Degas and Manzi's Vingt dessins: An Experimental Collaboration in Print

Critical Reception of Reproductive Prints

Vingt dessins and Degas’ other reproductive prints follow in the tradition of Gutenberg’s printing press and presage Walter Benjamin’s theories on the implications of mechanical reproduction; and the critical discourse around reproductions echoed the argument over the validity of printmaking as a creative endeavor within the academy, already underway since the eighteenth century. Official definitions of an ‘original print’ were not formalized until the 1960s, but as early as the eighteenth century, printmakers were making use of concepts such as limited editions to catalyze purchases.[xlvii]

Squabbles about conceptions of artistic viability persisted. Commentary on the storefront windows of Goupil in The Hague by John Gram in 1889 emphasizes the nature of reproductive prints and their role in a changing artistic society:

Every week The Hague is treated to a new display of plates, etchings, engravings and phototypes,that fit the time and events of the year. The middle window is reserved for an oil painting. Everyone that passes by, be they an important magistrate or a mason with his lime, a fashionable lady or a blushing maid-servant with her basket, stops here to look at all the news, and it is very amusing to slip between them and to listen to the sober or witty comments. [xlviii]

Gustave Kahn, editor of La Vogue, claimed to prefer “a lithograph by Thornley designed by Degas to any of [Félix] Buhot’s tricks.”[xlix] Fénéon echoes these sentiments, noting that:

To a far greater degree than the obsequious antics of the painters, such engravings will be works of art in their own right; take for example the subtly expressive lithographs made by Mr. G. W. Thornley after Degas, which can be found in the album purchased last winter by Boussod and Valadon. [l]

Pissarro, in direct opposition to his comments on Vingt dessins, was openly hostile towards most reproductive endeavors. Interestingly enough, he did not have an overt problem with low-quality reproductions, but rather with the high quality prints that might adversely affect the commercial viability of his originals. Unlike Degas, he turned down La Vie moderne’s requests to reproduce his work. Writing on photolithography, Pissarro notes: “not to say that the process, in the hands of someone like Degas or Keene, is inevitably bad, although the mechanical process is, by its very nature, anti-artistic.”[li] Similarly, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo:

For much as I like those drawings…in Vie moderne, still there is always something mechanical in them, something of a photograph or photogravure…I mean than an ordinary etching, an ordinary wood engraving, or an ordinary lithograph has a charm of originality which cannot be replaced by anything mechanical. [lii]

Such comments express the rising sentiment against new photomechanical printing processes in the 1880s, which speaks to a crisis in the state of traditional media. While some did articulate a frustration with the inability to distinguish between industrial and traditional prints, others looked at the situation more optimistically, suggesting that the mechanical nature of reproductive prints freed printmakers to create art for art’s sake. Edmond de Goncourt expressed this optimism, pondering ways he would take advantage of the advances in print production if he was an artist: “If I was a painter I would have a hundred proofs printed on art paper and I should amuse myself painting them in watercolors with all the tins that appear in the misty vapor from the Seine, all the magical colors of autumn, or winter with its plaster grey and rusted stone horizons.”[liii]

According to Walter Sickert, Degas owned many reproductive prints. In his apartment on the rue Victor Massé, where he lived from 1890-1912, Degas had a mahogany table in an anteroom whose sole purpose was to accommodate piles of Jean-Louis Forain’s drawings culled from the illustrated presses.[liv] This component of his collection not only adds credence to Degas’ respect for reproductive prints, but the process itself which was in line with his constant interest in pushing the limits of media. The works involved in Vingt dessins were not only another example of a collaborative printing process, this time with Manzi, but also should be part of his oeuvre. As Druick and Zegers point out, “…far from seeking to distinguish the ‘original print’ from the industrially ‘printed image’, Degas sought to explore simultaneously the resources of traditional and new printing media so as to wed art and industry.”[lv]

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