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"He was often as anti-impressionist as the critics who reviewed the shows", according to art historian Carol Armstrong; as Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know n... |
Degas's style reflects his deep respect for the old masters (he was an enthusiastic copyist well into middle age) and his great admiration for Ingres and Delacroix. He was also a collector of Japanese prints, whose compositional principles influenced his work, as did the vigorous realism of popular illustrators such as... |
By the late 1860s, Degas had shifted from his initial forays into history painting to an original observation of contemporary life. Racecourse scenes provided an opportunity to depict horses and their riders in a modern context. He began to paint women at work, milliners and laundresses. His milliner series is interpre... |
Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source, exhibited in the Salon of 1868, was his first major work to introduce a subject with which he would become especially identified, dancers. In many subsequent paintings, dancers were shown backstage or in rehearsal, emphasizing their status as professionals doing a job. From 1870 De... |
As his subject matter changed, so, too, did Degas's technique. The dark palette that bore the influence of Dutch painting gave way to the use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. Paintings such as Place de la Concorde read as "snapshots," freezing moments of time to portray them accurately, imparting a sense of movem... |
Blurring the distinction between portraiture and genre pieces, he painted his bassoonist friend, Désiré Dihau, in The Orchestra of the Opera (c. 1870) as one of fourteen musicians in an orchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience. Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of the dancers on... |
Degas's mature style is distinguished by conspicuously unfinished passages, even in otherwise tightly rendered paintings. He frequently blamed his eye troubles for his inability to finish, an explanation that met with some skepticism from colleagues and collectors who reasoned, as Stuckey explains, that "his pictures c... |
His interest in portraiture led Degas to study carefully the ways in which a person's social stature or form of employment may be revealed by their physiognomy, posture, dress, and other attributes. In his 1879 Portraits, At the Stock Exchange, he portrayed a group of Jewish businessmen with a hint of anti-Semitism. In... |
By the later 1870s, Degas had mastered not only the traditional medium of oil on canvas, but pastel as well. The dry medium, which he applied in complex layers and textures, enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line with a growing interest in expressive color. |
In the mid-1870s, he also returned to the medium of etching, which he had neglected for ten years. At first he was guided in this by his old friend Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, himself an innovator in its use, and began experimenting with lithography and monotype. |
He produced some 300 monotypes over two periods, from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s. |
He was especially fascinated by the effects produced by monotype and frequently reworked the printed images with pastel. By 1880, sculpture had become one more strand to Degas's continuing endeavor to explore different media, although the artist displayed only one sculpture publicly during his lifetime. |
These changes in media engendered the paintings that Degas would produce in later life. Degas began to draw and paint women drying themselves with towels, combing their hair, and bathing (see: After the Bath, Woman drying herself). The strokes that model the form are scribbled more freely than before; backgrounds are s... |
The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to an increasing abstraction of form. Except for his characteristically brilliant draftsmanship and obsession with the figure, the pictures created in this late period of his life bear little superficial resemblance to his early paintings. In point of fact, these painting... |
For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his studio from memory, photographs, or live models. The figure remained his primary subject; his few landscapes were produced from memory or imagination. It was not ... |
Sculpture |
Degas's only showing of sculpture during his life took place in 1881 when he exhibited The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. A nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and dressed in a cloth tutu, it provoked a strong reaction from critics, most of whom found its realism extraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly.... |
Degas created a substantial number of other sculptures during a span of four decades, but they remained unseen by the public until a posthumous exhibition in 1918. Neither The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years nor any of Degas's other sculptures were cast in bronze during the artist's lifetime. Degas scholars have agree... |
After Degas's death, his heirs found in his studio 150 wax sculptures, many in disrepair. They consulted foundry owner Adrien Hébrard, who concluded that 74 of the waxes could be cast in bronze. It is assumed that, except for the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, all Degas bronzes worldwide are cast from surmoulages (i.e., ... |
In 2004, a little-known group of 73 plaster casts, more or less closely resembling Degas's original wax sculptures, was presented as having been discovered among the materials bought by the Airaindor Foundry (later known as Airaindor-Valsuani) from Hébrard's descendants. Bronzes cast from these plasters were issued bet... |
Personality and politics |
Degas, who believed that "the artist must live alone, and his private life must remain unknown", lived an outwardly uneventful life. In company he was known for his wit, which could often be cruel. He was characterized as an "old curmudgeon" by the novelist George Moore, and he deliberately cultivated his reputation as... |
In the 1870s, Degas gravitated towards the republican circles of Léon Gambetta. However, his republicanism did not come untainted, and signs of the prejudice and irritability which would overtake him in old age were occasionally manifested. He fired a model upon learning she was Protestant. Although Degas painted a num... |
The Dreyfus Affair, which divided opinion in Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends, publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. H... |
Reputation |
During his life, public reception of Degas's work ranged from admiration to contempt. As a promising artist in the conventional mode, Degas had a number of paintings accepted in the Salon between 1865 and 1870. These works received praise from Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and the critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary. He soon j... |
Degas's work was controversial, but was generally admired for its draftsmanship. His La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, or Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, which he displayed at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, was probably his most controversial piece; some critics decried what they thought its "appalling ... |
