DEGAS

Edgar Degas (born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, 1834 – 1917) wasfamous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings of ballerinas. He alsoproduced bronze sculptures, prints, and drawings, and is especiallyidentified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depictdancers. Although regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, herejected the term, preferring to be called a realist, and did not paintoutdoors. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly indepicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers andbathing female nudes. In addition to ballet dancers and bathing women.

Self Portrait 1855

At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be ahistory painter, a calling for which he was wellprepared by his rigorous academic training andclose study of classical art. In his early thirties, hechanged course, and by bringing the traditionalmethods of a history painter to bear on contem-porary subject matter, he became a classical painterof modern life.

Male Nude 1856

He was born in Paris, into a moderately wealthy family; the oldest of five children of CélestineMusson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Augustin De Gas, a banker.

In 1855 he met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, whom herevered and whose advice he never forgot: "Draw lines,young man, and still more lines, both from life and frommemory, and you will become a good artist." In April of thatyear he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. Hestudied drawing there following the style of Ingres.

In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, where he wouldremain for the next three years. In 1858, while staying withhis aunt's family in Naples, he made the first studies for hisearly masterpiece The Bellelli Family. He also drew andpainted numerous copies of works by Michelangelo,Raphael, Titian, and other Renaissance artists.

In 1859, he returned to Paris and moved into a studio large enough to permit him to begin paintingThe Bellelli Family which he intended for exhibition in the Salon, although it remained unfinisheduntil 1867. The painting is of his aunt Laura, her husband the baron Gennaro Bellelli, and theirdaughters Giulia and Giovanna.

It is a large painting; 2 by 2.5 metres. It is an ambitious and psychologically poignant portrayal ofhis aunt, her husband, and their children portraying the tensions present between the husband andwife. In his early paintings, Degas already evidenced the mature style that he would later developmore fully by cropping subjects awkwardly and by choosing unusual viewpoints. Laura Bellelli'scountenance is dignified and austere, her gesture connected with those of her daughters. Herhusband, by contrast, appears to be separated from his family. His association with business andthe outside world is implied by his position at his desk. Giulia holds a livelier pose than that of hersister Giovanna, whose restraint appears to underscore the familial tensions.

The Bellelli Family 1858–67

In his early career Degas thought himself as a historypainter in the tradition of David and Ingres. Around1860 he began work on several history paintings,including Young Spartans, in which his gradualprogress toward a less idealised treatment of thefigure is already apparent.

The change in his art was influenced primarily by theexample of Édouard Manet, whom he had met in 1864(while both were copying the same Velázquez portraitin the Louvre, according to a story that may beapocryphal.) Degas's had a deep respect for the old masters (he was an enthusiastic copyist well into middleage) and greatly admired Ingres and Delacroix. He was also a collector of Japanese prints, whosecompositional principles influenced his work, as did the vigorous realism of popular illustrators suchas Daumier.

His portraits are notable for their psychological complexityand for their portrayal of human isolation. The peculiardecentral ised composit ion in The Woman Wi thChrysanthemums and the odd angle of vision is quitedistinct from normal pictorial conventions. Placed at theedge of the picture space, the figure appears tocommunicate with something outside, creating an impliedspace external to the painting – ’in the wings’, so to speak.

Woman With Chrysanthemums 1865

His paintings often hinted at narrative content in a waythat was highly ambiguous; for example, Intérieur(which has also been called The Rape) has presenteda conundrum to art historians in search of a literarysource—Zola's novel Thérèse Raquin has been sugg-ested—but it may be a depiction of prostitution.

Blurring the distinction between portraiture and genre pieces, hepainted his bassoonist friend, Désiré Dihau, in The Orchestra ofthe Opera (1868–69) as one of fourteen musicians in anorchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience.Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of thedancers onstage, their figures cropped by the edge of thepainting. Art historian Charles Stuckey has compared the view-point to that of a distracted spectator at a ballet, and says that "itis Degas' fascination with the depiction of movement, includingthe movement of a spectator's eyes as during a random glance,that is properly speaking 'Impressionist'."

