EDGAR DEGAS Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, July 19, 1834 (Paris, France); Died Born: Hilaire-Germain-Edgar France); July 19, 1834 (Paris, Gas, De France)
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EDGAR DEGAS Edgar Degas Born: Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas, July 19, 1834 (Paris, France); died September 27, 1917 (Paris, France). Artistic style: Impressionist painter and sculptor; expressive use of line; vivid- colored pastels; depictions of horse racing, dancers, and women bathing. One of the world’s greatest draftsmen, Edgar Degas has been credited as the link between classical and modernist art. He mastered painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography— taking up the latter in earnest from 1895 onward. Noting his talent, Degas’s wealthy parents allowed him to 1800-99 have a studio at home, and by the age of twenty he was Masterworks determined to become an artist. His early pieces were influenced by the work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1800-99 Young Spartans Exercising c.1860 (National Gallery, London, England) and Eugène Delacroix; in 1855 he met Ingres who gave him his Race Horses 1866 (Musée d’Orsay, famous advice to “follow the lines.” Degas enrolled in the École Paris, France) des Beaux-Arts in Paris and spent three years studying in Italy. The Star 1871 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France) He first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1865, and was one of the The Rehearsal 1873–1878 (Fogg Art Museum, Société Anonyme des Artistes who exhibited together from Harvard University, Massachusetts, U.S.) 1874 onward. The first show included work by Degas, Claude The Absinthe Drinker 1875 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France) Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and was Little Dancer Aged Fourteen c.1880–1881 later labeled pejoratively the “Exhibition of the Impressionists” (Tate Collection, London, England) by critic Louis Leroy because the artists’ style of insufficient Throughout his career, Degas was supported by his greatest ABOVE: Some found the woman’s The Bathtub 1886 (Musée d’Orsay, detail, obvious brushstrokes, and use of unblended colors. patron, gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel. Not everyone vulnerability in The Bathtub vulgar. Paris, France) Woman Ironing c.1890 (Walker Art Gallery, understood or liked Degas’s work at first, but by 1880 his Liverpool, England) paintings, with their compositions of unusual angles and loose, The Impressionists Dancers on a Bench c.1898 (Kelvingrove Art rapid brushstrokes, were being warmly received. Yet his Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland) Degas exhibited in seven of the eight masterpiece sculpture, a wax and fabric model (later cast in impressionist exhibitions, but was keen to bronze) Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (c.1880–1881), still divided distance his style from impressionism. He openly criticized the plein air technique opinion, provoking adoration, outrage, and disgust. In 1886 declaring: “If I were the government Degas’s works were shown in New York, and in 1905 Degas and I would have a special brigade of gendarmerie to keep an eye on artists many of the impressionists exhibited paintings in London. who paint landscapes from nature ….” Somewhat misogynous, Degas never married, considering He also became embroiled in “The Dreyfus Affair,” a debate that divided France in women a poor second to his art. Yet many of his most famous which a Jewish soldier, Alfred Dreyfus, ABOVE: Degas’s self-portrait was painted works depict dancers and working women, such as laundresses was falsely accused of treason. Degas’s early on in his career, in 1862. and seamstresses. Toward the end of his life he was plagued by insistence that Dreyfus was guilty revealed his anti-Semitism, and he lost many of his RIGHT: Dancers on a Bench shows Degas’s failing eyesight, but somehow retained an ability to sketch, impressionist friends as a result. mastery in depicting movement. paint, and sculpt. LH 228 • Edgar Degas Edgar Degas • 229.