edgar degas the rehearsal of the ballet onstage

The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, whom Degas had met in 1864 (while both were copying the same Velázquez portrait in the Louvre, according to a story that may be apocryphal). 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.Īlthough 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. In 1861, Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy, and made the earliest of his many studies of horses. He also began work on several history paintings: Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah in 1859–60 Sémiramis Building Babylon in 1860 and Young Spartans around 1860. Upon his return to France in 1859, Degas moved into a Paris studio large enough to permit him to begin painting The Bellelli Family-an imposing canvas he intended for exhibition in the Salon, although it remained unfinished until 1867. He also drew and painted numerous copies of works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and other Renaissance artists, but-contrary to conventional practice-he usually selected from an altarpiece a detail that had caught his attention: a secondary figure, or a head which he treated as a portrait. In 1858, while staying with his aunt's family in Naples, he made the first studies for his early masterpiece The Bellelli Family. In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, where he would remain for the next three years. He studied drawing there with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Ingres.

In 1855, he met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, whom he revered and whose advice he never forgot: 'Draw lines, young man, and still more lines, both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist.' In April of that year Degas was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. Degas duly enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853, but applied little effort to his studies. Upon graduating, he registered as a copyist in the Louvre Museum, but his father expected him to go to law school. By the time he graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artist's studio. His mother died when he was thirteen, and the main influences on him for the remainder of his youth were his father and several unmarried uncles.ĭegas began to paint early in life. His maternal grandfather Germain Musson, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, of French descent, and had settled in New Orleans in 1810.ĭegas (he adopted this less grandiose spelling of his family name when he became an adult) began his schooling at age eleven, enrolling in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He was the oldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Augustin De Gas, a banker. In his early thirties he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.ĭegas was born in Paris, France, into a moderately wealthy family.

His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.Īt the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classical art. In addition to ballet dancers and bathing women, Degas painted racehorses and racing jockeys, as well as portraits. Although Degas is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist, and did not paint outdoors as many Impressionists did.ĭegas was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers and bathing female nudes. Degas is especially identified with the subject of dance more than half of his works depict dancers. Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.ĭegas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings.

Edgar degas the rehearsal of the ballet onstage