Intérieur 1868-9

The Orchestra at the Opera1870

Young Spartans Exercising c.1860–1862

After the Franco Prussian war, Degas began in 1872 anextended stay in New Orleans, Louisiana, where hisbrother René and a number of other relatives lived.While staying at the home of his Creole uncle, MichelMusson, Degas produced a number of works, manydepicting family members. A Cotton Office in NewOrleans, received favourable attention back in France,and was his only work purchased by a museum duringhis lifetime.

Degas returned to Paris in 1873 and his father died thefollowing year, whereupon he learned that his brotherRené had amassed enormous business debts.

To preserve his family's reputation, Degas sold his house and an art collection he had inherited,and used the money to pay off his brother's debts. Dependent for the first time in his life on sales ofhis artwork for income, he produced much of his greatest work during the decade beginning in1874.

The painting was bought in 1878 by the newly founded Musee des Beaux-Arts in Pau, France. Itwas the first painting by Degas to be purchased by a museum, and the first by an Impressionist.Degas' sale of the piece marked a turning point in his career as he moved from being a struggling,unrecognised artist to a recognized and financially stable artist.

As his subject matter changed, so, too, didDegas's technique. The dark palette gave wayto the use of vivid colours and bold brush-strokes. Paintings such as Place de laConcorde read as "snapshots," freezingmoments of time to portray them accurately,imparting a sense of movement.

Disenchanted with the Salon, he joined theImpressionists. Between 1874 and 1886 theymounted eight Impressionist Exhibitions. Degastook a leading role in organising the exhibitions,and showed his work in all but one of them,despite his persistent conflicts with others in thegroup.

He had little in common with Monet and the other landscape painters in the group, whom hemocked for painting outdoors. Conservative in his social attitudes, he abhorred the scandal createdby the exhibitions, as well as the publicity and advertising that his colleagues sought. He alsodeeply disliked being associated with the term "Impressionist". The resulting rancour within thegroup contributed to its disbanding in 1886.

Degas, along with other Impressionists, collected Japanese prints. The deepperspective, arbitrary cutting off of figures at the edges of the picture, and theoff kilter composition found in Japanese prints, as in this print fromHiroshige's 100 views of Edo, may have influenced Degas' use of thesedevises to impart a sense of immediacy and informality to his work, although,as he has said, his paintings are the product of research, study and careful,thoughtful design.

Hirosige, 100 Views Edo, The Ferry at Haneda and the Benten Shrine 1858

A Cotton Office in New Orleans 1873

Place de la Concorde 1875

Painted in 1875–76, and originally titled In a Cafe, this work portrays awoman and man sitting side-by-side, drinking a glass of absinthe.They appear lethargic and lonely. A glass filled with absinthe is on thetable in front of the woman. The models used in the painting are EllenAndrée, an actress who also appeared in Édouard Manet's paintingPlum Brandy, and Marcellin Desboutin, a painter and etcher.

When first shown in 1876, it was panned by critics, who called it uglyand disgusting. In 1893 it was shown at the Grafton Gallery in London,this time entitled L'Absinthe, where it sparked even greater con-troversy. The people and the absinthe represented in the paintingwere considered by English critics to be shockingly degraded anduncouth, revealing the deep suspicion with which Victorian Englandhad regarded art in France since the early days of the BarbizonSchool, and the desire to find a morally uplifting lesson in works of art.

Many English critics viewed the picture as a warning lesson against absinthe, and the French ingeneral. The comment by George Moore on the woman depicted was: "What a whore!" He added,"the tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson". However, in his book Modern Painting, Mooreregretted assigning a moral lesson to the work, claiming that "the picture is merely a work of art,and has nothing to do with drink or sociology.''

Although regarded as an Impressionist work technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists inthat he continually belittled their practice of painting en plein air. ‘’You know what I think of peoplewho work out in the open. If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes tokeep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just alittle dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.’’

As Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneousthan mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study ofthe great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, Iknow nothing."

