Edgar Degas
1834-1917
Degas was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist.
Degas was born into a well-to-do banking family on July 19, 1834, in Paris. He began to paint seriously early in life. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of the famous French classicist J. A. D. Ingres Ingres. His academic training and close study of classic art had superbly prepared him for history painter career. After 1865, under the influence of the impressionist movement, he gave up academic subjects to turn to contemporary themes. He brought the traditional methods of a history painter to contemporary subject matter, and became a classical painter of modern life.
Degas joined a group of young artists who were intent upon organizing an independent exhibiting society. The result was the first of the exhibitions that became labeled Impressionist Exhibitions. Degas showed his work in all but one.
Degas often identification as an Impressionist, is an understandable but insufficient description. Degas Impressionism originated in the 1860s and 1870s and grew, in part, from the realism of such painters as Courbet and Corot. The Impressionists painted the realities of the world around them using bright, "dazzling" colors, concentrating primarily on the effects of light, and hoping to infuse their scenes with immediacy.
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. A superb draughtsman, he is especially identified with the subject of the dance, and over half his works depict dancers.
At the same time, Degas began a hobby as a photographer, using it to accurately capture action for his paintings and artwork. He was a keen observer of humanity and master in the depiction of movement. His portraits as well as his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses cultivated a complete objectivity, caught subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.
Degas is, however, closest to Impressionism than to any other movement: his scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists, most notably Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet, all relate him intimately to the Impressionist movement.
In the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, Degas began increasingly to work in sculpture and pastel. Degas was not well known to the public, and his true artistic stature did not become evident until after his death. He died in Paris on September 27, 1917.
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