Edgar Degas, July 19, 1834 – September 27, 1917, was a French painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and photographer associated with the Impressionist movement. Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas in Paris, he came from a prosperous banking family with connections in France and Italy. He studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and briefly enrolled in law before turning to art. Degas trained under Louis Lamothe, a pupil of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and copied extensively in the Louvre while also studying the works of Renaissance and seventeenth-century masters in Italy. His early ambition was to become a history painter, and his formative years included extended stays in Naples, Rome, and Florence.
Degas worked in oil, pastel, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and photography. Although associated with the Impressionists and a participant in most of their exhibitions, he maintained an independent position and preferred studio work to outdoor painting. His subjects included ballet dancers, singers, musicians, milliners, laundresses, racehorses, cafés, theaters, and scenes of modern Parisian life, as well as portraits and self-portraits. His art combined rigorous draftsmanship with unusual viewpoints, cropped compositions, and close observation of movement. He was associated with artists including Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Paul Cézanne, while remaining distinct from them in both method and subject matter.
Degas did not maintain a formal teaching studio, but he influenced numerous younger artists through his exhibitions, friendships, and technical innovations, particularly in pastel and printmaking. He was an important supporter and mentor of Mary Cassatt and maintained connections with many artists of the Impressionist circle. His work is held by major collections including the Musée d’Orsay, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Hermitage Museum, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Detroit Institute of Arts, and many other institutions throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.
Albert Bartholomé, Edgar Degas, aged 77, March 1912
Self Portrait Saluting, 1863
Oil on canvas, 36.2 x 24 in
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
Self Portrait with Evariste de Valernes, c 1865
Oil on canvas, 45.9 x 35.3 in
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
The Bellelli Family, 1858
Oil on canvas, 78.7 x 98.4 in
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Two Riders by a Lake, c 1861
Pen and ink
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Louis-Marie Pilet, Violoncellist in the Orchestra of the Opéra, 1868–1869
Oil on canvas, 19.9 x 24 in
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
At the Races in the Countryside, 1869
Oil on canvas, 14.4 x 22 in
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Orchestra at the Opera, c 1870
Oil on canvas, 22.2 x 17.7 in
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Violinist and Young Woman, c 1871
Oil and crayon on canvas, 18.3 x 22 in
Detroit Institute of Arts
Lorenzo Pagans and Auguste de Gas, 1871–1872
Oil on canvas, 21.3 x 15.4 in
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Woman with a Bandage, 1872–1873
Oil on canvas, 13 x 9.8 in
Detroit Institute of Arts
Woman with a Vase, 1872
Oil on canvas, 25.6 x 21.3 in
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Eugène Manet, 1874
Oil on canvas, 25.6 x 33.9 in
Private Collection
Place de la Concorde, 1875
Oil on canvas, 30.8 x 46.2 in
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
Portrait of a Woman, 1877
Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 21 in
Detroit Institute of Arts
p>Woman Getting out of the Bath, c 1877
Pastel over monotype on paper
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
The Road, c 1878–1880
Monotype (black ink) on china paper, 6.3 x 7.2 in
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Paul Lafond and Alphonse Cherfils Examining a Painting, c 1878–1880
Oil on wood panel, 16.8 x 19.7 in
Cleveland Museum of Art
Two Dancers, c 1879
Pastel and gouache on paper, 18.1 x 26.3 in
Shelburne Museum, Vermont
Woman in Street Clothes, Portrait of Ellen Andrée, 1879
Pastel on green-gray paper, 19 x 16.5 in
Private Collection
<p>Lowering the Curtain, c 1880<br />
Pastel<br />
Private Collection</p>
At the Milliner's, 1882
Pastel on pale gray wove paper laid down on silk bolting, 30 x 34 in
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Harlequin and Columbina, c 1884
Color on paper, 16.1 x 16.1 in
Belvedere, Vienna
Hélène Rouart in her Father's Study, c 1886
Oil on canvas, 63.9 x 47.6 in
National Gallery, London
Woman in a Tub, 1886
Pastel on paper, 27.5 x 27.5 in
Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington
At the Mirror, c 1889
Pastel on paper, 19.3 x 25.2 in
Kunsthalle Hamburg
Three Ukrainian Dancers, 1895
Pastel, 24.5 x 20.9 in
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Houses at the Foot of a Cliff, Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, c 1895–1898
Oil on canvas, 36.2 x 28.6 in
Columbus Museum of Art
Dancer in Ukrainian Dress, 1899
Pastel over charcoal on tracing paper, 24.3 x 17.9 in
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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