The Rising Celebrity and Modern Politics
Edgar Degas, Artist and Anti-Semite

The Dreyfus Affair had a profound effect on Degas. Though it is possible to detect anti-Semitism in predating the affair, it is clear that the affair strongly affected his friendships, his political ideology, and his art in a way that is incomparable to anything beforehand. Ostensibly, Degas came from the line of thinkers who accepted Jews as individuals but not as a group. Before the affair, Degas held many Jews in his esteem including Ludovic Halevy, a writer and childhood friend, and the artist Pisarro. Zola as well, though not a Jew, had a respectful if not friendly relationship with Degas before the Dreyfus Affair. Besides including these men and others in his circle of friends, he respected their work and appreciated their company. However, the affair violently affected the country, demanding that each person chose sides. Unlike a number of impressionists, Degas saw the Dreyfus Affair as a threatening and disastrous event, and conducted his life in a new way because of that.

Degas's reaction to the affair can be classified as that of a conservative, however, that would not do his actions or position justice. With a strong intensity, he believed that Dreyfus's pardon was worthless compared to the shame the French government would face had they granted it to the Jewish officer. Degas's world dramatically transformed into one which excluded all friends who had any connection to the Dreyfus Affair. This included any friend who was Jewish and any friend who was a Dreyfusard. Historian Linda Nochlin tells of an incident where Dreyfus declared Pissarro's work ignoble. When he was reminded that he had once held the fellow impressionist in high esteems, Degas responded, "Yes, but that was before the Dreyfus Affair."1

Another anecdote evokes Degas in his studio. When one of his models showed her belief in the possibility of Dreyfus's innocence, Degas threw her out declaring her Jewish despite the fact that she was Protestant. 2 These stories only begin to portray Degas's anti-Semitism. However, they do not fairly indicate the complexity of the situation. By looking at a few of Degas's pieces, even those that predate the affair, we can get more of a sense of what Jewishness means to Degas.

This painting depicts Ludovic Halevy, one of Degas's oldest childhood friends and Albert Boulanger-Cave, another old friend, backstage at the opera. Because this is Nochlin's analysis, I feel it necessary to quote her directly.

The image is a poignant one. The inwardness of mood and the isolation of the figure of Halevy, silhoutted against the vital brilliance of the yellowish blue-green backdrop, suggest an empathy between the middle-aged artist and his equally middle-aged subject, who leans, with a kind of resigned nonchalance, against his furled umbrella.The gaiety and make-believe of the theater setting only serves as a foil to set off the essential solitude, the sense of worldly weariness, established by Halevy's figure.... The only touch of bright color on the figures is provided by the tiny dab of red at both men's lapels: the ribbon of Legion of Honor, glowing like an ember in the dark, signifying with Degas'ss customary laconicism the distinction appropraite to members of his intimate cirlce-- though Degas himself viewed such institutional accolades rather cooly.... No one looking at this sympathetic, indeed empathetic, protrait would surmise that Degas was (or would become) an anti-Semite or that he would become a virulent anti-Dreyfusard; indeed that within ten years, he would pay his last visit to Halevy's home, which had been like his own for many years, and never return, except briefly, on Ludovic's death in 1908, to pay his final respects. 3

Ludovic Halevy and Albert Boulanger-Cave c. 1879 3

One interesting and important piece of Nochlin's argument rests in the connection she draws between the way Degas has portrayed Halevy and the way he relates to Halevy in real life. Degas's respect for his lifelong friend is apparent by the colors, mood and softness of the painting. Degas painted Ludovic Halevy a number of times. It is almost unimaginable that the same beloved character in Degas's paintings and life would be spurned by Degas only a few years later.

Nochlin mentions something else as well. Halevy had converted to Catholicism, but after the Dreyfus Affair, he became a faithful Dreyfusard. Because of his inability to separate his political views and his friendships, Degas isolated himself from all of those like Halevy. As is apparent by the aforementioned anecdotes and by this fact, Degas did not discrimant against any of his Dreyfusard friends' respective religions. That they believed that the justice of an innocent man overode the pride of the country was enough for him to reject them.

Below: Rabbi Elie-Aristude Astruc and General Emile Mellinet c. 1871 4

The painting to the left depicts two men who personally commissioned Degas to make a record of their friendship. General Mellinet, the man on the left, was an anticlerical, republican freemason. He met Rabbi Astruc, the chief Rabbi of Belgium and assistant rabbi in Paris, while working in the ambulance service during the siege of Paris. They sought Degas to "recall their fraternal effort." 5 Though this picture predated the Affair by about 15 years, it is perhaps possible to note the contrasts between General Mellinet in the forefront of the painting, and Rabbi Astruc. Though the differences between the two men in terms of age and shading are obvious, there are perhaps some more subtle implications of this painting. Rabbi Astruc seems less strong, less confident, less important. He stands in the background trying to push his way in. Perhaps this painting represents the superiority or, rather, eminence of the state over religion. This idea of making priorities of one over the other for the Jews was a looming and oft-discussed one.

