Degas is also clearly related to Corot, not only in the silvery harmonies of his suave landscapes, but also, and particularly, in his admirable faces whose inestimable power and moving sincerity we have hardly commenced to understand.  Degas passed slowly from classicism to modernity.  He never liked outbursts of colour; he is by no means an Impressionist from this point of view.  As a draughtsman of genius he expresses all by the precision of the planes and values; a grey, a black and some notes of colour suffice for him.  This might establish a link between him and Whistler, though he is much less mysterious and diffuse.  Whenever Degas plays with colour, it is with the same restraint of his boldness; he never goes to excess in abandoning himself to its charm.  He is neither lyrical, nor voluptuous; his energy is cold; his wise spirit affirms soberly the true character of a face or an object.

Since a long time this spirit has moved Degas to revel in the observation of contemporary life.  His nature has been that of a patient psychologist, a minute analyst, and also of a bitter ironist.  The man is very little known.  His friends say that he has an easily ruffled delicacy, a sensibility open to poetry, but jealous of showing its emotion.  They say that Degas’s satirical bitterness is the reverse side of a soul wounded by the spectacle of modern morality.  One feels this sentiment in his work, where the sharp notation of truth is painful, where the realism is opposed by colouring of a sober distinction, where nothing, not even the portrait of a drab, could be vulgar.  Degas has devoted himself to the profound study of certain classes of women, in the state of mind of a philosopher and physiologist, impartially inclined towards life.

His work can be divided into several great series:  the race-courses, the ballet-dancers, and the women bathing count among the most important.  The race-courses have inspired Degas with numerous pictures.  He shows in them a surprising knowledge of the horse.  He is one of the most perfect painters of horses who have ever existed.  He has caught the most curious and truest actions with infallible sureness of sight.  His racecourse scenes are full of vitality and picturesqueness.  Against clear skies, and light backgrounds of lawn, indicated with quiet harmony, Degas assembles original groups of horses which one can see moving, hesitating, intensely alive; and nothing could be fresher, gayer and more deliciously pictorial, than the green, red and yellow notes of the jockey’s costumes strewn like flowers over these atmospheric, luminous landscapes, where colours do not clash, but are always gently shimmering, dissolved in uniform clearness.  The admirable drawing of horses and men is so precise and seems so simple, that one can only slowly understand the extent of the difficulty overcome, the truth of these attitudes and the nervous delicacy of the execution.

[Illustration:  DEGAS