The Absinthe Drinker

 

Degas, Dans un Cafe, 1875-6

This enigmatic and now famous painting, was originally bought in 1876 by the British collector, Henry Hull.  It ascended to infamy when it appeared in the Grafton Gallery’s inaugural London exhibitions in 1893 -  becoming the center of what might be called a culture war.   The old guard of the Academy was offended by its subject matter and/or appalled  by its rough, sketchy brush work.   The avant-garde of  Modernism appreciated the edgy realism and pictorial power.

Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergere, done five years later, also depicted a modern public, urban facility into which was front-and-centered  an attractive young woman who may or may not be a prostitute.  It was also somewhat scandalous, controversial, and  open to conflicting interpretations, as discussed here .

Most of the quotes presented below were found in this essay by Kimberley Morse Jones

Frank Holl, portrait of Henry Hull

 

I can't remember ever seeing the actual piece in the Musee D'Orsay, but I've certainly become familiar with the reproductions over the last  fifty years - and have never forgotten its firm admonition: "Don't drink absinthe, it will rot your brain!"

 But was the painting originally intended to deliver that message?

It was first called "In a Cafe" 

and the two people depicted were local artsy folk

who hung out in the same cafe where Degas often did.

 

By the way - here’s how the painting looks without the green glass.

For me, the design does not appear to be missing it,

and now it might well depict travelers at a station cafeteria 

waiting for the next train.

 

except that:

 

The design does seem to be centered on the contemplation of that unaccompanied woman.

Her isolation is emphasized by her close proximity to a man

who pays absolutely no attention to her.

(my friend Tor cynically suggested that they were an old married couple) .

 

The vertical center line of her body coincides with the vertical center line of the painting itself.

This image is about her -  and she's kind of lost / dazed / bewildered

especially in contrast to the dynamic fellow to her right.  

Perhaps she just lost her job or broke up with her boyfriend.

So it might be called a psychological study

enhanced by the feeling that you, the viewer,

are seated at an adjoining table in that public space.

This contrasts with the more theatrical setting

favored by the French Academy.

Here there is no sense of actors on a stage facing an audience.

It’s more like the intimate feeling created in Ukiyo-e.

Utamaro

This genre, then quite fashionable in Paris,

also depicts attractive, available young women

and works more with contour line than with the illusion of volume

Utamaro

And it uses strong, straight, diagonal edges 

to dramatically dig into pictorial space

The Japanese tradition elevates timeless elegance

while still creating immediacy -

like shadows on a sunny day,

this is a passing moment.

L’Absinthe is a bit more confrontational than an Impressionist landscape.

Wouldn’t you rather imagine yourself among poppy specked  fields

rather than in a cheap cafe across the table from two strange strangers ?

It’s also more confrontational than both of the Japanese prints shown above.

They invite you  into the personal space of young, attractive women 

which is where every male visitor to Tokyo’s pleasure district would like to be.

Degas has conflated that Asian male fantasy

with gritty French Realism.

 Don Colley

 

 

 

 But the Degas piece is still more peaceful than this cafe scene

drawn mostly on-site by a 21st Century Chicago master.

No pretty girls here - just the kind of people you’re likely to find seated in any diner.

 

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (detail), 1942

Here’s yet another cafe scene.

The girl is pretty - but cold, closed, and inaccessible.

The whole space feels that way.

Degas, Women on the Cafe Terrace, 1877

Here’s a piece Degas made one year after L’Absinthe.

Everyone seems to agree these are sex workers waiting to get picked up.

They’re not especially attractive or introspective.

If you wish to strike up a conversation- they would probably have little interesting to say - and be prepared to pay for it anyway.

Much closer to social realism than L’Absinthe

And much closer to sociology than to aesthetics.

L’Absinthe is more appealing to me because it’s more enigmatic

and I’d prefer to hang out in a bohemian cafe than in a red light district.

It seems to incite the mystery of just being alive.

And as George Moore will later explain,

it is more formally dynamic

than the storytelling paintings of the Academy.

Even if Degas intended it to warn us about absinthe,

that’s not why this painting is worth viewing

over and over and over again.

