Sunday, September 4, 2016

Edgar Degas at the Clark Art Institute

Edgar Degas
Portrait studies of a man
ca. 1856-57
drawing
Clark Art Institute

Above, an early study by Edgar Degas drawn with a characteristic youthful meticulousness that would be surpassed and abandoned in the later work. Below, several impressions of Degas in person, recorded by fellow artists in Paris during his lifetime.

Maurice Denis
Edgar Degas & his Model
1905
etching
Clark Art Institute

Georges Jeanniot
Portrait of Edgar Degas
ca. 1885
drawing
Clark Art Institute

Marcellin Desboutin
Edgar Degas in Profile
1876
drypoint
Clark Art Institute

Marcellin Desboutin
Edgar Degas au chapeau
1876
drypoint
Clark Art Institute

The Degas artifacts brought together here are from collections at the Clark Art Institute. The extraordinarily complicated image immediately below  a print of actresses in their dressing rooms, presented as a sequence of fragmented panels that simultaneously defy and represent recession in space  makes my gratitude to the Clark tangible and specific, because I had never encountered it previously anywhere else.

Edgar Degas
Actresses in their Dressing Rooms
ca. 1875
etching, aquatint
Clark Art Institute

Edgar Degas
Leaving the Bath
caa. 1879-80
etching
Clark Art Institute

Edgar Degas
Studies of the Borghese Gladiator
ca. 1853-56
drawing
Clark Art Institute

The final two drawings (below) carry the red signature-stamp at lower left. This stamp was applied to hundreds of sheets that remained in the studio after the death of the artist in 1917. Most of these were sold by the heirs at a series of famous auctions in the 1920s. And many of them (like these two) found institutional homes in America.

Edgar Degas
Study of Drapery
ca. 1860-65
drawing
Clark Art Institute

Edgar Degas
Standing Nude
ca. 1860-65
drawing
Clark Art Institute