenage years in a kind of myopic haze, 444 00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:07,640 quite impressionist really. 445 00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:14,840 But, curiously, I think that makes you very attentive 446 00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,360 to how we see things in general, 447 00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:22,080 and there's different degrees to which vision might change 448 00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:24,040 in different circumstances. 449 00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:30,320 Degas overcame the shortcomings of his own vision, 450 00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:35,320 to arrive at a form where he moved into a kind of tactility. 451 00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:41,360 The late pastels come quite close to suggesting the kind of sensations, 452 00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:45,200 the experience of touching a body, touching material. 453 00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:49,720 It brings into play the other senses besides sight and vision. 454 00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:58,320 Very fortunately, I don't suffer from irredeemably damaged eyesight 455 00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:00,920 in the way Degas did later on. 456 00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:05,080 I think there are people who have clinically perfect eyesight, 457 00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:11,560 are strangely blind to certain aspects of the experience of artworks. 458 00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:17,400 That they don't actually encounter the real experience 459 00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:22,640 of seeing what's happening in a painting or a sculpture in front of their eyes 460 00:42:22,720 --> 00:42:26,040 because perhaps they're led by what they anticipate seeing 461 00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:31,520 by the narrative, by the language, by what they're being told about a work. 462 00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:36,080 So it's actually quite difficult to allow yourself to encounter work 463 00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:37,560 in a sensuous way 464 00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:42,720 without all these other sort of pre-conditions affecting what you see. 465 00:42:45,720 --> 00:42:48,800 After the war, Degas travelled with his brother Ren? 466 00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:53,000 to New Orleans, Louisiana, to visit some relatives. 467 00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,800 The artist painted several portraits of family members 468 00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,840 which culminated in an epic group portrait, 469 00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:02,760 The Cotton Office in New Orleans. 470 00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:07,080 This included his uncle in the foreground, inspecting cotton, 471 00:43:09,240 --> 00:43:12,920 one leaning at a window and the other reading a paper. 472 00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,400 "I have attached myself to a fairly vigorous picture. 473 00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:24,760 In it there are about 15 individuals 474 00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,400 more or less occupied with a table 475 00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:31,160 covered with the precious material and two men, 476 00:43:31,240 --> 00:43:35,720 one half leaning and the other half sitting on it, 477 00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,720 the buyer and the broker, are discussing a pattern. 478 00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:44,560 A raw picture if there ever was one, 479 00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:47,880 and I think from a better hand than many another. 480 00:43:48,720 --> 00:43:53,560 What lovely things I could have done, and done rapidly 481 00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:57,480 if the bright daylight were less unbearable for me. 482 00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:01,440 The women are pretty and unusually graceful. 483 00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:07,840 The black world, I have not the time to explore it. 484 00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:12,600 There are some real treasures as regards drawing and colour 485 00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,040 in these forests of ebony. 486 00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:20,520 I shall be very surprised to live among white people only in Paris. 487 00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:26,240 And then I love silhouettes so much and these silhouettes walk." 488 00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:36,160 His father died in 1874 leaving large debts 489 00:44:36,240 --> 00:44:40,720 that forced Degas to rely on selling his art to generate an income. 490 00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:44,080 The Cotton Office in New Orleans was exhibited 491 00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:48,240 in the second Impressionist exhibition of 1876 492 00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:53,160 and was the first painting by the artist to enter the French public collections 493 00:44:53,240 --> 00:44:58,680 when it was acquired in 1878 by the Mus?e des beaux-arts in Pau. 494 00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,560 He joined the Durand-Ruel Gallery 495 00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:07,080 where his work started to sell to collectors looking for something new. 496 00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:14,520 "Here Durand-Ruel assures me of his devotion 497 00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,920 and swears he wants everything I do. 498 00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:23,120 My eyes are not so bad but all the same, 499 00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:26,800 I shall remain in the ranks of the infirm 500 00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,520 until I pass into the ranks of the blind. 501 00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:35,720 It really is bitter, is it not? 502 00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,640 Sometimes I feel a shiver of horror. 503 00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:43,440 Durand-Ruel takes everything I do, but scarcely sells anything. 504 00:45:44,720 --> 00:45:50,160 Manet, always confident, says he is keeping us for the "bonne bouche", 505 00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:52,520 the best taste for last. 506 00:45:55,240 --> 00:45:57,560 Paul Durand-Ruel was a visionary figure. 507 00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:00,840 Not only did he decide to defend the artists in whom he believed 508 00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:02,560 and who were alive at his time, 509 00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:06,200 but he completely redefined the role of the art dealer. 