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the camera interrupting space, but the Japanese prints
did not enter Europe until mid-nineteenth century. If
Degas was only infl uenced by things Japanese then he
would not have cut the man legs off at the knee (sitting
stage front), nor would he have cut the hands off the man
at the table stage right. To our eyes now we see such
works as ‘real’ because we see photographically, but
pre-photography this painting would merely look crude,
inexplicable, badly composed, unnatural. It has a chan-
nel of nothing running between the man with no hands
and the main group examining the cotton. There is a
channel of windows running stage left to the back which
directs your eye to the back of the room to fi nd nothing
of importance. It has a cupboard door sticking out, top
right and a wood doorpost running down the entire left
hand side. Put against the Renaissance tradition that had
lasted nearly 400 years this is all a revolution. However
the most important aspect is the meaning produced from
this range of compositional, photographically-derived
devices. Unlike virtually any other painting before its
time nearly every participant, ‘portrait,’ is going about
his business without any regard for the other persons
in the image. This is no longer a complete world, one
of order and harmony, a composito, quite the opposite.
The man at the desk has no interest in the man sitting
in the chair with no legs who has no interest in the man
reading the newspaper who has no interest in the man
leaning up against the window who would appear to be
equally disinterested in the two engaged in examining
the cotton in front of him who have no interest in the
two men walking through the room behind them. It is a
profound image that heralds a new world, the industrial
city with its money-making preoccupations, a dislocated
community of self interest; while they are all busy at
their tasks, they are profoundly lonely, nobody really
connects. This picture tells of what we in the ‘economic
developed countries’ were to become. While Degas’
world foretold the coming of narrative cinema, manyCOMPOSITION
Thompson, Stephen. Satyr, British
Museum.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift,
2005 (2005.100.510) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.