The best
way--possibly the only way--to obtain any notion of the depth of the
abyss on which we stand will be by a plain statement of the facts.
When Ingres fell down in the fit from which he never recovered, it was
Degas who carried him out of his studio. Degas had then been working
with Ingres only a few months, but that brief while convinced Ingres
of his pupil's genius, and it is known that he believed that it would
be Degas who would carry on the classical tradition of which he was a
great exponent. Degas has done this, not as Flandren tried to, by
reproducing the externality of the master's work, but as only a man of
genius could, by the application of the method to new material.
Degas's early pictures, "The Spartan Youths" and "Semiramis building
the Walls of Babylon". are pure Ingres. To this day Degas might be
very fairly described as _un petit Ingres_. Do we not find Ingres'
penetrating and intense line in the thin straining limbs of Degas's
ballet-girls, in the heavy shoulders of his laundresses bent over the
ironing table, and in the coarse forms of his housewives who sponge
themselves in tin baths? The vulgar, who see nothing of a work of art
but its external side, will find it difficult to understand that the
art of "La Source" and of Degas's cumbersome housewives is the same.
To the vulgar, Bouguereau and not Degas is the interpreter of the
classical tradition.
'Hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and
seclusion, without which no great works are produced.
Pages:
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287