Edgar Degas
A painter of modern life who captured the fleeting grace of ballerinas and the unguarded intimacy of women at their toilette.
1834–1917 (age 83)·French Impressionist artist·Birthday: July 19
Biography
Edgar Degas stood apart from his Impressionist peers, a misanthropic classicist obsessed with movement and modern Parisian society. While he exhibited with the Impressionists, he rejected painting outdoors, preferring the controlled environment of the studio, the ballet rehearsal room, and the racetrack. His true subject was the human body in motion—the straining muscles of a dancer, the coiled tension of a jockey on a horse. He pioneered unusual, off-center compositions, viewing his subjects from sharp angles as if through a keyhole, which gave his work a startling immediacy. In later years, as his eyesight failed, he turned increasingly to pastels and sculpture, creating rough, textured figures of dancers and bathers that radiated raw, tactile energy. Degas redefined artistic observation, transforming fleeting moments into monuments of studied casualness.
#1 When Edgar Was Born
The biggest hits of 1834
Edgar's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1834Born
1839Started school
1847Became a teenager
1850Could drive
1852Could vote
1855Turned 21
1864Turned 30
President: Abraham Lincoln
1874Turned 40
President: Ulysses S. Grant
1884Turned 50
President: Chester A. Arthur
1894Turned 60
President: Grover Cleveland
1904Turned 70
New York City opens its first subway line
President: Theodore Roosevelt
1914Turned 80
World War I begins
President: Woodrow Wilson
1917Died at 83
Russian Revolution overthrows the tsar; US enters WWI
President: Woodrow Wilson
Key Achievements
- Created a vast body of work focused on ballet dancers, comprising over 1,500 paintings, pastels, and drawings.
- Pioneered the use of pastels as a primary medium, pushing the technique to new levels of expressiveness and brilliance.
- His sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen' was groundbreaking for its use of real materials like a tutu and hair ribbon.
- Produced a famous series of monotype prints depicting brothel scenes and women bathing, exploring themes of voyeurism and private ritual.
Did You Know?
He was a passionate photographer and used his own photos as studies for paintings.
He had a famous feud with the painter Édouard Manet, which began when Degas gave Manet a portrait he had painted of Manet and his wife; Manet cut the wife out of the canvas.
He was an ardent anti-Dreyfusard during the controversial Dreyfus Affair in France.
He never married and was known for being notoriously reclusive and irritable in his later years.
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
