THE ART BULLETIN A Quarterly Published by The College Art Association of America December 1988 Volume LXX Number 4 The Art Bulletin (ISSN-0004 3079) is published quarterly by the College Art The Art Bulletin is available only through membership, open to individuals and Association of America, Inc. , 275 Seventh Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10001. institutions, in the College Art Association of America. For information about Printed by lntelligencer Printmg Co., Lancaster, Pa. Second class postage paid membership and back issues, write CAA, 275 Seventh Avenue, New York, N.Y. at New York, N.Y. and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address 10001. The contents of Th e Art Bulletin is recorded in The Art Index, Arts and changes to the College Art Association, 275 Seventh Avenue, New York, N.Y. Hu manities, and RILA . 10001. © 1988, College Art Association of America, Inc. Edgar Degas and French Feminism, ca. 1880: "The Young Spartans," the Brothel Monotypes, and the Bathers Revisited Norma Braude In this article, I shall consider the newly resurgent and visible feminist movement in France , ca. 1878-80, as a context for understanding the sometimes ambiguous and much debated meanings of many of Edgar Degas's works of this period, spe­ cifically the Spartan Girls Challenging Boys (which, as evidence presented here will show, must have been revised and its figures given a more contemporaneous appearance at this time), the brothel monotypes, and the bather compositions. The writings of the Italian critic, Diego Martelli, a man who was a committed feminist activist and who was closely associated with Degas in Paris during these years, will be adduced to establish the extent to which feminist issues had become an accessible and relevant part of the modern world that Degas set out to interpret. Edgar Degas's Spartan Girls Challenging Boys (Fig . 1), be­ group of adolescents at the left, formerly thought to consist gun around 1860, later revised for inclusion (but never only of females, contains within it a male and female cou­ shown) at the Fifth Impressionist Exhibition in April of ple, who set an example of heterosexual bonding which the 1880,1 is a painting whose subject has held considerable youths at the right are being encouraged to emulate. The fascination for modern scholars, but whose meaning, group at the left, moreover, is said to provide a complete nevertheless, remains something of an enigma. Once in­ display of the stages of courtship, including "hesitancy on terpreted as an expression of a competitive and unhealthy the part of the young woman on the left" (whose long hair, hostility between the sexes, one that reflected a personal according to Spartan custom, would mark her as a virgin), fear and dislike of women on Degas's part, the scene was "aggressive enticement in the lunging figure" (whose subsequently described as a natural confrontation among cropped hair signals that she is either married or ready to equals and offered in an essay of mine as part of a refu­ be), and, finally, "bonding in the couple." The so-called tation of the notion of Degas's presumed "misogyny."2 More male in this couple (who is, by the way, noticeably smaller recently, Carol Salus, also writing in these pages, has re­ in size than any of the adolescent boys at the right), is shown jected the idea that the picture represents a competition fondling the breast of his female companion, and "his ges­ between the sexes and has proposed instead that it is a por­ ture," we are told, "indicates that he is male."4 This as­ trayal of Spartan courtship rites, a subject in which Degas, sumption, which plays a central role in Salus's argument, a young man when he first undertook the painting, would is unwarranted, however, both in light of Degas's knowl­ presumably have had a natural interest.3 edge of classical culture in general and his literary sources In support of her interpretation, Salus maintains that the for this painting in particular. For Plutarch, who is rec- This article grows out of a paper delivered at the joint meetings of the Painting, 299, 301, 309, n. 43, and 311) . College Art Associati on and the Women's Caucus for Art in New York The verb "provoquer," used by Degas for the title in the catalogue of City in February of 1986. I am grateful to The American University for 1880, can mean, according to Larousse, "to provoke, to inci te, to bring the grant awarded me in the summer of 1987, which permitted me to on; to instigate; to cha llenge." Though the term "provoking," with its complete my research, and to the staffs of the Bibliotheque Marguerite implication of sexual enticement, is the one most frequently used in En­ Durand in Paris and the Bibl ioteca Marucell iana in Fl orence fo r their gen­ glish translations of the title, I prefer to translate Degas's "provoquant" erous assistance. My thanks go also to my colleague, Mary D. Garrard, instead with the equally correct "challengi ng," which, as I hope this article who encouraged and assisted the development of this article in many prac­ will show, more accurately refl ects what Degas may have had in mind in tical and important ways. 1880. 