Richmond and Mr. Crane.
Mr. Richmond says "it is not painting at all". We must understand
therefore that the picture is void of all accomplishment--composition,
drawing, and handling. We will take Mr. Richmond's objections in their
order. The subject-matter out of which the artist extracted his
composition was a man and woman seated in a cafe furnished with marble
tables. The first difficulty the artist had to overcome was the
symmetry of the lines of the tables. Not only are they exceedingly
ugly from all ordinary points of view, but they cut the figures in
two. The simplest way out of the difficulty would be to place one
figure on one side of a table, the other on the other side, and this
composition might be balanced by a waiter seen in the distance. That
would be an ordinary arrangement of the subject. But the ingenuity
with which Degas selects his point of view is without parallel in the
whole history of art. And this picture is an excellent example. One
line of tables runs up the picture from left to right, another line of
tables, indicated by three parts of one table, strikes right across
the foreground. The triangle thus formed is filled by the woman's
dress, which is darker than the floor and lighter than the leather
bench on which both figures are seated. Looking still more closely
into the composition, we find that it is made of several perspectives
--the dark perspective of the bench, the light perspective of the
partition behind, on which the light falls, and the rapid perspective
of the marble table in the foreground.
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