Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2015 Meet the Masters: Highlights from the Scottish National Gallery

Edgar Degas: Portrait of Diego Martelli (1879) Anthea Callen 28/29 October 2015

Lecture summary: This lecture considers Degas’s Portrait of Diego Martelli (1879, o/c, 110.40 x 99.80 cm) within the context of a group of major portraits of friends executed by the artist during this period of the later 1870s. The lecture differentiates between the work of portraying friends and of undertaking paid commissions of non-intimates: how might economic factors influence the artist-model relationship in portraiture? The decade of the 1870s in Degas’s art is characterised as one of feverish experimentation in varied and often unconventional media, methods and composition. Looking at the technical and aesthetic problems of making a portrait, and of ‘likeness’, I examine the ways ideas of personality or character were viewed and constructed at this period, and the radicalism of Degas’s approach. Another friend portrayed by Degas at this time, the realist writer Edmond Duranty, wrote important pamphlets not only on Degas’s art (La nouvelle peinture, 1876), but also on ‘physiognomy’ (Sur le physiognomie, 1867), the ‘science’ of reading character through outward facial and bodily expression – coincident indeed with Duchene de Boulogne’s neurological research on the mechanisms of facial expression (1862), with which Degas would have been familiar. Degas’s intimacy with Duranty gave him a particular take on representing character in his portraits, indebted to Duranty’s writings and their conversations on the subject of art and physiognomy.

Slide list: 1. Cover slide 2. (Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, Spring 1879. oil on canvas, 110 x 100 cm. Photo of Diego Martelli, 1870s. Shown Fourth Impressionist exhibition, 1879. Martelli: Florentine art critic & supporter of a group of Italian realist artists known as the , some of whom were influenced by ) 3. Info slide 4. Degas, Bellelli Family, 1858-67, o/c 200 x 253 cm. Musee d’Orsay, Paris 5. Martelli (left) with (right) Ingres, Portrait of Monsieur Bertin, 1832, oil on canvas, 116.2 cm × 94.9. Louvre. Bertin: Writer, art collector and director of the pro-royalist Journal des débats. 6. Federico Zandomenghi, Portrait of Diego Martelli, oil on canvas, 72 x 92 cm Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Palazzo Pitti, Florencia (Fourth Impressionist exhibition, 1879) 7. Nineteenth-century French standard canvas formats, Lefranc, 1855 8. Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, Spring 1879. oil on canvas, 110 x 100 cm (NG Scotland) 9. Ditto, Detail 10. Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, 1879. Museu Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina 11. Degas, Study of Diego Martelli, 1879. NG Scotland 12. Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, Spring 1879. oil on canvas, 110 x 100 cm 13. Degas, Study of Diego Martelli, black crayon heightened with white. Harvard University Art Museum (with Degas, Martelli, Argentina variant).

