#and add in pictoral evidence of above

[amesroom]

Shadow Blues

A description plaque installed beneath Edgar Degas’s Duchessa di Montejasi with her Daughters (1876) helpfully notes that Degas painted his last family portrait as a gift to its sitters, his aunt and cousins.  Given his familiarity with the subjects, Degas’s choice of a title that identifies only his aunt by name to which he adds a mere possessive label referring to his cousins seems to identify the Duchessa as the family portrait’s primary subject. Degas’s emphasis on the Duchessa’s gaze in the portrait reveals this specific regard for her. In characterizing the Duchessa’s gaze as an expression of heavy preoccupation through the rendering of her surroundings, Degas’s projection of his own shadow offers empathy towards her concerns.

When the Duchessa’s fixating gaze out of the canvas meets the viewer’s eyes, the viewer’s attention narrows down to her face. The clarity and dimensionality that allow for this restricted focus are elements unique to her face in an otherwise flat painting. For instance, the detailed translation of the shadows in the creases at the bridge of her nose and under eye area, with the assistance of the highlighting of her forehead and cheekbones, amplify the depth of her gaze. No such detailed shadowing can be identified on either one of the daughters’ faces. The Duchessa’s face is in fact the most meticulously rendered feature of the entire painting, indicated not only by its depth but also the fineness of detail: attention to a miniscule wrinkle on the front end of her right eyebrow contrasts drastically with the inarticulate strokes of black above the Duchessa’s head that generalize their subject; it may as well be a rough nest sitting on her head instead than an elaborate hair arrangement. The departure from such inattentive brushstrokes pervading the rest of the canvas at the targeted area of the Duchessa’s face thereby indicates intentional concentration on the Duchessa, and more specifically, her face.

In spite of her clearly rendered face, however, it is difficult to articulate emotions from the Duchessa’s expression. To this, the wallpaper behind her offers insight: perhaps it is the very imperceptibility of her underlying emotions that the painting seeks to portray. The muddy blue wall redolent of an overcast sky with scattered clouds proffers a reflection of the incoherence of Duchessa’s emotions, embodied by the thick layering of light grey strokes that stir the wall’s blue-grey composition.

Like the wallpaper, the other, less-attentively composed subjects of the painting reveal information that helps contextualize, or characterize the Duchessa’s gaze. The Duchessa’s two daughters, for instance, draw attention to her stagnant state in contrast to their physically active selves. The lack of contour and the blending of the daughters’ facial features indicate physical movement:  the blurry, out of focus countenance of the daughter to the far left, with her droopy right eye and right ear amounting to a dark smudge blending into the background suggests that she is in motion. The oscillating strokes that obscure the backline of the daughter to the right, and the similarly rippled ring-like dabs of grey between the daughters’ heads provide further evidence of physical shifting during a social interaction with some subject off the side of the canvas. This evidence of their movement presents a sharp contrast to the inertness of the Duchessa’s engagement, which appears to be contemplative for the most part. Her physical features, then, may be read as bodily evidence of her engrossment in this mental activity; the shadows under her eyes as those of weariness from prolonged investment, and her pursed lips as a betrayal of the façade of composure that her rigidly folded hands present, an indication of muted discomfort. Another distinction that the daughters’ movement brings to light is that between their progressive attitude—their investment in the present, and physical distance from their mother’s pensiveness—and the stagnant nature of the Duchessa’s reflection. The daughters thereby assist in discerning the Duchessa’s frozen contemplation and spatiotemporal isolation, identifying expressive features difficult to ascertain with the depiction of the Duchessa’s face alone.

The Duchessa’s black dress elaborates on the gravity of this contemplation. The dark pyramid that it forms off-center to the right of the canvas appears to anchor the imposing weight of the Duchessa’s emotional and mental heft. That is, its dominating presence in the asymmetrical divide of pictoral space ascribes magnitude to the Duchessa’s contemplation.

It has been shown thus far, that Degas’s rendering of the Duchessa’s surroundings expounds on the painting’s concentration on the gaze, directing attention to the expressive qualities of what they identify as stagnant, heavy contemplation. Degas not only concerns himself with the depiction of his aunt’s serious preoccupation, but also invests in the communication of his own expression in the painting.

This is achieved by the shadow cast in the area between the daughter to the right and the Duchessa, by the strokes of dark grey-brown that appear to be emanating from the dark left end of the sofa in which the Duchessa is seated. As the previous examination of the highlighting on the Duchessa’s cheekbones and forehead indicate a frontal light source, it follows that the shadow identified cannot belong to any one of the figures sitting for the painting. This suggests the presence of another figure—that is, that of Degas himself, blocking the source of light as he stands opposite of the Duchessa while painting the portrait. Upon closer examination, however, one notes distinctly lighter strokes of grey above the dark grey-brown blotch directly next to the Duchessa’s right shoulder. This suggests that there is a proportionately larger shadow looming over the smaller, darker shadow, and this overlap suggests the presence of another individual closer to the picture, further away from the light source—a figure that may be identified as the viewer. The overlapping of the shadows suggests that Degas and the viewer are standing in the same line of vision, one that, while occupying the spatiotemporal divide between the three women, focuses on the Duchessa’s face. The inclusion of the two shadows, then, appears to serve the purposes of indicating recognition of and empathy towards the Duchessa’s preoccupation and isolation.

Such physical manifestations of the viewer and Degas himself into the painting point directly to the background’s subservient role in the articulation of Degas’s regard for the Duchessa. Further, the layer of pale blue around her right shoulders and face seems to have been added to prevent the shadows from overshadowing her face, thereby preserving her gaze as the focus of the painting.  Perhaps in doing so, Degas saw the act of gifting this portrait to her as an offering of himself and the viewer as shadow witnesses of the blues in her gaze.