Two essays remembering Degas by the most acute observers of the avant-garde art of their time

 

“The one great French painter, perhaps one of the greatest artists the world has ever seen.”  —Walter Sickert on Degas, 1889

 

This volume brings together groundbreaking and intensely personal memoirs of Degas, by George Moore, the first writer in English on Impressionism, and Walter Sickert, one of the finest English followers of Degas. Thanks originally to George Moore’s pioneering essay “The Painter of Modern Life,” Degas was a celebrity in Britain in his lifetime. When Degas died, Moore reprised the essay with some further recollections, in part as a riposte to the memoir published by Degas’s great admirer and follower, Walter Sickert. Sickert’s essay, sparkling, engaged, witty, and occasionally combative, is among the best of his writings. Together these memoirs represent some of the most vivid responses to Impressionism in English, as well as painting an intimate picture of arguably the most important and most influential—and the most humane—of the painters of the later 19th century. Hitherto difficult to find, these essays are illustrated with 30 pages of color plates covering the span of Degas’s dazzling career.