When and where was Edgar Degas born?
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De GasEdgar Degas / Full name
When was Edgar Degas first painting?
Around 1867-68, Degas painted his first ballet related work. This initial painting represented Miss Fiocre, a ballerina. He became more fascinated by theater and performing arts and painted several portraits of musicians such as “The Orchestra at the Opera.”
Where did Edgar Degas live?
ParisEdgar Degas / Places livedEarly Life. Degas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas on July 19, 1834, in Paris, France. (As an adult, Degas reverted his last name back to the original spelling.) His father, Auguste, was a banker, and his mother, Celestine, was an American from New Orleans.
When did Edgar Degas graduate?
1853At age eleven, Degas (as a young man he abandoned the more pretentious spelling of the family name) began his schooling with enrollment in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, graduating in 1853 with a baccalauréat in literature.
How much is a Degas sketch worth?
Edgar Degas's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from 4 USD to 41,610,000 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 1998 the record price for this artist at auction is 41,610,000 USD for Petite danseuse de quatorze ans, sold at Christie's New York in 2022.
What pastels did Degas use?
Degas, one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, was a faithful customer, using Roche pastels in a famous series of ballet dancers.
Who painted the ballerinas?
The ballerinas Degas bequeathed to us remain among the most popular images in 19th-century art. The current exhibition is a reminder of just how daring the artist was in creating them.
What does it mean to Degas?
to remove gas fromDefinition of degas transitive verb. : to remove gas from degas an electron tube.
What is foreshortened in art?
Foreshortening refers to the technique of depicting an object or human body in a picture so as to produce an illusion of projection or extension in space.
Where is Edgar Degas from?
Paris, FranceEdgar Degas / Place of birthHilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas was born in 1834 in Paris, France. His penetrating and sometimes disturbing depictions of late 19th-century Parisian society are as much innovative explorations of movement and pictorial space as they are portrayals of contemporary life.
How did Degas paint?
Degas experimented with an array of techniques, breaking up surface textures with hatching, contrasting dry pastel with wet, and using gouache and watercolors to soften the contours of his figures.
How much did Degas Blue dancer sell for?
One of Edgar Degas' iconic “Little Dancer” sculptures broke the artist's auction record Thursday when it sold for $41.6 million from the collection of the late Anne Bass, the former wife of an oil billionaire who championed American ballet.
What was Edgar Degas most famous painting?
#1 The Absinthe Drinker The most famous painting by Edgar Degas is a representation of the increasing social isolation in Paris during its stage of rapid growth. It depicts a woman staring dully with a glass of Absinthe in front of her.
What is Edgar Degas best known for?
Degas is perhaps best known for painting ballet dancers. He was fascinated by them, and wanted to capture their grace and power. He often painted them backstage, getting ready for a performance. This little bronze sculpture of a dancer is a copy of a wax figure Degas made in 1880.
How many paintings did Edgar Degas paint?
Edgar Degas - 626 artworks - painting.
When did Degas start painting dancers?
The wax model of a dancer in a tutu standing in a glass case was undoubtedly Degas's Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. When it was first shown, at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, the work was adorned with a real costume and hair.
Who Was Edgar Degas?
Edgar Degas studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and became renowned as a stellar portraitist , fusing Impressionistic sensibilities with traditional approaches. Both a painter and sculptor, Degas enjoyed capturing female dancers and played with unusual angles and ideas around centering. His work influenced several major modern artists, including Pablo Picasso .
Where was Degas born?
Early Life. Degas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas on July 19, 1834, in Paris, France. (As an adult, Degas reverted his last name back to the original spelling.) His father, Auguste, was a banker, and his mother, Celestine, was an American from New Orleans. Their family were members of the middle class with nobler pretensions.
What were the paintings that Degas painted?
The paintings Degas exhibited were modern portraits of modern women — milliners, laundresses and ballet dancers — painted from radical perspectives. Over the course of the next 12 years, the group staged eight such Impressionist exhibitions, and Degas exhibited at all of them.
