Reading Between his Outlines: Degas is Haunted by the Memory of his Deceased Mother, Celestine De Gas
Jessica Gheiler: Princeton Class of 2008It is true that I am not working very much but on some difficult things. Family portraits, near enough to the taste of the family, in impossible light, everything upset, with the models full of affection but a little shameless, taking you less seriously because you are their nephew or cousin (qtd. Mauclair 111)
This passage, taken from Degas’ letter to his friend the Danish painter Lorentz Frolich, was written during his five month sojourn in New Orleans in 1872. The playful, “shameless” interaction Degas describes between him, his cousins and his aunts is indicative of his close relationship with one cousin in particular, “poor Estelle,” who he met for the first time in Paris on June 18, 1863 (qtd. Guerin 15); in New Orleans, he stayed in the same house as she, an arrangement that Boggs, co-author of Degas & New Orleans, claims allowed Degas to become as close to Estelle as he would his own sister (Boggs 198). This contributed to his developing fascination with her, which was “already palpable” only a week after they met (Benfey 53). While painting his cousin, Degas complains to his friend Rouart of how “the completion of [his] pictures, pastels, etc. is never ending” (qtd. Mauclair 113). What was the image that Degas painstakingly desired to record with his portraits of Estelle? Why was he so fretful of them, cherishing them to the extent that he carried them with him to France to keep in his atelier until his death in 1917, refusing to either sell them (Boggs 198) or return them to his uncle, Henri, even after repeated requests (Feigenbaum 200)?
These considerations raise some fascinating inquiries into Degas’ true motivation for painting Estelle both in France in 1865 and later in the United States. In his book Degas in New Orleans, for instance, Benfey argues that in painting Estelle, Degas could have been painting his own mother, Celestine De Gas, “dead at roughly Estelle’s age, a Creole like Estelle, with something like her niece Estelle’s features” (Benfey 98). While Benfey is correct in noting their physical semblance, he underestimates Degas’ memory of his mother’s melancholy as a driving force for his later fascination with Estelle, who also suffered. This is easy to do considering Degas never spoke of his mother after her premature death in 1847 (Loyrette 18). Yet the powerful connection Degas drew between the two women is clear when we read between the lines of the portraits, which, according to the painter, create not only “form,” but also the “experience of a form” (qtd. Pecirka 21). Indeed, Degas’ outlining techniques depict not only Estelle’s figure — her “form” — but also his subconscious association of her suffering body with the suffering of his mother, a ghost that continued to haunt him in adulthood; in Estelle’s company, he “experiences” the memory of his mother. This is important because it not only justifies the reason why Degas was captivated by Estelle, but also how the artist’s perception of his mother influenced his view of her. It was his mother — whose memory he had long tried to suppress — which he subconsciously attempted to capture in his portraits of Estelle, explaining why these portraits were “difficult things” (qtd. Mauclair 111).
The Exhibit
His MotherExile in France, 1865
Return to New Orleans, 1872
Conclusion
Works Cited
About the Author
The Gallery
The War on WomenEstelle's Misfortunes
Their Shared Blindness
Degas' Legacy in New Orleans