510 00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:10,560 When Durand-Ruel fell in love with the production of an artist, 511 00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:15,680 he decided to buy everything he could and ask the artist for exclusivity, 512 00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:18,600 in exchange of a monthly payment 513 00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:23,120 which would then financially support the artist's day-to-day life. 514 00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:28,760 In his memoirs, he first saw the pictures of Degas at the official Salon, 515 00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:31,520 starting in 1868, in 1869. 516 00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:35,600 And actually, in the Salon of 1870, Degas exhibits two pictures 517 00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,080 which are, each of them, a portrait of a woman, 518 00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,000 and Durand-Ruel asks to buy one of them, 519 00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:43,760 but Degas says, "No, unfortunately, they're not for sale." 520 00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,680 So this is a stock book of the Durand-Ruel Gallery 521 00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,880 from 1868 until 1873. 522 00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:55,640 That's where you find all the purchases made by the gallery, 523 00:46:55,720 --> 00:46:59,640 from whom the pictures are bought, when, at what price. 524 00:46:59,720 --> 00:47:02,080 And, for example, here you have the first two Degas 525 00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:03,640 purchased by Durand-Ruel. 526 00:47:03,720 --> 00:47:06,200 You have the stock number, the name of the artist, 527 00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,840 the title of the piece, L'Orchestre de l'Op?ra, 528 00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:10,480 The Opera Orchestra. 529 00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:17,080 Le Foyer de la Danse, purchased from Degas in January 1872. 530 00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:21,440 One is for 1,500 French francs and the other one for 1,000 francs. 531 00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:26,800 And on the next page, you see whether Durand-Ruel is able to sell them, 532 00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:32,560 and you see the second one is sold to Mr Brandon in exchange of pictures. 533 00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:49,320 "Look here, my dear Tissot, no hesitations, no escape. 534 00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:52,520 You positively must exhibit at the Boulevard. 535 00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:56,040 It will do you good, you... and us too. 536 00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:01,000 Manet seems determined to keep aloof, he may well regret it. 537 00:48:01,720 --> 00:48:05,080 Yesterday I saw the arrangement of the premises, 538 00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:09,760 the hangings and the effect in daylight. It is as good as anywhere. 539 00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:13,240 I am getting really worked up and am running the thing with energy 540 00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:16,640 and, I think, a certain success. 541 00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,400 it already is, it exists. 542 00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,600 It must show itself as something distinct, 543 00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:29,560 there must be a salon of Realists. 544 00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:32,400 Manet does not understand that. 545 00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:35,160 I definitely think he is more vain than intelligent. 546 00:48:35,240 --> 00:48:38,280 So forget the money side for a moment. 547 00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:43,040 Exhibit! Be of your country and with your friends." 548 00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:49,640 It seems that Degas played an important role 549 00:48:49,720 --> 00:48:52,600 in organising some of the Impressionist exhibitions, 550 00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,680 and it's quite contradictory to the fact that, indeed, 551 00:48:55,760 --> 00:49:00,920 Degas is more of a portrait painter, or ballerinas painter, 552 00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:04,360 or nudes, or horses, 553 00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:08,720 but he's not what we called then and we can call today a "landscape painter". 554 00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:11,080 It was not what interested him. 555 00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:16,600 He did accept and he wanted the group to be together 556 00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:20,520 but Degas was not so interested by plein air pictures 557 00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:22,280 or plein air painters, 558 00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:26,560 going outside, outdoors, to paint what you could see. 559 00:49:31,240 --> 00:49:33,200 I think some of the defining characteristics 560 00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:36,520 of doing his art practice are essentially that it's studio based. 561 00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:38,400 That's quite an important thing to think about 562 00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:41,440 in terms of our ideas of him as an Impressionist. 563 00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:49,160 Also an extraordinary ability to combine a discipline and a rigour 564 00:49:49,240 --> 00:49:55,080 with incredible waywardness and technical experimentation, 565 00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:59,680 often with very, very unconventional procedures. 566 00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:05,920 "Just an occasional glance out of the window is enough 567 00:50:06,040 --> 00:50:07,640 when I am travelling. 568 00:50:07,720 --> 00:50:11,720 I can get along very well without even going out of my own house. 569 00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:14,560 With a bowl of soup and three old brushes, 570 00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:18,640 you can make the finest landscape ever painted. 571 00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:21,840 I met Monet himself and I said to him, 572 00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:27,000 'Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes!' 573 00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:32,320 His pictures were always too draughty for me! 574 00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:36,200 If it had been any worse I should have had to turn up my coat collar. 575 00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,920 You see, the air you breathe in a picture 576 00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:44,840 is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors." 577 00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:26,800 Of course, we know of Degas as an impressionist painter, 578 00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:30,240 terminology that he himself resisted in his lifetime. 579 00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:32,880 So what is important to understand about Au Caf?, 580 00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:36,040 point number one, is that it's unfinished. 581 00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:40,320 And the questions and the sort of narrative that it invites, 582 00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:42,600 we really have to take that into account. 