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14. Left: Degas, Study of Diego Martelli, black chalk with white-ish highlights on paper. Right: Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, 1879. Charcoal heightened with white chalk on blue-gray wove paper, discolored to tan, squared in charcoal..Harvard University Art Museums. 15. Degas, Portrait of Diego Martelli, Spring 1879. oil on canvas, 110 x 100 cm 16. Jean-François Raffaëlli, La famille de Jean-le-Boîteux, paysans de Plougasnou en 1876. Oil/canvas, 190.5 x 154.3 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. 17. Degas, Portrait of Henri Michel-Levy in his Studio,1878-9. Oil on canvas 41 x 27cm. Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal 18. Left: Degas At the Louvre (Mary Cassatt) 1879-80, Pastel on joined paper, 71.4 x 54 cm Priv coll. Right: Degas At the Louvre (Mary Cassatt) 1879-80, etching, soft-ground etching, drypoint and aquatint, 30.3 × 12.7 cm. 1879-80. Brooklyn Museum. 19. Degas Portrait after a Costume Ball (Portrait of Madame Dietz-Monnin), 1879. 85.7 x 75.3 cm. Distemper, with metallic paint and pastel, on fine-weave canvas, prepared with a glue size. Art Institute of Chicago 20. Degas, Edmond Duranty, 1879, Distemper & pastel/linen 100 x 100.4 cm.. Glasgow, Kelvingrove Gallery. Exhibited 4th Imp exh 1879, and 5th, 1880 (after Duranty’s early death). 21. Physiognomy & Expression slide 22. Mid-nineteenth century ‘expressions of the emotions’, after Charles Le Brun, Expressions of the Passions of the Soul, 1670 23. Mid-nineteenth century ‘expressions of the emotions’, after Charles Le Brun, Expressions of the Passions of the Soul, 1670 24. Left: JJ Virey ‘Apollo to Ape’, L’Origine des especes humaines, Paris, 1801. Right: Grandville (pseudo), Man descending towards the Brute, 1843, and Head of Men and Animals Compared, 1844 25. Degas, Little Dancer of 14 Years, pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paint- brushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base; overall without base: 98.9 x 34.7 x 35.2 cm, weight 22.226 kg. Begun 1878, completed 1881. National Gallery of Art, Washington. 26. Left: Photo, Musee Dupuytren, wax effigies of murders & criminals, Paris; Right: Illustrations from Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals 1872, published in French in 1874. 27. Degas, Criminal physiognomies (Knobloch and Abadie) 1881. Pastel on paper mounted on board, 47.8 x 63 cm. Sold, Sotheby’s London, 24 June 2015, Lot 33. 28. Left: Alphonse Bertillon, Forms of the nose, 1893. Right: Self-portrait,

Reference: Jean Sutherland Boggs, Douglas W. Druick, Henri Loyrette, Michael Pantazzi, Garry Tinterow, Degas, exhibition catalogue, Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Metroplitan Museum of Art, New York. Jean Sutherland Boggs, Portraits by Degas, University of California Press, 1962 Theodore Reff, Degas: The Artist’s Mind, New York, 1976 Carol Armstrong, Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of , Chicago, 1991 Anthea Callen, The Spectacular Body: Science Method and Meaning in the work of Degas, New Haven & London, 1995 Ronald Pickvance, Degas 1879: paintings, pastels, drawings, prints and sculpture from around 100 years ago in the context of his earlier and later works, exhibition catalogue, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

For access to all past lecture notes visit: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/current-members/member-events/meet-the-masters/ The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh is a priceless gift to all. The neoclassical building stands majestically near the Mound and boasts an impressive array of some of the most marvelous works of fine art in the world. Gazing longingly at a Monet, marveling at a Degas, and pontificating over a Van Gogh are just a few of the pleasures to be had here. Discover the must-see artworks at the Scottish National Gallery. Edgar Degas, Woman Drying Herself, 1890s. This highly adept man was a genius painter, master drawer, and brilliant draftsman. It is a privilege to contemplate his work in person, and every piece he created tells a story. His numerous masterpieces, many of which took dance and dancers as their subject, are invariably thought-provoking and rewarding of close attention. . Many thankx to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Planes, Trains & Automobiles is the third in a series of thematic exhibitions exploring the exceptional permanent collection of photography at the National Galleries of Scotland. He graduated from Napier College and went on to London to obtain a masters degree in photography from the Royal College of Art. Throughout his life, his devotion to the Highlands inspired him to capture the essence of Scottish culture in his artwork, even when travelling abroad. He came to work at the School of Scottish Studies in 1985, where he was curator of the Photographic Archive for nearly twenty-five years. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is an art museum on Queen Street, Edinburgh. The gallery holds the national collections of portraits, all of which are of, but not necessarily by, Scots. It also holds the Scottish National Photography Collection. Since 1889 it has been housed in its red sandstone Gothic revival building, designed by Robert Rowand Anderson and built between 1885 and 1890 to accommodate the gallery and the museum collection of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The building...