Nonetheless, he is described more accurately as anImpressionist than as a member of any other movement. Hisscenes of Parisian life, his off-centre compositions, hisexperiments with colour and form, and his friendship with severalkey Impressionist artists—most notably Mary Cassatt andÉdouard Manet—all relate him intimately to the Impressionistmovement. The Ballet Class 1873-76

In many paintings dancers were shown backstage or inrehearsal, emphasising their status as professionals doinga job. From 1870 Degas increasingly painted balletsubjects, partly because they sold well and provided himwith needed income after his brother's debts had left thefamily bankrupt.

Ballet Rehearsal 1873

L'Absinthe 1876

The lack of colour in the 1874 Ballet Rehearsal on Stageand the 1876 The Ballet Instructor can be said to be linkedwith his interest in the new technique of photography.

The changes to his palette, brushwork, and sense ofcomposition all evidence the influence that both theImpressionist movement and modern photography, with itsspontaneous images and off-kilter angles greatly influencedhis style of composition.

Ballet Rehearsal on Stage 1874

This pastel study, Fin d'Arabesque, depicts the ballerina Rosita Mauri.Unusually it shows the dancer on stage in front of the public, albeitpossibly at the end of her performance.

The composition suggests that this is astudio work, although based on many ofhis studies from life. The combination ofa high viewpoint, as if looking down froma box near the stage, with the distant,low viewpoint of the dancers standingaround in the background, or in thewings, not as if they were part of theperformance, introduces a deep pers-pective into the scene.

In the 70s Degas began to paintcafé life as well as the theatre, inworks such as L'Absinthe andSinger with a Glove. Here thepopular singer is dramatically litfrom below by the footlights,enhancing the dramatic effect.

Although a studied and carefully arranged composition, this depic-tion of a comic song with hand gestures gives the impression ofspontaneity, as if caught in a snapshot. He combines an indoorstage setting with an outside evening scene of revellers. Thedramatic effect of the low lighting is enhanced by the strongprimary colours.

Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando shows a mixed-race acrobat, sus-pended from the rafters of the circus dome by a rope clenched betweenher teeth, at the Cirque Fernando in Montmartre, Paris. The work isDegas's only circus painting. Unlike his contemporaries like Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, the focus is not on the action within the ring or thecrowd's reactions; the viewer sees the spectacle as the audience wouldhave done, gazing up at the daring feat taking place above. In paintinga highly foreshortened figure Degas may have been seeking to emulatethe expansive ceiling paintings by Italian artists such as GiovanniBattista Tiepolo, which he may have seen on his visits to Italy.

Fin d'Arabesque 1877

The Singer with the Glove1878

At the Café-Concert,The Song of the Dog1875–77

Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando 1879

Degas's only exhibited sculpture was The Little Dancer of FourteenYears, which he displayed at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881.A nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and dressed in a cloth tutu, itprovoked a strong reaction from critics, most of whom found its realismextraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly. In a review, J.-K.Huysmans wrote: "The terrible reality of this statuette evidentlyproduces uneasiness in the spectators; all their notions aboutsculpture, about those cold inanimate whitenesses ... are hereoverturned. The fact is that with his first attempt Monsieur Degas hasrevolutionised the traditions of sculpture as he has long since shakenthe conventions of painting."

In part Degas' originality consisted in disregarding the smooth, fullsurfaces and contours of classical sculpture and in garnishing his littlestatue with real hair and clothing made to scale like the accoutrementsfor a doll. These relatively "real" additions heightened the illusion, butthey also posed searching questions, such as what can be referred toas "real" when art is concerned.

Degas created a substantial number of other sculptures during a span offour decades, but they remained unseen by the public until a posthumousexhibition in 1918. None of Degas's sculptures were cast in bronze duringhis lifetime. Degas scholars have agreed that the sculptures were notcreated as aids to painting, although the artist habitually explored ways oflinking graphic art and oil painting, drawing and pastel, sculpture andphotography. Degas assigned the same significance to sculpture as todrawing: "Drawing is a way of thinking, modelling another".

After Degas's death, his heirs found in his studio 150wax sculptures, many in disrepair. They consultedfoundry owner Adrien Hébrard, who concluded that 74of the waxes could be cast in bronze.

