Degas is known by the select few, and almost ignored by the public.  This is due to several reasons.  Degas has never wished to exhibit at the Salons, except, I believe, once or twice at the beginning of his career.  He has only shown his works at those special exhibitions arranged by the Impressionists in hired apartments (rue le Peletier, rue Laffitte, Boulevard des Capucines), and at some art-dealers.  The art of Degas has never had occasion to shock the public by the exuberance of its colour, because he restricted himself to grey and quiet harmonies.  Degas is a modest character, fond of silence and solitude, with a horror of the crowd and of controversies, and almost disinclined to show his works.  He is a man of intelligence and ready wit, whose sallies are dreaded; he is almost a misanthrope.  His pictures have been gradually sold to foreign countries and dispersed in rich galleries without having been seen by the public.  His character is, in short, absolutely opposed to that of Manet, who, though he suffered from criticism, thought it his duty to bid it defiance.  Degas’s influence has, however, been considerable, though secretly so, and the young painters have been slowly inspired by his example.

[Illustration:  DEGAS

THE BEGGAR WOMAN]

Degas is beyond all a draughtsman of the first order.  His spirit is quite classical.  He commenced by making admirable copies of the Italian Primitives, notably of Fra Angelico, and the whole first series of his works speaks of that influence:  portraits, heads of deep, mat, amber colour, on a ground of black or grey tones, remarkable for a severity of intense style, and for the rare gift of psychological expression.  To find the equal of these faces—­after having stated their classic descent—­one would have to turn to the beautiful things by Ingres, and certainly Degas is, with Ingres, the most learned, the most perfect French draughtsman of the nineteenth century.  An affirmation of this nature is made to surprise those who judge Impressionism with preconceived ideas.  It is none the less true that, if a series of Degas’s first portraits were collected, the comparison would force itself upon one’s mind irrefutably.  In face of the idealist painting of Romanticism, Ingres represented quite clearly the cult of painting for its own sake.  His ideas were mediocre, and went scarcely beyond the poor, conventional ideal of the Academy; but his genius was so great, that it made him paint, together with his tedious allegories, some incomparable portraits and nudes.  He thought he was serving official Classicism, which still boasts of his name, but in reality he dominated it; and, whilst he was an imitator of Raphael, he was a powerful Realist.  The Impressionists admire him as such, and agree with him in banishing from the art of painting all literary imagination, whether it be the tedious mythology of the School, or the historical anecdote of the Romanticists.  Degas and Besnard admire Ingres as colossal draughtsman,