Professor Butter Beard and Edgar Degas’ “Monsieur and Madame Édouard Manet”
“Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things.”
― Oscar Hammerstein II, 1959, “The Sound of Music”
My edible “favorite things” swirl in a dance like falling crimson and golden leaves in autumn. Dark chocolate, white chocolate and minted chocolate seductively tango, each offering their own ruby-red rose. Honeycrisp apples, Asian pears and fresh cranberries dazzle for attention in a Chopin waltz. Chinese Five Spice, fresh rosemary sprigs and deep-fried sage leaves do the “twist” to the sound of groovin’ bongo drums. And Grandma’s cornbread, Mrs. Gildow’s pumpkin pies and Aunt Cordie’s holiday pudding tap dance with Fred and Ginger, desperately begging me to join in.
My favorite artists each beg me to spend the rainy Saturday afternoons with them on the sofa: Holbein, Vermeer, Dürer, Michelangelo, and Van Gogh. Wait. Who’s kidding who… It will always be Vincent!
But this Saturday, Vincent graciously granted me a reprieve while he chatted with Theo. Two somewhat reluctant guests joined Nellie and me, each bringing their own special tea leaves and favorite porcelain teacups. They sat on either side of us and helped turn the crisp pages of my new Metropolitan Museum catalogue, “Manet/Degas,” each loudly whispering their own running, and often overlapping, monologues.
“To consider the legacies of Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, two giants of art history who reimagined the visual language of modern life,” writes Max Hollein, “it is only fitting to reunite them in museum galleries, a setting reminiscent of their legendary first encounter at the Louvre.”
When their paths first converged, neither had attained the stature of “modern master,” but each was extraordinarily ambitious and well aware of their shared potential. Hollein continues, “Their rivalry in paint and on paper over the course of two decades produced some of the most provocative and admired images in Western art.”
Over the course of the afternoon and multiple refills of hot Earl Grey, they both reminded me that portraiture was in vogue in France during the mid-nineteenth century. Neither artist relied on commissions, which deliciously freed them to focus primarily on family, friends, and public figures connected to their widening social and artistic circles.
Manet, with a sideways sly glance, proudly stated that he imbued his models with a “certain stateliness.” He usually presented them full-length, often in stationary poses and magnified their presence by having them look directly into their viewer’s eyes. Degas rebutted that he was equally concerned with the expressive power of bodies and faces. Although, his aim was to convey something of his sitter’s characters and souls by depicting them in “distinctive, unconventional postures within familiar environments.”
In 1868, Degas attempted to capture the “relaxed sociability” of their shared Thursday evening salons in a double portrait of his friend Manet distracted in thought, comfortably slumped on a sofa like mine, while Manet’s wife Suzanne plays the piano. Just a month earlier, Manet had painted his own portrait of Suzanne in the same setting and pose. Degas reportedly presented his version as a gift to the Manets, but what happened next, neither will confirm, even after encouraging paw prodding from Nellie.
For reasons to remain unknown, Manet slashed the right-hand side of the canvas, slicing off his wife’s profile. The rightfully angered Degas reclaimed the gift and then returned a still life Manet had given him to “be rid of the ungrateful imbicile.” Max Hollein confirmed that years later, the cropped composition could still be seen conspicuously hung in Degas’ private apartment. It is unclear when or why the blank strip of canvas with the red atelier stamp was added, but Hollein speculates that in his seventies, Degas intended to repair the “ruptured work.”
Just as an additional sumptuous note, although Manet never portrayed Degas, he kept a photograph of him, inscribed “Degas” by a later, unknown hand, in an album alongside those of his wife. And that shared thought brought with it an uncomfortable silence between the friends, only broken by the sounds of sipping tea through mustaches and silly Nellie giggles.
I leave these two crazy moonbeams to reconcile, with Nellie as a bouncing buffer, while I step into the kitchen to plate up my offering of Browned Butter Double Chocolate Espresso cookies still warm from the oven. I return to the sofa and watch the two friends’ faces erupt with dark chocolate grins as I adjust the pillows and settle back to enjoy the rest of Saturday afternoon with “a few of my favorite things.”
Browned Butter Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies
Four dozen cookies
3 Tbsp finely ground “dark roast” coffee beans
1 cup dark brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
8 ounces unsalted butter (2 sticks)
2 large eggs and 2 additional large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla paste
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
4 Tbsp dark cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp fine sea salt
10 ounces mini chocolate chips
Turbinado sugar and additional sea salt
1) Whisk together the ground coffee and sugars in a large bowl. Set aside.
2) Brown the butter in a light-bottomed pan over medium high heat until it changes in color from pale yellow to golden brown and smells of caramelization. Immediately pour over the coffee/sugar and whisk to combine.
3) In a small bowl, whisk together the whole eggs and additional yolks and vanilla. Stir this mixture into the butter/sugar mix.
4) In a third bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and soda, cinnamon and salt. Fold this dry mix into the wet. And then fold in the mini chocolate chips. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour – even better overnight.
5) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
6) Portion the dough into 1” balls and roll each of the balls in turbinado sugar. Place no more than 16 on each tray.
7) Bake the cookies, one tray at a time, for 8-9 minutes until puffed. Remove the tray from the oven and bang it on the counter 2-3 times to deflate and form “wrinkles.” Sprinkle the cookies with the sea salt and return the tray to the oven to back for an additional 3 minutes.
8) Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes on the tray before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.