What was Degas' group of artists?
The group of painters would come to be known as the Impressionists (though Degas preferred the term "realist" to describe his own work), and on April 15, 1874, they held the first Impressionist exhibition. The paintings Degas exhibited were modern portraits of modern women — milliners, laundresses and ballet dancers — painted from radical perspectives.
What is the Degas family?
Their family were members of the middle class with nobler pretensions. For many years, the Degas family spelled their name "de Gas"; the preposition "de" suggesting a land-owning aristocratic background which they did not actually have.
What did Degas' paintings portray?
His paintings portray the growth of the bourgeoisie, the emergence of a service economy and the widespread entrance of women into the workplace. In 1886, at the eighth and final Impressionist exhibition in Paris, Degas exhibited 10 paintings of nude women in various stages of bathing.
What is the name of the sculpture that Degas created?
In 1880, he also sculpted "The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, " a sculpture so hauntingly evocative that while some critics called it brilliant, others condemned him as cruel for having made it. While Degas's paintings are not overtly political, they do reflect France's changing social and economic environment.
Who is Edgar Degas?
Edgar Degas, in full Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, De Gas later spelled Degas, (born July 19, 1834, Paris, France—died September 27, 1917, Paris), French painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was prominent in the Impressionist group and widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life.
Where was Degas born?
Born in Paris just south of Montmartre, Degas always remained a proud Parisian, living and working in the same area of the city throughout his career. Though detailed knowledge of his middle-class family is limited, it is known that they maintained the outward forms of polite society and that they were related to minor aristocracy in Italy and to the business community in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. The family was also prosperous enough to send Degas in 1845 to a leading boys’ school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he received a conventional classical education. Music featured prominently in the Degas home, where the artist’s mother sang opera arias and his father arranged occasional recitals, one of which is represented in Degas’s painting of 1872, Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste De Gas. The artist’s mother died when he was 13 years old, leaving three sons and two daughters to be brought up by his father, a banker by profession. Knowledgeable about art but conservative in his preferences, Degas’s father helped to develop his son’s interest in painting and in 1855 encouraged him to register at the École des Beaux-Arts under the supervision of Louis Lamothe, a minor follower of J.-A.-D. Ingres. Surviving works from that period show Degas’s aptitude for drawing and his attention to the historical precedents he viewed in the Louvre. He also began his first solemn explorations of the self-portrait.
What was Edgar Degas's main subject?
Degas’s principal subject was the human—especially the female—figure, which he explored in works ranging from the sombre portraits of his early years to the studies of laundresses, cabaret singers, milliners, and prostitutes of his Impressionist period. Ballet dancers and women at their toilette would preoccupy him throughout his career. Degas was the only Impressionist to truly bridge the gap between traditional academic art and the radical movements of the early 20th century, a restless innovator who often set the pace for his younger colleagues. Acknowledged as one of the finest draftsmen of his age, Degas experimented with a wide variety of media, including oil, pastel, gouache, etching, lithography, monotype, wax modeling, and photography. In his last decades, both his subject matter and technique became simplified, resulting in a new art of vivid colour and expressive form, and in long sequences of closely linked compositions. Once marginalized as a “painter of dancers,” Degas is now counted among the most complex and innovative figures of his generation, credited with influencing Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and many of the leading figurative artists of the 20th century.
When did Degas return to Paris?
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now. Returning to Paris in April 1859 , Degas attempted to launch himself through the established art-world channels of the day, though with little success.
Who was the antithesis of Ingres?
Characteristically, the young Degas developed a near reverence for Ingres, the 19th-century champion of Classical line, while almost guiltily imitating Eugène Delacroix, who was the leading proponent of lyrical colour in the century and considered to be Ingres’s antithesis.
Who were the artists who were to echo through his compositions for decades?
Among these were copies after Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Titian, artists who were to echo through his compositions for decades; the inclusion of less-expected works, however, such as those by Sir Anthony van Dyck and Frans Snyders, hinted at wider interests.
