LONDON — Is a work on paper a lesser, and perhaps even a smaller, thing? I mean by comparison with a work in oils, a painting on canvas? Works on canvas often look so large and so grandiose, as if they are there to be bowed to, or awestruck by.
Think of all those history paintings by the French neo-classical painter Jacques-Louis David, for example. Or, say, Ingres’s portrait of Napoleon from 1806, freshly elevated to an imperial throne, tricked out to look like a ridiculous pantomime god. Not a hint of the Corsican runt about him.
These thoughts spring to mind upon entering Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec, which occupies three modestly sized galleries at the Royal Academy. How small they all are, most of the works in this first gallery, and somewhat squeezed together too.
And yet smallness was often a part of it because works on paper were frequently the stuff of sketchbooks, not necessarily works of high finish labored over in some studio. They did not strive to be. But modesty of size was also a feature of the Impressionist moment. Once upon a time the pick of the Impressionists in Paris lived at the Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries Gardens, and what first struck any visitor who had grown up with Rubens or the great altarpieces of the Renaissance was that so many off them were, well, little larger than pocket-sized.
But that lack of high finish, that lack of calculated and mannered deliberation, drags something else along in its wake, a matter of great importance to those painters. Life as we are living it now. That was what the Impressionists were so keen on, to capture life on the wing, because life — have you not noticed? — always moves along at such a rattling pace, in fact so fast that at times we almost fall off. A great painting on canvas, on the other hand, often slows life right down, and gently cajoles us into associating it with the much longer time of eternity and mythology. What an effective wheeze for puffing up the importance of mere humanity!
So in the first gallery we find Manet capturing people squeezed into a lurching cabriolet along the Rue Mosnier in the rain. The date is 1878. Boulevard St. Michel or Fifth Avenue? It’s much the same story really, getting somewhere fast in headlong pursuit of wine and oysters.
But there is a change, a quite significant one, by the time we reach the final gallery. The best is kept to the end, as with many a well-turned plot: Degas and his dancers, rendered large, and in pastel — this use of pastel is highly significant in terms color and its intensity. Can an Impressionist work on paper match the richness and color range achieved with oils or acrylic on canvas? Yes, if you are Edgar Degas.
Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec continues at the Royal Academy of Art (6 Burlington Gardens, London, England) through March 10. The exhibition was curated by Ann Dumas.
Beautiful thank you.