Lot Essay
During the mid-1890s, Degas produced a series of more than fifteen significant works in a variety of media, including twelve oil paintings, depicting the seaside town of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme on the Picardy coast in the Hauts-de-France region. In his youth, the artist had regularly vacationed in the resort town with his family, and drew a street plan of its medieval lanes in a sketch book while he was in his mid-twenties. Some forty years later when Degas had passed his sixtieth year and achieved considerable celebrity, he made several trips to the coast to visit his brother René–who rented a house in Saint-Valéry–and to stay with his friend, the younger artist Louis Braqueval (1854-1919).
Jeanne Raunay, an opera singer who knew both Braqueval and Degas, wrote, “Degas loved to return to this little town where his parents had taken him as a child. He found there everything he had once enjoyed: the sea with all its surprises, roads bordered by old houses, the walls of a ruined tower, a monumental gate under which Joan of Arc had passed; but above all, he would rediscover the first memories of his childhood, and he could recall those he had loved” (quoted in R. Kendall, op. cit., exh. cat., 2006, p. 44).
Richard Kendall, who has studied the series extensively, observed that, “Village Street, Saint Valéry [the present lot] shows an obscure cobbled lane close to Braqueval’s house, situated half-way between the ruined abbey and the parish church. On either side are ancient walls and cottages, while the steep decent of the path contrasts vividly with the flatness of the lower town. If Degas had positioned himself a little higher, he might have included the Bay of the Somme beyond the painted rooftops but in this and a number of similar works, he seems to have chosen to suppress the maritime association” (ibid., p. 42).
Most of the chosen subjects in the series were taken from locations close to Braqueval’s home, pointing to a very direct contact between the artist and his motif. However, Degas does not appear to have been concerned with reproducing local topography in any detail. Instead, “windows and doors change shape or disappear, a line of trees is imperiously axed, and roof-lines and walls take on new orientations to suit altered painterly circumstances” (ibid., p. 54). Elsewhere, Kendell notes that, “These latter canvasses are deceptively simple in appearance, yet extraordinarily complex in structure…they seem to be synthetic reformulations of observed elements, constructed by Degas from disparate views of the town in a collage-like process, which may depend on photography or conceptual verve but has few equals in the age before Cubism” (R. Kendall, op. cit., exh. cat., 1996, p. 278).
The artist was less interested in capturing a sense of place than he was in form, light, color and mood. “In both pastels and oil-paintings, a subtle dialog between structure and tonality appears to energize the scene, the artist beckoning his viewers forward into space, then calling us back with delicate textures and surface hues. Each work offers a restatement of this theme, now emphasizing the ponderous mass of walls and the tactility of roadways, now hinting at the delicacies of atmosphere…Colors have been floated across the canvas, playing off course linen against luscious paint, dense shadow against opalescent sky.” Richard Kendall continues, “Most of the surviving paintings were begun as networks of emphatic painted lines, many of which were ruled, using either black or dark-blue oil color directly on the primed canvas. Over this wiry scaffolding, translucent veils and dense crusts of paint were added, though often with further delineations as the picture progressed. Working from depth to surface, from illusionism to pattern-making, Degas found himself face to face with the elements of his craft” (op. cit., exh. cat., 2006, pp. 48 and 52).
Jeanne Raunay, an opera singer who knew both Braqueval and Degas, wrote, “Degas loved to return to this little town where his parents had taken him as a child. He found there everything he had once enjoyed: the sea with all its surprises, roads bordered by old houses, the walls of a ruined tower, a monumental gate under which Joan of Arc had passed; but above all, he would rediscover the first memories of his childhood, and he could recall those he had loved” (quoted in R. Kendall, op. cit., exh. cat., 2006, p. 44).
Richard Kendall, who has studied the series extensively, observed that, “Village Street, Saint Valéry [the present lot] shows an obscure cobbled lane close to Braqueval’s house, situated half-way between the ruined abbey and the parish church. On either side are ancient walls and cottages, while the steep decent of the path contrasts vividly with the flatness of the lower town. If Degas had positioned himself a little higher, he might have included the Bay of the Somme beyond the painted rooftops but in this and a number of similar works, he seems to have chosen to suppress the maritime association” (ibid., p. 42).
Most of the chosen subjects in the series were taken from locations close to Braqueval’s home, pointing to a very direct contact between the artist and his motif. However, Degas does not appear to have been concerned with reproducing local topography in any detail. Instead, “windows and doors change shape or disappear, a line of trees is imperiously axed, and roof-lines and walls take on new orientations to suit altered painterly circumstances” (ibid., p. 54). Elsewhere, Kendell notes that, “These latter canvasses are deceptively simple in appearance, yet extraordinarily complex in structure…they seem to be synthetic reformulations of observed elements, constructed by Degas from disparate views of the town in a collage-like process, which may depend on photography or conceptual verve but has few equals in the age before Cubism” (R. Kendall, op. cit., exh. cat., 1996, p. 278).
The artist was less interested in capturing a sense of place than he was in form, light, color and mood. “In both pastels and oil-paintings, a subtle dialog between structure and tonality appears to energize the scene, the artist beckoning his viewers forward into space, then calling us back with delicate textures and surface hues. Each work offers a restatement of this theme, now emphasizing the ponderous mass of walls and the tactility of roadways, now hinting at the delicacies of atmosphere…Colors have been floated across the canvas, playing off course linen against luscious paint, dense shadow against opalescent sky.” Richard Kendall continues, “Most of the surviving paintings were begun as networks of emphatic painted lines, many of which were ruled, using either black or dark-blue oil color directly on the primed canvas. Over this wiry scaffolding, translucent veils and dense crusts of paint were added, though often with further delineations as the picture progressed. Working from depth to surface, from illusionism to pattern-making, Degas found himself face to face with the elements of his craft” (op. cit., exh. cat., 2006, pp. 48 and 52).