The Anti-Semitism of Degas

From A Compulsive Perfectionist by Colin B. Bailey

The most dramatic—and saddest—aspect of Degas in the 1890s relates to his increasingly outspoken anti- Semitism and his reaction to the efforts to rehabilitate Captain Albert Dreyfus, who had been found guilty of espionage in December 1894 and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.8 

As evidence tending to exonerate Dreyfus and implicate the highest echelons of the French military came to light in 1897, Degas’s relations with the Halévy family became more and more fraught. The Halévys’ elder son, Élie, noted in November 1897, “I have a Jewish name, even though I am Protestant.” (Degas also harbored an irrational dislike of Protestants.) The Halévys associated with journalists and intellectuals committed to proving (and publicizing) Dreyfus’s innocence. At their Thursday dinner on November 25, 1897, the day on which Le Figaro published Émile Zola’s first article in support of Dreyfus, Ludovic expressly forbade any discussion of the topic (“Papa was very annoyed, Degas very anti- Semitic”). Although no one knew it at the time, the last family dinner that Degas attended at the Halévys took place on January 13, 1898, the day on which Zola’s “J’accuse” appeared on the front page of L’Aurore. Their ebullient younger guests, whose company Degas usually relished, offended him with their pro- Dreyfusard opinions. He canceled the following week’s dinner on the day itself, writing to Louise:

You will have to excuse me tonight, and I would rather tell you right away that I am asking you to do so for some time. You could not have thought that I would have the heart to continue being cheerful and entertaining. The time for laughter is over. You kindly introduced me to these young people, but I constrain them and they are unbearable to me. Let me remain in my corner. I’ll be happy there. There are many good moments to remember.

The decision must not have been easy for Degas to take. Unaware of this crisis, on the evening of January 20 nineteen- year- old Julie Manet— another anti- Dreyfusard who would contribute funds to La Libre Parole for the repatriation of Jews to Jerusalem— went to Degas’s apartment to invite him to dinner. “We found him so worked up into such a terrible state against the Jews,” she noted in her diary, “that we left without asking him anything at all.” “To live alone, without any family, it is really too hard,” he had confided to Madame Giuseppe De Nittis in May 1877. In his rupture with the Halévys, Degas administered a selfinflicted wound.

...Degas, who initially appeared to Kessler like “an elegant grandfather . . . an apostle, untouched by the world,” became agitated when conversation turned to the Bernheim family, who dealt in his work. Referring to the father, Alexandre, who had established the business, Degas exclaimed, “How can one chat with people like that? Let’s see, with a Jewish Belgian who is a naturalized Frenchman! It’s as if one wished to speak with a hyena, a boa. Such people do not belong to the same humanity as us.”

Kessler recorded that Degas’s most deranged invective was reserved for compulsory education: 

“It’s the Jews and the Protestants who do that” [Degas said] . . .Degas became completely angry, thundering against the popularization of art and the unrestrained increase in  exhibitions, pictures, and artists...?

Amused and horrified in equal measure, Kessler left the dinner concluding that the artist was “a deranged and maniacal innocent.”

8 For what remains the best introduction, see Linda Nochlin, “Degas and the Dreyfus Affair: A Portrait of the Artist as an Anti- Semite,” in The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice, edited by Norman L. Kleeblatt (University of California Press, 1987). Degas was joined by Renoir (and to a lesser degree Cézanne) in their at times violent anti- Dreyfusard positions; Monet  and Pissarro were ardent supporters of Dreyfus’s cause. Degas and Renoir both broke with Pissarro over the Dreyfus Affair.

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