Edgar Degas was near­ly blind when this film footage was tak­en in 1915. The great French Impres­sion­ist painter had begun to lose his eye­sight in his thir­ties, when he became extreme­ly sen­si­tive to bright light and expe­ri­enced a loss of vision in his right eye. Degas devel­oped blind spots in both eyes, and by the time he was in his for­ties he had lost a sig­nif­i­cant part of his cen­tral vision.

Paint­ing was a strug­gle. The unbear­able­ness of bright light forced Degas to work indoors, and even­tu­al­ly he had to ask his mod­els for help iden­ti­fy­ing col­ors. By the time he was 57 he could no longer read. “How awful it is not being able to see clear­ly any­more,” Degas said late in his life. “I have to give up draw­ing and paint­ing and for years now con­tent myself with sculp­ture.… But if my eye­sight con­tin­ues to dim I won’t even be able to mod­el any more. What will I do with my days then?”

In 1912 Degas had to give up art alto­geth­er, and he filled his days by tak­ing long walks around Paris. When the young actor Sacha Gui­t­ry approached the retired artist about appear­ing in his film Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land” (we fea­tured Gui­t­ry’s footage of a severe­ly arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Wednes­day and Claude Mon­et in his gar­den at Giverny yes­ter­day), Degas flat­ly refused to par­tic­i­pate. Unde­terred, Gui­t­ry became a sort of pio­neer­ing paparazzi: He set up his cam­era near Degas’s home on the Boule­vard de Clichy and wait­ed in ambush for the 81-year-old man to pass by on one of his reg­u­lar walks.

The result­ing film is brief, but fas­ci­nat­ing. The great painter strolls along with a female helper, a bowler hat on his head and a fold­ed over­coat under one arm, using an umbrel­la as a walk­ing stick. When he gets clos­er to the cam­era we can see that Degas is wear­ing the tint­ed glass­es he cus­tom­ar­i­ly used to shield what was left of his eye­sight from the harsh day­light. When the old man reach­es the edge of the frame, the wom­an’s hand takes hold of his arm, and then he’s gone.

By the late six­ties, the Amer­i­can Bell Tele­phone Com­pa­ny, col­lo­qui­al­ly known across Amer­i­ca as “Ma Bell,” need­ed some spiff­ing up. Per­haps a vast, long-estab­lished tele­phone ser­vice monop­oly does­n’t spring to mind as the ide­al design client, but Saul Bass, the artist behind the title sequences for films like The Man with the Gold­en Arm, Spar­ta­cus, and Psy­cho, thought dif­fer­ent­ly. If you rec­og­nize Bass’ name, you prob­a­bly know he cre­at­ed the Bell logo used by the com­pa­ny from 1969 to its Jus­tice Depart­ment-man­dat­ed divesti­ture in 1984. But the work cut out for Bass and his asso­ciates went well beyond fig­ur­ing out how best to stream­line and mod­ern­ize an old-timey bell-in-a-cir­cle graph­ic. As you can see above, they had to pro­duce an entire half-hour film pitch­ing their ideas for the cor­po­ra­tion’s com­plete aes­thet­ic redesign. They did­n’t just make a new logo; they prac­ti­cal­ly cre­at­ed a new world, encom­pass­ing signs, booths, vehi­cles, equip­ment, pub­li­ca­tions, uni­forms, and exec­u­tive cuf­flinks.

Bass pre­sent­ed all this to Bell in 1969, the year after Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001 offered a vision of a near-future sim­i­lar­ly uni­fied by con­sis­tent, mod­ern design. It marked the last era when you could pro­pose such a top-down aes­thet­ic pro­gram and not appear total­i­tar­i­an — and, con­sid­er­ing the earth-toned styl­is­tic excess­es the sev­en­ties would short­ly bring, it was the last era when you would have want­ed to. View­ers of cer­tain gen­er­a­tions will remem­ber vivid­ly the real-life ver­sions of Bass’ pro­posed phone book, van, and hard­hat designs. Oth­er pro­pos­als seem slight­ly out­landish and, from the per­spec­tive of 2012, more than a lit­tle retro. Observe, for instance, the unre­al­ized uni­form designs for women work­ing at Bel­l’s ser­vice cen­ters: “More flat­ter­ing than any­thing offered by the air­lines [ … ] Ma Bell has gone Mod!” But the stock of retro-futur­ism has reached an all-time high in recent years, and Bass’ design work, as goofy as cer­tain pieces of it may now seem, has retained a strik­ing qual­i­ty over the decades. He cer­tain­ly impressed the right peo­ple at Bell: after the breakup, the new AT&T hired him to make them a logo of their own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Yes­ter­day we showed you some star­tling footage of an elder­ly, arthrit­ic Pierre-Auguste Renoir, paint­ing with hor­ri­bly deformed hands. Today we offer a more idyl­lic image of a French Impres­sion­ist painter in his gold­en years: Claude Mon­et on a sun­ny day in his beau­ti­ful gar­den at Giverny.

Once again, the footage was pro­duced by Sacha Gui­t­ry for his project Ceux de Chez Nous, or “Those of Our Land.” It was shot in the sum­mer of 1915, when Mon­et was 74 years old. It was not the best time in Mon­et’s life. His sec­ond wife and eldest son had both died in the pre­vi­ous few years, and his eye­sight was get­ting pro­gres­sive­ly worse due to cataracts. But despite the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal set­backs, Mon­et would soon rebound, mak­ing the last decade of his life (he died in 1926 at the age of 86) an extreme­ly pro­duc­tive peri­od in which he paint­ed many of his most famous stud­ies of water lilies.

At the begin­ning of the film clip we see Gui­t­ry and Mon­et talk­ing with each oth­er. Then Mon­et paints on a large can­vas beside a lily pond. It’s a shame the cam­era does­n’t show the paint­ing Mon­et is work­ing on, but it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see the great artist all clad in white, a cig­a­rette dan­gling from his lips, paint­ing in his love­ly gar­den.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

Rare Film of Sculp­tor Auguste Rodin Work­ing at His Stu­dio in Paris (1915)

Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)