Who is Pablo Picasso's influence?
Once marginalized as a “painter of dancers,” Degas is now counted among the most complex and innovative figures of his generation, credited with influencing Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and many of the leading figurative artists of the 20th century.
Where was Degas born?
Early life. Degas was born in Paris, France, the eldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas and Augustin De Gas, a banker. The family was moderately wealthy.
What did Degas do in the late 1880s?
In the late 1880s, Degas also developed a passion for photography. He photographed many of his friends, often by lamplight, as in his double portrait of Renoir and Mallarmê. Other photographs, depicting dancers and nudes, were used for reference in some of Degas' drawings and paintings.
What did Degas do after he returned to Italy?
After returning from Italy in 1859, Degas continued his education by copying paintings at the Louvre; he was to remain an enthusiastic copyist well into middle age. In the early 1860s, while visiting his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy, he made his first studies of horses. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which attracted little attention. Although he exhibited annually in the Salon during the next five years, he submitted no more history paintings, and his Steeplechase—The Fallen Jockey (Salon of 1866) signaled his growing commitment to contemporary subject matter. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864 while copying in the Louvre.
How did Degas differ from the Impressionists?
Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that, as art historian Frederick Hartt says, he "never adopted the Impressionist color fleck", and he continually belittled their practice of painting en plein air. "He was often as anti-impressionist as the critics who reviewed the shows", according to art historian Carol Armstrong; as Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing." Nonetheless, he is described more accurately as an Impressionist than as a member of any other movement. His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists, most notably Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet, all relate him intimately to the Impressionist movement.
What war did Degas fight in?
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.
Why did Degas become isolated?
As the years passed, Degas became isolated, due in part to his belief that a painter could have no personal life. The Dreyfus Affair controversy brought his antisemitic leanings to the fore and he broke with all his Jewish friends. In later life, Degas regretted the loss of those friends.
What is Degas' style?
Artistic style. Degas is often identified as an Impressionist, an understandable but insufficient description. Impressionism originated in the 1860s and 1870s and grew, in part, from the realism of such painters as Courbet and Corot.
Where was Edgar Degas born?
The early years. Hilaire German Edgar Degas was born on July 19, 1834, in Paris, France, the son of a well-to-do banker. From an early age Edgar loved books, especially the classics, and was a serious student in high school. He was very attached to his younger brother, René, and he would later paint his image repeatedly.
Where did Degas live?
In 1856 Degas went to Italy and settled in Rome for three years. He admired the early Christian and medieval masterpieces of Italy, as well as the frescoes (paintings done on fresh plaster), panel paintings, and drawings of the Renaissance (a period in Italy from roughly the fourteenth century until the seventeenth century that was marked by a renewed interest in the arts) masters. He copied many of these. At that time this was a common way of studying art.
What techniques did Degas use to copy Mantegna?
For example, when he copied Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), Degas tried to copy Mantegna's method of building up the canvas with layers of cool and warm tones by using a series of glazes (thin, smooth, shiny coats).
What medium did Degas use?
Pastel, for the most part an eighteenth-century medium, helped Degas produce qualities of airiness and lightness, as in the Ballerina and Lady with Fan (1885). However, Degas experimented with unusual combinations of mediums in producing his colors and prints.
What is Degas's daughter of Jephthah based on?
Among these was the Daughter of Jephthah (1861), which is based on an episode from the Old Testament in the Bible. He copied the works of the old masters (the well-regarded painters ...
What was Degas interested in?
Degas was interested in combining the discipline apparent in classical art with the direct expression of contemporary life that characterized the impressionists. However, he did not share the impressionists' focus on light and color. He emphasized composition, line, and form.
What did Degas suffer from?
Beginning in the mid-1870s Degas suffered from failing eyesight. From the 1890s on, he became more and more of a recluse (one who lives in isolation). In the last years of his life he was almost totally blind, and he wandered aimlessly through the Parisian streets. He died on September 27, 1917, in Paris.