583 00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:47,560 How we interpret who these women are, what the dynamic between them is; 584 00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,080 it's really dependent on understanding that he hasn't finished it. 585 00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:55,840 What he has done, which again is unlike a lot of his fellow Impressionists, 586 00:51:55,920 --> 00:51:58,840 is that he follows in the academic tradition 587 00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:02,840 of using a form of monochrome painting, 588 00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,640 or near monochrome painting, in black or grey, 589 00:52:05,720 --> 00:52:08,080 and sometimes in other colours and beiges, 590 00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:10,560 blacks and greys, with white highlights. 591 00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:14,480 He maps out the terrain, he maps out the composition in that first 592 00:52:14,560 --> 00:52:16,640 and then works over it. 593 00:52:16,720 --> 00:52:19,600 And that, of course, is unlike what we know of the Impressionists, 594 00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:22,160 whose approach was more spontaneous. 595 00:52:22,240 --> 00:52:26,360 Degas himself said, "Nothing about my art is spontaneous. 596 00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:29,760 What I know is what I've learned from the great masters." 597 00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:32,000 Using brush strokes which don't actually make any sense, 598 00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:34,520 we don't quite know what the background is supposed to represent, 599 00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:36,920 but he's laying it in. It's in progress. 600 00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:45,200 Painting, drawing, making sculptures, it's like physical thinking at times. 601 00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:48,880 There is a haptic aspect to painting, 602 00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:54,920 and by that I mean things to do with the kind of muscle memory of the hand. 603 00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:58,640 Degas had built up a lifetime's experience 604 00:52:58,720 --> 00:53:02,600 of describing human and animal forms and landscapes, 605 00:53:02,680 --> 00:53:05,000 and some of that becomes innate, 606 00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,680 embedded in your bodily movements when you're working 607 00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,400 and that creates a particular and complex relationship 608 00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,520 between the work itself, and our idea of time. 609 00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:17,600 A painting, unlike a film, 610 00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:19,720 doesn't really insist that you look at it 611 00:53:19,800 --> 00:53:21,200 for a certain amount of time. 612 00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:23,800 You can have a glance at it, go away for 20 years, 613 00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,520 and come back and revisit the same painting, which I've done. 614 00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:33,280 I think we can be fairly sure that Degas finished a work 615 00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:35,480 when he exhibited it. 616 00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:37,320 We know that he was very particular 617 00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:40,200 about how he mounted drawings, for example. 618 00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:44,480 He also cared deeply about the sorts of frames he used for his paintings. 619 00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:33,160 There's one word which could describe Degas' personality, 620 00:54:33,240 --> 00:54:34,760 and that's probably "complex", 621 00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:38,800 but that's a pretty unhelpful cover-all term 622 00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:42,640 to describe what we understand from letters, 623 00:54:42,720 --> 00:54:48,040 from the notes he makes to himself, recollections of him by other people. 624 00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:54,440 It's hard to piece together a single description of his personality. 625 00:54:57,720 --> 00:55:00,680 "At dinner every Friday, at Monsieur Rouart's, 626 00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:03,120 Degas would be the soul of the evening. 627 00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:08,600 A constant, brilliant, unbearable guest, spreading wit, terror, and gaiety. 628 00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:14,800 A piercing mimic, with an endless fund of whims, maxims, banter, anecdotes, 629 00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:17,040 brilliantly unfair in his attacks, 630 00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:21,920 infallible in his taste, narrow-mindedly yet lucidly passionate. 631 00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,800 He was always throwing mud at writers, at the Institut, 632 00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:31,080 at the aloof poseurs, and the artists who were bent on getting there. 633 00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:33,120 I can still hear him. 634 00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:40,040 His host, who worshipped him, listened indulgently, admiringly, 635 00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:45,640 while the other guests, young people, ancient generals, speechless ladies, 636 00:55:45,720 --> 00:55:51,280 listened with varying degrees of enjoyment while this prodigious aphorist 637 00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:56,760 exercised his irony, his aesthetic acuity, 638 00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:58,840 and his vehemence." 639 00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:57,040 "Dance, urchin with wings, on the wooden lawns. 640 00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:01,120 Your thin arm in place on the ordered line 641 00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:05,320 gives balance at once to your flight and your weight. 642 00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:11,520 I, who knew you, want for you an illustrious life. 643 00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:16,920 Nymphs, Graces, come down from the summits of old. 644 00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:22,280 Taglioni, come, princess of Arcady, 645 00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:25,920 To ennoble and shape with a smile at my choice, 646 00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:29,920 this new little thing with the impudent face. 647 00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:34,240 If Montmartre has given the spirit and kin, 648 00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:37,640 Roxelane the nose and China the eyes, 649 00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:42,440 Ariel in your turn, give to this new recruit 650 00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:47,720 your light step for daytime, your light step for night. 651 00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:53,440 But for my taste, may she keep the scent of her fruit 652 00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:59,640 and in palaces golden, the race of her street." 