Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was famous for his paintings of ballet dancers, but he also created sculptures, drawings, portraits, and even photographs. Raised primarily by his widowed father and several unmarried uncles, Degas too remained a bachelor. Known as one of the creators of the Impressionist group, he nevertheless disliked the appellation, calling himself “a realist.” He was often critical of the Impressionists for painting outside, but was close to painters Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet and cooperated with other artists to organize an exhibiting society. It was the press that named them the Impressionists.

Degas liked to portray people at their work, such as the men in A Cotton Office in New Orleans, as well as washerwomen, jockeys, and his famous dancers. His most famous sculpture was Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The girl is a wax figure with real hair and a cloth tutu. Most other artists worked in bronze but Degas’s statutes were never cast in bronze in his lifetime. In the 1880s Degas took up photography and photographed many of his friends, including a double portrait of Renoir and Mallarme.

Because his well-to-do family went bankrupt in the 1870s, Degas worked tirelessly to produce and sell his paintings. His dancer paintings were very popular and he produced a great many of them. He believed that an artist should not have a personal life and devote himself only to work. Despite his success, he drove most of his friends away with his argumentative nature and his anti-Semitism. He stopped working around 1912 and spent much of the rest of his life wandering around the streets of Paris, almost blind. He died in 1917.

Fortunately for us, his work survives in museums and in private collections that are sometimes loaned out for special exhibitions. Below are some of the more famous works. Enjoy!