Photo by Braun, Clement & Co.
NOTRE DAME · J. F. RAFFAËLLI
J. F. RAFFAËLLI
During the course of a long and strenuous career, Raffaëlli has received many decorations. He is of the Legion of Honour, besides having received numerous medals and awards from foreign exhibitions. He is represented adequately in the Luxembourg, and many continental galleries. He enjoys the admiration and friendship of a host of connoisseurs throughout the world. His studio is most pleasant. Facing the broad green sweeps of the boulevard by the fortifications, in the Rue de Courcelles, it occupies a large area on the ground floor, having been built over a spacious courtyard surrounded by banks of foliage and flowers. The predominant note is that of cheerfulness. The decoration is bright and restful, the ruling colours being delicate shades of yellow and blue. The usual theatrical adornments of a French studio are absent; there are no oriental carpets and rugs, no armour, no antique furniture, so dear to the heart of the Gallic painter. In this atelier the master holds periodical conferences, exhibitions, and friendly gatherings. Upon these occasions one will meet the cleverest men in Paris, for Raffaëlli is a celebrated conversationalist as well as a famous artist.
Degas has a temperament strangely different from that of Raffaëlli, and, although always classed with the Impressionists, he stands apart from the recognised group. He has never endeavoured to transmit the impression of atmosphere, and work “en plein air” does not attract him. He has, however, profited much by the teaching of the Impressionists, particularly in relation to the use of radiant colour, for at one time he painted in greys which were closely allied to black. He exhibited continually with the other men in the early days of the movement, and proved a genius both in suggestion and organisation.
Hilaire Germain Edgard Degas was born in Paris, July 19, 1834. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1855, studying under Lamothe and also having Ingres for a master. He made his first appearance at the Salon of 1865 with a pastel entitled War in the Middle Ages. In 1866 he contributed the Steeplechase, the first of his series devoted to scenes of modern life. In 1867 he exhibited Family Portraits, in 1868 the portrait of a ballet-dancer, and during 1869 and 1870 some further portraits which closed his connection with official art, for he never sent contributions to the Salon again. In his early work he did not confine his brush to subjects of daily actuality, such compositions as Semiramis Building the Walls of Babylon and Spartan Youths Wrestling being far removed both in style and genre from later work. During the sixties his canvases were classical in spirit as well as in subject. He had a strong feeling for the Primitives together with Fra Angelico, and much of his work conveyed a reminiscence of Holbein. A Realist from the beginning, the Interior of an American Cotton-Broker’s Office, painted in 1860, shows that his temperament has never radically changed. This canvas, now in the museum at Pau, is minutely exact in all its details. It is Realism but emotionless, without atmosphere and lacking all feeling. It shows too that forty-three years ago the artist was acquiring that facility of hand which has placed him at the head of modern draughtsmen.
Degas exhibited in company with Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists generally, at five exhibitions, namely 1874, 1876, 1878, 1879 and 1880. In the last-named year he exhibited a series of portraits of criminals, and commenced to model figures of dancers in wax. In December 1884 he showed some racecourse scenes, and at the last exhibition of the Impressionists in 1886 exhibited studies of the nude, jockeys, washerwomen, and other characters of modern life. He has worked with the etcher’s needle, and also in lithography, his subjects being generally confined to theatrical life and incidents noticeable on the Parisian boulevards.
The characteristic of Degas personally is mystery. He now refuses to exhibit his works, he shuts his door to all visitors. Like most artists he detests writers, and there is a legend that he successfully grappled with one enterprising but unwelcome interviewer and dropped the unfortunate critic down a flight of stairs. This proves how thoroughly his principles are carried out in practice. “I think that literature has only done harm to art,” he said once to George Moore. “You puff out the artist with vanity, you inculcate the taste for notoriety, and that is all; you do not advance public taste by one jot. Notwithstanding all your scribbling it never was in a worse state than it is at present. You do not even help us to sell our pictures. A man buys a picture, not because he read an article in a newspaper, but because a friend, who he thinks knows something about pictures, told him it would be worth twice as much ten years hence as it is worth to-day.”
With these strong views one can understand the attitude of Degas to the art world in general. It was a very different attitude from that of Manet who gloried in the fight. “Do you remember,” Degas said once to George Moore (who quotes the conversation in his “Impressions and Opinions”), “how Manet used to turn on me when I wouldn’t send my pictures to the Salon? He would say, ‘You, Degas, you are above the level of the sea, but for my part, if I get into an omnibus and some one doesn’t say, “M. Manet, how are you, where are you going?” I am disappointed, for I know then that I am not famous.’” This conversation reveals in a curious manner the differing characters of the two men; Manet with that attractive vanity so often to be found in the artistic temperament, Degas, a satiric misanthrope analysing the degraded types which make up the gay life of Paris.