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Edgar Degas: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on the 19th of July 1834, into a family that carried the weight of a Neapolitan banking dynasty and a Creole heritage from New Orleans. He was the oldest of five children, raised in Paris by a father who expected him to follow a conventional path and a mother who died when he was only thirteen. This early loss left him under the guardianship of his father and several unmarried uncles, shaping a personality that would become increasingly isolated and difficult. Degas was a man who believed that the artist must live alone, and his private life must remain unknown, a philosophy that turned him into a self-imposed exile from the social circles he once navigated with wit and cruelty. He was an old curmudgeon who deliberately cultivated a reputation as a misanthropic bachelor, firing models upon learning they were Protestant and breaking off relations with all his Jewish friends during the Dreyfus Affair. Yet, beneath this prickly exterior lay a mind of extraordinary discipline, one that rejected the very label of Impressionism he is now famous for, insisting instead that he was a realist who found no art less spontaneous than his own.
The Classical Painter Of Modern Life
In 1855, Degas met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a man 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. This encounter set the trajectory for his early career, as he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts and studied under Louis Lamothe, following the rigorous style of the master. He traveled to Italy in 1856, spending three years copying works by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian, but unlike his peers, he selected details from altarpieces that had caught his attention, treating secondary figures or heads as portraits. Upon returning to France, he moved into a large Paris studio to paint The Bellelli Family, an imposing canvas intended for the Salon, though it remained unfinished until 1867. He also began work on several history paintings, including Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah, but his commitment to contemporary subject matter grew stronger. By the late 1860s, he had shifted from history painting to an original observation of contemporary life, painting racecourse scenes, women at work, and milliners. His style reflected a deep respect for the old masters, yet he was also a collector of Japanese prints, whose compositional principles influenced his work, and he was fascinated by the vigorous realism of popular illustrators such as Daumier and Gavarni.
The Dance Of The Ballet Class
More than half of Degas's works depict dancers, a subject that became his defining obsession and a source of both income and artistic innovation. Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source, exhibited in the Salon of 1868, was his first major work to introduce a subject with which he would become especially identified. In many subsequent paintings, dancers were shown backstage or in rehearsal, emphasizing their status as professionals doing a job rather than idealized figures. From 1870, Degas increasingly painted ballet subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother's debts had left the family bankrupt. He began to paint café life as well, in works such as Singer with a Glove, and his paintings often hinted at narrative content in a way that was highly ambiguous. He painted his bassoonist friend, Désiré Dihau, in The Orchestra at the Opera as one of fourteen musicians in an orchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience. Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of the dancers onstage, their figures cropped by the edge of the painting. Art historian Charles Stuckey has compared the viewpoint to that of a distracted spectator at a ballet, and says that it is Degas' fascination with the depiction of movement, including the movement of a spectator's eyes as during a random glance, that is properly speaking Impressionist.
When was Edgar Degas born and what was his full birth name?
Edgar Degas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas on the 19th of July 1834. He was the oldest of five children raised in Paris by a father who expected him to follow a conventional path and a mother who died when he was only thirteen.
Why did Edgar Degas reject the label of Impressionism despite being a founder of the movement?
Edgar Degas rejected the label of Impressionism because he insisted that he was a realist who found no art less spontaneous than his own. He believed that the artist must live alone and his private life must remain unknown, which turned him into a self-imposed exile from the social circles he once navigated.
What year did Edgar Degas exhibit The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years and what was the public reaction?
Edgar Degas exhibited The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years in 1881, which provoked a strong reaction from critics who found its realism extraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly. J.-K. Huysmans wrote that the terrible reality of this statuette produced uneasiness in the spectators and overturned all their notions about sculpture.
How did Edgar Degas's eye problems affect his work and when did he stop working?
Edgar Degas's eye problems deteriorated further after 1890, yet he continued to work in pastel as late as the end of 1907 and is believed to have continued making sculptures as late as 1910. He apparently ceased working in 1912 when the impending demolition of his longtime residence on the rue Victor Massé forced him to move to quarters on the Boulevard de Clichy.
When did Edgar Degas break off relations with his Jewish friends and why?
By the mid-1890s, Edgar Degas had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends and publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists due to the Dreyfus Affair. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of the anti-Semitic Anti-Dreyfusards until his death.
When did Edgar Degas die and what was his final living situation?
Edgar Degas died in September 1917 after spending the last years of his life nearly blind and restlessly wandering the streets of Paris. He never married and lived in quarters on the Boulevard de Clichy following his move from the rue Victor Massé in 1912.
Degas's mature style is distinguished by conspicuously unfinished passages, even in otherwise tightly rendered paintings. He frequently blamed his eye troubles for his inability to finish, an explanation that met with some skepticism from colleagues and collectors who reasoned that his pictures could hardly have been executed by anyone with inadequate vision. The artist provided another clue when he described his predilection to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, and was in any case notoriously reluctant to consider a painting complete. His eye problems, which had been a constant worry since his rifle training during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, deteriorated further after 1890. Despite this, he continued to work in pastel as late as the end of 1907, and is believed to have continued making sculptures as late as 1910. He apparently ceased working in 1912, when the impending demolition of his longtime residence on the rue Victor Massé forced him to move to quarters on the Boulevard de Clichy. He never married, and spent the last years of his life, nearly blind, restlessly wandering the streets of Paris before dying in September 1917. The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to an increasing abstraction of form, with strokes that model the form being scribbled more freely than before and backgrounds simplified.
