Ambroise Vollard: Renoir and Degas

"Leçons de Danse" by Edgar Degas

Ambroise Vollard writes: "It has sometimes been said that Degas and Renoir, with their dissimilar natures, were not made to understand one another. As a matter of fact, although Degas disliked the fluffy texture of some of Renoir's paintings ('He paints with balls of wool'), he would exclaim at other times as he passed his hand amorously over one of his pictures, 'What a lovely texture!' 

On the other hand, there was no greater admirer of Degas than Renoir, although secretly he deplored Degas' desertion of the art of the pastellist, in which he was so entirely himself, for that of the painter in oils. Notwithstanding their esteem for one another as artists, Renoir and Degas did, however, manage to quarrel. It happened in this way. 

In the painter Caillebotte's will, Renoir was bequeathed any one of the pictures in his collection, at the artist's choice. He eventually decided upon one of the 'Leçons de Danse' by Degas. But Renoir soon tired of seeing the musician forever bending over his violin, while the dancer, one leg in the air, awaited the chord that should give the signal for her pirouette. One day, when Durand-Ruel said to him: 'I have a customer for a really finished Degas,' Renoir did not wait to be told twice, but taking down the picture, handed it to him on the spot.

When Degas heard of it he was beside himself with fury, and sent Renoir back a magnificent painting that the latter had once allowed him to carry off from his studio - a woman in a blue dress cut low in front, almost life-size. I was with Renoir when the painting was thus brutally returned to him. In his anger, seizing a palette knife, he began slashing at the canvas. Having reduced the dress to shreds, he was aiming the knife at the face: 

'But, Monsieur Renoir!' I cried. 'You were saying in this very room only the other day that a picture is like a child one has begotten. And now you are going to destroy that face!' His hand dropped, and he said suddenly, 'That head gave me such a lot of trouble to paint! Ma foi! I shall keep it.' He cut out the upper part of the picture. That fragment, I believe, is now in Russia.

Renoir threw the hacked strips furiously into the fire. Then taking a slip of paper, he wrote on it the single word 'Enfin!' put the paper in an envelope addressed to Degas, and gave the letter to his servant to post. Happening to meet Degas some time after, I had the whole story from him, and after a silence, 'What on earth can he have meant by that 'Enfin!'?' 'Probably that he had quarrelled with you.' 'Well, I never!' exclaimed Degas. Obviously he could not get over his astonishment."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Recollections of a Picture Dealer" by Ambroise Vollard.)