Rusart. Edgar Degas - biography, paintings, drawings

RUSART > History of Arts > Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Degas Edgar Degas was a French painter, graphic artist, and sculptor. He began to paint early in his life. By eighteen, he had turned a room in his home into an artist's studio, and in 1853 he registered as a copyist in the Louvre. His father, however, expected him to go to law school. Degas duly registered at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853, but made little effort at his studies there. In 1855, Degas met Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, whom he revered, and whose advice he never forgot: "Draw lines, young man, and still more lines, both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist." In April of that same year, Degas received admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In 1854-1859 he made several trips to Italy, some of the time visiting relatives, studying the Old Masters; he painted historical pictures and realistic portraits of his relatives: Portrait of Marguerite de Gas, the Artist's Sister, Portrait of Achille de Gas in the Uniform of a Cadet, Portrait of Hilaire de Gas, Grandfather of the Artist. By 1860 Degas had drawn over 700 copies of other works, mainly early Italian Renaissance and French classical art.

In the 1860s he was introduced to Impressionism by Édouard Manet and gave up his academic aspirations, turning for his subject matter to the fast-moving city life of Paris, particularly the ballet, theatre, circus, racetrack, and cafés. Influenced by Japanese prints and the new medium of photography, he used displaced figure groupings and unfamiliar perspective to create figure groups seen informally and in movement, similar in effect to snapshots. His fascination with the ballet and the racetrack sprang from his interest in picturing people absorbed in the practiced movements of their occupations.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, 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.

After the war, in 1872, Degas began an extended stay in New Orleans, Louisiana, where his brother René and a number of other relatives lived. Staying in a house on Esplanade Avenue, Degas produced a number of works, many depicting family members. One of Degas' New Orleans works, depicting a scene at The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans, garnered favorable attention back in France, and was his only work purchased by a museum (that of Pau) during his lifetime.

After his return from America, Degas had closer contact with dealers such as Durand-Ruel, in an attempt to bring his work to public attention independently of the Salon. In 1874 Degas helped organize the 1st Impressionist exhibition. He always found the term “Impressionism” unacceptable – mainly, perhaps, because he did not share the Impressionists’ over-riding interest in landscape and color. He did not care to be tied down to one method of painting. Nonetheless, Degas was to participate in all the group exhibitions except that of 1882. Degas used the group and the exhibitions high-handedly to promote himself. His strategy seems to have been to show off his own diversity at the exhibitions, for he always entered works that were thematically and technically very varied

Although 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, restlessly wandering the streets of Paris before dying in 1917.

Joan Miro Claude Monet Edgar Degas Emily Carr Marc Chagall Renoir Van Gogh Yasek Jerka Pavel Filonov Ray CaesarRembrandt History of Arts Rob Gonsalves Dali

Dancers Cleveland Museum of Art	At the Milliners Shopping Bequest of Grace Underwood Barton	Ballet Rehearsal, 1873 The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts	At the Races in the Country 1875 Oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Ballet Rehearsal	Woman in the Bath 1886 Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut	Four Dancers , 1899 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington	La classe de danse (The Dancing class) 1873-75 Oil on canvas Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Two Dancers in Blue 1899 Oil on canvas	Dancers in Blue1890 Musee d'Orsay, Paris	Place de la Concorde 1875 Oil on canvas Hermitage, St Petersburg	Ballet School 1879-80 Oil on canvas Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington (D.C.)
Ballet 1899	Ballet Rehearsal 1875 Gouache, Pastel Private Collection	The Dance Foyer at the Opera Ru Le Peletier 1872 Musee d'Orsay, Paris	Ballet Scene c. 1904-1906 Pastel Sammlung C. Dale, New York
Ballet Rehearsal 1878-79 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York	Ballet 1872 Oil on canvas Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main	At the stage	Dancers 1872 Oil on panel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
1880 pastel on paper Sammlung Mrs. Thomas Card, New Bedford	Primaballerina 1878 pastel Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Dancer1877-1878 oil on canvas Pushkin Museum, Moscow	Russian Dancers 1885 pastel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Dancers 1898 pastel on paper Ordrupgaardsamlingen, Kopenhagen	Dancers 1873 oil on canvas Sammlung H. de Ganay, Paris	Ende der Arabeske1877 pastel on paper Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Rehersal 1873-1874 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Harlekin and Colombine 1884 pastel on paper Österreichische Galerie, Vienna	Dancers 1885 pastel on paper Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris	Dancer1881-83 pastel on paper Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Dancer1891 pastel on paper Magyar Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
Dancer c. 1881 pastel on paper	Der Star des Balletts 1878 pastel on paper Private collection, Paris	Dancer1890 pastel on paper Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Dancer 1890 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Dancer at Stange c. 1888 oil on canvas Phillips Collection, Washington (D.C.)	Dancers in Foyer 1887-90 oil on canvas Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Kopenhagen	Dancer in Blue1890 pastel on paper Pushkin Museum, Moscow	Dancer in Pink 1884 oil on canvas Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Kopenhagen
During the Dance Class: Madame Cardinal c. 1888 oil on canvas Museum of Art, Philadelphia	Exhausted dancer 1887-90 pastel on paper	Two Dancers	Dancer pastel on paper Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Dancers Practicing at the Bar1877 Mixed media on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York	Balette Scene pastel on paper	Ballet Exam	Ballet School oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Ballet School Oil on canvas	In the Theatre pastel on paper	Race Horses 1885-88 Pastel on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA	Three Ballet Dancers 1899 Pastel on paper Barnes Foundation
The Singer in Green Pastel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York	Seated Dancer c. 1879-80 Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on pasteboard The Hermitage, St. Petersburg	Les repasseuses (Women Ironing) 1884 Oil on canvas Musee d'Orsay, Paris	Woman Combing her Hair 1887-90 Louvre, Paris
L'absinthe 1876 Oil on canvas Musee d'Orsay, Paris	Cafe-Concierto Ambassadors 1877	Dancer in Red	Dancers
Dancer	Dancers	Woman in Bath	Woman in Bath Pastel on tracing paper The Art Institute of Chicago
Woman in Her Toilet	The Baker's Wife 1885 Pastel on paper The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation	Study	David and Goliath 1864 The Art Institute of Chicago
Two Dancers Study	Vilonist and Young Womanc. 1871	Dancer Stretching at the Bar c. 1877-1880 Pastel with stumping on ivory laid paper The Art Institute of Chicago	Jockeys Before The Race 1878-79
Dancer Bending Forward 1881 Charcoal with stumping, heightened with white and yellow pastel with stumping, on blue laid paper ruled with charcoal The Art Institute of Chicago	Study	Dancers in the Wings c. 1878 Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena, CA	Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste de Gas (the artist's father) 1871-72 Oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Before the Start Oil on canvas	L’orchestre		Woman Having Her Hair Combed c. 1885 Pastel Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Bellelli family Oil on canvas	Count Lepic and His Daughters 1870 Oil on canvas stolen from Sammlung E. G. Bührle	Lake and Mountains c. 1890-1892 Sammlung H. Havemeyer jr., New York	Landscape with cliffs
The Fashion Store Oil on canvas Art Institute, Chicago	The Collector of Prints 1870 Oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York	The Cotton Exchange 1873 oil on canvas	Portrait of Diego Martelli oil on canvas
Portrait of Young Woman Oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris	Ironing woman 1870 Oil on canvas	Still life with Lizard c. 1858-1860 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York	Hilaire de Gas oil on canvas
Woman with Chrysanthemes Oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris		In the Cafe Ambassateur pastel	The dog song 1876-77

Back to History of Arts