Volume 43, Number 15 · October 3, 1996
Degas in the Evening
By James Fenton
Degas as a Collector
exhibition at the National Gallery, London, through August 26, 1996.. Catalog of the exhibition, by Ann Dumas
London: Apollo Magazine Ltd./National Gallery Publications, 77 pp., £21.95
Degas: Beyond Impressionism The Art Institute of Chicago, September 30, 1996-January 5, 1997.
exhibition at the National Gallery, London, through August 26, 1996;. Catalog of the exhibition, by Richard Kendall
London: National Gallery Publications/Yale University Press, 324 pp., $50.00
'At death,' wrote Larkin, 'you break up: the bits that were you/Start speeding away from each other for ever….' Degas died in September 1917, and the bits that belonged to him started speeding away from each other soon after. He had thought of trying to keep them together, in a museum of his own, but that fantasy had not survived the trip in 1903 to the Gustave Moreau museum, which gave him the sinister feeling of being in a family vault. He had thought of giving the best of them to the Louvre—then, he said, he would go and sit in front of them and contemplate what a fine thing he had done for his nation. But that noble urge never bore fruit, and anyway he later came to despise the Louvre, as we shall see.
Review, 6936 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |