Edgar DEGAS (1834 1917) [FRANCE] - Lot 2

Edgar DEGAS (1834 1917) [FRANCE] Two nude studies of the back Preparatory to the painting "Young Spartans Practicing Wrestling". Black pencil drawing on Michallet watermarked paper Handwritten inscriptions in drypoint on the front "Jeunes spartiates s'exerçant à la lutte" "ETAR". Workshop stamp "ATELIER ED. DEGAS" on verso Traces of folding, spotting and foxing 580 x 400 mm Provenance : -Artist's studio (red oval stamp from the Degas studio inventory of December 1917 L.657) Collection Jean Pozzi (1884 1967), Sale November 6, 1970, Hôtel Drouot, n°48 as "Etude de nu pour " Les jeunes spartiates s'exerçant à la lutte" Dimensions prises à vue -Galerie Paul Prouté, catalog "Gauguin" 1972, no. 84 as: "Etude de nu [ ] Nous sommes probablement en présence d'une étude pour "Les jeunes spartiates s'exerçant à la lutte"" (Nude study for "Young Spartans practicing wrestling") -Private collection, France "I am a colorist with line", Degas would say of his art. Born into a middle-class family in 1834, Edgar Degas studied law at his father's request. His penchant for drawing soon caught up with him, however, and he eventually entered the studio of Lamothe, a pupil of the Flandrin brothers, and apprenticed for a time to Jean Dominique Ingres. Ingres was to have a decisive influence on Degas: "Make lines, lots of lines, from nature or from memory, and you'll become a good artist", Ingres is said to have told Degas during their brief and only meeting. After a short stay at the École des Beaux-arts in 1855, Degas finally went to Italy in 1856, at the dawn of his 23rd birthday. Degas knew Italy well, and this trip was not his first. In Naples, he had his grandfather and part of his family, with whom he stayed initially before settling in Rome and completing his Tour in Florence. In the Eternal City, he met Gustave Moreau and attended evening classes with him at the Académie de France, where he practiced copying from live models. During these four years, Degas assiduously studied the old masters, not hesitating to borrow their sober lines. Back in Paris, haunted by his Italian sojourn and classical teachings, driven by his taste for contemporary life, Degas dreamed of reinterpreting the history painting neglected by his contemporaries. His sketchbooks of 1856-18601863 abound with these projects, one of which will hold our attention in particular, since it is the very object of our study: Les Petits filles spartiates provoquant des garçons (Fig. 1) Degas never parted with this early work, a precious testimony to his apprenticeship in Italy, completed around 1860 and immortalized in the prodigious sketches of his sketchbooks. Our drawing is a preparatory study for the figure of the young Spartan at the far right of the final work. Indeed, as Daniel Halévy has observed: Missing original photo Fig. 1 Petites filles spartiates provoquant des garçons, Oil on canvas, 109.5 × 155 cm, c. 1860, The National Gallery "The taste for study was always a passion for Degas, but also a danger; sometimes the number of studies jeopardized the very work for which they were intended." Indeed, Petites filles spartiates provoquant des garçons is inseparable from his three preparatory studies in oil and his numerous sketches (at least 37). Our study of a young Spartan girl is one of the earliest in the work's development, probably one of the first studies made for the project, and certainly contemporary with the many other studies of nudes from live models that he carried out at the Villa Medici. The simplicity of the figure's contours, limited by an exact lineament, removes the subject from its own force, even from the constraints of gravity. Degas conceived the subject "in an extraordinarily schematic and uncluttered form" that can easily be compared with some of his other preparatory studies executed in his early years, between 1855 and 1860. (Fig.2 Fig.3 Fig.4) Missing original photo Fig. 3 Missing original photo Fig. 4 Missing original photo Fig. 5 6 Gros & Delettrez8 April 2025 But "with each step he takes towards the definitive sketch, he complicates it a little and impoverishes it all the more" This observation by Robert Ray perfectly illustrates the evolution of our young Spartan's drawing, as the preparatory studies progress. Although these three Spartans share a slender line, as the creative process progresses, Degas does indeed sacrifice the line in favor of the curve. The momentum of a continuous, slippery line, emerging