653 00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:07,600 Today when we see sculptures of the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 654 00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:09,280 they're almost always, 655 00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:11,560 except in the National Gallery of Art in Washington 656 00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:16,200 where the original wax is housed, they're bronze casts. 657 00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:20,040 And these bronze casts were made after Degas' death 658 00:58:20,120 --> 00:58:22,320 with permission from his heirs. 659 00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:27,360 Little Dancer Aged Fourteen 660 00:58:27,440 --> 00:58:32,320 is a portrait of a young ballerina from the Paris Opera. 661 00:58:32,400 --> 00:58:34,120 Degas loved the Paris Opera, 662 00:58:34,200 --> 00:58:37,720 and went sometimes more than once or twice a week, 663 00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:42,120 and he, I think, was really taken with the ballerina's body, 664 00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:44,400 and movement, and gesture. 665 00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:49,320 This is the only one that he finished and exhibited, it's a wax sculpture, 666 00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:54,200 so he dressed up this wax sculpture of this young girl with a real tutu, 667 00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:58,800 and real hair, and ribbons, and ballet slippers. 668 00:58:59,720 --> 00:59:02,560 She was a girl called Marie van Goethem. 669 00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:06,480 She was the daughter of a Belgian tailor and a laundress, 670 00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:09,200 so she was from a lower-class background. 671 00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:14,480 She was one of the young women who trained at the Paris Opera, 672 00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:17,160 commonly called "petits rats", the little rats, 673 00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:19,400 a reference to perhaps when they scampered around 674 00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:23,320 in the foyer and the corridors of the Opera. 675 00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:30,080 I think it's really fascinating, the contrast between the way we perceive 676 00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:34,640 Degas' Little Dancer of Fourteen Years now by comparison 677 00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:37,640 to how it was seen at the time. 678 00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:44,240 Because, of course, it had been signalled as in progress in 1879, 679 00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:48,800 then in 1880, it was actually in the catalogue for the exhibition, 680 00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:55,480 but instead of showing the dancer, he just showed the glass box 681 00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:57,880 in which it would be displayed the following year. 682 00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:02,280 It's really fascinating, because of course these were the vitrines 683 01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:06,360 that were used for medical displays, 684 01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:09,880 not for artworks at this time. 685 01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:14,000 He is setting the scene for how it will be received. 686 01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:17,200 And when the work is actually exhibited, 687 01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:23,160 the critics will react to it as a medical sample, 688 01:00:23,240 --> 01:00:25,520 as a medical object, 689 01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,760 and the medium he's using, the wax medium, 690 01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:35,920 is, of course, par excellence the medium which is used for medical specimens. 691 01:00:36,040 --> 01:00:42,640 So for it to be used as the medium for a real sculpture, 692 01:00:42,720 --> 01:00:45,160 rather than merely a medical example, 693 01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:47,360 was very radical, 694 01:00:47,440 --> 01:00:53,880 but also very explosive in terms of a female figure, 695 01:00:54,000 --> 01:01:00,400 a female body and what he actually produces is a little figure 696 01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:05,880 in which the face is made to look like a simian creature. 697 01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:10,520 And his critics, like Huysmans, absolutely responded accordingly. 698 01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:16,000 They called it a rat, of course, rat is what the ballet chorus were called, 699 01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:17,720 they were called "the rats". 700 01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:20,440 But equally, it was used literally, 701 01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:24,520 because her face was elongated and pointed. 702 01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:29,360 So we have something which almost is a crossover between the exhibition 703 01:01:29,440 --> 01:01:31,000 and the freak show, 704 01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:34,120 high art and popular art. 705 01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:39,680 But because it's Degas, because it's brilliant as an object, 706 01:01:39,760 --> 01:01:43,520 because he's brilliant as an artist, 707 01:01:43,600 --> 01:01:48,360 now we see it in terms of an ideal of the dance. 708 01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:57,320 But of course, these were poor girls from Paris 709 01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:00,560 who were trying to earn a living and it was really a hard living, 710 01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:05,000 and I think Degas was fascinated by this confluence 711 01:02:05,080 --> 01:02:10,120 of a very refined high art, classical ballet, 712 01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:14,720 and all of the ideals that this wonderful art form represented, 713 01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:18,560 with these real girls from the Paris arrondissements, 714 01:02:18,640 --> 01:02:22,120 from some of the poorer neighbourhoods, you know, struggling to make a living. 715 01:02:29,480 --> 01:02:32,800 "When Degas' eyesight became so poor 716 01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:35,680 that he could see only with great difficulty, 717 01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:38,200 he gave up painting for sculpture. 718 01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:44,040 'I must learn a blind man's trade now.' 719 01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,040 But this cry of self-pity was somewhat exaggerated. 720 01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:55,800 One day he showed me a little dancer he had done over for the twentieth time. 721 01:02:55,880 --> 01:02:58,880 'I believe I've got it at last,' he announced. 722 01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:03,560 'One or two days more work and it will be ready for the caster.' 723 01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:07,520 The next day, however, all that remained of the little dancing girl 724 01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,520 was the original lump of wax from which she had sprung. 