Study of a Woman Bathing

Race horses and Jockeys, occupied Degasthroughout his long career. Some ninety-one workshave been catalogued in this category, spanningthe period from 1860 to 1900, not including hisequestrian waxes and bronzes, in a range of sizesand mediums. As with the Paris Opera, thespectacle of the turf gave Degas the motifs to makeimages of modern life. He made countlessvariations on the subject, selecting individualjockeys and rearranging them, to repeat poses andrefine them, until this hermetic world lost allconnection with the reality of the race track. At the Races 1877–80

Little DancerAged Fourteen1878-81

The Spanish Dance c.1885

The publication in 1878 of The Horse in Motion,illustrated with the photographic studies of theEnglish/American photographer EardweardMuybridge, demonstrated that during trotting allfour of the horse's hooves were off the ground atone point in its stride; also that at full gallop atno point were the legs extended in parallel, astraditionally depicted by artists. This made animmediate impression on Degas and the way heand other artists subsequently representedhorses in motion.

Muybridge, The Horse in Motion 1878

Degas typically painted several versions of a com-position, making slight variations in each. Here, ridersand horses are shown in quiet and agitated movement.By the 1880s, Degas was making good use of recentlypublished, stop-action photographs, which capturedmovement too fleeting to be perceived by the naked eyeand which increased the artist's understanding of thehorse in motion.

Painted in oils on a small wooden panel, Degas allowsthe colour of the wood to show through and contribute tothe colour scheme: in the hilly background, the muddyforeground and notably the foreground horse, which isonly lightly sketched in in outline.

In 1877 Degas invited the American Mary Cassatt to exhibit inthe third Impressionist exhibition. The two had much in commonand formed a friendship. They shared similar tastes in art andliterature, came from affluent backgrounds, had studied paintingin Italy, and both were independent, never marrying.

Degas introduced Cassatt to pastel and engraving, while shewas instrumental in helping Degas sell his paintings andpromoting his reputation in America. They worked most closelytogether in the autumn and winter of 1879–80 when Cassatt wasmastering her printmaking technique. Degas owned a smallprinting press, and by day she worked at his studio using histools and press, collaborating on a journal of prints. However, inApril 1880, Degas abruptly withdrew from the project, andwithout his support it folded.

Although they continued to visit each other until Degas' death in 1917, she never again workedwith him as closely as she had over the prints journal.

Around 1884 Degas made this portrait in oils of Cassatt. She thought it represented her as "arepugnant person" and later sold it, writing to her dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1912 or 1913 that "Iwould not want it known that I posed for it."

Mary Cassatt frequently posed for Degas, notably for his millinery series trying on hats.

Before the Race 1882–84

Mary Cassatt Seated,Holding Cards c.1880–84

For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas'swork remained the same throughout his life. He alwayspainted indoors, preferring to work in his studio, eitherfrom memory, photographs, or live models. The figureremained his primary subject; his few landscapes wereproduced from memory or imagination. It was not unusualfor him to repeat a subject many times, varying thecomposition or treatment. He was a deliberative artistwhose works, as Andrew Forge has written, "were pre-pared, calculated, practiced, and developed in stages.They were made up of parts. The adjustment of each partto the whole, their linear arrangement, was the occasionfor infinite reflection and experiment." Degas himselfexplained, "In art, nothing should look like chance, noteven movement".

In his paintings of dancers and laundresses, he reveals theiroccupations not only by their dress and activities but also by theirbody type: his ballerinas exhibit an athletic physicality,…

…while his laundressesare heavy and solid.

“People call me the painter of dancing girls,” Degas once explainedto Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard. “It has never occurred tothem that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movementand painting pretty clothes.” But Degas didn’t care tremendouslyabout the ballet as an art form, let alone frilly pastel tutus. Heendeavoured to capture the reality of the ballet that lurked behindthe artifice of the cool, carefully constructed choreography.

In keeping with Degas’s broader interest in the harsh realities ofmodern life, he favoured scenes of ballet dancers, laundresses,milliners, and other members from the lower echelons of Parisiansociety.

