DEGAS

Edgar Degas was born into an upper class family in Paris, France. His father, Pierre, was a banker and his mother, Celestine Musson had been born into a Creole family in New Orleans.He lost his mother while still an adolescent...she passed away in 1847. This traumatic event as well as the influence of a strict schooling experience caused Edgar to form a chronically sad and gloomy personality. He was ill-tempered, restless and insecure which he himself acknowledged when he remarked, "It was perhaps a vicious impulse arising from skepticism and bad temper which caused me to appear unpleasant towards everyone. I thought about myself as inferior, so fragile, so unable, my artistic calculations being on the other hand, so precise. I was ill-tempered toward everyone, including myself".He experienced great loneliness of course, due to his poor social skills. He would shut himself off in his studio for long periods focusing completely on his art and experimenting with the most diverse and novel painting techniques. Occasionally he would allow himself some enjoyment, usually by attending the theatre or visiting with his closest friends such as Manet, Moreau, Paul Valpincon, Boldini, the Rouarts and the Haleivies.Degas' first intention was to study law which he started to do for a time after graduating from secondary school. His father, being an art and music lover had exposed Edgar to the great artists on display at the Louvre during his formative years. Edgar had been deeply influenced by this and he had met the most important art collectors, including Valpincon who was the owner of Ingres' Bagniste. He changed his mind about what he was pursuing for a career and he decided to enroll at the famous Ecole des Beaux Arts (School of Fine Art) of Paris in 1855.He became a pupil of Louis Lamothe who had himself been trained by the great classical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres for whom Degas developed a life-long admiration for and he did get the opportunity to meet him when Ingres was 75 years of age. Degas was influenced and concurred with Ingres' belief that 'wide and continuing' lines should always be the basis for artistic composition. However, he wanted to explore modern methods and experiment with techniques yet untried. Thus, Edgar Degas was successful in merging the classic and modern styles of painting and composition.To expand his knowledge and learn from different sources he began to travel extensively, including Naples, Florence and Rome. He actually chose to stay in Rome for three years. He observed and emulated the works of Renaissance Masters Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna, Nicholas Poussin. He was extremely talented in drawing figures and thus did well in the field of portraiture.Edgar began producing 'history paintings' which were paintings with Biblical and historical themes which were in high demand by contemporary art collectors....then he shifted his focus to depictions of everyday scenes of Parisian life. By 1862 he was depicting scenes from the racetrack, including studies of the horses, their mounts and the fashionable spectators.After the early 1860's he was influenced by his friendship with Edouard Manet and the blossoming Impressionist movement. He also was exposed to Japanese graphic art and used these ideas in his art, notably in his ballet dancers, which are his most famous paintings. Degas experimented with unusual visual angles and asymmetrical lines, not unlike a photographer's treatment of a subject...as in Ballet Rehearsal where the dancers are cropped at the edges of the canvas.His focus was on draftsmanship, portraiture and composition. It was this that made him different from his impressionist colleagues...he stopped displaying his work at the Salon in 1874 and chose to do showings with lesser known artists. Degas was labeled as bizarre and eccentric by contemporaries, but even so he made no effort to change himself to please others, even art critics.During the second half of his life, Degas suffered a gradual, but steady loss of his sight until in old age he was almost blind. He never let this handicap stop him from his art however. He focused more on sculpting and produced statues of horses, ballet dancers and other subjects in bronze. His "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" was an example of his amazing ability to capture action in the moment. His figures were dressed in real costumes and many of them captured the moment of transition between one position to another, giving the statues a real sense of immediacy and motion.Today Edgar Degas is known throughout the world as the master of depicting the human figure in movement, he is acknowledged for the superb drawer that he was, and a great innovator in the art of the portrait. His works are celebrated for the originals that they are and the unrivalled technique contained within them.