725 01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:13,840 Seeing my disappointment, 726 01:03:13,920 --> 01:03:16,920 'All you think of is what it was worth. 727 01:03:18,240 --> 01:03:23,040 But I wouldn't take a bucket of gold for the pleasure I had in destroying it 728 01:03:23,120 --> 01:03:25,720 and beginning over again.'" 729 01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:50,120 The bronzes which we see in exhibitions and museums 730 01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:53,240 throughout the world were cast posthumously 731 01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:57,840 after Degas died with the permission of his heirs. 732 01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:02,680 One of the great rarities in the Fitzwilliam's collection 733 01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:07,240 are three wax statuettes of dancers. 734 01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:11,360 When Degas died in 1917, 735 01:04:11,440 --> 01:04:17,400 the wax sculptures were found in a corner of his studio, 736 01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:20,800 lots of them broken, covered in dust 737 01:04:20,880 --> 01:04:25,440 and in fact, for many people, they brought to mind the sorts of figures 738 01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:28,920 that you would find excavated from an archaeological dig, 739 01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:32,600 notably relating them to Tanagra figurines 740 01:04:32,680 --> 01:04:38,160 which were hugely popular in collecting circles in both France and Britain 741 01:04:38,240 --> 01:04:40,560 at the end of the 19th century. 742 01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:42,279 What, of course, we can now tell 743 01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:46,520 through various forms of scientific and technical analysis 744 01:04:46,600 --> 01:04:48,600 is a lot more about how they were made. 745 01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:55,120 And they were made using twisted wire armatures, a lot of his sculptures, 746 01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:56,760 including those in the Fitzwilliam, 747 01:04:56,840 --> 01:05:00,040 are bulked out using different sorts of material. 748 01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:02,920 Either plastiline, what we now call plasticine, 749 01:05:03,040 --> 01:05:05,640 or wine corks, wine bottle corks, 750 01:05:05,720 --> 01:05:09,520 he even used part of a paintbrush to form part of the structure 751 01:05:09,600 --> 01:05:12,400 around which he modelled the figure. 752 01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:17,120 I think he was interested in the performance of women, 753 01:05:17,200 --> 01:05:22,360 whether it was a Parisienne in a caf?, or a courtesan in a caf?, 754 01:05:22,440 --> 01:05:24,920 a ballerina, a prostitute, 755 01:05:25,040 --> 01:05:29,040 who he would sort of follow voyeuristically behind the scenes 756 01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:31,480 into her bathing chamber. 757 01:05:31,560 --> 01:05:35,760 So I think, you know, he was interested in capturing women, 758 01:05:35,840 --> 01:05:39,200 late 19th-century French women in their off moments, 759 01:05:39,279 --> 01:05:41,440 in their non-performative moments. 760 01:05:42,480 --> 01:05:46,760 He does have, historically, a very complex relation 761 01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:49,880 with women and, of course, class again is crucial. 762 01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:55,600 Even more complex when it's a fellow artist, like Mary Cassatt for example, 763 01:05:55,680 --> 01:06:00,160 whom he obviously admired, whose work he thought was really, really strong, 764 01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:06,320 really powerful, and yet represented her in ways which are complex, 765 01:06:06,400 --> 01:06:08,279 which are ambivalent. 766 01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:12,480 They don't celebrate her as an artist in the way, for example, 767 01:06:12,560 --> 01:06:16,520 his portrait of Duranty celebrates Duranty as a writer. 768 01:06:16,600 --> 01:06:21,160 So he can give recognition to a male fellow 769 01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:23,520 in terms of their professional esteem, 770 01:06:23,600 --> 01:06:27,880 but not a fellow artist who was a woman, like Cassatt. 771 01:06:28,640 --> 01:06:34,560 He can hardly be described as having a great number of close female friends, 772 01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:38,560 and clearly he didn't have long-term relations with women either, 773 01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:41,640 although he may well have had prostitutes himself. 774 01:06:41,720 --> 01:06:44,840 Certainly some art historians argue that he did so, 775 01:06:44,920 --> 01:06:49,440 and he was clearly very familiar with life in the brothel, 776 01:06:49,520 --> 01:06:54,440 which one has to assume is actually from direct experience. 777 01:06:54,520 --> 01:06:59,520 But he was not someone for whom anything but art was really crucial. 778 01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:06,360 "I said to Renoir, 'I've heard Lautrec compared with Degas.' 779 01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:10,760 'Ridiculous!', he said, 'Lautrec did some very fine posters, 780 01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:12,400 but that's about all. 781 01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:15,320 Just compare their paintings of coquettes... 782 01:07:15,400 --> 01:07:17,360 why, they're worlds apart! 783 01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:20,520 Lautrec just painted a prostitute, 784 01:07:20,600 --> 01:07:24,480 while Degas painted all prostitutes rolled into one. 785 01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:29,600 Lautrec's prostitutes are vicious, Degas' never. 786 01:07:30,680 --> 01:07:34,640 While others paint a bawdy house, the result is usually pornographic, 787 01:07:34,720 --> 01:07:38,240 always sad to the point of despair. 788 01:07:38,320 --> 01:07:43,080 Degas is the only painter who can combine a certain joyousness, 789 01:07:43,160 --> 01:07:48,240 that chaste, half-religious side, which makes his work so great, 790 01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:52,920 it is at its best when he paints those poor girls.'" 791 01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:57,840 For someone who wants to focus in the kind of obsessional way 792 01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:01,080 that Degas focused, 793 01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:06,400 having a housemaid, a housekeeper, like Zoe, was the perfect answer. 794 01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:10,080 She served all the needs of a wife, 795 01:08:10,160 --> 01:08:15,720 without the sex and without having to take any notice of her as a wife. 796 01:08:16,680 --> 01:08:20,040 Effectively, all the women apart from 797 01:08:20,120 --> 01:08:23,760 the ones he had relationships with socially, 798 01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:25,439 were women he paid, 799 01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:29,520 whether it was models, whether it was Zoe, his housekeeper, 800 01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:33,200 for anything, it was a paid relationship, 801 01:08:33,279 --> 01:08:37,760 so he knew where he stood and had control in that situation. 802 01:08:37,840 --> 01:08:41,520 His relations with women were much more complex, 803 01:08:41,600 --> 01:08:45,319 much more difficult with women of his own class. 