Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas
French painter & sculptor
1834 - 1917


Degas was born to an aristocratic family, unusually supportive of his desire to paint. Edgar Degas was a French painter and sculptor, whose innovative composition, skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the masters of modern art in the late 19th century. Degas is usually classed with the impressionists, and he exhibited with them in seven of the eight impressionist exhibitions. However, his training in classical drafting and his dislike of painting directly from nature produced a style that represented a related alternative to impressionism.
Degas was born into a well-to-do banking family on July 19, 1834, in Paris. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under a disciple of the famous French classicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, where Degas developed the great drawing ability that was to be a salient characteristic of his art. Degas admired Ingres's work and believed, as the great master did, in the primary importance of drawing in the creation of a work of art. During the eighteenth century, much was made of the rivalry between Ingres the draftsman and Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who placed greater emphasis on the role of color in painting. Degas was enamored of both artists and acquired their works for his own art collection.
After 1865, under the influence of the budding impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. But, unlike the impressionists, he preferred to work in the studio and was uninterested in the study of natural light that fascinated them. Theatrical subjects attracted him, and most of his works depict racecourses, theaters, cafés, music halls, or boudoirs. Degas was a keen observer of humanity—particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied—and in his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he cultivated a complete objectivity, attempting to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.



In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision.
After 1865, under the influence of the budding impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. But, unlike the impressionists, he preferred to work in the studio and was uninterested in the study of natural light that fascinated them. He was attracted by theatrical subjects, and most of his works depict racecourses, theaters, cafés, music halls, or boudoirs.Degas was a keen observer of humanity -- particularly of women, with whom his work is preoccupied -- and in his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he cultivated a complete objectivity, attempting to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.
Famous and revered, Degas died in Paris on 27th September 1917, and is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. He left more than 2,000 oil paintings and pastels, and 150 sculptures, the latter unsurprisingly mostly depicting racehorses and dancers.


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