Urban subjects cast in harsh, artificial light distinguished his works from the bright, leisurely pleinair paintings by artists such as Claude Monet. And while Monet focused his attentions primarily onthe effects of light and colour, Degas obsessed over capturing the body in motion.

Degas lived an outwardly uneventful life. In company he was known for his wit, which could oftenbe cruel. In the 1918 issue of Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Irish novelist GeorgeMoore disputed Degas’s reputation as an old curmudgeon. Instead, Moore revealed thatDegas presented himself as such to drive people away. As Degas allegedly explained tohim, “The artist must live apart, and his private life remain unknown.”

The Millinery Shop 1885

Dancers at the Bar 1888

Women Ironing(Repasseuses)c.1884-86

Dancers 1900

Degas developed a passion for photography in the late 1880s,photographing many of his friends, often by lamplight. Otherphotographs, depicting dancers and nudes, were used for reference insome of Degas's drawings and paintings.

He often used photographs and sketches as a preliminary step, studyingthe light and the composition for his paintings. This work is part of aseries of photographs, preliminary sketches and completed works inpastels and oils by Degas from this period.

Degas made a series of pastels depicting women dancing orbathing, some showing women in awkward unnatural positions.Speaking about these works, he said, he intended to create afeeling in the viewer: "as if you looked through a keyhole." Degasincluded many works of female nudes bathing in the lastImpressionist exhibition in 1886.

Degas began to draw and paint women drying themselveswith towels, combing their hair, and bathing. The strokes thatmodel the form are scribbled more freely than before and thebackgrounds are more simplified.

Pastel on paper became his main media in later life, which hecarried through to large sized, well developed completedworks. His colour was brilliant and technique 'loose',conveying a sense of immediacy and informality, but in facthis use of pastel, more often used as a sketching media, washighly controlled and deliberate.

Francis Bacon said: "I love Degas. I think his pastels are among the greatest things ever made. Ithink they're far greater than his paintings."

The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to anincreasing abstraction of form. Except for his character-istically brilliant draftsmanship and obsession with the figure,the pictures created in this late period of his life bear littlesuperficial resemblance to his early paintings. In point offact, these paintings—created late in his life and after theheyday of the Impressionist movement—most vividly use thecoloristic techniques of Impressionism.

Woman in the Bath 1886

After the Bath,Woman Drying Her Back1896 Photo

After the Bath,Woman Drying Herself c.1884–86

La Toilette,Woman Combing Her Hairc.1884-86

As the years passed, Degas became isolated, due inpart to his belief that a painter could have no personallife. The Dreyfus Affair controversy brought his anti-Semitic leanings to the fore and he broke with all hisJewish friends. His argumentative nature was deploredby Renoir, who said of him: "What a creature he was,that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one ofthe last to go, but even I couldn't stay till the end.’’

Although he is known to have been working in pastel aslate as the end of 1907, and is believed to have con-tinued making sculptures as late as 1910, he apparentlyceased working in 1912. He never married and spentthe last years of his life, nearly blind, restlesslywandering the streets of Paris before dying inSeptember 1917.

After the Bath, Woman Drying her Nape 1898 After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself c1890 After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself depicts a woman sitting on white towels spread over awicker chair, with her back to the viewer. Her body is arched and slightly twisted, creating a tensionin her back, accentuated by the deep line of her backbone. One hand dries her neck with a towel,presumably after getting out of the tin bath in the corner of the room. The other arm leans out tohold onto the chair for support. The space is defined by the vertical and diagonal lines where thefloor and walls meet.

The drawing was made on several pieces of paper mounted on cardboard. Degas may havestarted with a smaller composition which he extended as he worked, requiring more paper. Theheavily worked pastel creates deep textures and blurred contours, emphasising the figure'smovement.

Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, mostnotably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert; his greatest admirer may have beenHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Click on the link below, or paste into your browser, for animation of Muybridge's horse galloping:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge#/media/File:Muybridge_race_horse_animated.gif

The Tub 1886