Where was Degas born?
Degas was born in Paris, France, into a moderately wealthy family. He was the oldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans, ...
What did Degas do in school?
Born to wealthy family, he began his schooling with a baccalaureate in literature in 1853. Due to the wishes of his father, who wanted him to go to law school, he enrolled at the University of Paris in 1853 to pursue a law degree, where he made little effort. Degas, who at age 18 had transformed one of the rooms is his house into a studio, ...
How old was Degas when he left law school?
Degas, who at age 18 had transformed one of the rooms is his house into a studio, and was a registered copyist at the Louvre by 1853, left law school after two years, and a year later traveled to Italy studying the art of the great masters.
Why did Degas sell his paintings?
Degas was forced to sell the family home and many family paintings in order to cover the debt, and for the first time, had to rely on the income from his paintings for survival. It was in 1874 that he began producing his most successful works.
Where did Degas go to study?
In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, where he would remain for the next three years. In 1858, while staying with his aunt's family in Naples, he made the first studies for his early masterpiece The Bellelli Family.
Where did Degas go to law school?
Upon graduating, he registered as a copyist in The Louvre Museum, but his father expected him to go to law school. Degas duly enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853, but applied little effort to his studies.
How old was Degas when he graduated?
Following his graduation in 1853 with a baccalaureate in literature, the eighteen-year-old Degas registered at the Louvre as a copyist, which he claimed later in life is the foundation for any true artist. Read full biography. Read artistic legacy.
What was Edgar Degas's style of art?
Always remembered as an Impressionist , Edgar Degas was a member of the seminal group of Paris artists who began to exhibit together in the 1870s. He shared many of their novel techniques, was intrigued by the challenge of capturing effects of light and attracted to scenes of urban leisure. But Degas's academic training, and his own personal predilection toward Realism, set him apart from his peers, and he rejected the label 'Impressionist' preferring to describe himself as an 'Independent.' His inherited wealth gave him the comfort to find his own way, and later it also enabled him to withdraw from the Paris art world and sell pictures at his discretion. He was intrigued by the human figure, and in his many images of women - dancers, singers, and laundresses - he strove to capture the body in unusual positions. While critics of the Impressionists focused their attacks on their formal innovations, it was Degas's lower-class subjects that brought him the most disapproval.
Why did Degas paint Manet's portrait?
However, a riddle surrounds it. Degas painted it as a tribute to his friends, and it originally showed Mme. Manet playing the piano. However, some time after he had presented the portrait to them, he visited their house only to discover the painting had been mutilated and the right of the picture had been cut away. Degas was furious and removed the picture, though it was never repaired. Some scholars believe it was the depiction of the disharmony in the relationship between the couple that was the reason that Manet slashed the canvas.
What did Degas prefer to work from?
As well, he preferred to work from sketches and memory in the traditional academic manner, while they were more interested in painting outdoors ( en plein air ). Like many of the Impressionists, Degas was significantly influenced by Ukiyo-e Japanese prints, which suggested novel approaches to composition.
What did Degas's art style encourage?
Degas's academic training encouraged a strong classical tendency in his art, which conflicted with the approach of the Impressionists. While he valued line as a means to describe contours and to lend solid compositional structure to a picture, they favored color, and more concentration on surface texture. As well, he preferred to work from sketches and memory in the traditional academic manner, while they were more interested in painting outdoors ( en plein air ).
What was Degas's interest in the human figure?
Degas's enduring interest in the human figure was shaped by his academic training, but he approached it in innovative ways. He captured strange postures from unusual angles under artificial light. He rejected the academic ideal of the mythical or historical subject, and instead sought his figures in modern situations, such as at the ballet.
Was Degas a misogynist?
There is a very interesting and puzzling dichotomy in the way Degas approached his female subjects. There is much evidence that he was a misogynist, and also, much to prove that he was enamored with the female form that he attempted to represent it in its most absolute state through hundreds of painstaking studies.
