After Degas: Burrell Collection at the National Gallery

A small Degas show, “Drawn in Colour,” at the National Gallery until 7 May, comprises a splendid group of pictures, chiefly on loan from the Burrell Collection, near Glasgow, complemented by some from the National’s own horde. It’s a little difficult to find, as it’s not in the Sainsbury wing, but in the main-floor galleries, and the National Gallery’s  disability-challenging signage doesn’t help.

We think of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) as the disagreeable old man he certainly became, nursing grudges, profoundly conservative – to the point of hating the new-fangled telephone, anti-Semitic, anti-Dreyfusard, curmudgeonly and even, some say, misogynistic. Picasso relished (perhaps shared) the older artist’s voyeurism.  But some sympathetic traits emerge from this little show, artistic traits, not praiseworthy traits of character, to be sure. But in the wonderful Burrell pastel of mounted “Jockeys in the Rain” (c.1883-36) with the huge expanse of turf at the bottom and left of this strange composition, in the room devoted to ballet dancers, and the wall of nude female bathers, you realise that Degas never painted en plain air, could not have drawn the ballet scenes from life, and probably drew and painted the awkwardly bathing women in the studio as well.

There is one example of a photograph. A gelatin silver print (c.1896) of a woman drying herself after the bath, which is obviously related to the three paintings he did of the woman clumsily twisting around on her towel – the NG is lucky enough to own the best one (bequeathed, I learned from the catalogue, only in 2006 by the late Simon Sainsbury, who must have had one hell of a collection). Degas worked these up in the studio, as he did most of the paintings that are cropped unusually, such as the “Jockeys in the Rain” and “The Rehearsal” (c.1874). I remember being showed slides of these by John Rewald, in his lectures at the University of Chicago, and being told how the bare floorboards in this last, with the curving staircase partially shown on the left, and the ballerina sliced in half in the right foreground, were as daring as the green turf of the former.

This mode of working, of remembering and working up the image in the studio, reminds me of the practice of the late Howard Hodgkin, who painted a great picture called “After Degas” (1993) and made a print with the same title in 1990-91, both incorporating striking green-coloured frames; also a painting, “James Fenton’s Degas” 2000 with a darker green frame; and he returned to the brighter green frame for “Tribute” (2001-2002), which his website groups with the others, when you search for “Degas.”

Howard Hodgkin, After Degas

1993

26 x 30″, 66 x 76cm

Oil on wood

 

Howard Hodgkin. After Degas

1990 – 1991

10 x 12 1/2″, 25.5 x 32cm

Intaglio print with carborundum from three aluminium plates, printed in two shades of red ochre and two mixes of burnt Sienna, chrome yellow and raw umber, and grey, with hand colouring in veronese green egg tempera. On Aquarelle Larroque moulins de Larroque et Pombie (240 gsm).

         It was this aspect of Degas, his painting from memory, probably remembering his feelings about the subject or circumstances of the instant pictured, that I believe Howard treasured – though the use of colour and radical compositions must have been part of his admiration for Degas.  The current exhibition has two Degas “Russian Dancers” (both c. 1899). The one belonging to the National Gallery, pastel and charcoal on tracing paper, is the clear inspiration for Howard’s “Degas’ Russian Dancers” (2006-07). Hodgkin thrillingly captures the dramatic forward trust of the dancer’s leg diagonally splitting Degas’ composition.

Russian Dancers 
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
about 1899

Pastel and charcoal on tracing paper, 73 x 59.1 cm

Howard Hodgkin,

Degas’ Russian Dancers

2006 – 2007

30 7/8 x 34 7/8″, 78.4 x 88.6cm

Oil on wood

         Incidentally, there’s speculation about whether Degas’ women bathers are models or even prostitutes, unlike the dancers, who are obviously dancers (though he might have used models later, in the studio, to fill in their features). But note that some of the images, such as the NG’s “Combing the Hair” (c.1896) shows a woman having her long red hair combed by a maid in uniform; and the Burrell’s charcoal and pastel “After the Bath” (c.1890-5) shows a maidservant holding a towel for the bather; and that the Burrell’s pastel “Preparation for the Class” (c.1877) shows eight ballerinas, and two black-clad chaperones.

Combing the Hair 
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
about 1896

Oil on canvas 114.3 x 146.7 cm

 

There is some distinction of social class being made in these images. Are we looking at the intimate lives of Parisian working girls? Or are we pretending that we are looking at bourgeois bath-time? Or are we supposed to experience a frisson from looking at goings-on in the brothel? Or is this all completely irrelevant to Degas’ interesting and unusual vantage points, compositions and technical mastery? The exhibition raises some of these questions, but doesn’t answer many of them. They might have been dealt with more fully in the otherwise helpful catalogue. But this is a gem of a show, which delights the eye while making you think hard about what you are seeing.