Painting a Town That Paints You

An Essay on Museum-Going

By Chloe Malle

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illustration by the author
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Dieppe is a seaside town in Normandy originally known as a fishing port. During the late 18th and 19th century it developed into and then prospered as a luxurious vacation spot for both the French and British. In the mid-18th century the Duchesse de Berry catalyzed the evolution of Dieppe into a summer resort, encouraging the building of chic bathing huts and public spas, transforming the empty beaches into a fashionable tourist magnet. Empress Eugenie continued this gentrification later in the century with the construction of grassy lawns designed for sports and recreation on the otherwise rocky beach terrain. The construction of a casino in the town confirmed it as a resort getaway and by the time Degas and his friends enjoyed the fruits of Dieppe the bustling Casino was under its third incarnation, this time themed as a Moorish fantasy.

Degas and his contemporaries were not the first to paint this town, literally. In the 1830s Eugene Isabey captured Dieppe in his famous etchings and pen and ink drawings of the rocky harbor. In the late 1850s Monet was encouraged by his professor, the famed painter Eugene Boudin, to paint outdoors, and so Monet began a series of paintings of the coastal region in Normandy where Dieppe was located. These paintings introduced him to his revolutionary representation of light and time.

In the mid nineteenth century Degas' "set" vacationed frequently in Dieppe. One particular summer is chronicled by Degas in a portrait of the six close friends he spent the summer with. The group is formed by Degas, his wealthy painter friend Jacques-Émile Blanche, Blanche's painting instructor and painter himself, Henri Gervex, British actor turned artist, Walter Sickert, art critic and professional man of leisure Albert Boulanger-Cavé, famed librettist Ludovic Halévy and his son Daniel.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs A Kidney?

While this is enough construction material to build six characters, the real character building is better found in the RISD Museum Building itself and those art lovers who schlepped themselves across the Atlantic and in their walkers to see who this French favorite was friends with.

A British couple is bantering with the woman behind the desk as I enter the RISD museum through the Farago entrance closest to Waterman St. A membership would be very expensive for them, they explain, because it would have to include airfare from London. There is a feminine ripple of laughter and the British husband seems satisfied with the success of his humor. "But we love our Degas," the wife chirps in, "so we popped on down from Maine where we are spending the weekend for a wedding." Is hopping from Old England to New England an appropriate expense for a glimpse at the ballerina master's pastel of his six friends?

There is a woman at the exhibit who is past elderly and way past due getting rid of the walker she is struggling to lean upon. She waits desperately as the museum guards shuffle to find her a wheelchair. She is with a younger woman who is reassuring her. She starts complaining emphatically that she needs to sit down and that it is absurd to have a gallery with no benches. "I have to sit down, I need to sit down nowwww." Each word is crackled and drawn out like a very scratched LP. I look over, trying to be discreet, and realize this is no overdramatization, this woman is about to collapse into the 1830s etchings. Is it possible that Degas and Dieppe are worth all this? And does this build character or just masochistically allow her to pretend she is in better health than she actually is?

Loitering

The focal point of the exhibit is the large pastel that is its namesake. It stands alone on a wide rectangle column in the center of the room. There is none of the suspense or anticipation of exhibits at the Met or the Boston MFA, because at the RISD museum there are no crowds. There is no scramble to go eye to eye with the famous work, no struggle involved—it's just there waiting for you with nothing else to do.

On the other side of the column is a protrait of Degas by Jacques-Émile Blanche and the related history between the two canvases. Degas gave the portrait to Mme. Blanche, mother of Degas' artist friend, in 1885. The portrait hung nicely in her living room until Blanche asked Degas permission to use the portrait he had done of Degas in his personal catalogue. The very private Degas refused and was outraged when he found it published in an international fine arts magazine. He promptly ended his friendship with Blanche and demanded "Six Friends from Dieppe" back from Mme. Blanche.

Blanche recounts that he next saw the portrait in 1914 at a prestigious Paris gallery in the center of a room on an easel in an ornate Florentine Renaissance frame that inflated its character tremendously.

While the portrait tells plenty of the story on its own and through wily museum goers' speculation, the summer of the "Six Friends at Dieppe" was later recorded by Daniel Halevy in a memoir titled in English, "My Friend Degas." (Friendship seems to be the recurrent theme in all these works of art.)

My energy was all but sucked by the time I got to the work of Walter Sickert and I made the decision to come back the next day. I got down two flights of stairs, sighed heavily realized I was conceding to defeat and disrespecting Degas' contemporaries, and stormed back into the exhibit—an angry munchkin on a mission is what I must have looked like to the tall, burly museum guard.

On The Shoulders Of Giants

I suck myself back into the exhibit because Walter Sickert intrigues me and I feel that I owe him more of an audience. I toy with the idea of writing my article from his point of view, the 19th century actor turned painter commenting on his love of Degas and the master's influence on his work; but I decide this is too risky and stick to my own point of view, a character I can always rely on.

Sickert was fascinated by Degas' paintings of urban entertainment, and after the summer in Dieppe began miming this style by painting London theatres. Through Degas' influence on his work he was able to combine his background in theatre with his new found passion for painting.

His homage to circus performer, Mademoiselle LaLa is a marvelous painting that mixes influences of Degas' style of capturing people in motion with the oblique angles of Japanese prints.

Degas was very taken with the art of Japan. Artists such as Kiyonaga, influenced his style greatly. The layering of subject matter and the off-center composition was revolutionalary in Western painting and revitalized dry compositions. Sickert, as well as other artists influenced by Degas, painted incorporating stylistic elements of Japanese prints.

Like me by the end of the exhibit, Degas wearied in later life and in middle age his eyes began to fail. He met this physical impediment by turning to sculpture, creating the riders and ballet dancers he so often sketched from life by feeling their shape with his fingers. A painter once said of Degas, "If he'd stopped when he was 50, he would only have been a great painter." He became a great sculptor only later in life when his eyesight failed him, building and expanding the character of his work. Because Degas saw the world so sharply he was able to recreate it from memory when his eyes no longer could.

The Anxiety Of Influence

I learn from the exhibit pamphlet that many impressionist painters of the era were highly influenced by Degas such as his close friend Mary Cassat and his ardent admirerer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who once presented a Degas painting as the dessert at a dinner party. I feel excluded from a talent and an era and want to wonder that my painting may have been influenced by Degas as well had I been part of this illustrious troupe.

I read this pamphlet as I make my way through the maze of the museum to the actual exhibit itself. I feel the exclusion and jealousy as I hike up and down art-lined staircases on my way to Degas. By the time I am through with the exhibit, my short-lived escape included, I realize how silly I have been. Not only can I be influenced by Degas if I so choose, but I am part of a talent and an era all its own that is growing into its own shape and influence with its own pastel of six friends. Everyday I weave through the cubicles in the fifth floor painting studio of List as a detour to get to the one I share with another student in my Painting I class. I weave through and I study and I marvel. I look at the Painting II students and their huge covered canvases and I especially look at the honors students who will devote possibly too much of this year to finding their own style and not realizing the complete range of their influences. I am in awe of these spaces, these cubicles covered in canvas that is rich and emotive and wonderful. I am inspired and eager and it would be silly to say these painters, these artists in their own right, have not influenced me. And so, I kick myself in the shins for being jealous of Mary Cassat and her proximity to Degas, because that jealousy sells myself and the artists around me short. And that would be a shame.

Chloe Malle B'07 IS A RIGHTEOUS VOYEUR

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