EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
1 More
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
4 More
FROM THE HEART: THE COLLECTION OF DR. JULIUS AND JOAN JACOBSON
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)

Rue de village

Details
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
Rue de village
stamped with signature 'Degas' (Lugt 658; lower right)
oil on canvas
31 7/8 x 27 1/4 in. (81 x 69.4 cm.)
Painted circa 1895-1898
Provenance
Estate of the artist; Third sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 7-9 April 1919, lot 35.
Charles Viguier, Paris; Estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 21 May 1931, lot 13.
Anon. sale, Palais Galliéra, Paris, 5 December 1968, lot 38.
Galerie Schmit, Paris (by 1969).
Acquired from the above by the late owners, March 1983.
Literature
P.-A. Lemoisne, Degas et son oeuvre, Paris, 1946, vol. III, p. 704, no. 1212 (illustrated, p. 705).
F. Russoli and F. Minervino, L'opera completa di Degas, Milan, 1970, p. 138, no. 1178 (illustrated, p. 139).
Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Schmit, Cent ans de peinture française, May-June 1969, p. 48, no. 36 (illustrated in color).
Tokyo, Ginza Matsuzakaya; Sapporo Matsuzakaya; Osaka Matsuzakaya; Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum; Nagoya Matsuzakaya; Shizuka Matsuzakaya and Tokyo, Ueno Matsuzakaya, Le centenaire de l'impressionisme, July 1974-November 1974, no. 14 (illustrated in color).
Paris, Galerie Schmit, Degas, May-June 1975, p. 72, no. 36 (illustrated in color, p. 73).
Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and Fukuoka Red Brick Culture Museum, Degas, September 1976-January 1977, no. 23 (illustrated in color).
Paris, Galerie Schmit, Maîtres français, XIXème-XXème siècles, May-July 1979, p. 21, no. 19 (illustrated in color).
Tokyo, Isetan Museum of Art; Mie Prefectural Art Museum; Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts; Okayama Prefectural Museum and Kasama Nichido Museum, Edgar Degas, October 1988-May 1989, p. 142, no. 76 (illustrated in color).
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Degas Landscapes, January-July 1994. no. 73 (illustrated in color, pp. 250-251, fig. 219).
London, The National Gallery and The Art Institute of Chicago, Degas: Beyond Impressionism, May 1996-January 1997, p. 292, no. 101 (illustrated in color).
Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and Columbus Museum of Art, Edgar Degas: The Last Landscapes, June 2006-January 2007, pp. 44-46 (illustrated, p. 45, fig. 48).

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).

More from Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale

View All
View All