These interpretations of the two immediate earlier paintings are only speculations. While the second painting may add to what we know about Degas's stance on the Dreyfus Affair, it cannot be used as a basis for a demonstration of anti-Semitism in Degas's art. However, his prejudices become more apparent in At the Bourse.

Degas painted this at about the same time he painted Ludovic Halevy and Albert Boulanger-Cave. However, this painting which depicts Ernest May, speculator, banker, and art collector, on the floor of the stock exchange with M. Bolatre, is more flagrantly anti-Semitic than that one. Both of the main charachters are Jews, though. This one protrays May in a stereotypic manner. Sneaky and , suspicious, May is even in a stereotypic profession.

Why the disparity of depictions? As Nochlin writes, "The gestures, features, and the positioning of the figures suggest something quite different from the distinction and empathetic identification characteristic of the Halevy portrait; what they suggest is "Jewishness" in an unflattering, if relatively subtly way. If At the Bourse does not sink to the level od anti-Semitic caracicature it nevertheless draws from the ... polluted source of visual sources of available visual stereotypes...." Perhaps May is less of a real person to Degas than Halevy. Halevy was a friend, May was just a Jew with no other credits to his name.

Below: At the Bourse c. 1879 6

Nochlin further describes the anti-Semitic undertones of this peice.

It is not so much May's Semitic features, but rather the gesture that I find disturbing-- what might be called the"confidential touching" --that and the rather strange, close up angle of vision from which the artist chose to record it, as thought to suggest that the spectator is spying on rather than looking at the transaction take place. At this point in Degas's career, esture and the vantage point from which gesture was recorded were everything in his creation of the accurate, seemingly unmediated, imagery of modern life.... What is "revealed" here, perhaps unconsiously, through May's gesture, as well as the unseemly, inelegant closeness of the two central figures and the demeanor of the vaguely adumbrated supporting cast of characters, like the odd couple, one with the "Semitic nose," pressed as tightly as lovers into the narrow spaceat the left-hand margin of the picture-- is a whole mythology of Jewih financiall conspiracy. That gesture-- the half-hidden head tilted to afford greater intimacy, the plump white hand on the slightly raised sholder, the stiff turn of May's head, the somewhat emphasized ear picking up the tip-- all this, in the context of the half-precise, half-merely adumbrated background, suggests "insider" information to which "they" are privy, from which "we," the spectators (understood to be gentile) are excluded. It is not too farfetched to think of the traditional gesture of Judas betraying Christ in this connection, except that here, both figures function to signify Judas; Christ, of course in is the French publicm betrayed by Jewish financial machinations. 6

Nochlin's analysis both exposes and clarfies any anti-Semitic deliniations in this painting. One of the integral peices of her argument is the description of a widely-accepted anti-Semitic view. It is almost understandable that such representations in paintings existed, considering this fact, however, this in no way justifies this portrayel.

While Degas may have been obvious and vocal in his relatively newly-acquired ardent anti-Semitism, one could not profess explicitly anti-Semitic themes in his artwork. In truth there are actually few and small hints of anti-Semitism in Degas's work. Afterall, it is not irrelevant that the paintings that do express some anti-Semitism are not his most famous. If anything the analyses attempt to identify the furtive complexity of Degas's prejudices.

Note: the above is, for the most part, a paraphrase of Linda Nochlin's essay on the subject. She has two different versions, one in the Norman L. Kleeblat edition of the Dreyfus Affair exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York, and the other slightly different one can be found in her own collection of essays, The Politics of Vision: Essays of Nineteenth Century Art and Society.

For a brief bio and good links to his paintings go to:

The Archive.com: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/degas.html
A comprehensive site of Degas’ paintings is the CFGA at: http://www.bibl.u-szeged.hu/cgfa/degas/p-degas40.htm

Information about the Full Essay:

Nochlin, Linda. The Politics of Vision: Essays of Nineteenth Century Art and Society. Colorado: Westview Press, 1989.
Or Kleeblatt, Norman L. The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

1 Kleeblatt, Norman L. The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

From the essay by Linda Nochlin, " Degas and the Dreyfus Affair as an Anti-Semite." p.96

2 ibid, p.96

3 ibid, p.97

4 ibid, p.103

5 ibid, p.102

6 ibid, p.100