Recognized as an important artist in his lifetime, Degas is now considered "one of the founders of Impressionism". Though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries, his involvement with the other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, a... |
Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert; his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. |
Degas's paintings, pastels, drawings, and sculptures are on prominent display in many museums, and have been the subject of many museum exhibitions and retrospectives. Recent exhibitions include Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks (The Morgan Library, 2010); Picasso Looks at Degas (Museu Picasso de Barcelona, 2010); Degas ... |
Relationship with Mary Cassatt |
In 1877, Degas invited Mary Cassatt to exhibit in the third Impressionist exhibition. He had admired a portrait (Ida) she exhibited in the Salon of 1874, and the two formed a friendship. They had much in common: they shared similar tastes in art and literature, came from affluent backgrounds, had studied painting in It... |
After Cassatt's parents and sister Lydia joined Cassatt in Paris in 1877, Degas, Cassatt, and Lydia were often to be seen at the Louvre studying artworks together. Degas produced two prints, notable for their technical innovation, depicting Cassatt at the Louvre looking at artworks while Lydia reads a guidebook. These ... |
Degas introduced Cassatt to pastel and engraving, while for her part Cassatt was instrumental in helping Degas sell his paintings and promoting his reputation in the United States. Cassatt and Degas worked most closely together in the fall and winter of 1879–80 when Cassatt was mastering her printmaking technique. Dega... |
Around 1884, Degas made a portrait in oils of Cassatt, Mary Cassatt Seated, Holding Cards. Stephanie Strasnick suggests that the cards are probably cartes de visite, used by artists and dealers at the time to document their work. Cassatt thought it represented her as "a repugnant person" and later sold it, writing to h... |
Degas was forthright in his views, as was Cassatt. They clashed over the Dreyfus affair. Cassatt later expressed satisfaction at the irony of Lousine Havermeyer's 1915 joint exhibition of hers and Degas' work being held in aid of women's suffrage, equally capable of affectionately repeating Degas' antifemale comments a... |
Relationship with Suzanne Valadon |
Degas was a friend and admirer of Suzanne Valadon. He was the first person to purchase her art, and he taught her soft-ground etching. |
He wrote her several letters, most asking her to come see him with her drawings. For example, in an undated letter he said in response to one of her letters to him (translated from French): |
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.R. W. Meek’s historical fiction novel, The Dream Collector: Sabrine & Sigmund Freud, imagines Edgar Degas's friendship wi... |
Legacy with Édouard Manet |
In 2023, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York exhibited a two-person exhibition of Degas and Manet. |
Gallery |
Paintings |
Nudes |
Sculptures |
References |
Notes |
Citations |
Sources |
Further reading |
Capriati, Elio (2009). I Segreti di Degas. Milan: Mjm Editore. ISBN 978-88-95682-68-6. |
Dumas, Ann, et al. (1997).The Private Collection of Edgar Degas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Distributed by H.N. Abrams. |
Naomi Lubrich: Ceci n’est pas un chapeau: What is Art and what is Fashion in Degas's Millinery Series?, Fashion Theory, 2022, Manuscript ID: 2113602 |
Robins, Anna Gruetzner and Thomson, Richard (2005). Degas, Sickert, and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870-1910. London: Tate Publishing. |
Valery, Paul (1989). Degas, Manet, Morisot. Princeton University Press. |
The Painter of Modern Life: Memories of Degas by George Moore and Walter Sickert, with an introduction by Anna Gruetzner Robins. London: Pallas Athene, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84368-080-2 |
External links |
35 artworks by or after Edgar Degas at the Art UK site |
Edgar Degas at Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California |
TATE BRITAIN EXHIBITION: DEGAS, SICKERT AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, LONDON AND PARIS 1870–1910. 5 OCTOBER 2005 – 15 JANUARY 2006 At The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. 18 February — 14 May 2006. |
Edgar Degas Gallery at MuseumSyndicate |
Edgar Degas paintings and interactive timeline |
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Edgar Degas. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles. |
Works and literature on Edgar Degas |
The Complete Set of Edgar Degas Bronzes at the M.T. Abraham Foundation |
Edgar Degas exhibition catalogs and letter from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries |
Impressionism: a centenary exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 12, 1974 – February 10, 1975, fully digitized text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art libraries |
Manet/Degas exhibition at Musée d'Orsay, from 28 March to 23 July 2023. |
Manet/Degas exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, from 24 September 2023 – 7 January 2024. |
Edgar Degas in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website |
Digital Degas Catalogue Raisonné The ongoing documentation of paintings and works on paper by Edgar Degas |
Édouard Manet (UK: , US: ; French: [edwaʁ manɛ]; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. |
Born into an upper-class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the naval career originally envisioned for him; he became engrossed in the world of painting. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) or Olympia, "premiering" in 1863 and '65, respectively, caused gre... |
Early life |
Édouard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, in the ancestral hôtel particulier (mansion) on the Rue des Petits Augustins (now Rue Bonaparte) to an affluent and well-connected family. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the daughter of a diplomat and goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince Charles Bernadot... |
At his father's suggestion, in 1848 he sailed on a training vessel to Rio de Janeiro. After he twice failed the examination to join the Navy, his father relented to his wishes to pursue an art education. From 1850 to 1856, Manet studied under the academic painter Thomas Couture. Couture encouraged his students to paint... |
From 1853 to 1856, Manet made brief visits to Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, during which time he was influenced by the Dutch painter Frans Hals and the Spanish artists Velázquez and Francisco José de Goya. |
Career |
In 1856, Manet opened a studio. His style in this period was characterized by loose brush strokes, simplification of details, and the suppression of transitional tones. Adopting the current style of realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, he painted The Absinthe Drinker (1858–59) and other contemporary subjects such as b... |
Manet had two canvases accepted at the Salon in 1861. A portrait of his mother and father (Portrait of Monsieur and Madame Manet), the latter of whom at the time was paralysed by a stroke or advanced syphilis, was ill-received by critics. The other, The Spanish Singer, was admired by Théophile Gautier, and placed in a ... |
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