Now, L’Absinthe is a literary performance.  It is not a painting at all.  It is a novelette - a treatise against drink.  Everything valuable about it could have been done, and has been done, by Zola.  It would be ridiculous not to recognize M. Degas is a very clever man , but curiously his cleverness is  literary far more than pictorial. -- William Blake Richmond

 

William Blake Richmond, Self portrait with Felt Hat

It's tempting to digress into this artist/critic’s career.  His father named him after the great visionary poet/artist who inspired his group of companion artists who called themselves "the Ancients".

It's ironic that Richmond would scold Degas for being more literary than pictorial since that is what I would say about him  and his namesake.  His ideas have  more life than his forms.

 

 But L'Absinthe, by Degas, is the inexhaustible picture, the one that draws you back and back again. It sets the standard by which too many of the would-be "decorative inventions" in the exhibition are cruelly judged... M. Degas understands his people absolutely; there is no false note of an imposed and blundering sentiment, but exactly as a man with a just eye and comprehending mind and power of speech could set up that scene for us in the fit words, whose mysterious relations of idea should affect us as beauty, so does this master of character, of form, of colour, watch till the cafe table-tops and the mirror and the water-bottle and the drinks and the features yield up to him their mysterious affecting note. The subject, if you like, was repulsive as you would have seen it, before Degas made it his. If it appears so still, you may make up vour mind that the confusion and affliction from which you suffer are incurable.....Dugald MacColl

If MacColl exemplifies the "new critics" of London in the 1890’s, sign me up!  L’Absinthe is indeed both sharp character study and painterly painting.  And "inexhaustible " is the same word I would choose for what distinguishes art from illustration.

For what is the New Art Criticism? It is simply the attempt to apply to current art the same standards which we apply to ancient art, to disengage from the enormous stream of picture-producers the one or two contemporary masters who are worthy to be named beside the ancients, the one or two promising talents that may some day deserve the same praise ; to refuse steadfastly to confound the very good with the pretty bad, and to take mediocrity at its own estimate.... Dugald MacColl, 1893

Today’s  artworld is quite distant from the notion that the ancients set standards by which the contemporary can and should be judged.  In the late 20th Century that notion was replaced by the institutional definition of art : art is whatever is shown in an art museum.

Donald MacLaren, Portrait of Dugal Maccoll, 1905

 

 

 Here a man and a woman are seated at a table in a cafe. The man is lounging over the table, smoking a pipe, with a glass of absinthe before him, while the woman that chance has placed next to him is staring straight before her with dull eyes in vacant thought. The foreshadowed view of the tables, and the prominent shadows of the two, projected upon the clear depths of the window behind, contribute to complete the effect of the whole. This composition is one of the most rigorous that the artist has accomplished, and, as a study of contemporary manners, these two people form a perfect epitome of a class of shady individuals who spend their lives in the cafes of Paris, trifling away their days... .......Theordore Duret

I haven’t read Duret’s book about the Impressionists - and now perhaps I won’t. He’s sloppy - the green glass is in front of the woman not the man;  many Degas compositions feel no less rigorous; and the characters portrayed here need not be "shady".

 

  Manet, Portrait of Duret, 1868 (detail)

 

 

 

This masterpiece of painting as of a characterization. The brutal types are seized and relished with profound impartiality. In this strange picture there is nothing of the commonness in life. The severity of treatment, the exclusion of all save the essential elements, the ordered composition, the simplicity of the color, lift it far out of the region of squalor and misery, which was its motive... Charles Whibley 

 

I like his use of the word  "severity" - but not "squalor" or "brutal types"  (though he might also say  that I am also a brutal type who lives in squalor.  The Nouvelles Athenes, the site for this painting was a hangout for artsy Bohemians, not the bourgeoise. He was somewhat higher on the social register)

 

Powys Evans, portrait of Charles Whibley, 1929

Regretfully, Morse-Jones did not share any long quotes from the morally conservative press that would soon be inspired by Max Nordau’s "Degeneration"  (1892).  How ironic that the notion of "entartete kunst" would be introduced into modern Germany by the Zionist son of a rabbi.