804 01:08:45,399 --> 01:08:49,359 However considered his relationship with Cassatt was, 805 01:08:49,440 --> 01:08:52,279 it was nevertheless at arm's length. 806 01:09:47,319 --> 01:09:50,720 "Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses 807 01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:52,800 which presuppose an audience, 808 01:09:52,880 --> 01:09:56,520 but these women of mine are honest, simple folk, 809 01:09:56,600 --> 01:09:58,800 unconcerned by any other interests 810 01:09:58,880 --> 01:10:01,920 than those involved in their physical condition. 811 01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:06,000 It is as if you looked through the keyhole." 812 01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:13,080 What's really remarkable about the drawings 813 01:10:13,160 --> 01:10:15,520 is they feel like they are fleeting moments 814 01:10:15,600 --> 01:10:17,320 where you've just drawn someone 815 01:10:17,400 --> 01:10:21,000 as they're getting dressed or undressed around you, 816 01:10:21,080 --> 01:10:25,559 and they feel like they're very swift drawings but actually, they're not. 817 01:10:25,640 --> 01:10:29,280 They're very, very hard for those models to hold those poses. 818 01:10:29,360 --> 01:10:32,160 They are very physically challenging 819 01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:36,720 and it really made me think about how Degas was working with his models 820 01:10:36,800 --> 01:10:41,760 and the amount of commitment those models would have had to have 821 01:10:41,840 --> 01:10:45,200 to be able to pose for him again and again, 822 01:10:45,280 --> 01:10:48,920 to work very long hours with him, to really work with somebody 823 01:10:49,040 --> 01:10:51,920 who's revisiting the same thing again and again. 824 01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:55,080 Any artist knows, if you've got a good model, 825 01:10:55,160 --> 01:10:56,760 the job is half done. 826 01:10:56,840 --> 01:10:58,320 It's a profession. 827 01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:02,559 You have the same models, if they're really good, will be highly in demand, 828 01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:07,080 will be circulating amongst the key artists' studios, 829 01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:10,040 and there will be competition for their time. 830 01:11:10,120 --> 01:11:15,800 So it was a way in which women could work and be respected at the period. 831 01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:20,640 He doesn't want an individual particular. 832 01:11:20,720 --> 01:11:24,400 It's not a portrait; it's about the body, it's about the action, 833 01:11:24,480 --> 01:11:27,320 it's about the way the body moves and how. 834 01:11:27,400 --> 01:11:32,400 The emphasis is on the animal, the physicality of the body. 835 01:11:32,480 --> 01:11:36,480 And obviously sensual, erotic, 836 01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:39,240 but not a portrait. 837 01:11:39,320 --> 01:11:44,440 This is about other and, in fact, very complex, issues here. 838 01:11:47,120 --> 01:11:51,120 I think the idea of a perfect drawing 839 01:11:51,200 --> 01:11:54,600 is something that Degas is testing. 840 01:11:54,680 --> 01:12:00,120 I think having the confidence to leave mistakes there, 841 01:12:00,200 --> 01:12:04,200 to leave shadows of what wasn't working, 842 01:12:04,280 --> 01:12:07,920 to have the confidence to assert the line 843 01:12:08,040 --> 01:12:09,840 when something is going well for you 844 01:12:09,920 --> 01:12:13,400 or is capturing what you're trying to achieve is really important. 845 01:12:13,480 --> 01:12:15,400 When we're new to drawing, 846 01:12:15,480 --> 01:12:19,600 we don't always want to be seen to be doing something that's bad. 847 01:12:19,680 --> 01:12:22,360 We don't want to be seen to be doing something that looks like a mistake, 848 01:12:22,440 --> 01:12:26,400 but actually, those are the things that are crucial and are valuable. 849 01:12:26,480 --> 01:12:33,160 Degas is working through the drawing to understand something 850 01:12:33,240 --> 01:12:37,000 and therefore the things that aren't working are just as valuable. 851 01:12:37,080 --> 01:12:41,200 You can see his confidence in himself as he looks. 852 01:12:42,200 --> 01:12:47,680 Degas's interest in matter is really fascinating, 853 01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:50,360 because he starts off interested, 854 01:12:50,440 --> 01:12:55,080 or influenced more by the academic tradition, shall we say, 855 01:12:55,160 --> 01:12:58,120 with an artist like Ingres 856 01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:04,480 for whom the important thing was to smooth out matter, 857 01:13:05,520 --> 01:13:10,480 where the brush marks, the signs of making, were not visible. 858 01:13:11,400 --> 01:13:17,600 With Degas, increasingly the work becomes deeply material, 859 01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:22,840 deeply tactile, very much the matter of someone 860 01:13:22,920 --> 01:13:28,200 who is physically engaged with their hands in what they're making. 861 01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:33,800 Not only was he later working much, much more with clay and so forth, 862 01:13:33,880 --> 01:13:40,040 but here with, in fact, the monotypes that he started a few years earlier, 863 01:13:41,120 --> 01:13:44,000 he's working very, very physically. 864 01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:50,880 So there's this sense of the process being absolutely crucial, 865 01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:54,800 the process and his physical engagement with the process 866 01:13:54,880 --> 01:13:58,520 as being almost as important as the end product. 867 01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:34,480 One of the highlights from the Fitzwilliam's own collection, 868 01:14:34,559 --> 01:14:37,160 is a beautiful large pastel, 869 01:14:37,240 --> 01:14:40,680 Two Dancers in Violet Skirts, Arms Raised. 870 01:14:40,760 --> 01:14:45,760 And as part of the process, in preparation for the exhibition, 871 01:14:45,840 --> 01:14:48,200 this work was carefully examined, 872 01:14:48,280 --> 01:14:50,280 and you don't always get the opportunity 873 01:14:50,360 --> 01:14:55,440 to do that with 18,000 drawings in our own collection. 874 01:14:55,520 --> 01:14:59,640 The work was photographed under different wavelengths. 875 01:14:59,720 --> 01:15:02,520 So we have a daylight image, 876 01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:07,520 we have an ultraviolet image and we have an infrared image. 877 01:15:08,160 --> 01:15:11,760 These analysis techniques are especially helpful, 878 01:15:11,840 --> 01:15:14,400 because they're non-invasive, 879 01:15:14,480 --> 01:15:16,680 and they can be quite revealing 880 01:15:16,760 --> 01:15:21,000 about the way the artwork is constructed and built up. 881 01:15:21,720 --> 01:15:25,920 The fluorescence is telling us about the material, 882 01:15:26,040 --> 01:15:30,920 or a part of a material within the make-up of the pastel. 883 01:15:31,040 --> 01:15:35,200 On a number of the works, there's quite a range of media. 884 01:15:35,640 --> 01:15:37,400 You may have some graphite. 885 01:15:37,480 --> 01:15:41,800 More typically, you've got passages of charcoal, 886 01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:46,720 maybe fabricated black chalks, occasionally watercolour. 887 01:15:46,800 --> 01:15:49,880 On this one, lots of pastel 888 01:15:50,000 --> 01:15:56,480 and Degas is also known to have added a spirit to the pastel. 