Surreal visions: the best of this year’s art books reviewed
Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas first met in a gallery at the Louvre. Degas was standing, etching plate in hand, copying a picture. How audacious, Manet exclaimed, to work without a preliminary drawing. ‘I would not dare to do the same.’ And thus he revealed the essential difference between the two. Degas was a supreme
![](https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/1Algae-Books.jpg?w=440)