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Edgar
Degas
Dans un café
(In a café), also called L’absinthe (Absinthe)
1876
Oil
on canvas
92x68cm
Musée
d’Orsay, Paris, France
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Often
considered as an Impressionist artist, through the unconventional composition used
in his paintings and the dynamic portrayal of the spontaneous moments captured,
French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas has demonstrated that he is not only an
Impressionist painter but also a talented photographer who is capable of
executing a snapshot with his brushes and paint.
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Edgar Degas
The Bellelli
Family
1858–1867
Oil on canvas
200x253 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
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Born
in Paris in 1834, Degas began to paint early in life. At the Louvre where he was enlisted as a
copyist, he met artist Jean August Dominique, whose advice he would never
forget: “Draw lines, young man, and still more lines,
both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist.” He was later admitted to École des Beaux-Arts and
soon afterwards he started painting his early masterpiece The
Bellelli Family, a portrait of his
aunt, her husband, and their two young daughters, intended for exhibition in
the Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris,
France.
Having become increasingly disappointed with the rigid rules, judgements and
elitism of the Salon, Degas began showing his work
with a group of Impressionist artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste
Renoir and Paul Cézanne who were organizing an independent exhibiting society and
soon took a leading role in organising the exhibitions. Although Degas rejected the term
“Impressionism” and preferred to be called a realist, he is regarded as one of
the founders and major representatives of Impressionism, due to his innovating
composition, perspective analysis of motion, experiment with colours and forms
and depictions of contemporary daily life.
L’absinthe was created in 1875-1876 while
Degas was living in Paris. It depicts a
scene in a Parisian café where a man and a woman are seated side-by-side behind
a rectangular table. They are positioned
to the right of the painting and take up approximately two-thirds of the canvas
space. The scruffy man who wears a hat is
smoking a pipe, with his arm on the table, gazing emptily to the right beyond
the border of the canvas away from the woman. Dressed like a prostitute, the woman is
staring ahead blankly with an empty expression, oblivious of her surroundings,
her arms hanging limply by her side and her back slouching. On the table before them are two beverages, a
glass of green-coloured liquor before the woman and a black coffee before the
man. The green
liquor that gives the title of the painting is the notoriously addictive,
highly-alcoholic and toxic absinthe, which became very popular in France during
1850s. The painting was originally named
Dans un Café (In a Café) in its first showing in 1876 and was later renamed L’absinthe (Absinthe) by a gallery where it was displayed. Although in the painting two people are sitting
next to each other at the same table, the lack of interaction with each other,
the body language and the blank facial expression strongly suggested a sense of
loneliness, isolation and despair. Degas
leaves viewers wonder whether it was the addictive alcohol that caused the
desolation or was it the increasing social isolation in Paris during its stage
of rapid growth that made the couple having to resort to the poisonous drink to
escape from reality.
The
models posed as the woman and the man in the café are Parisian actress Ellen
Andrée and Bohemian artist Marcellin Desboutin. Degas intended his two models to pose as
absinthe addicts in front of his favourite café, the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes, which
was a popular meeting place situated in the Place Pigalle in Paris for many
artists including Degas and his friend Édouard Manet.
As much as Degas disliked being
classified an “impressionist”, L’absinthe
is clearly Impressionistic in terms of it subject matter, brushstrokes and
compositions. Impressionism was a term
that was used to describe an art movement during 1870s and 1880s in spite of
harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France and it
represented a new style of painting where a momentary impression is captured by
the artist. It is often marked by small,
thin, visible brushstrokes, a bright palette, an emphasis on the changing
quality of lights and an open, arbitrary-looking framing, with landscapes and
scenes of urban life being the favourite motifs usually. In L’absinthe
Degas showed viewers a glimpse of the Parisian café. The off-centre framing, the substantial foreground
and the cropping of the man’s pipe at the edge all give the impression of a
snapshot taken by an onlooker at a nearby table. The presence of the shadow of the two people
reflected in the mirror and use of the dark but harmoniously related tones of
colour are also a resemblance of the painting to a photograph. The short, thick strokes of paint that quickly
captured the essence of the subject, rather than its details, are again clear
indications that this painting is Impressionistic. All these elements can be contrasted by his
early work The Bellelli Family, a
family portrait where all the figures are aligned horizontally with little
emphasis on light and shadow, and where lines and surfaces are smooth and
polished without a clear trace of the brushstrokes.
