Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas, (19 July 1834 - 27 September 1917) was a French
artist famous for his work in oil painting, sculpture, and drawing.
His early study of classical art prefaced a body of mature works
which convincingly placed the human figure in contemporary
environments. He is regarded as one of the founders of
impressionism.
Degas was born in Paris, France to Celestine Musson de Gas, and
Augustin de Gas, a banker. The de Gas family was moderately
wealthy. At age 11, Degas began his schooling, and started down the
road of art with enrollment in the Lycee Louis Grand. Degas began
to paint seriously early in life; by eighteen he had turned a room
in his home into an artist's studio, but he was expected to go to
law school, as were most aristocratic young men. Degas, however,
had other plans and left his formal education at age 20. He then
studied drawing with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he
flourished, following the style of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
In 1855 Degas met Ingres and was advised by him to "draw lines,
young man, many lines." In that same year, Degas received admission
to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The next year, Degas traveled to
Italy, where he saw the paintings of Michelangelo, Raphael, and
other artists of the Renaissance.
After returning from Italy, Degas copied paintings at the Louvre.
In 1865 some of his works were accepted in the Salon. During the
next five years, Degas had additional works accepted in the Salon,
and gradually gained respect in the world of conventional art.[3]
In 1870, at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Degas enlisted
in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little
time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to
be defective, and for the rest of his life his eye problems were a
constant worry to him.
Following the war, Degas visited his brother, René, in New Orleans
and produced a number of works, many of family members, before
returning to Paris in 1873. The following year, Degas helped to
organize the first Impressionist Exhibition. The Impressionists
subsequently held seven additional shows, the last in 1886, and
Degas showed his work in all but one. At around the same time,
Degas also became an amateur photographer, both for pleasure, and
in order to accurately capture action for oil painting.
At the death of his father in 1874, the subsequent settling of the
estate revealed that René had amassed enormous business debts. To
preserve the family name, Degas was forced to sell his house and a
collection of art he had inherited. He now found himself suddenly
dependent on sales of his artwork for income. After several years
his financial situation improved, and sales of his own work
permitted him to indulge his passion for collecting works by
artists he admired?old masters like El Greco, moderns such as
Delacroix, and his contemporaries
Paul Cézanne,
Paul Gauguin and
Vincent Van
Gogh. Ingres and Manet were especially well represented.
As the years passed, Degas became isolated, due, in part, to his
belief "that a painter could have no personal life."[8] The Dreyfus
Affair controversy brought his antisemitic leanings to the fore,
and he broke with all his Jewish friends. While he is known to have
been working in pastel as late as the end of 1907, and is believed
to have continued making sculpture as late as 1910, he apparently
ceased working in 1912, when the impending demolition of his
longtime residence on the rue Victor Massé forced a wrenching move
to quarters on the boulevard de Clichy. He never married and spent
the last years of his life, nearly blind, "aimlessly wandering the
streets of Paris" before dying in 1917.
Please visit our gallery of
Edgar Degas Oil Painting Reproduction.
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