Edouard Manet, George Moore in the Artist’s Garden, 1879

We do, however,  have an extensive essay by George  Moore (1852-1933). It's near the end of "Modern Painting" (1893), a book of his which can be read online.  Coming from the  Anglo-Irish landed gentry, Moore went to Paris in his twenties to study painting.  He began with the academic ateliers, and eventually turned to Manet and Degas for inspiration. Eventually,  he abandoned a career as a painter and pursued one as a novelist. He wrote art criticism for English journals in the 1890's.

 

  At first he wrote that L’Absinthe was a moral admonition:

"Look at the head of the old Bohemian the engraver Deboutin -a man whom I have known all my life, and yet he never really existed for me until I saw this picture. There is the hat I have always known, on the back of his head as I have always seen it, and the wooden pipe is held tight in his teeth as I have always seen him hold it. How large, how profound, how simple the drawing! How easily and how naturally he lives in the pose, the body bent forward, the elbows on the table! Fine as the Orchardson undoubtedly is, it seems fatigued and explanatory by the side of this wonderful rendering of life; thin and restless like Dumas fils' dialogue when we compare it with Ibsen's. 

 

 

 Willam Quiller Orchardson, The First Cloud, 1887

This may not have been the Orchardson piece to which Moore refers, but presumably it is similar, and makes for a strong contrast with L'Absinthe.

It resembles a screen shot from an episode of "The Crown" -- i.e. high drama in high society under high ceilings- and it is so well done -- so convincing - so humorous in an understated way. Such a delicious anxiety permeates every quivering brush stroke in every object, from the figures to the cut flowers.  It's  a wonderful confrontation between the masculine with the feminine - and you already know who will win.

L'Absinthe presents a man and a woman as well -- but they don't appear to even  know each other. They each live  in their own worlds - and unlike the Orchardson, they're not up on a stage - they're sitting down in a cafe, across some tables from the viewer.

The Orchardson is mostly about drama - the Degas is mostly about  painting. So we might say the one is a great illustrator - the other a great painter.  I've got to agree with Moore, the Orchardson does "seem fatigued and explanatory by the side of this wonderful rendering of life". It is inexhaustible.

 

 

 The woman that sits beside the artist was at the Elysée Montmartre until two in the morning, then she went to the ratmort and had a soupe aux choux; she lives in the Rue Fontaine, or perhaps the Rue Breda; she did not get up till half-past eleven; then she tied a few soiled petticoats round her, slipped on that peignoir, thrust her feet into those loose morning shoes, and came down to the cafe to have an absinthe before breakfast. Heavens! what a slut! A life of idleness and low vice is upon her face; we read there her whole life. The tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson. Hogarth's view was larger, wider, but not so incisive, so deep, or so intense. Then how loose and general Hogarth's composition would seem compared to this marvellous epitome, this essence of things! That open space in front of the table, into which the skirt and the lean legs of the man come so well- how well the point of view was selected! The beautiful, dissonant rhythm of that composition is like a page of Wagner- the figures crushed into the right of the canvas, the left filled up with a fragment of marble table running in sharp perspective into the fore-ground. The newspaper lies as it would lie across the space between the tables. The colour, almost a monochrome, is very beautiful, a deep, rich harmony. More marvellous work the world never saw, and will never see again: a maze of assimilated influences, strangely assimilated, and eluding definition-remembrances of Watteau and the Dutch painters, a good deal of Ingres' spirit, and, in the vigor of the arabesque, we may perhaps trace the influence of Poussin. But these influences float evanescent on the canvas, and the reading is difficult and contradictory.' 

Then he backpedaled:

I have written many a negligent phrase, many a stupid phrase, but the italicised phrase is the first hypocritical phrase I ever wrote. I plead guilty to the grave offense of having suggested that a work of art is more than a work of art. The picture is only a work of art, and therefore void of all ethical signification. In writing the abominable phrase "but it is a lesson" I admitted as a truth the ridiculous contention that a work of art may influence a man's moral conduct; I admitted as a truth the grotesque contention that to read Mademoiselle de Maupin  may cause a man to desert his wife, whereas to read Paradise Lost may induce him to return to her. In the abominable phrase which I plead guilty to having written, I admitted the monstrous contention that our virtues and our vices originate not in our inherited natures, but are found in the books we read and the pictures we look upon. That art should be pure is quite another matter, and the necessity of purity in art can be maintained for other than ethical reasons. 

Moore’s initial claim about L’Absinthe being "a lesson" is believable if we don't need Degas to have ever intended it as such.

Moore's later denial that never "a work of art is more than a work of art" has many counter-examples — beginning with stuff made for churches, shrines, temples, palaces, and a variety of other public buildings.  Even some weather-vanes has been called "art" despite their quotidian function.

Art I am speaking now of literature, owes a great deal to ethics, but ethics owes nothing to art. Without morality the art of the novelist and the dramatist would cease. So we are more deeply interested in the preservation of public morality than any other class the clergy, of course, excepted. To accuse us of indifference in this matter is absurd. We must do our best to keep up a high standard of public morality; our living depends upon it and it would be difficult to suggest a more powerful reason for our advocacy. Nevertheless, by a curious irony of fate we must preserve at least, in our books- a distinctly impartial attitude on the very subject which most nearly concerns our pockets.

An interesting twist on the connection between art and morality.  It is an understandable reaction to the politicized art of the French Academy as founded on behalf of Louis XIV and still ruling the Paris where Moore studied.  It is also encouraging to read those words in today’s artworld that is so attached to social justice.  But the orderliness of art can indeed be seen, in a more general way, as promulgating harmony in human society.  That’s a Confucian idea that may be too open ended for the European tradition of didacticism. 

To remove these serious disabilities should be our serious aim. It might be possible to enter into some arrangement with the bishops to allow us access to the pulpits. Mr. So-and so's episcopal style I refer not only to this gentleman's writings, but also to his style of figure, which, on account of the opportunities it offers for a display of calf, could not fail to win their lordships' admiration marks him as the proper head and spokesman of the deputation; and his well-known sympathies for the pecuniary interests of authors would enable him to explain that not even their lordships' pockets were so gravely concerned in the maintenance of public morality as our own.  I have allowed my pen to wander somewhat from the subject in hand; for before permitting myself to apologise for having hypocritically declared a great picture to be what it was not, and could not be "a lesson"-it was clearly incumbent on me to show that the moral question was the backbone of the art which I practise myself, and that of all classes none are so necessarily moral as novelists. I think I have done this beyond possibility of disproof, or even of argument, and may therefore be allowed to lament my hypocrisy with as many tears and groans as I deem sufficient for the due expiation of my sin. Confession eases the heart. Listen. 

I assume his confidence here is intended to be playfully humorous.  It’s one thing to say that a great picture offers no "lesson" for him —- and quite another thing to say that it "could not" offer some kind of lesson to others.

My description of Degas' picture seemed to me a little unconventional, and to soothe the reader who is shocked by everything that lies outside his habitual thought, and to dodge the reader who is always on the watch to introduce a discussion on that sterile subject, "morality in art", to make things pleasant for everybody, to tickle the Philistine in his tenderest spot, I told a little lie: I suggested that some one had preached. I ought to have known human nature better- what one dog does another dog will do, and straight away preaching began-Zola and the drink question from Mr. Richmond, sociology from Mr. Crane. But the picture is merely a work of art, and has nothing to do with drink or sociology; and its title is not L' Absinthe, nor even Un Homme et une Femme assis dans un Cafe, as Mr. Walter Sickert suggests, but simply Au Cafe. 

The piece was originally presented to the public as "Au Cafe", but Degas himself is not quoted one way or the other.

