Thoughts on { A pear | Edgar Degas, 1911

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Edouard Manet, A young man peeling a pear (Portrait Of Leon Leenhoff), 1868

“I put it (a still life of a pear, made by Edouard Manet, ed.) there (on the wall, next to Ingres’ Jupiter, ed.), for a pear like that would overthrow any god.”

Edgar Degas

Edouard Manet, Portrait of George Moore, 1879 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Jupiter and Thetis, 1811

Jupiter, of course the Jupiter,’ and he took me to see the picture “ not a very good Ingres, I thought ” good, of course, but somewhat tedious “ a Jupiter with beetling brows, and a thunderbolt in his hand. But next to it was a pear, and I knew that pear, just a speckled pear painted on six inches of canvas; it used to hang in Manet’s studio, six inches of canvas nailed to the wall, and I said to Degas, ‘I think, after all, I like the pear better than Jupiter;’ and Degas said, ’ I put it there, for a pear painted like that would overthrow any god.’ There is a picture by Mr. Sargent in this room ” one of his fashionable women.

George Moore, Hail and Farewell: Vale, 1911