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

Vingt dessins as an Object

Boussod Manzi, Joyant & Cie published Degas: vingt dessins 1861-1896 in 1897 as a selection of drawings chosen by Degas to encapsulate his career as a draftsman. Highly sought after by bibliophiles today, the work measures roughly 16” x 20” x 2” and was published as a box containing the twenty reproductive prints of varying sizes, each mounted on an individual folio page and unbound. Notes in the Musée Goupil dating from October 1897, suggest that the reproductions were originally intended to be displayed and bound more traditionally; it was only later in the process that the decision was made to mount them as if they were original drawings, creating the impression of a perfect reproduction.[x] The portfolio was produced in an edition of one hundred, each priced at one thousand francs. Degas received 33% of the profits, which was well above the norm. Many artists involved in similar projects received compensation along the order of 10%. Due to its high price, only seventy were sold between its publication in 1897 and 1916, with less than forty of those sold in its first ten years of publication. [xi]

The frontispiece includes the text, “Vingt dessins is a facsimile of Degas, who drew these examples, and each example is signed by the artist,”[xii] under which Degas signed in pencil. This text highlights the role of Degas in the creation of these works, and the signature in pencil reinforces the idea that Vingt dessins was never meant to be seen as simply a reproduction. The twenty images were arranged in a portfolio that was created in a set edition, and each portfolio’s frontispiece was signed by the artist – in pencil. The choice of a different material in which to create his signature underscores the hands-on process of the application of the signature to the page. If Degas had signed in pen, the medium would be too similar to the inks used in the chromogravure process. The use of pencil underscores the importance of each edition as a work of art in its own right – in the eyes of the print house, the presumed collectors and, perhaps most importantly, Degas himself. Highlighting this idea was the advertisement for Vingt dessins in Boussod, Manzi, Joyant & Cie.’s new publications catalogue in October 1898. The advertisement noted the edition of one hundred and emphasized how each was each signed by the artist.[xiii] Vingt dessins was exhibited in the spring of 1898 at the gallery of Boussod, Manzi, Joyant et Cie. This decision to exhibit the series, coupled with the fact that they were not bound in the volume, but remained on separate folio pages, further stresses the artistic nature of the prints. The works spanned Degas’ entire career, as well as his forays into a variety of media and evolving approaches to issues of draftsmanship. What each had in common was its place as a standard in the draftsman’s oeuvre.[xiv]

The reproduced retrospective was well received by critics and artists alike. In a letter to his daughter-in-law, Pissarro wrote:

I saw yesterday at Joyant an album of reproductions of Degas’ drawings, [made via the] Manzi process, it is impressive. It is here that one sees that Degas is truly a master, it is more beautiful than Ingres, and my word, it is modern! It does not have the pompous style that offends me. [xv]

Such a glowing review is important because it belies the intention of Degas in the creation of the drawing retrospective, namely to provide the learned viewer with the opportunity to reconsider his drawings as a whole and underline his role as one of the successors to Ingres – a goal of Degas’ from the start of his career. Degas, through Halévy’s memoirs, recounted his first meeting with Ingres in 1855 in a conversation with Jacques Blanche:

I was sent to go and ask him for the loan of a picture for an exhibition. And I took advantage of the opportunity to tell him that I was doing some painting, that I was in love with art and would like his advice. The pictures that hung in his studio are still photographed in my mind. ‘Draw lines, young man,’ he said to me, ‘draw lines; whether from memory or after nature. Then you will be a good artist.’ [xvi]

Blanche responded to the story in much the same way that Pissarro did to seeing Vingt dessins that day in the gallery, “The curious thing about that interview,” he said, “is that in the history of painting you will be Ingres’s pupil.”[xvii]

In a contemporaneous review of the portfolio of drawings, André Mellerio compliments Degas’ draftsmanship, praising the natural postures of the figures, in all their complication. Mellerio commends Degas for allowing the reality of pose to shine through, regardless of preconceived conventions of beauty or tradition. The portfolio used Manzi’s techniques of chromogravure to reproduce Degas’ drawings in exquisite detail, and Mellerio admires the process of chromogravure and the resultant high quality of the reproductions. He perceives the complicated nature of the process and the perfection in the result. Furthermore, Mellerio references the rapidly rising cost of owning an original work by Degas, even a drawing, and states that this pageant of draftsmanship – due to the collaboration between Degas and Manzi – in its curatorial breadth and quality will only add fuel to the collectors’ fire.[xviii] Much of what Mellerio praised was due to the efforts of Manzi, who took an active role in the process of image reproduction.

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