Edgar Degas - Life and Art

Edgar Degas:

A friend of mine, unfamiliar with French pronunciation, once declared that the best of all the Impressionists was the painter and sculptor, Edgar Degas - "No one can beat The Gas!" he proclaimed.

I wonder what Degas, a very sharp and witty man, would have made of this piece of unintended homage. In probability, he would have annihilated my friend. But perhaps more for bundling him with the Impressionists. For although he participated in seven of the eight Impressionist Exhibitions, he never had much respect for Impressionism or the Impressionist artists – he preferred line and contour skills over color effects, urban scenes over pastoral ones, and studio painting over pleine air adventures.

"You know what I think of people who work out in the open," he once said. "If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmerie to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone, I would be quite content with a little bird-shot now and then as a warning."

Early Life:

Edgar Degas was born in Paris on 19 January 1834 to wealthy, upper-class parents. His father, Augustin de Gas, was a Neopolitan banker, his mother, Celestine Musson, was from New Orleans, and he had four younger siblings, two brothers and two sisters. From an early age Degas showed an interest in art and his parents indulged him by allowing him to set up a studio in the house. It was understood, of course, that this was just 'Edgar's hobby'; people of his class didn't become artists, they went first to have a classical education at elite schools like the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, then to Law College, then into a money-making enterprise, and made pots of more money.

Art Studies:

Degas, however, was principally interested in making pictures. He did go to Law College for two years and then decided that the experience had been enough. He dropped out at the age of twenty and began a serious study of art under Louis Lamothe. As a former student of Ingres, Lamothe placed emphasis on drawing and this went down very well with Degas's own idea of art.

Ingres (whom he met through the family of his school friend Paul Valpincon and who told him to "follow the lines"), Delacroix, and later Japanese Prints were to remain strong influences on his style.

His excellent progress under Lamothe enabled him to pass the entrance exam to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1855, and the year after, now that he was on his way to becoming a full-fledged artist, he made the requisite study tour to Italy. He ended up staying there for the next three years, visiting Naples, Capodimonte, Rome, and Florence and closely studying the Renaissance Masters; he was particularly keen on the works of Mantegna and Uccello.

On his return, he concentrated on developing his own art. Unlike most of his artist friends and acquaintances, he wasn't burdened with any financial concerns – that is, not until his father's death several years later, when he had to fall back on his art earnings, sell off much of the art collection he had built up, and adjust to living in straitened circumstances. But that was still far off. For now he could lead the leisurely existence of a gentleman artist, which actually meant he worked very hard at his art, diligently studied the paintings at the Louvre, and eventually became a regular participant in the annual Salon exhibitions.

"No art is less spontaneous than mine," he once said. "What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters."

Artistic Development:

His earlier paintings, featuring historical themes as well as individual and group portraits, were mostly oil on canvas and conventional enough, but not in the idealized way that was popular at the time. Not that he didn't try, but ultimately he had little patience in inflating ordinary egos with false mythological pretensions. He became more intrigued with showing real people in real settings – so long as it didn't take him out of the studio, that is; if he didn't get models, he worked from memory and later from photographs. The subject matters that interested him were people in cafes, people visiting the opera or performing in it, women working as Washerwomen, and, most well-known of all, ballet-dancers on-stage and behind scenes.

There was a slight disruption of his life during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, which required him to give up painting for its duration; it's always annoying to give up one's long-term passion for other men's short-term nationalism, but, when he wasn't painting, Degas was a very conventional sort and probably entered the fray in all sincerity.

Degas and the Impressionists:

After the war, Degas went to live for a while in New Orleans where Rene, his brother, was managing the family cotton business, but America was clearly not for him and he returned back to Paris. He once again immersed himself in the artistic community, but now stopped bothering with the Salon exhibitions; his work had developed beyond their conventional tastes. He was friendly with a bunch of other radical painters, equally unwelcome at the Salon, and they decided, why wait for the stick-in-the-muds to appreciate us, let's start appreciating ourselves. And so, in 1874, they got together and organized what became known as the first Impressionist Exhibition.

The general public, after a life-time of the dreary brownness of smooth, godly classicism, were baffled by the bright colors, the peculiar brush-strokes, and the even peculiarly ordinary themes of the Impressionists. Monet came in for special criticism for his painting 'Impression:Sunrise' – one look at it and the riled art critic Louis Leroy wrote in his paper, Le Charivari, "Impression I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it — and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape."

The group was scoffingly called 'the Impressionists' and the name stuck. Degas continued exhibiting with the Impressionists and staunchly sharing the criticism that came their way, but their mutual relations were not always easy. Degas had never been a group person and he considered himself to have his own special style. While he had certainly began using bolder strokes and brighter colors since their association, he was scathing about almost all their ideas, insistent on his own, and was prone to a rather acerbic wit to get his opinions across.

"Monet's pictures are always too draughty for me," he announced.

Still, such was his talent for painting and organizing that nobody shoved him into a haystack for airing his personality.

Degas after the Impressionists:

The Impressionists broke up after 1886, and Degas began keeping more and more to himself, concentrating, along with his painting, on his photography and sculpture. He began favoring pastels over oils, mixing them with different media and experimenting with a variety of techniques, and it was now, curiously enough, that his work began to show distinctly Impressionist qualities. And, even more curiously, these beautiful, luminous works – many of which show nude women in intimate moments, bathing, combing their hair, etc., and are considered by some modern art critics as proof of Degas's misogynist outlook - now found acceptance with the public. Degas found himself considered now as 'an important' artist. He, of course, had always held that opinion himself and showed no particular delight in the honors and awards that were so belatedly heaped his way; in fact, he refused most of them.

Degas also produced small-sized sculpture, as linearly perfect as his drawings, but these were never displayed to the public during his life-time.

Photography had always been a great passion of his, but he began seriously experimenting in it after buying his first Kodak camera in 1895. He did 'trick' landscape shots, but, predictably, turned soon to studio shots, with the difficulties of arranged lighting. His portraits of family, friends, and acquaintances are all well-thought-out and intriguingly composed. Many of the portraits feature his close friends, the Halevys.

Degas and the Dreyfuss Affair:

In 1894, a French Army Officer of Jewish descent, Alfred Dreyfuss, was falsely accused of treason, and this caused a great uproar in French Society. Degas took the part of the Anti-Dreyfuss crowd and revealed himself to be rabidly antisemitic. Since he couldn't do anything in halves, he topped his unsavory behavior by breaking off contacts with all Jews – including his childhood friends, the Halevys, and his long-time art colleagues, Renoir and Cezanne.

Death:

In his later years, Degas's eye-sight began failing. He had never married – he doesn't appear to have had a very high opinion of women and his art gave him enough trouble – and his immediate family had dispersed and he had broken with old friends. So he lived a pretty much lonely existence until his death, at the age of 83, on 27 September 1917.

Some of Degas's well-known paintings:

1. The Belleli Family (1859)

2. Head of a Young Woman (1867)

3. Estelle Musson (1872-1873)

4. A Carriage at the Races (1873)

5. Absinthe (1876)

6. Dancers Practicing at the Bar (1877)

7. Diego Martelli (1879)

8. Ballerina and Lady with Fan (1885)