Degas Landscapes [Hardcover]

Mr. Richard Kendall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0300058373 | ISBN-13: 978-0300058376

Degas is renowned for his masterful studies of the human body - powerfully rendered paintings of dancers, jockeys, washerwomen, and bathers. It is less well known, however, that he also produced challenging and varied landscapes at almost every phase of his career - from this early travels in Italy, to his association with the impressionist movement, and to into his final decades. Remarkably, Degas chose the subject of landscape for his only one-person show in 1892. This illustrated book by Richard Kendall deals with Degas's landscapes, relating them to his other work and to evolving views of art. Kendall demolishes the myth of Degas's indifference to the landscape art. He traces Degas's first experiments in watercolour, oil, and etching; his progress as a painter of equestrian scenes and pastel seascapes in the 1860's; and his association with Pissarro, Cassatt, and Gauguin and rivalry with Monet and Cezanne in the middle of his career. Kendall provides a details examination of Degas's audacious colour monotypes from the early 1890's, showing how they reveal the artist's engagement with contemporary colour printing, his interest in Japanese art, his involvement with symbolism, and his affinity for contemporary philosophy and literature. He concludes by discussing the last flowering of Degas's landscape activity - the little-known series of paintings produced at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme in the late 1890s - and with the help of photographic evidence proves that these pictures relate directly to surviving streets and buildings, often in radical and innovative ways. Illustrated with many previously unpublished works, this book demonstrates that Degas had an affectionate, original , and complex relationship with the landscape, a relationship that has profound implications for this more familiar repertoire of subjects. The book accompanies an exhibition of Degas's landscapes opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in January 1994 and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Housten in April 1994.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Degas was considered to be the dominant figurative painter among the French Impressionists. British art historian Kendall presents a highly focused study that details the artist's more than 40 years as a landscapist. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that opened at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and travels this spring to Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, this amply illustrated volume brings together for the first time less familiar Degas works, including previously unpublished images. Beginning with Degas's travels in Italy in the 1850s, Kendall discusses the artist's early Italian landscape studies, equestrian scenes, and pastel seascapes and concludes with a series from the French resort town of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. There is a fascinating analysis of the only individual exhibition Degas himself ever staged, which was devoted solely to the landscapes and featured the artist's innovative color monotypes. Kendall's clear, solid scholarship proves that Degas was neither indifferent to landscapes nor scornful of plein-air painting (literally, painting done in the "open air"). Recommended for general and special collections.
- Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 322 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 29, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300058373
• ISBN-13: 978-0300058376
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 10.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,686,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A misnomer?, January 3, 2008

By 

Benjamin (UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Degas Landscapes (Hardcover)

Degas Landscapes was produced to accompany an exhibition of Degas' landscapes opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in January 1994 and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in April 1994. If the title of this hefty volume comes as a surprise, it is unlikely the contents of the same will so much to change that view. It is however a fine book with a comprehensive text which discusses Degas' work in detail, and includes anecdotes and Degas' own words.

Yes, Degas did produce a few landscapes, most of which appear to be in pastel, and just a few paintings. The author negotiates this minor problem by including Degas' equestrian paintings, and anything else he can find which can be construed as containing a landscape in the background; and he bolsters the meagre number of images by including examples of other artists' landscapes.

The quality of the writing is not in question, it is intelligent, illuminating and extensive; and the images which illustrate the text are undoubtedly beautiful; subtle yet rich in colour and texture.

It includes a comprehensive bibliography, and details of the pictures included in the exhibition. There are about two hundred and thirty illustrations, almost all of which are in full colour, and include a few photographs of the scene depicted in the painting, and sometimes a map showing the location and the view point for the picture. The illustrations some of which are half page or even full page, appear along with the text, and refreshingly generally manage to appear on the same page in which they are discussed.

While this is a fine work, I cannot help but think the reader will come away confirmed in the view that Degas and landscape are not words that readily sit together.