Mr. Walter Crane writes: "Here is a study of human degradation, male and female." Perhaps Mr. Walter Crane will feel inclined to apologise for his language when he learns that the man who sits tranquilly smoking his pipe is a portrait of the engraver Deboutin, a man of great talent and at least Mr. Walter Crane's equal as a writer and as a designer. True that M. Deboutin does Modern Painting not dress as well as Mr. Walter Crane, but there are many young men in Pall Mall who would consider Mr. Crane's velvet coat, red necktie, and soft felt hat quite intolerable, yet they would hardly be justified in speaking of a portrait of Mr. Walter Crane as a study of human degradation. Let me assure Mr. Walter Crane that when he speaks of M. Deboutin's life as being degraded, he is speaking on a subject of which he knows nothing. M. Deboutin has lived a very noble life, in no way inferior to Mr. Crane's; his life has been entirely devoted to art and literature; his etchings have been for many years the admiration of artistic Paris, and he has had a play in verse performed at the Théâtre Français. The picture represents M. Deboutin in the cafe of the Nouvelle Athènes He has come down from his studio for breakfast, and he will return to his dry-points when he has finished his pipe. I have known M. Deboutin a great number of years, and a more sober man does not exist; and Mr. Crane's accusations of drunkenness might as well be made against Mr. Bernard Shaw. When, hypocritically, I said the picture was a lesson, I referred to the woman, who happens to be sitting next to M. Deboutin. Mr. Crane, Mr. Richmond, and others have jumped to the conclusion that M. Deboutin has come to the cafe with the woman, and that they are "boozing" together. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Deboutin always came to the café alone, as did Manet, Degas, Duranty. Deboutin is thinking of his dry-points; the woman is incapable of thought. If questioned about her life she would probably answer, "je suis à la coule". But there is no implication of drunkenness in the phrase. In England this class of woman is constantly drunk, in France hardly ever; and the woman Degas has painted is typical of her class, and she wears the habitual expression of her class. And the interest of the subject, from Degas' point of view, lies in this strange contrast the man thinking of his dry-points, the woman thinking, as the phrase goes, of nothing at all. Au Cafe-_that is the title of the picture. How simple, how significant! And how the picture gains in meaning when the web of false melodrama that a couple of industrious spiders have woven about it is brushed aside!

Just because the men modeling for David’s "Oath of the Horatii" were not Roman warriors, that doesn’t not mean that they should not be considered as such in that painting.  

Again, Moore is just entertaining casual readers with playful chatter.

 I now turn to the more interesting, and what I think will prove the more instructive, part of my task- the analysis of the art criticism of Mr. Richmond and Mr. Crane. Mr. Richmond says "it is not painting at all". We must understand therefore that the picture is void of all accomplishment composition, drawing, and handling. We will take Mr. Richmond's objections in their order. The subject-matter out of which the artist extracted his composition was a man and woman seated in a cafe furnished with marble tables. The first difficulty the artist had to overcome was the symmetry of the lines of the tables. Not only are they exceedingly ugly from all ordinary points of view, but they cut the figures in two. The simplest way out of the difficulty would be to place one figure on one side of a table, the other on the other side, and this composition might be balanced by a waiter seen in the distance. That would be an ordinary arrangement of the subject. But the ingenuity with which Degas selects his point of view is without parallel in the whole history of art. And this picture is an excellent example. One line of tables runs up the picture from left to right, another line of tables, indicated by three parts of one table, strikes right across the foreground. The triangle thus formed is filled by the woman's dress, which is darker than the floor and lighter than the leather bench on which both figures are seated. 

Moore attributes the success of this composition to its geometric arrangement - but does not characterize that accomplishment.  Apparently we just have to accept  that there is something special about triangles.

I would prefer to talk about how the foreground affects what we feel about  the people seated behind it but according to Moore, subject matter is not relevant.

Looking still more closely into the composition, we find that it is made of several perspectives, the dark perspective of the bench, the light perspective of the partition behind, on which the light falls, and the rapid perspective of the marble table in the fore-ground. 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. 

I’m surprised that the odd perspectives of Japanese woodcuts are not mentioned.  Perhaps that is what he is calling the "continued desire for novelty".

"The qualities admired by this new school are certainly the mirrors of that side of the nineteenth-century development most opposed to fine painting, Modern 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." ( Moore quoting WB Richmond )

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. 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 Flandrin 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Hippolyte Flandrin, Shepherd, 1834

 Flandrin, portrait of a Lady, 1860

 

 

 It appears that Flandrin worked with "new material" as well - or at least his homoeroticism cannot be found in Ingres.  The warmth and compassion in that above portrait is distant from Ingres as well.  