889 01:15:56,559 --> 01:15:59,559 It would be called an essence medium 890 01:15:59,640 --> 01:16:04,640 and that would enable him perhaps to manipulate the surface more. 891 01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:09,280 So, he's using pastel, taking it in new directions. 892 01:16:09,360 --> 01:16:14,200 It's supposed to be a medium which is very light and delicate and fresh. 893 01:16:14,280 --> 01:16:18,880 With some of them, he just builds up to such an extent 894 01:16:19,000 --> 01:16:21,559 that he's deadening the surface. 895 01:16:21,640 --> 01:16:24,400 So he's working over and over and over again, 896 01:16:24,480 --> 01:16:27,760 then he will try spraying it with fixative, 897 01:16:27,840 --> 01:16:31,360 or he'll spray it with water, 898 01:16:31,440 --> 01:16:36,760 and then almost create a wet surface 899 01:16:36,840 --> 01:16:40,840 so that he can work further into it and move the colour around. 900 01:16:41,640 --> 01:16:45,760 Then he'll also change the format. He'll add a bit at the bottom, 901 01:16:45,840 --> 01:16:48,280 he'll add another bit at the side. 902 01:16:48,360 --> 01:16:55,360 So there's the relationship between the original composition 903 01:16:55,440 --> 01:16:58,800 or the spatial positioning of the figure, 904 01:16:58,880 --> 01:17:03,880 adding a bit extra to change the composition as he goes along. 905 01:17:05,720 --> 01:17:09,280 Experiments and failures are, I think, 906 01:17:09,360 --> 01:17:14,680 really at the essence of what painters are trying to do at any time. 907 01:17:14,760 --> 01:17:18,080 We know what painters have been able to do in the past, 908 01:17:18,160 --> 01:17:19,880 but you always have to take that risk 909 01:17:20,000 --> 01:17:22,480 with the materials to go against the grain. 910 01:17:23,400 --> 01:17:26,400 Degas is not the only artist who commits himself 911 01:17:26,480 --> 01:17:33,280 to a kind of creative cycle of destruction, and reiteration, 912 01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:35,920 and rebuilding over and over again. 913 01:17:36,040 --> 01:17:38,880 It's not a circle, it's kind of like a spiral 914 01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:41,040 where you're building towards something, 915 01:17:41,120 --> 01:17:45,760 and revisiting, going in again and having a second run-up on something 916 01:17:45,840 --> 01:17:49,440 in order to get closer to what it was you were aiming for. 917 01:18:03,800 --> 01:18:06,880 "It is all very well to copy what one sees, 918 01:18:07,000 --> 01:18:13,240 but it is much better to draw what one does not see except in one's memory. 919 01:18:14,280 --> 01:18:19,559 It's a transformation during which the imagination collaborates with memory. 920 01:18:20,280 --> 01:18:26,400 You reproduce only what has struck you, that is, the necessary. 921 01:18:26,480 --> 01:18:29,200 In that way, your memories and your fantasy 922 01:18:29,280 --> 01:18:33,480 are liberated from the tyranny exercised by nature." 923 01:18:42,280 --> 01:18:45,280 Despite being so open to experimentation 924 01:18:45,360 --> 01:18:47,480 and new artistic thinking, 925 01:18:47,559 --> 01:18:52,080 Degas had strong conservative views which were often anti-Semitic. 926 01:18:52,720 --> 01:18:55,920 He was not shy in making his views known, 927 01:18:56,040 --> 01:18:58,240 particularly when it came to his opposition 928 01:18:58,320 --> 01:18:59,760 during the Dreyfus Affair. 929 01:18:59,840 --> 01:19:01,000 DREYFUS IS INNOCENT 930 01:19:01,080 --> 01:19:06,880 Spanning 12 years, this affair caused a major political and social divide 931 01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:10,320 when a Jewish French officer, Alfred Dreyfus, 932 01:19:10,400 --> 01:19:15,400 was accused of giving secrets to the German Empire and betraying France. 933 01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:18,440 The whole affair split the nation 934 01:19:18,520 --> 01:19:22,520 into those who were for Dreyfus and believed him to be innocent, 935 01:19:22,600 --> 01:19:26,120 called "Dreyfusards", and those who were against him 936 01:19:26,200 --> 01:19:28,360 and saw him as a Jewish traitor. 937 01:19:28,440 --> 01:19:29,440 THE TRAITOR 938 01:19:29,520 --> 01:19:31,040 Degas was against, 939 01:19:31,120 --> 01:19:34,320 and although Dreyfus was eventually cleared of his crimes 940 01:19:34,400 --> 01:19:36,280 after many years in prison 941 01:19:36,360 --> 01:19:40,920 for what was considered a major miscarriage of justice, 942 01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:44,559 Degas could not reconcile his resentment. 943 01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:49,920 He slowly withdrew from the world and cut ties with close Jewish friends 944 01:19:50,040 --> 01:19:53,240 such as the influential Hal?vy family. 945 01:19:55,080 --> 01:19:57,559 There was not just anti-Semitism, 946 01:19:57,640 --> 01:20:01,360 but a huge amount of anti-migrant, 947 01:20:01,440 --> 01:20:04,160 of nationalist sentiment, 948 01:20:04,240 --> 01:20:07,000 particularly in the last decade, 949 01:20:07,080 --> 01:20:13,480 a seriously problematic attitude towards incomers, towards migrants. 950 01:20:13,559 --> 01:20:18,680 But obviously, many of the Jewish community were long-standing residents, 951 01:20:18,760 --> 01:20:21,240 long-standing French people. 952 01:20:21,320 --> 01:20:24,480 His anti-Semitism, which began very early, 953 01:20:24,559 --> 01:20:28,200 it's not as if it suddenly appeared, but because of the Dreyfus Affair, 954 01:20:28,280 --> 01:20:33,280 it tipped him over the edge and it was a dramatic split, 955 01:20:33,360 --> 01:20:35,760 but characteristic of the age. 956 01:20:35,840 --> 01:20:38,840 There was a lot of anti-Semitism around at the time. 957 01:20:40,320 --> 01:20:44,920 You have very various political beliefs or religious beliefs. 958 01:20:45,040 --> 01:20:47,640 For example, Monet was a Republican, 959 01:20:47,720 --> 01:20:51,200 Pissarro was a Jewish anarchist, Courbet was a Communard, 960 01:20:51,280 --> 01:20:55,480 Durand-Ruel yet, who was a conservative Catholic, defended them all, 961 01:20:55,559 --> 01:21:00,840 and for all of them the bottom line was art before anything else. 962 01:21:00,920 --> 01:21:04,559 Perhaps "complex" is the only way to describe somebody 963 01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:06,640 who was certainly charismatic, 964 01:21:06,720 --> 01:21:10,559 but at the same time could alienate people by his gruffness, 965 01:21:10,640 --> 01:21:12,200 his harshness, 966 01:21:12,280 --> 01:21:17,280 somebody who, by his own admission, had a vicious tongue. 967 01:21:17,360 --> 01:21:20,040 Somebody who was also called misanthropic, 968 01:21:20,120 --> 01:21:22,120 who was called misogynistic, 969 01:21:22,200 --> 01:21:25,600 who certainly endured periods 970 01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:29,520 of what he called "dark thoughts", and melancholy. 971 01:21:34,840 --> 01:21:38,520 "His hearing became worse and he was now almost totally blind. 972 01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:42,760 His indifference to everything increased, 973 01:21:42,840 --> 01:21:45,000 and finally included even himself. 974 01:21:45,920 --> 01:21:48,760 But in spite of his forlorn appearance, 975 01:21:48,840 --> 01:21:52,200 there was always a certain distinction about him to the end. 976 01:21:52,280 --> 01:21:55,200 He had the air of having stepped out of a portrait, say, 977 01:21:55,280 --> 01:21:56,760 of the Italian school. 978 01:21:57,400 --> 01:22:01,680 He spent his last days wandering aimlessly about Paris, 979 01:22:01,760 --> 01:22:05,760 but usually his ramblings ended up at his former home, in Montmartre, 980 01:22:06,720 --> 01:22:10,559 now rapidly disappearing under the hands of the wreckers." 