Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas was a French artist born on July 19, 1834, and passed away on September 27, 1917. He is well known for his beautiful pastel drawings and oil paintings. Along with paintings, Degas also created bronze sculptures, prints, and many drawings.

Degas is especially famous for his artworks showing dancers, as more than half of his works feature them. Even though he is often called an Impressionist, he did not like this label and preferred to be known as a realist. Unlike many Impressionists, Degas did not paint outdoors.

He was very skilled at drawing and was especially good at showing movement, which can be seen clearly in his pictures of dancers and women bathing. Besides dancers, Degas also painted racehorses, jockeys, and portraits. His portraits are special because they show deep feelings and often depict people feeling alone.

When Degas began his career, he wanted to be a history painter. He studied art carefully and learned a lot about classical Western art. When he was in his early thirties, he changed his focus. He started using his traditional painting skills to create artworks about everyday modern life, becoming a classical painter of contemporary scenes.

Early life

Degas was born in Paris, France, into a moderately wealthy family. He was the oldest of five children. His mother came from New Orleans, Louisiana, and his maternal grandfather was from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Degas started school at age eleven and later attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Sadly, his mother passed away when he was thirteen. After finishing school, he began studying art seriously and turned a room in his home into an artist's studio. He also tried studying law, though he didn’t put much effort into it. Later, he met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who gave him important advice about drawing. Degas then studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and later traveled to Italy for several years, where he created early works and studied famous artists.

Artistic career

Edgar Degas returned to Paris in 1859 and began painting a large work called The Bellelli Family for the Salon, though he did not finish it until 1867. He also started creating historical paintings like Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah. In 1861, he visited a friend and made early studies of horses. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1865 with a painting called Scene of War in the Middle Ages.

After the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas joined the National Guard but had little time for painting. He later moved to New Orleans in 1872, where he created works featuring family members, including A Cotton Office in New Orleans, which was purchased by a museum during his lifetime.

Back in Paris, Degas joined a group of artists who organized independent exhibitions known as the Impressionist Exhibitions. He helped organize these shows from 1874 to 1886, though he often disagreed with his fellow artists. Degas also collected works by artists he admired and began taking photographs of his friends.

As Degas grew older, his eyesight worsened, and he stopped creating art around 1912. He spent his final years in Paris and passed away in September 1917.

Artistic style

Edgar Degas is often called an Impressionist, though this doesn’t tell the whole story. Impressionists painted everyday scenes with bright colors and focused on how light changes. They liked to paint outdoors. But Degas didn’t agree with painting outdoors. He thought artists should work inside instead.

Even so, Degas shared many ideas with Impressionists. He painted everyday life in Paris, used unusual angles, and experimented with colors and shapes. He was friends with important Impressionist artists like Mary Cassatt and Manet.

Degas loved old masters and copied their work. He also liked Japanese prints, which influenced his style. At first, he painted historical scenes, but later he focused on modern life. He painted racecourses, women at work, and dancers. His dancer paintings often showed them practicing or getting ready, showing their hard work.

As Degas’s subjects changed, so did his painting style. He began using bright colors and bold brushstrokes. His paintings started to look like snapshots, capturing moments in time. He was also interested in photography and used some of its techniques in his work.

Degas often left parts of his paintings unfinished, saying his eyes made it hard to finish. But others thought he just didn’t like to complete things. He was very careful about how his paintings looked when they were displayed.

Degas also used different materials besides paint, like pastels and etching. He made many drawings using a special printmaking method called monotype. Later in life, he began painting women drying off, combing their hair, and bathing. His style became looser, with simpler backgrounds.

Though his style changed, some things stayed the same. Degas always painted indoors, either from memory, photographs, or people posing for him. He liked to repeat subjects many times, changing small details each time. He cared a lot about how his paintings were framed.

Sculpture

Edgar Degas showed his only sculpture during his lifetime in 1881. It was called The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, and he used a real girl named Marie van Goethem as his model. This sculpture was a life-sized wax figure with real hair and a cloth tutu. Many critics thought it was very realistic but also thought the dancer looked unusual.

Degas made many other sculptures over 40 years, but people didn’t see them until after he passed away in 1918. After his death, people found about 150 wax sculptures in his studio. These were later turned into bronze statues by a foundry owner named Adrien Hébrard. Most of these bronze statues were made from copies of the original wax pieces.

Personality and politics

Edgar Degas preferred to keep his personal life private and lived simply. Friends often found him witty, but sometimes his jokes could be unkind. One writer called him a "grumpy old man," and Degas enjoyed this image.

In the 1870s, Degas became interested in politics and joined groups led by Léon Gambetta. However, his views later changed. Sadly, he developed unfair prejudices against certain people. During a disagreement over a famous event called the Dreyfus Affair, he made hurtful choices about who to be friends with and refused to work with some artists. He held these unfair views until the end of his life.

Reputation

During his lifetime, people had different opinions about Edgar Degas's artwork. At first, his paintings were praised when shown in big art events called the Salon. Later, he joined a group of artists known as the Impressionists, who didn't follow strict rules.

Degas's work was often talked about because of its strong drawing style. One of his most talked-about pieces was Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, shown in 1881. Some people thought it looked strange, while others loved it.

His paintings and drawings of everyday life and bold use of color helped make him one of the most important artists of the Impressionist movement. Even though he didn’t teach anyone officially, he inspired many famous painters.

Today, Degas's artworks are shown in many museums around the world. There have been many special exhibitions of his work in places like the Morgan Library, Museu Picasso de Barcelona, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Relationship with Mary Cassatt

In 1877, Edgar Degas invited Mary Cassatt to show her art in an Impressionist exhibition. He liked a painting she showed in 1874 and they became friends. They both loved art and books, came from wealthy families, and studied painting in Italy. Neither of them ever got married.

After Cassatt’s family moved to Paris, Degas, Cassatt, and her sister often visited the Louvre together to look at art. Degas made special prints showing Cassatt looking at art while her sister read about it. Cassatt often posed for Degas, especially for paintings where she tried on different hats.

Degas taught Cassatt how to use pastel and engraving. Cassatt helped Degas sell his paintings and made sure people in the United States knew about his work. They worked very closely together in 1879–80 when Cassatt was learning how to make prints. But in 1880, Degas stopped working on a prints project they were doing together, and it was never finished. Even though they kept visiting each other until Degas passed away in 1917, they did not work that closely again.

Later, Degas painted a picture of Cassatt sitting and holding some cards. Cassatt didn’t like how she looked in the painting and sold it.

Degas and Cassatt sometimes disagreed, especially about important public issues. In 2014, a museum showed their friendship in an exhibition called Degas/Cassatt.

Relationship with Suzanne Valadon

Edgar Degas was a friend and fan of Suzanne Valadon. He was one of the first people to buy her art and taught her a special art technique called soft-ground etching.

He wrote her many letters, often asking her to visit him with her drawings. In one letter, he playfully said, "Every year I see this handwriting, drawn like a saw, arriving, terrible Maria. But I never see the author arrive with a box (of drawings) under her arm. And yet I am getting very old. Happy new year."

The novel The Dream Collector: Sabrine & Sigmund Freud by R. W. Meek imagines Degas's friendship with Suzanne Valadon.

Legacy with Édouard Manet

In 2023, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had an exhibition showing the works of Degas and Manet together.