 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. 

Ingres, The Source, 1820-1856

Flandrin , Young Man Sitting Near the Sea, 1835

Is the stubby little pin-up girl by Ingres really a better  painting than the pin-up boy by Flandrin ? I'm surprised that Moore chose it as exemplary.

Ingres, Le Grande Odalisque, 1814

The grandeur of this Ingres, however, might make make a better comparison. It feels like an arrow about to be shot from a bow.

 

 

 

 

Degas, Young  Spartans Exercising, 1860

I can't think of anything  by Ingres with this much spacious power and action.

"Hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works are produced."  ( Richmond)

For the sake of his beloved drawing Degas has for many years locked himself into his studio from early morning till late at night, refusing to open even to his most intimate friends. Coming across him one morning in a small cafe, where he went at midday to eat a cutlet, I said, "My dear friend, I haven't seen you for years; when may I come?" The answer I received was: "You're an old friend, and if you'll make an appointment I'll see you. But I may as well tell you that for the last two years no one has been in my stu-dio." On the whole it is perhaps as well that I declined to make an appointment, for another old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was expected to stay, was thrown down the staircase. And that staircase is spiral, as steep as any ladder. Until he succeeded in realising his art Degas's tongue was the terror of artistic Paris; his solitary days, the strain on the nerves that the invention and composition of his art, so entirely new and original, entailed, wrecked his temper, and there were moments when his friends began to dread the end that his striving might bring about. But with the realisation of his artistic ideal his real nature returned, and he is now full of kind words for the feeble, and full of indulgence for the slightest artistic effort. The story of these terrible years of striving is written plainly enough on every canvas signed by Degas; yet Mr. Richmond imagines him skipping about airily from cafe to cafe, dashing off little impressions. 

Some interesting first person anecdotes.  Perhaps they’re even true.

They do make the point that a successful quick sketch may rest upon years of study and effort.

In another letter Mr. Richmond says, 'Perfect craftsmanship, such as was Van Eyck's, Holbein's, Bellini's, Michael Angelo's, becomes more valuable as time goes on.' It is interesting to hear that Mr. Richmond admires Holbein's craftsmanship, but it will be still more interesting if he will explain how and why the head of the old Bohemian in the picture entitled "L'Absinthe" is inferior to Holbein. The art of Holbein, as I understand it and if I do not understand it rightly I shall be delighted to have my mistake explained to me consists of measurements and the power of observing and following an outline with remorseless precision. Now Degas in his early manner was frequently this. His portrait of his father listening to Pagan singing whilst he accompanied himself on the guitar is pure Holbein. Whether it is worse or better than Holbein is a matter of individual opinion; but to affect to admire Holbein and to decline to admire the portrait I speak of is well, incomprehensible. The portrait of Deboutin in the picture entitled "L'Absinthe" is a later work, and is not quite so nearly in the manner of Holbein; but it is quite nearly enough to allow me to ask Mr. Richmond to explain how, and why it is inferior to Holbein. Inferior is not the word I want, for Mr. Richmond holds Holbein to be one of the greatest painters the world ever knew, and Degas to be hardly a painter at all.

Degas, Father listening to Pagans,  1871-2

I would not say, here, that Degas was “following outline with remorseless precision"

This outline in L’Absinthe is wonderfully done.

Hans Holbein the younger, portrait of a member of the Wedigh family, 1533

The outlines of each finger are perfect, but not as dynamic as the Degas outline shown above  it.

Hans Holbein the Younger, portrait of cleric or scholar, 1530-35

These outlines, however, are indeed "remorseless precision"

Simultaneously they reveal the three dimensional form, compose the surface of the painting, and express the character of the subject.  It’s amazing.