It was probable that due to the
controversial subject matter, that a woman is drinking absinthe in public, L’absinthe was not well received by the
critics when it was first exhibited. It
was criticised as “ugly and disgusting” and regarded as a setback to morality
and degradation to the society. Some English
critics viewed it as a warning lesson against absinthe and the French in
general. The female model, Ellen Andrée,
was described as “What a whore!” by a critic.
The liquor was later banned in France in 1915.
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Edgar
Degas
The
Dance Class
1873–1876
Oil
on canvas
85x75cm
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Nevertheless, despite the
controversy L’absinthe remains an
important piece of work by Degas in representing his artistic style. Impressionistic and captivating, the painting
is essentially a snapshot executed in paint. Degas evidenced
his mature style of photographic painting by cropping subjects awkwardly and by
choosing unusual viewpoints. Similarly,
in The Dance Class where a group of
young female ballet dancers were portrayed having ballet class with a master,
dancers’ bodies were cropped abruptly and the main subject’s position is
off-centred.
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Edgar
Degas
Musicians
in the Orchestra
1872
Oil on canvas
49x69cm
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In Musicians in the
Orchestra, it is even more apparent that Degas has deliberately chosen a
most unexpected viewpoint, i.e. from the orchestra pit, to observe the ballet
dancers on stage, whose figures are again cropped by the edge of the
painting. These fascinating depictions
of seemingly spontaneous scenes with their innovative compositions are all
evidence of the influence that both Impressionism and photography had on
Degas. Given his profound interest in
repeatedly applying photographic techniques in his paintings, it is only a
natural consequence that Degas eventually took up photography in his later
years. His friends including
Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and poet Stéphane Mallarmé became
the subjects of his photographs.
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Édouard Manet
The
Plum
1872
Oil
on canvas
74x50cm
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Degas’s
mature cinematic painting style can be demonstrated more evidently by
contrasting L’absinthe
with The Plum, a painting by Degas’s
artist friend Édouard Manet. The same actress who posed for L’absinthe is depicted in The Plum similarly as a lonely,
melancholic woman sitting in a Parisian café with a plum soaked in brandy
before her on the table, staring ahead blankly.
Unlike in L’absinthe, the woman
is positioned in the centre of the painting and there is no abrupt cropping at
the edge. Whilst it still resembles a
snapshot, its cinematic effect is not as strong and dramatic as it is in L’absinthe.
Through
his photographic paintings Degas has introduced a revolutionary idea in craving
the reality and giving the impression of a spontaneous event. Unlike his predecessors, Degas portrayed parts
of a person using unconventional composition making paintings appear like
snapshots, letting viewers imagine and wonder what is beyond the canvas. Even though his paintings depict spontaneous
moments, for Degas, it is through careful calculations and adjustments that
such result is achieved. Degas has once
said that “no art could be less spontaneous than mine. Inspiration, spontaneity, temperament are
unknown to me. One has to do the same
subject ten times, even a hundred times over. In art, nothing should look like
chance, not even movement.” In L’absinthe,
whilst the painting is akin to a snapshot where it looks as if the painter is
present in the café capturing the drinkers, the painting was actually completed
in his studio where his friends were posing as the models. By
his deliberate use of photography techniques in painting, Degas has
successfully portrayed an illusion of reality, an image so intriguing and
captivating that anyone who has viewed it would find it difficult to forget.
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