981 01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:21,880 "I am taking great care of my bladder 982 01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:25,000 with turpentine, Contreville water, 983 01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:29,000 and by cutting out coffee, spirits, etc. 984 01:22:30,040 --> 01:22:33,880 But my kidneys still hurt. My eyes are failing. 985 01:22:36,559 --> 01:22:40,200 I have had a little exhibition at Durand-Ruel 986 01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:45,080 of 26 imaginary landscapes which has been rather successful. 987 01:22:47,600 --> 01:22:51,040 I wish above all to remain alone, 988 01:22:51,120 --> 01:22:54,480 to work as quietly as possible with my poor eyes, 989 01:22:55,240 --> 01:23:00,080 and in order to obtain that quiet and that supreme good fortune, 990 01:23:00,160 --> 01:23:03,559 condemn myself also to die alone." 991 01:23:05,880 --> 01:23:10,400 We see that at the end of his life, Degas has become quite an old man. 992 01:23:10,480 --> 01:23:13,640 He's sick and tired, 993 01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:17,200 and yet he doesn't really want his niece to come at his home. 994 01:23:17,280 --> 01:23:20,680 We see that Cassatt writes to Durand-Ruel, 995 01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:22,280 "Yes, I don't understand Degas, 996 01:23:22,360 --> 01:23:25,440 who doesn't want to welcome his niece, who really wants to help him". 997 01:23:25,520 --> 01:23:28,920 But Degas is obsessed by the idea that they only want, 998 01:23:29,040 --> 01:23:34,240 maybe, his works of art, his money, his heritage, 999 01:23:34,320 --> 01:23:38,480 while Cassatt, who is quite close to Degas and to Durand-Ruel, 1000 01:23:38,559 --> 01:23:41,320 "They want to help him, 1001 01:23:41,400 --> 01:23:44,120 but he doesn't want to open his door". 1002 01:23:53,880 --> 01:23:55,840 Degas never married 1003 01:23:55,920 --> 01:23:57,160 and many of his acquaintances 1004 01:23:57,240 --> 01:23:59,840 could not maintain a relationship with him in the end 1005 01:23:59,920 --> 01:24:02,280 due to his difficult nature. 1006 01:24:02,360 --> 01:24:09,280 He died in Paris on 27th September 1917, aged 83. 1007 01:24:12,040 --> 01:24:14,240 In a letter to his gallery, 1008 01:24:15,440 --> 01:24:20,640 "You will realise how much I've produced, only at my death". 1009 01:24:27,240 --> 01:24:30,160 When Degas died and the Durand-Ruel family, 1010 01:24:30,240 --> 01:24:31,559 along with other dealers, 1011 01:24:31,640 --> 01:24:34,559 had to organise the sales after his death, 1012 01:24:34,640 --> 01:24:38,640 all the drawings they found in his studio were not signed, 1013 01:24:38,720 --> 01:24:41,080 as an artist only signs them when he sells them, 1014 01:24:41,160 --> 01:24:43,120 only when they get out of his studio. 1015 01:24:43,200 --> 01:24:47,559 So, Durand-Ruel takes photographs of all that is in his studio 1016 01:24:47,640 --> 01:24:52,559 and will have to later on put the signatures, 1017 01:24:52,640 --> 01:24:55,440 a stamped signature of Degas, on all Degas' work. 1018 01:24:55,520 --> 01:25:01,160 So here are the sales catalogues of the sales after Degas' death. 1019 01:25:01,240 --> 01:25:05,760 You have here the first catalogue, which is the first sale in 1918. 1020 01:25:07,000 --> 01:25:08,480 And you see that... 1021 01:25:10,520 --> 01:25:14,440 the experts for that sale are Mr Bernheim Jeune, 1022 01:25:15,200 --> 01:25:17,440 Durand-Ruel, and Vollard. 1023 01:25:18,000 --> 01:25:20,800 And the exhibition takes place at Georges Petit's Gallery. 1024 01:25:22,640 --> 01:25:26,120 Here you have the three various stamps they will use 1025 01:25:26,200 --> 01:25:31,680 in order to put Degas' signature on all these works of art which are not signed, 1026 01:25:31,760 --> 01:25:34,400 because they are in the artist's studio. 1027 01:25:34,480 --> 01:25:38,880 They'd authenticate the works of art and sign them with a stamp. 1028 01:25:44,440 --> 01:25:47,280 The works that Degas collected furiously, 1029 01:25:47,360 --> 01:25:51,520 mainly in the 1890s, were put up for sale. 1030 01:25:51,600 --> 01:25:55,240 He was a hugely enthusiastic collector himself. 1031 01:25:56,480 --> 01:26:01,320 But also a series of studio sales of his own work. 1032 01:26:01,400 --> 01:26:03,800 And they were hugely revealing. 1033 01:26:03,880 --> 01:26:09,640 He'd kept works in his studio from really his earliest career as an artist, 1034 01:26:09,720 --> 01:26:12,280 so the 1850s and early 1860s, 1035 01:26:12,360 --> 01:26:14,360 as well as thousands, 1036 01:26:14,440 --> 01:26:16,640 hundreds of drawings of nudes, 1037 01:26:16,720 --> 01:26:19,920 late charcoal drawings which were studio works, 1038 01:26:20,040 --> 01:26:22,520 again never intended for exhibition. 1039 01:26:25,160 --> 01:26:27,520 His legacy has been enormous, I think, 1040 01:26:28,640 --> 01:26:33,640 and it's partly due to his openness to new technology. 1041 01:26:33,720 --> 01:26:38,800 On the other hand, his engagement with that sensuality of colour, 1042 01:26:38,880 --> 01:26:43,400 you can see clear links to late 20th-century artists, 1043 01:26:43,480 --> 01:26:46,000 like Howard Hodgkin, for example, 1044 01:26:46,080 --> 01:26:49,080 for whom the experience of colour 1045 01:26:49,160 --> 01:26:55,240 is something that is capable of being eloquent and articulate 1046 01:26:55,320 --> 01:26:58,160 in describing our relationships to each other, 1047 01:26:58,240 --> 01:27:01,800 the quality of emotions we may experience in everyday life. 1048 01:27:03,000 --> 01:27:06,120 I think unquestionably he's a brilliant artist. 1049 01:27:06,200 --> 01:27:13,240 The extraordinary range, ingenuity, variety of work 1050 01:27:13,320 --> 01:27:16,320 that he achieved in a whole range of different media, 1051 01:27:16,400 --> 01:27:20,840 which was extremely adventurous and experimental. 1052 01:27:22,200 --> 01:27:29,320 I think it always has to be measured in the context of the time he worked. 1053 01:27:29,400 --> 01:27:33,680 It's really important not to ignore the past 1054 01:27:33,760 --> 01:27:37,120 and the way the past coloured his view, 1055 01:27:37,200 --> 01:27:41,200 and colours how we see him. 1056 01:27:43,720 --> 01:27:45,559 Degas' work looks effortless. 1057 01:27:45,640 --> 01:27:48,920 Those drawings, those pastels, look as if they were just dashed off, 1058 01:27:49,040 --> 01:27:52,200 but of course we know that he worked incredibly hard. 1059 01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:54,280 No wonder he was so grumpy in later life. 1060 01:27:54,360 --> 01:27:56,880 This kind of slightly obsessive quality 1061 01:27:57,000 --> 01:27:59,000 that I think made Degas 1062 01:27:59,080 --> 01:28:02,480 this most fascinating, and most perfectionist of artists. 1063 01:28:02,559 --> 01:28:06,559 Also, one of the sort of flawed geniuses of art as well. 1064 01:28:08,640 --> 01:28:13,640 I think Degas is a very great artist and of that coterie of impressionist, 1065 01:28:13,720 --> 01:28:16,880 post-impressionist painters, I think he is one of the very greatest. 1066 01:28:27,520 --> 01:28:30,120 "The gods are dead, 1067 01:28:30,200 --> 01:28:37,520 poetry alone is left to us, the last star in the night of chaos. 1068 01:28:37,600 --> 01:28:42,120 I have seen some very beautiful things through my anger, 1069 01:28:42,200 --> 01:28:44,800 and what consoles me a little, 1070 01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:50,320 is that through my anger I do not stop looking. 1071 01:28:51,200 --> 01:28:54,280 Art is not a matter of what you see, 1072 01:28:54,360 --> 01:28:58,559 but what you make other people see." 89864

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