For three weeks the pens of art critics, painters, designers, and engravers have been writing about this picture about this rough Bohemian who leans over the cafe table with his wooden pipe fixed fast between his teeth, with his large soft felt hat on the back of his head, upheld there by a shock of bushy hair, with his large battered face grown around with scanty, unkempt beard, illuminated by a fixed and concentrated eye which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit of an idea about one of the finest specimens of the art of this century and what have they told us? Mr. Richmond mistakes the work for some hurried sketch- impressionism and practically declares the painting to be worthless. Mr. Walter Crane says it is only fit for a sociological museum or for an illustrated tract in a temperance propaganda; he adds some remarks about "a new Adam and Eve and a paradise of unnatural selection" which escape my understanding. An engraver said that the picture was a vulgar subject vulgarly painted. Another set of men said the picture was wonderful, extraordinary, perfect, complete, excellent. But on neither side was any attempt made to explain why the picture was bad or why the picture was excellent. The picture is excellent, but why is it excellent? Because the scene is like a real scene passing before your eyes? Because nothing has been omitted that might have been included, because nothing has been included that might have been omitted? Because the painting is clear, smooth, and limpid and pleasant to the eye? Because the colour is harmonious, and though low in tone, rich and strong? Because each face is drawn in its distinctive lines, and each tells the tale of instincts and of race? Because the clothing is in its accustomed folds and is full of the individuality of the wearer? 

We look on this picture and we ask ourselves how it is that amongst the tens and hundreds of thousands of men who have painted men and women in their daily occupations, habits, and surroundings, no one has said so much in so small a space, no one has expressed himself with that simplicity which draws all veils aside, and allows us to look into the heart of nature. Where is the drawing visible except in the result? How beautifully concise it is, and yet it is large, supple, and true without excess of reality. Can you detect anywhere a measurement? Do you perceive a base, a fixed point from which the artist calculated and compared his drawing? That hat, full of the ill-usage of the studio, hanging on the shock of bushy hair, the perspective of those shoulders, and the round of the back, determining the exact width and thickness of the body, the movement of the arm leaning on the table, and the arm perfectly in the sleeve, and the ear and the shape of the neck hidden in the shadow of the hat and hair, and the battered face, sparely sown with an ill-kempt beard, illuminated by a fixed look which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit of an idea--this old Bohemian smoking his pipe, does he not seem to have grown out of the canvas as naturally and mysteriously as a herb or plant? By the side of this drawing do not all the drawings in the gallery of English, French, Belgian, and Scandinavian seem either childish, ignorant-timed, or presumptuous? By the side of this picture do not all the other pictures in the gallery seem like little painted images? Compared with this drawing, would not Holbein seem a little geometrical? Again I ask if you can detect in any outline or accent a fixed point from whence the drawing was measured, calculated, and constructed. In the drawing of all the other painters you trace the method and you take note of the knowledge through which the model has been seen and which has, as it were, dictated to the eye what it should see. But in Degas the science of the drawing is hidden from us a beautiful flexible drawing almost impersonal, bending to and following the character, as naturally as the banks follow the course of their river. I stop, although I have not said everything. To complete my study of this picture we should have to examine that smooth, clean, supple painting of such delicate and yet such a compact tissue; we should have to study that simple expressive modelling; we should have to consider the resources of that palette, reduced almost to a monochrome and yet so full of colour. I stop, for I think I have said enough to rouse if not to fully awaken suspicion in Mr. Richmond and Mr. Crane of the profound science concealed in a picture about which I am afraid they have written somewhat thoughtlessly.

Prior to reading Moore’s essay, I had never read an assertion of  the critical importance of measurement - i.e.  the apparent absence thereof.

He hasn’t shown us any examples where measurement is not hidden - but I think I get his point. 

Perfunctory drawing measures/feels lines against each other.  The paintings of WB Richmond, for example.

In a more aesthetic drawing, lines seem to be the consequence of the flow of forms through pictorial space - like "the banks following the course of a river".

It’s the revealed presence of that inner flowing river that makes all the difference.

And it feels to me that even the faintest of outlines can produce a similar effect:

Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr ( detail), 1873

Matisse, Nude in a Forest, 1909

..or even without any outlines at all.

 

Give Moore credit for articulating the excellence of Degas,

even if he missed it in other kinds of painting.