Manet and Degas, a meeting at the Musée d’Orsay – World

World – Paul Valery spoke of “wonderful cohabitations” that border on dissonant chords.
But perhaps for us moderns the relationship between Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas was more a relationship of love and hate, but without which modern painting would not have been the same.
Accomplices and at the same time rivals, the two artists meet again at the Musée d’Orsay for a brushstroke comparison between little-known anecdotes and stories that pave the way for new readings, demonstrating how much pictorial modernity was as heterogeneous as it was confrontational.
From 28 March to 23 July the two masters of light will be the protagonists of the new exhibition which at the Musée d’Orsay offers a glimpse into the nature and works of the two champions of painting.
The itinerary, curated by Isolde Pludermacher and Stéphane Guégan, is organized by the Orsay and Orangerie museums and by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where the exhibition will arrive from September 2023 to January 2024.

Édouard Manet, The Reading, 1848-1883, Oil on canvas, 73.2 x 61 cm, Paris Musée d’Orsay © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

Besides being rivals in painting, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas also differed in temperament, training, and even musical and literary tastes. The first, who had the courage to impress on the paintings “the poetry and wonder of modern life” through gypsies and singers, challenging the art of the time with the same gaze as Olympia – the classical Venus represented like a prostitute – was sociable and brilliant. Degas, on the other hand, was mysterious, reserved, a genius in the continuous and obsessive search for perfection, a mania which, on some occasions, even drove him to ask clients to get his paintings back in order to be able to retouch them further.
Yet what the two giants, protagonists of the new painting of the 1860s-80s, had in common was a friendship characterized by strong artistic affinities, as well as the choice of subjects to represent on the canvas, from horse racing to café scenes.

Rich in masterpieces never brought together before, the exhibition recounts an unprecedented partnership, prompting the public to investigate the short-lived complicity and perennial rivalry of two giants with new eyes. Among the unmissable pieces shines the Family portrait (The Bellelli family) by Degas, in which the painter succeeds in restoring the restlessness of a silent domestic drama with an entirely contemporary psychological subtlety.

Edgar Degas, Young Woman with an Ibis, 1857–58, Oil on canvas, 74.9 x 100 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This masterpiece from the Musée d’Orsay, restored for the exhibition thanks to the sponsorship of Friends of Florence, dates back to the painter’s youth and bears witness to his links with Italy. From the summer of 1858 to the spring of the following year, Degas stayed in Florence with his aunt Laure de Gas and her husband, Baron Gennaro Bellelli, then in exile in the Tuscan city.
In view of this monumental family portrait, the artist carried out numerous studies of his uncles and cousins, the little Giovanna and Giulia. The painting is a superb example of the young Degas’ ability to skilfully analyze the psychology of his models.
X-rays of the work confirmed the presence of numerous repentances, while infrared reflectography revealed traces of preparatory drawings passing through the restoration mastics, crucial information which proves the artist’s intervention on the already lacerated painting, and therefore the his involvement in the restoration of the work.

Edgar Degas, Beach scene: girl with her hair combed by the nurse, 1869-1870, Oil on canvas, 82.9 x 47.5 cm, London, The National Gallery | © The National Gallery, London

Alongside this painting which, thanks to the restoration, has regained its luminosity, freshness and color accuracy, the exhibition welcomes other masterpieces such as Young lady by Manet, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well young woman with ibis in Degas.
“It was bigger than we thought” recognized a moved Degas, during the funeral of his colleague, being the first to recite the mea culpa of the entire art society in front of the grotesque painter who scandalized Salon and made the right-thinking Parisians jump. Not even death will interrupt the relationship between the two which will rather know a new evolution.

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