Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas was born on the 19th of July 1834 in Paris, France. He was the eldest of five children and his family were bankers. When degas was thirteen his mother died and his father and grandfather became the main stabilisers in his life. Degas began his education at eleven enrolling in the Lycee Louis le Grand and he graduated in 1853 with a degree in literature.

Degas started painting at an early age and by the time he was eighteen he had turned one of the rooms in the family house into an artist's studio and had registered as a copyist at the Louvre. However, his father, Augustin De Gas, expected the young Degas to go to law school. Degas dutifully complied but showed little enthusiasm for the Law. In 1855 Degas met Jean Aguste Dominique Ingres who was to tell Degas, 'Draw lines, young man, and still more lines, both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist'. Degas revered him and was to remember his advice for the rest of his life. Later that year Degas was admitted to the Ercole des Beaux - Arts where he studied drawing.

Degas is regarded as one of the founding fathers of impressionism although this is a term he later rejected as he preferred to be called a realist instead. Technically Degas differed from the impressionists inasmuch as he was as critical of the impressionists as the critics who reviewed the exhibitions. Degas was especially drawn to the subject of dance and many of his oil paintings were of dancers. As with his female nudes, racecourse subjects and portraits his mastery of movement is clearly evident in his works. Degas wanted to be a history painter- a calling for which he was well prepared by his study of classical art and his rigorous academic training. But in his thirties he changed course by bringing his traditional methods of a history painter to his contemporary subject matter, and thus he became a classical painter of modern life

Degas was an anti-Semitic and this was visible in his art works. He had painted Jewish subjects early in his career but from the mid 1870s his anti Semitism became more apparent. His later paintings of Jewish people usually used the faces that were popular in anti Semitic cartoons at that time. In the mid 1890s Degas had broken off all his friendships with friends that were Jewish and refused to use models that came from a Jewish background. He remained strongly anti-Semitic until his death in September 1917.

Degas work was controversial with the public reception of his work ranging from admiration to contempt. A number of his paintings were accepted in the Salon between 1865 and 1870 and these paintings received praise from the critic Castagnary and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

Without doubt Degas was, by his death, recognized as an important artist. His work crossed many stylistic boundaries so that his bold color experiments, dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities and his involvement with the other major figures of impressionism and their exhibitions served to bind him to the impressionist movement as one of its greatest early artists.

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