Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas born on July 19th, 1834 and dead on September 27th, 1917 with Paris, is a painter, Graveur, Sculpteur and Photographe French.

The majority of dedicated works with Edgar Degas, when they wish to classify it in the history of art, attach it to the great movement of the Impressionnisme, formed in France in the last third of the 19th century in reaction to the academic painting of the time. The artists who form part of it, such Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Camille Pissarro, tired to be regularly refused with the official Living rooms, had constituted themselves in public limit company in order to show their art with the public.

One often summarizes impressionist art with returned outdoor and the light effects. These characteristics are not however applicable to Degas: even if it is one of the principal organizers of the impressionist exposures, it finds its place in the movement only in the name of freedom to paint preached by the group. With the outdoor he prefers, and by far, “what one does not see any more but in his memory”. He would have one day called to Pissarro: “You need a natural life; with me factitious life. ”

If Degas forms officially part of the impressionists, it thus did not join them in their most known features. Its situation of exception does not escape criticisms from then, often destabilized by its avant-gardism. Several of its images sowed the controversy, and still today the work of Degas is the subject of many debates near the historians of Article.

Edgar Degas rests with the Cemetery of Montmartre in Paris, in the family tomb.

Degas, a Parisian high bourgeoisie of Montmartre

Wire of the banking rich person Auguste De Gas and Célestine Musson, Edgar Degas is born in Paris on July 19th, 1834 and grows in a cultivated middle-class medium. He has four brothers and sisters and enjoys a gilded childhood.

After its baccalaureat, it starts to attend the Cabinet of the Prints of the National library. Tireless draftsman, it copies there works of Albrecht Dürer, Andrea Mantegna, Paul Véronèse, Francisco Goya, Rembrandt. He spends his days to the Louvre, fascinated by the Italian, Dutch and French painters. In 1854, it is registered with the workshop of the Lyonese Louis Lamothe, raises rather poor of Dominique Ingres and the Flandrin brothers. On his side, his/her father, refined amateur of Art and Music, present to him some of the largest collectors of Paris, like Lacaze, Marcille, and Valpinçon.

In 1855, it starts to follow courses to the École of the Art schools of Paris; however, preferring to directly approach the art of the large traditional Masters such Luca Signorelli, Sandro Botticelli and Raphaël, it undertakes of 1856 to 1860 of many voyages in Italy, initially in its family with Naples, then with Rome and Florence, where it binds friendship with the painter Gustave Moreau.

Its early works count some paintings of neo-classic inspiration, but especially of many portraits of the members of its family. From 1865 to 1870, he proposes with the Living room his work in progress. From 1874 to 1886, Degas sends works to the impressionist exposures to the organization of which it takes an active part very. It then has very many contacts with painters of its generation, in particular Pissarro, but also with younger artists of avant-garde.

In spite of its voyages in province and abroad, it is Paris which counts primarily for Degas - and with Paris, Montmartre. He attends certain coteries, workshops, coffees literary and carries out with some middle-class men, his close friends, a life conformist of haughty single person. Of its family circle, it preserves the reserve and the respect of the principles. Its delicacy of heart, its moral intransigence are worth the regard of all to him. It takes an active part in the discussions which bring together the young artists of avant-garde and his friend Edouard Manet with the Guerbois coffee.

As from 1875, in prey with many material difficulties, painting becomes its source of revenue. In the years 1880, whereas its sight starts to decline, Degas privileges the Pastel, with which it mixes sometimes the Aquarelle and the Gouache. The tables of this period testify to a very modern work on the expressivity of the color and the line. At the end of the years 1890, almost blind, it is devoted quasi exclusively to the sculpture, which it already practices since ten years, transposing its favorite subjects in wax. The exposure of twenty-six landscapes which it presents in October 1892 to the Durand-Ruel gallery is its first and last personal exposure. As from 1905, the painter cuts off himself more and more in his workshop, fighting against the blindness which gains it. Almost blind man for a few years, Degas has died of a stroke in Paris the September 27th 1917, 83 years old. He is buried with the Cimetière of Montmartre. The following year, the works accumulated in its workshop and its important collection are dispersed with the biddings.

The bankruptcy of its family (death of her father, financial problems of its brother Achilles), her difficult character, its corrosive spirit, its wild jokes, its often intransigent positions, the inexorable progression of its ocular disorders, could contribute to accentuate the misanthropy so often denounced of this old single person. However, it seems that this reputation was often exaggerated. Several indices prove indeed that, even old, it continued to be interested in creation, receiving artists in his workshop until his removal in 1912.

Of the admiror of Ingres with impassioned of Delacroix

The personal collection of Degas was mainly dedicated to the French art of the 19th century, and in particular to Ingres and Delacroix, two artists marvelously represented as well in quantity as in quality. On several occasions, Degas recognized besides the admiration which it carried to the art of the two large Masters, with their techniques but also with their artistic culture. Through their works, Degas joined again with the Masters of last and consolidated his traditional culture.

Ingres: the tradition of the drawing

The influence of Ingres was certainly dominating in his youth. To twenty and one years, the Degas young person obtains to meet the old Master in his workshop. The same year, it copies with passion of the works presented in the retrospective devoted to Ingres. Painted at that time, the first large self-portrait of Degas clearly refers to that of Ingres going back to 1804. The young artist however did not represent himself as a painter but as a draftsman, a carry-charcoal with the hand, perhaps reminding the councils that Ingres had just lavished to him: “Made lines, much of lines, and you will become a good artist. ”

Even at the end of its career, Degas did not give up the academic approach which consists in setting up a composition using preparatory drawings, and in particular of studies according to alive model. In the same way that it prepared its tables of history, it often has recourse to the drawing for its last scenes of the modern life. It continues to apply the precepts of Ingres. Remembering naked female Ingres like the “Valpinçon Bather”, it draws his wives with their toilet, by determining of a dark and sensual feature contours of their body.

