Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Alphonsine Fournaise (1879) and Edgar Degas’s Dancers (1884-1885), while both being categorized as impressionist works, exhibit numerous differences in terms of their subject, composition, use of color, brush strokes, overall mood being conveyed, etc. Therefore, in this short essay, I would like to briefly compare and contrast these two pieces of artwork and analyze how these features have served distinctive functions in expressing different themes and meanings.
In terms of the subjects, both paintings have focused on the depiction of human figures. But unlike the history paintings or academic paintings, they have both captured scenes and people from modern life and painted them within the natural surroundings. No ideal or divine forms are being imaged or depicted. Instead, only the pure optical experience is emphasized and reproduced.
However, while Renoir’s Alphonsine Fournaise, as suggested by the title of the painting itself, is a portrait of a specific, identifiable lady, Degas’s Dancers does not have a main character or central figure. The identities of the subjects are concealed, with no recognizable facial features being depicted. I would say Degas’s work is more like a photo capture of a moment in time, when the dancers are in motion, adjusting their shoes, dresses, hair, etc. This involvement of actions has brought this painting a higher level of vividness and ambiance. Instead, Alphonsine Fournaise is more like a standard portrait, where the model is maintaining a certain posture, and the facial characteristics of the young lady are delineated in the greatest detail. Though different in style, both paintings have captured the beauty of the girls and their activities in modern life.
On composition, no any kind of symmetry could be found in both works. Renoir has centralized the lady relatively in the middle, while Degas has painted the six dancers in rather random positions, without much interaction in-between. In other words, the figures seem to be fragmented and separated from each other, yet still existing in the same frame in Degas’s work. Except for the one on the right, all dancers have only parts of their bodies being shown. Their bodies and dresses are cut off at the edges, and therefore neither wholeness nor unity has been pursued in this painting as an objective. This fragmentary nature is often characteristic of the modernist philosophy and can be interpreted as the artist’s appreciation or acceptance of naturality, transiency, and imperfection in paintings. As the reality is always imperfect and the canvas is always limited, paintings should be able to embrace them, instead of acting against them.
When we take a closer look, it is important to note that Dancers is a pastel and Alphonsine Fournaise is an oil painting on canvas, as this difference in the material has been directly reflected in the special brush strokes and textures of these two paintings.
At first glance, Renoir’s work has an overall softer feeling, both in terms of the vagueness of the edges and the blending of light and shadow throughout the whole painting. The brush strokes in Renoir’s paintings often create a “fluffy” synesthetic feeling, which can provide the viewers with a feeling of warmth, especially in combination with Renoir’s choice of colors, which will be discussed later in further detail. There does not seem to exist any hard or straight line serving the function of edges. Instead, the contours are created with different levels of shades in color and shadow, which has generated a soft and creamy style for this portrait of a young lady.
On the other hand, more lines and sharp edges can be observed in Degas’s Dancers. For example, the contours of the chair and the window are more or less directly drawn using thick black lines. In contrast with the relatively bright and flat lighting in Alphonsine Fournaise, this work is much darker and contains more shadow. The only light source comes from the outside of the window, and the contrast in light and shadow is exhibited more sharply and directly, with chiaroscuro-like techniques. This can be best observed from the highlights and shading on the dancer’s bodies, arms, and feet, where highlights are often directly connected to parts in shadow, with the transitions being rather abrupt and discontinuous.
However, it is also similar to Renoir’s work in terms of their lack of depth and the roughness of the brush strokes. Both paintings have not been painted in an illusionistic fashion, and no clear leading lines can be found. Although we can still see the bridge and river behind the lady in Alphonsine Fournaise, the perspective has been flattened through Renoir’s application of brush strokes. In Dancers, the only cue of depth comes from the relative blocking of body parts among the dancers. But if we look at the surrounding environment, it is also flat, as the uneven brush strokes have sometimes blended the foreground and background, like the floor, dress, and wall on the right of the painting. These are some of the common features that have distinguished the painterly, impressionist, modernist paintings from the more realistic, classical, academy paintings.
As mentioned earlier, the color choices and coloring methods of Renoir and Degas also differ in several significant ways. A global warm tone has been applied in Alphonsine Fournaise. Even the blue and white used in this painting have shifted toward a warm temperature, forming a comfortable and pleasant scene of daily enjoyment. Examining the colors in Renoir’s painting in greater detail, we can discover the unusual way in which Renoir has been mixing and applying the colors. The colors seem to be “untidy” or “unclean,” sometimes even “unrealistic.” For instance, while the lady’s dress and the tablecloth are both supposed to be white or slightly blue, there are shades of yellow and brown mixed within them. And if we focus on the lady’s hand on the rail, we can see various shades of grey, blue, yellow, and pink mixed together, constituting an unnatural color for the human body. Nevertheless, Renoir has blended these colors in such a harmonious way, such that viewers cannot sense any bizarreness or strangeness from the combination. This coloring method could be observed throughout the whole painting and also in Renoir’s other artworks. In contrast with the classical, academic paintings, through this slightly unrealistic way of coloring, the visual nature of the paintings has been emphasized. Renoir has recognized the limitations of painting as a medium and has instead utilized color and light as its strength in the representation of beauty. It is the pure beauty of colors, of visual sensations, that has been appreciated in modern impressionist paintings like Renoir’s.
If we turn to Degas’s Dancers, we can immediately see the coldness of the colors being chosen. Both the highlights and shadows in this painting have shifted toward blue, which can be best demonstrated by the dancers’ dresses. But interestingly, Degas’s way of coloring seems to be less smooth or harmonious. For instance, if we look at the back of the dancer standing by the window, different shades of blue, pink, and grey are not smoothly transitioning from each other. This could also be seen from the outside of the window, the dresses, and the wall in the background. This might be partially due to the difference between pastel and oil and their relative abilities of color mixing. But to summarize, the distinct color choices and coloring methods of Renoir and Degas have played a crucial role in building up their unique art styles and supporting their expression of different themes and styles of beauty.
To summarize, for Renoir, he has focused on the beauty coming from the women’s figure, the emotions behind their facial expressions, and nature. A strong country-style authenticity can be directly felt by the viewers at their first glance at Alphonsine Fournaise. For Degas, the environment is less natural. The scene comes from a small dance room in a modern city, in a modern way of life. It is the beauty of motion, activities, and even mistiness, that has been treasured. Nevertheless, both artists have successfully captured and depicted these natural and daily scenes from modern life with distinct while also somewhat similar styles and techniques. And exactly behind these styles and choices lies the self-criticality and self-reflective philosophy of modern art, of modernist paintings.