Paris. While the canvases and pastels of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) caused a sensation at the “Manet-Degas” exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, the National Library of France (BNF) was interested in a more confidential but not less important part of the artist’s work: the work in black and white. The curators, Henri Loyrette, honorary president and director of the Louvre Museum and Degas specialist, and Sylvie Aubenas, Valérie Sueur-Hermel and Flora Triebel from the BNF, show how leaves and canvases previously approached separately according to their technique form a whole.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), The Matchmaker, monotype, c. 1879, 16.1 x 11.8 cm (image), Library of the National Institute of Art History, Jacques Doucet collections.
The one hundred and sixty works gathered for this demonstration tell of a passion: “If I had to redo my life, I would only do black and white”, wrote the painter in 1906 to the engraver and lithographer Georges Villa. One of the twenty-nine sketchbooks by Degas kept in the Cabinet des Estampes, Carnet 1 (1859-1864), is being restored and loose sheets are on display. Pen drawings and wash drawings make Henri Loyrette say that Degas “saw first in black and white” rather than in color. In 1874, during what we now call the “first Impressionist exhibition”, Edgar Degas showed, alongside the works of Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro, a grisaille oil on canvas titled Ballet rehearsal on the stage. Designpossibly a model for engraving. “But when you have everyone on your back to ask you for color!…”later regret the artist to the merchant Ambroise Vollard.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Self-portrait with Zoé Closier in front of his library, photograph, 19.2 x 25.4 cm, 1895, BNF collection.
