Degas and Manet: a study in friendship: Jeffrey Meyers explores the intense, admiring, but often wary relationship between two great artists whose lives, as well as art, had many parallels

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Jeffrey Meyers

Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet first met in the Louvre, that thriving crossroads of social life, in the latter half of 1861, when they were both in their late twenties. Degas was etching a copy of Velazquez's painting of a royal child, The Infanta Margarita (1653). He recalled that he 'had started to work with his needle directly on the already grounded plate, without the aid of a preparatory drawing, when he was interrupted by a voice behind him saying, "You have a lot of nerve, and with that method you'll be lucky if you come out with anything." ' (1) This dramatic encounter in the centre of the French art world brought together Manet's favourite painter, Degas' uncharacteristically bold etching, and Manet's cheeky and rather patronising advice--offered in a disembodied voice, before they had been formally introduced or even seen each other.

This was the challenging beginning of a sharp-edged yet comradely rivalry that lasted until Manet's death. The two young painters soon discovered they were kindred spirits. Both were Paris-born and educated, well off, cultured and sophisticated. Manet had been to Rio de Janeiro, Degas would travel to New Orleans. Manet had praised the beauty of black women, and apparently slept with them. Degas later said that his friend would have appreciated the beauty of the Louisiana landscape and people even more than he, with his weak eyes, was able to do. The teenaged Manet had painted rotten cheeses in Brazil; Degas would produce a major work, The cotton office, in New Orleans.

Manet's father urged him to study law or become a naval officer; Degas' father (named Auguste, like Manet's), who loved music and had artistic inclinations, mildly recommended a legal career and then encouraged his painting. Both families, once prominent, suffered scandal and decline. Manet and Degas had studied for five or six years with teachers of the old school, Thomas Couture and Louis Lamothe. They eventually rejected their teachers' conventional ideas and academic art, yet spent years assiduously copying and assimilating the Old Masters. They were the greatest artists of their time, but neither won the big prize of the day, the coveted Prix de Rome; and neither opened a school or (with the exception of Eva Gonzales, taught by Manet) had pupils.

Although hostile to the French government and over military age, both Manet and Degas did their patriotic duty by serving in the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, and sympathised with the fate of the massacred Communards. Despite grave disabilities, both continued to work. In the last months of his life, when severely ill and partly paralysed, Manet painted small still lifes. Degas, when nearly blind, turned to pastels and sculpture. Manet inspired Degas to abandon his early historical paintings and paint scenes of contemporary life. Like Manet, Degas painted figures in the studio rather than outdoors.

Manet was the greater innovator, Degas the more technically accomplished. A critic has described their strong artistic bonds: 'the things Degas and Manet have in common go even beyond similar ideas and concepts of painting and the shared destinies of outsiders within a group of outsiders: they used the same models, shared an iconography and indulged in reciprocal quotations that is almost amusing in its consistency, suggesting that they actually delighted in crossing brushes' (2) Both portrayed people separated, even in the most intimate domestic settings, and alienated from one another. This shared theme, which dominated their work, distinguished them from their contemporaries and makes their art seem especially modern and timeless.

Roy McMullen observed that Degas and Manet had wit and zest for life: they were 'united by ... their indulgence in irony, their delight in the passing Second Empire show, and their love of flanerie.' (3) Yet the two men were temperamental opposites. Manet was charming, with a richer, warmer, more responsive personality; the unsociable, caustic Degas was guarded and hostile. Naively optimistic and resilient, Manet sought honours in the Salons; Degas was cynically indifferent to public acclaim. Manet was irresistibly attractive to women, and married early. Degas' gallantries were forced, and he never got beyond thinking about marriage solely as a welcome relief from the strains of social life. 'It is really a good thing to be married,' he said, 'to have good children, to be free of the need of being gallant. Ye gods, it is really time one thought about it.' (4) The single-minded Manet told George Moore: 'I also tried to write, but I did not succeed; I never could do anything but paint.' (5) The more adventurous and many-talented Degas was a sculptor, photographer and poet. Although married to a musician, Manet was bored by music, while Degas--a habitue of the Opera--was devoted to it.

The more self-assured and independent Degas despised and distrusted all medals and honours. He hated anything controlled by the State, the Salons, the Academie des Beaux-Arts and the Legion d'honneur, and disdainfully insisted: 'Sir, in my day one did not "make good".' (6) One of his most perceptive mots (which illuminates the self-destructive impulse of many current celebrities) warned of the dangers and disasters that came with official recognition: 'There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.' (7) Manet, crushed by the condemnation of fatuous critics (whose praise he perversely sought), felt he needed all the protection he could get. When Degas belittled a mutual friend who had been awarded the Legion d'honneur, Manet replied: 'You must take everything that distinguishes you from the crowd.... In this dog's life of ours, where everything is a struggle, one can't be too heavily armed.' 'To be sure', Degas interrupted, 'I was almost forgetting what a bourgeois you are.' (8) Their arguments at the Card Guerbois provoked Degas' competitive instinct and he challenged Manet by boasting: ' "I shall be at the Institute [of France] before you will, Manet!" The other burst out laughing. "Yes, sir,' continued Degas, 'because of my drawing." ' (9)