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- zoe.vanderweide@sothebys.com
- Degas rejected the “Impressionist” label and preferred to be known as a “realist”. Even though he took a leading role in organizing the Impressionist Exhibitions and is considered one of the movement’s founders, Degas had a contentious relationship with his contemporaries.
- He initially aspired to be a history painter, but changed course in his early thirties. Degas received his formal training at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, where he closely studied classical painting under Louis Lamothe.
- Degas was a well-heeled member of the haute bourgeoisie. Perpetually outfitted in a frock coat and stovepipe hat, Degas was an obsessive collector of lace handkerchiefs and walking sticks.
- Like many Impressionists, he was influenced by Japanese art and collected ukiyo-e prints. In 1853, with the opening of trade between Japan and the west, an influx of new art into France ignited a craze for all things Japanese.
- Overview
- Beginnings
- Colour and line
Edgar Degas (born July 19, 1834, Paris, France—died September 27, 1917, Paris) French painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was prominent in the Impressionist group and widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life. Degas’s principal subject was the human—especially the female—figure, which he explored in works ranging from the sombre portraits...
Born in Paris just south of Montmartre, Degas always remained a proud Parisian, living and working in the same area of the city throughout his career. Though detailed knowledge of his middle-class family is limited, it is known that they maintained the outward forms of polite society and that they were related to minor aristocracy in Italy and to the business community in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. The family was also prosperous enough to send Degas in 1845 to a leading boys’ school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he received a conventional classical education. Music featured prominently in the Degas home, where the artist’s mother sang opera arias and his father arranged occasional recitals, one of which is represented in Degas’s painting of 1872, Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste De Gas. The artist’s mother died when he was 13 years old, leaving three sons and two daughters to be brought up by his father, a banker by profession. Knowledgeable about art but conservative in his preferences, Degas’s father helped to develop his son’s interest in painting and in 1855 encouraged him to register at the École des Beaux-Arts under the supervision of Louis Lamothe, a minor follower of J.-A.-D. Ingres. Surviving works from that period show Degas’s aptitude for drawing and his attention to the historical precedents he viewed in the Louvre. He also began his first solemn explorations of the self-portrait.
In 1856 Degas surprisingly abandoned his studies in Paris, using his father’s funds to embark on a three-year period of travel and study in Italy, where he immersed himself in the painting and sculpture of antiquity, the trecento, and the Renaissance. Staying first with relatives in Naples, he later worked in Rome and Florence, filling notebooks with sketches of faces, historic buildings, and the landscape, and with hundreds of rapid pencil copies from frescoes and oil paintings he admired. Among these were copies after Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian, artists who were to echo through his compositions for decades; the inclusion of less-expected works, however, such as those by Sir Anthony van Dyck and Frans Snyders, hinted at wider interests. The same sketchbooks include written notes and reflections, as well as drafts for his own figure-based paintings in a variety of eclectic styles. Together they suggest a literate and serious young artist with high ambitions, but one who still lacked direction.
From his beginnings, Degas seemed equally attracted to the severity of line and to the sensuous delights of colour, echoing a historic tension that was still much debated in his time. In Italy he consciously modeled some drawings on the linear restraint of the Florentine masters, such as Michelangelo, although he gradually acknowledged the lure of the Venetian painters, such as Titian, and their densely hued surfaces. Characteristically, the young Degas developed a near reverence for Ingres, the 19th-century champion of Classical line, while almost guiltily imitating Eugène Delacroix, who was the leading proponent of lyrical colour in the century and considered to be Ingres’s antithesis. Many of the pictures of Degas’s maturity grew out of a confrontation between these impulses, which arguably found resolution in the vigorously drawn and brilliantly coloured pastels of his later years.
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Returning to Paris in April 1859, Degas attempted to launch himself through the established art-world channels of the day, though with little success. He painted large portraits of family members and grandiose, historically inspired canvases such as The Daughter of Jephthah (1859–60) and Semiramis Building Babylon (1861), intending to submit them to the annual state-sponsored Salon. Each work was painstakingly prepared in drawings that still rank among the most beautiful of his career, but he found the paintings themselves difficult to complete to his satisfaction. Perhaps humbled by his exposure to the Italian masters, Degas scraped down and reworked parts of his own canvases, initiating a habit of technical self-criticism that was to last a lifetime. In 1865 his more simply executed Scene of War in the Middle Ages was accepted by the Salon jury, but it remained almost unnoticed in the thronged exhibition halls. The following year his dramatic painting Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey was again met with indifference, despite its startlingly close-up view of a contemporary horse race that seems, in retrospect, like the public announcement of a transformation in his art.
- Richard J. Kendall
Edgar Degas (UK: / ˈ d eɪ ɡ ɑː /, US: / d eɪ ˈ ɡ ɑː, d ə ˈ ɡ ɑː /; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, French: [ilɛːʁ ʒɛʁmɛ̃ ɛdɡaʁ də ɡa]; 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints, and drawings.
Aug 6, 2020 · Best Known For: Painter and sculptor Edgar Degas was a highly celebrated 19th-century French Impressionist whose work helped shape the fine art landscape for years to come. Industries; Painting...
Mar 29, 2022 · Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was a French impressionist painter who used many different media to capture dancers, bathers, horse races, and scenes from Parisian café society. A keen photographer, Degas' paintings frequently show real-life captured in a moment in time, often with an unusual viewpoint, composition or framing – all of which ...
- Mark Cartwright
- What is Edgar Degas known for?Edgar Degas is known for being an influential 19th-century impressionist painter who concentrated on depicting dancers, horse races, bathers, and d...
- Did Edgar Degas go blind?Edgar Degas did lose part of his sight as he got older, although he was not completely blind. For this reason, he tended to concentrate on sculptur...
- How did Edgar Degas influence European art?Edgar Degas influenced European art by painting ordinary daily life in Paris and giving his work a psychological depth through the use of unusual c...
Edgar Degas (1834–1917): Painting and Drawing. Edgar Degas seems never to have reconciled himself to the label of “ Impressionist ,” preferring to call himself a “ Realist ” or “Independent.”. Nevertheless, he was one of the group’s founders, an organizer of its exhibitions, and one of its most important core members.
1 of 9. Summary of Edgar Degas. Always remembered as an Impressionist, Edgar Degas was a member of the seminal group of Paris artists who began to exhibit together in the 1870s. He shared many of their novel techniques, was intrigued by the challenge of capturing effects of light and attracted to scenes of urban leisure.
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