© Copyright 2005 Paul van Rensburg.
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Although Degas had during his entire life, studied women’s movements and habits with a minute, almost unreasonable attention, his relationship with them was one of mere tolerance and he never had a serious relationship with anyone. From a very young age, he was ill tempered, temperamental, restless and insecure. Degas was lonely, and sometimes he himself complained about this. He used to spend almost all his time in his studio, entirely focused on his work experimenting with the most diverse painting techniques. The only entertainment he granted himself was an occasional outing to the theater and visiting with some very close friends such as Manet, Moreau, Paul Valpinçon, Boldini, the Rouarts and the Haleivies.
His gradual loss of sight, around the age of 60, and serious economical problems due to unfortunate financial speculations by his brother Achille, made him yet more gloomy and lonely. He died in Paris on September 27, 1917, relatively unknown, but not without having had a great influence on several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt and Walter Sickert.
After returning from Italy in 1859, he painted portraits of his family and friends and a number of historical subjects, in which he combined classical and romantic styles. These included realistic portraits of his brother Achille, his sister Marguerite and his grandfather Hilaire.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas is famous for his work in painting, sculpture, and drawing. His innovative composition, skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the masters of modern art in the late 19th century and he is widely acknowledged as the master of drawing the human figure in motion. He is also regarded as one of the founders of impressionism as he exhibited with them in seven of the eight impressionist exhibitions.
Degas, though, made no important contributions to the style of the impressionists; instead, his contributions involved the organization of exhibitions and he preferred to refer to himself as a realist. His training in classical drafting and his dislike of painting directly from nature rather produced a style that represented a related alternative to impressionism.
Despite his own desire to paint he began to study law, but broke off his studies in 1853 at age 20 to study drawing with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. In 1855, Degas received admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and a year later, he traveled to Italy where he visited relatives and studied the paintings of Michelangelo, Raphael, and other artists of the Renaissance.
In Paris, Degas came to know Édouard Manet, and by the late 1860s, he had shifted from his intitial forays into history painting to an original observation of contemporary life. He began to paint women at work, milliners, laundresses, opera performers, and dancers. Degas began to paint café life as well and he urged other artists to paint 'real life' instead of traditional mythological or historical paintings. As his subject matter changed, so, too, did his technique and the dark palette which bore the influence of Dutch painting gave way to the use of vibrant strokes and vivid colour
Unlike the other impressionists, Degas was uninterested in the study of natural light and did not like to work "en plein air". He definitely preferred the artificial light of the indoors, that gave him more freedom and ability to manipulate the subjects and modify the pose. Even the outdoor subjects, such as race horses, jockeys, hunting scenes, as well as landscapes, although studied in their minutes detail "in loco", by means of drafts and sketches, were to be later remade in his studio.
He was attracted by theatrical subjects, and most of his works depicted racecourses, theaters, cafés, music halls, or boudoirs. he was also a keen observer of humanity, particularly of women, with whom his work was preoccupied. In his portraits as well as in his studies of dancers, milliners, and laundresses, he attempted to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those recorded in action photographs.
In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision.
In the troubled post-war years Degas undertook his longest journey. In 1872, with his younger brother René, he traveled to New York and New Orleans, where his uncle, Michel Musson, ran a cotton business.
Degas stayed in Louisiana for 5 months and returned to Paris in February 1873. In America he fulfilled a number of works including Courtyard of a House in New Orleans which shows part of the Musson's home in Esplanade avenue and possibly the room that served Degas a studio during his stay. The most important work resulting from his visit to the USA was a portrait of The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans, his only picture to be acquired by a museum in 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 and he 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.
During his life, public reception of Degas' work ran the gamut from admiration to contempt. As a promising artist in the conventional mode, and in the several years following 1860, Degas had a number of paintings accepted in the Salon and these works received praise from some of the jury. However, Degas soon joined the Impressionist movement and rejected the Salon, just as the Salon and general public rejected the Impressionists. His work was, at that time, considered controversial and he was labelled as an eccentric and bizarre artist. Although he was ridiculed by many, including the critic Louis Leroy, towards the end of the Impressionist movement, Degas began to gain acceptance and at the time of his death he was considered an important artist.
Nowadays, Degas is known worldwide as the master of the human figure in movement, a superb drawer and a great innovator in the art of the portrait. His works are currently celebrated for their compositional originality and his unrivalled technique. Although some critics of his time had recognized the artistic qualities of that ‘bizarre’ young man at an early stage, he only attained real success in the last years of his life, but his true acclaim came only after his death. This was mainly due to the fact that Degas, usually keeping aloof, rarely showed his works. His only one-man exhibition was held in 1893, when he was almost 60, and where he presented about thirty landscapes in pastel. Between 1865 and 1870 he exhibited a couple of works each year at the Salon and also participated in seven of the eight exhibitions held by the Impressionist group.
In the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, Degas began increasingly to work in two new media that did not require intense visual acuity: sculpture and pastel. In his sculpture, as in his paintings, he attempted to catch the action of the moment, and his ballet dancers and female nudes are depicted in poses that make no attempt to conceal their subjects' physical exertions. His pastels are usually simple compositions containing only a few figures. He was obliged to depend on vibrant colors and meaningful gestures rather than on precise lines and careful detailing, but, in spite of such limitations, these works are eloquent and expressive and have a simple grandeur unsurpassed by any of his other works.
By 1860 Degas had drawn over 700 copies of other works, mainly early Italian Renaissance and French classical art. The most important historical work of the period was Spartan Girls Challenging Boys. It was exhibited only in 1879 at the fifth Impressionist show, and he kept it in his studio throughout his life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/degas/
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/degas.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas
http://www.expo-degas.com/2.cfm
http://www.abcgallery.com/D/degas/degasbio.html
http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_degas/index.php?lang=en&gallery=bio
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