1 In the catalogue of the Fi fth Impressionist Exhibition, the picture is listed 2 N . Broude, "Degas's 'Misogyny,"' Art Bulletin , LIX, 1977, 95-107, and as No. 33, with the title "Petites fill es Spartiates provoquant des g ar~o n s esp. 99-100. (1860). " But it was apparently not exhibited . Its absence from the show, 3 C. Salus, "Degas' Young Spartans Exercising," Art Bulletin , LXV II, 1985, which opened on 1 April and closed on 30 April 1880, was specifically 501-506. noted by Gustave Goetschy in a review that appeared in Le Vo ltaire on 4 6 April (see C.S. Moffett, "Disarray and Disappointment," in The New Ibid. , 504. EDGAR DEGAS AND FRENCH FEMINISM, CA . 1880 641 1 Edgar Degas, Spartan Girls Challenging Boys, ca. 1860/ 80, oil on canvas, 109 x 15Scm. London, National Gallery, Courtauld Collection (photo: National Gallery) ognized as a major source for Degas's understanding of straightforward depiction of the egalitarian training given Spartan life and custom, 5 speaks of the practice of taking atypically to young women in Spartan society, may have same-sex lovers as normal for Spartan adolescents of both taken on for him by the late 1870's a more complex and sexes. 6 problematic significance - one that might serve as a met­ In this article, I shall present a previously overlooked aphor and as a reflection of the relationship between the contemporary commentary, which suggests that Degas did sexes in contemporary European society. The attitudes and regard the action depicted in 'The Young Spartans" as a influences of the contemporary feminist movement, I will challenge that would lead to an ensuing athletic competi­ also suggest, may have far broader implications for Degas tion. But this painting and its subject, I will argue, no mat­ scholarship than the illumination of a single picture and its ter what its original iconographical stimulus may have iconography; and I will therefore conclude with a recon­ been, had very different meanings for Degas when he began sideration of Degas's brothel monotypes and bather im­ it in 1860 and when he considered exhibiting it for the first agery in the light of this new context. time two decades later in 1880 - at a moment when the feminist movement in France (a movement with which De­ A new clue to the subject of "The Young Spartans" is gas can now be shown to have had an important link) had provided by the writings of Diego Martelli, the Italian art begun to emerge as a significant force in the political life critic who was a close friend of Degas and of many of the and in the social consciousness of the French people. What advanced artists in his circle. From April1878 to April1879, may have begun for Degas in 1860, in other words, as a Martelli spent a year in Paris, and during this period, Degas 5 See D. Halevy, Degas parle, Paris-Geneva, 1960, 14 . 298. Although Nochlin appears to accept Salus's identifica tion of Degas's 6 Plutarch, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (Loeb Class ical Library), 11 vols., Lon­ subject as a Spartan courtship rite, she ci tes elements in the picture that don and Cambridge , MA, 1967, I, 259, 263, 265. On the sexual identity appear to contradict or mask its presumed iconography, and she argues, of these fi gures , see also L. Nochlin, "Letter to the Editor," Art Bulletin, correctly, I believe, for a more psychologica ll y complex interpretati on of Lxvm, 1986, 486-87; and R. Rosenblum, "Letter to the Editor," LX IX, 1987, the picture's meaning. 642 THE ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 1988 VOLUME LXX NUMBER 4 and unfinished because of the same sincerity that had impelled Degas to begin it. A man of the finest education, modern in every aspect of his life, Degas could not fos­ silize himself in a composite past reconstructed from fragments, which can never be what was or what is, a Chinese puzzle that may yield excellent results for artists like Gerome, but not for artists who feel the pulse of real life. 8 Martelli's remarks help to clarify several important issues regarding not only the subject but also the history of "The Young Spartans." They suggest, first of all, that in 1878- 79, when Martelli had the opportunity to form his impres­ sions of the picture, Degas apparently considered it to be unfinished.