The Sculptor Of Wax And Hair
Degas's only showing of sculpture during his life took place in 1881 when he exhibited The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, which he had created using Marie van Goethem as a model. A nearly life-size wax figure with real hair and dressed in a cloth tutu, it provoked a strong reaction from critics, most of whom found its realism extraordinary but denounced the dancer as ugly. In a review, J.-K. Huysmans wrote that the terrible reality of this statuette evidently produces uneasiness in the spectators, and that all their notions about sculpture, about those cold inanimate whitenesses, are here overturned. Degas created a substantial number of other sculptures during a span of four decades, but they remained unseen by the public until a posthumous exhibition in 1918. Neither The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years nor any of Degas's other sculptures were cast in bronze during the artist's lifetime. After Degas's death, his heirs found in his studio 150 wax sculptures, many in disrepair. They consulted foundry owner Adrien Hébrard, who concluded that 74 of the waxes could be cast in bronze. It is assumed that, except for the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, all Degas bronzes worldwide are cast from surmoulage bronze, a bit smaller and showing less surface detail than its original bronze mold. The Hébrard Foundry cast the bronzes from 1919 until 1936, and closed down in 1937, shortly before Hébrard's death.
The Anti-Semite And The Broken Friendships
Degas, who believed that the artist must live alone, and his private life must remain unknown, lived an outwardly uneventful life, but in company he was known for his wit, which could often be cruel. He was characterized as an old curmudgeon by the novelist George Moore, and he deliberately cultivated his reputation as a misanthropic bachelor. In the 1870s, Degas gravitated towards the republican circles of Léon Gambetta, but his republicanism did not come untainted, and signs of the prejudice and irritability which would overtake him in old age were occasionally manifested. He fired a model upon learning she was Protestant. Although Degas painted a number of Jewish subjects from 1865 to 1870, his 1879 painting Portraits at the Stock Exchange may be a watershed in his political opinions. The painting is a portrait of the Jewish banker Ernest May, who may have commissioned the work and was its first owner, and is widely regarded as anti-Semitic by modern experts. The facial features of the banker in profile have been directly compared to those in the anti-Semitic cartoons rampant in Paris at the time, while those of the background characters have drawn comparisons to Degas' earlier work Criminal Physiognomies. The Dreyfus Affair, which divided opinion in Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends, publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of the anti-Semitic Anti-Dreyfusards until his death.
The Woman Who Painted Like A Man
In 1877, Degas invited Mary Cassatt to exhibit in the third Impressionist exhibition. He had admired a portrait, Ida, she exhibited in the Salon of 1874, and the two formed a friendship. They had much in common: they shared similar tastes in art and literature, came from affluent backgrounds, had studied painting in Italy, and both were independent, never marrying. Both regarded themselves as figure painters, and the art historian George Shackelford suggests they were influenced by the art critic Louis Edmond Duranty's appeal in his pamphlet The New Painting for a revitalization in figure painting. After Cassatt's parents and sister Lydia joined Cassatt in Paris in 1877, Degas, Cassatt, and Lydia were often to be seen at the Louvre studying artworks together. Degas produced two prints, notable for their technical innovation, depicting Cassatt at the Louvre looking at artworks while Lydia reads a guidebook. These were destined for a prints journal planned by Degas, together with Camille Pissarro and others, which never came to fruition. Cassatt frequently posed for Degas, notably for his millinery series trying on hats. Degas introduced Cassatt to pastel and engraving, while for her part Cassatt was instrumental in helping Degas sell his paintings and promoting his reputation in the United States. Cassatt and Degas worked most closely together in the fall and winter of 1879, 80 when Cassatt was mastering her printmaking technique. Degas owned a small printing press, and by day she worked at his studio using his tools and press. However, in April 1880, Degas abruptly withdrew from the prints journal they had been collaborating on, and without his support the project folded. Although they continued to visit each other until Degas' death in 1917, she never again worked with him as closely as she had over the prints journal.
The Legacy Of The Unfinished
Degas's paintings, pastels, drawings, and sculptures are on prominent display in many museums, and have been the subject of many museum exhibitions and retrospectives. Recent exhibitions include Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks at The Morgan Library in 2010, Picasso Looks at Degas at the Museu Picasso de Barcelona in 2010, and Degas and the Nude at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2011. He is now considered one of the founders of Impressionism, though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries. His involvement with the other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, and his bold color experiments, served to finally tie him to the Impressionist movement as one of its greatest artists. Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert, and his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In 2004, a little-known group of 73 plaster casts, more or less closely resembling Degas's original wax sculptures, was presented as having been discovered among the materials bought by the Airaindor Foundry. Bronzes cast from these plasters were issued between 2004 and 2016 by Airaindor-Valsuani in editions inconsistently marked and thus of unknown size. There has been substantial controversy concerning the authenticity of these plasters as well as the circumstances and date of their creation as proposed by their promoters. While several museum and academic professionals accept them as presented, most of the recognized Degas scholars have declined to comment, citing fear of litigation. A group of Degas experts who convened in January 2010 to discuss the sculptures reached universal agreement that these things were not what they were being advertised as, but declined to speak on the record.