Charles Saatchi
Degas was dismissed as a misogynist by fellow artists
Awoman slumped in her café seat, staring listlessly into space, her shoulders hunched and eyes glazed over, a glass of absinthe perched before her. She is dressed as a prostitute; the bar probably located close to Notre Dame de Paris, generally regarded as a popular haunt for women of the night, as well as artists, poets and writers. The man accompanying her is dressed shabbily, his eyes tired and empty.
The presence of the absinthe is central. It deliberately connects the drink, which was a stalwart of bohemian life at the time, to its role in society.
The painting, created in 1876, was entirely staged. Degas produced it in his studio; the man and woman were the artist’s friends. Sadly, after the painting was seen, his model, Ellen Andrée, was publicly perceived as a whore, his friend, Desboutin, as a destitute vagabond – reported by critics as a “man and a woman of the most degraded type”.
Degas wanted to set the record straight about the painting’s subjects. Desboutin, in fact, led a charmed and lavish lifestyle, owning large properties in Nice, as a result of his success as a printmaker and painter. Andrée trained to become a teacher, yet abandoned this in pursuit of her passion for the theatre and modelling. She periodically posed for Renoir and, most famously, for Manet, in his magnificent 1874 work La Parisienne.
Degas attempted to reveal the truth about the two protagonists in his painting, when it was viewed at Christie’s auction house, in 1892. But, instead, the sight of the painting caused a noisy stir among an aghast audience: it had clearly offended their overall sense of decency and propriety. The picture was hissed out of the room, selling for a modest £180 to a helpful friend of Degas’s.
The presence of absinthe was enough to antagonise a Victorian audience. The green spirit was held responsible for many blemishes against decency during the late 19th century but, at the time Degas made the picture, the radical café culture of Paris had fully embraced audacious creativity, with absinthe acting as a gregarious social lubricant. And, naturally, bohemian diehards shunned conventional notions such as marriage, monogamy, sobriety and family, which the Victorians held on to so fervently.
Absinthe was enjoyed across all classes, to the point that its popularity became something of a crisis, swiftly infecting much of Europe. Its very high alcohol content was known to render its users senseless, earning the title La fée verte – the green fairy. Due to its psychotropic and hallucinogenic properties, it was viewed as the catalyst for the hedonistic debauchery that its users were believed to indulge in.
Of course, many of the most celebrated artists and writers of the time enjoyed the drink, some even citing absinthe as a source of their inspiration. Oscar Wilde, Henri de Toulouse-lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway and Charles Baudelaire were vocal advocates.
What of Degas? An absinthe drinker himself, the painter was at the forefront of the art world, somewhat unwillingly cast as one of the leaders of the impressionist movement. In fact, he openly rejected the notion of himself as an impressionist when this term was coined by the press in the 1870s; rather, he maintained his stance as a realist, and clumsily explained that L’absinthe should not be seen as a brutal social judgment, but rather a representation of life as he saw it.
In general, his relationship with the impressionists was somewhat fraught. Degas mocked the impressionist tendency to produce works in the open air, and their obsession with landscape. Preferring to operate from his studio, Degas concentrated on human subjects, directly representing individuals as he wished them to be interpreted. The palette he used in these early years remained characteristically pale and washed out, presenting no hint of colour or vibrancy.
Unfortunately, Degas was acquiring a rather unflattering reputation for himself. Many saw him as a misogynist, and not simply as a result of his never marrying or showing any real interest in women. Almost certainly, it was because of the blunt and uncompromising way in which he painted the female form, with no softening or glossing over of imperfections. In general, his view of people was seen as rather acidic. Works such as The Rape and L’absinthe disturbed contemporaries in their bleak and remorseless portrayal of women in particular.
During his early years, he was dependent on money provided by his father, a prominent banker, to enable him to reject a conventional career and pursue painting. Sadly, this meant he was seen in artistic circles as a dilettante.
Worse, in later years Degas was also known as a staunch antisemite. This became particularly strident during the notorious Dreyfus affair of 1894-1906. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was accused of selling military secrets to Germany in an act of blatant treason. Degas energetically supported the vilification of Dreyfus, as the trial transfixed France. Finally, Dreyfus was proved to be utterly innocent, the false evidence placed against him due to the widespread antisemitism holding sway over much of the population. When the truth finally emerged, a shadow was cast over Degas’s reputation as a thoughtful intellectual.
Indeed, towards the culmination of his life, Degas appeared to live a bitter, lonely existence, hardly leaving the confines of his studio. He had outlived most of his contemporaries, isolating himself with only a housekeeper for company, his eyesight dwindling.
It was a tragic end for one of the most gifted of all artists. Many of his works are majestically radiant, with an impeccable touch for pictorial structure. The use of pastel, as seen in his ballerina studies, has never been equalled.
At his best, Degas succeeded in creating paintings that were both bewitching and thought-provoking – an immeasurable legacy of sublime art, despite his uneasy life.
He had a blunt way in which he painted the female form