Degas [antikvár]

FOREWORD 'One is called a criminal for being different, and malicious for observing other people with too much clarity and penetration. But ivhat if one began with oneself?' André Suares Of all the 19th-century painters, Degas undoubtedly conforms most closely to Baudelaire's canon of 'modernity'. Being incomparably keen-sighted, he portrayed the society in which he lived with much greater precision than Constantin Guys, much greater subtlety than Courbet, much more realism than Manet; yet now, fifty years after his death, he shares neither the renown of van Gogh nor the respect accorded to Cézanne. He is the mal aitné and the misunderstood. At the Bibliotheque Nationale, looking through the bibliographical lists dealing with painters of that period, I discovered that there were hardly any books on Degas, whereas van Gogh and Gauguin took up whole pages. What was the reason for this ostracism? The answer, I decided, was that Degas had been 'out on a limb' from the point of view of his own environment, his own social class, the current of contemporary life; and it was this that