The man is high up on the
right-hand corner, the woman is in the middle of the picture, and
Degas has been careful to place her in front of the opening between
the tables, for by so doing he was able to carry his half-tint right
through the picture. The empty space on the left, so characteristic of
Degas's compositions, admirably balances the composition, and it is
only relieved by the stone matchbox, and the newspaper thrown across
the opening between the tables. Everywhere a perspective, and these
are combined with such strange art that the result is synthetic. A
beautiful dissonant rhythm, always symphonic _coulant longours de
source_; an exasperated vehemence and a continual desire of novelty
penetrated and informed by a severely classical spirit--that is my
reading of this composition.
"The qualities admired by this new school are certainly the mirrors of
that side of the nineteenth-century development most opposed to fine
painting, or, say, fine craftsmanship. Hurry, rush, fashion, are the
enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works
are produced. Hence the admiration for an art fully answering to a
demand. No doubt impressionism is an expression in painting of the
deplorable side of modern life."
After "forty years of the study of the best art of various schools
that the galleries of Europe display", Mr. Richmond mistakes Degas for
an impressionist (I use the word in its accepted sense); he follows
the lead of the ordinary art critic who includes Degas among the
impressionists because Degas paints dancing lessons, and because he
has once or twice exhibited with Monet and his followers.
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