Delacroix: the color and the movement

Degas admires works that Eugene Delacroix presents to the Living room of 1859 and studies its painting, in particular undertaking a copy with the oil of “the Entry of Crossed in Constantinople”. From now on, Degas attempts to reconcile color and drawing, movement and structure, by carrying out the synthesis of the various influences which it continues to collect.

During its last time, Degas calls indeed more and more upon colors bright, even yelling, and with harmonies of complementary colors. As a worthy successor of Delacroix, it releases its pallet of all forced to paint according to its own terms of the “riots of color”. In 1889, Degas travels to Tangier on the steps of its famous predecessor.

Technique and subjects of Degas

1853-1873: the invention of a “new painting”

During the first twenty years of its career, Degas tries out all the kinds. It first of all has a predilection for the portraits. In those, the accessories take sometimes as well importance as works are halfway between portrait and still life. It very early appears able to compose of large ambitious fabrics like “the Belleli family”. With the beginning of the year 1860, Degas approaches the kind of historical paintings, by having recourse in a very personal way to various sources of inspirations. He does not forsake therefore the painting of kind, impassioning himself very early for the horse-races, then for the dance, the opera, the café concerts and the daily life. The dance is a subject which will mark the career of Degas. It was in admiration in front of these dancers who radiated on the scene. They were as stars where our glance could not be detached from them. It showed them in preparation, behind the scene and at the time of their service. Degas was going on the spot to represent better than it could the least details, for this reason these tables touched us so much.

For these scenes of the modern life, it has sometimes recourse to expressive luminous effects and invents very daring page layouts (clever framings). The kind of the landscape is certainly that which Degas worked the least, even if it carried out a specific series of landscapes to the Pastel. Lastly, the first attempts at sculptures remain as for them marginal compared to oils on fabrics, with which Degas gradually sets up a “New painting” which will open out during the following decade.

1874-1886: the time of the impressionist exposures

In 1874, of return to Paris after a voyage to New-Orleans, Degas starts to be made known. It was hitherto relatively ignored, in spite of the role of leader whom it occupied with Manet among the artists of the Guerbois coffee. As of the second exposure, Degas is noticed by criticisms, which rent or disparage the realism of its work. The defense of the “realistic movement”, to take again its own expression, is besides in the middle of its step in these years.

It is about this time that it starts to explore certain new topics, like the ironers, the modistes or the women with their toilet. Cultivating its taste of the technical experiments, he seeks new pictorial means. Thus, in 1877, it presents a series of monotypes, sometimes raised pastels, which testify to a saving in means and a very innovative freedom of invoice.

This time of the life of Degas is thus marked by technical innovations which go hand in hand with formal innovations: Degas multiplies the daring points of view, in diving or low-angle shot (see “Lala Miss with the Fernando circus”). Enjoying the spontaneousness which the work of the pastel allows him, he seeks luminous and coloured effects very original, sticking for example with his naked very realistic of 1886 to translate the vibrations of the light on the body of the women. He says besides in connection with his naked: “Until now, the naked one had always been represented in installations which suppose a public. But my wives are simple people… I show them without coquettery, with the state of animals which are cleaned. ” It is often for such remarks that it was treated expéditivement of misogynist: it is however less the deliberate intention insult the beauty of the women who the extreme concern for an anatomical relentless veracity which shows through in its approach.

1887-1912: beyond the Impressionism

During nearly thirty years, already old, Degas does not cease renewing its Article Working more and more per series, it declines of the familiar topics. Being interested only in a specific way in the landscape, it is always fascinated by the dancers and more and more by the women with their toilet, who wash themselves, are capped or leave the bath. To paint these female figures, Degas tends to privilege the sharp and intense colors which it juxtaposes without fearing to lead to yelling harmonies (“the hairstyle”).

One often explained the evolution of the pallet of the artist by the aggravation of his ocular disorders. The use of these daring colors is however indissociable of an assertion of the expressive power of the line. Degas indeed never neglects the formal structure: to set up its compositions, it has sometimes recourse to a drawing subjacent with the Fusain and uses preparatory drawings regularly. The intensive use which it makes of the sculpture also takes part of this will not to neglect the formal structure, seeking for each figure the accuracy of the movements and the balance of volumes.

Posterity

Degas controls the elliptic short cuts, the practice of the closes-up, the taste of the ascending or plunging glance, the oppositions run up against, the variations on the topic of the back-light; he invents a role in the suggestion of space to splendid floors splashed with light, arranges the reports/ratios of reflections subtly, the sources of light, attentive with unforeseen lightings of the slope which throw spots coloured on the faces. The artist dares to cross, to divide. He can make the synthesis of a succession of movements, the gestures which he suggests by an increasingly cursive drawing have one surprising expressive value.

In reference to his fidelity for quantity of traditional rules but also to his many innovations, one could write about it in 1919: “It threw a bridge between two times; it connects the past to the most immediate present. ”

Although celebrates today, Degas remains still a “evil liked” compared to Vincent Van Gogh, with Paul Gauguin and even with Henri of Toulouse-Lautrec, and one refuses the importance to him which one attaches to Paul Cézanne. But the posterity exauce thus its wish: “I would like to be famous and unknown. ”

List its tables

Gallery

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