Edgar degas simple biography of william shakespeare
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He abandoned the law career, determined to become an artist.
From an early age Degas showed an interest in art and his parents allowing him to set up a studio in the house. Edgar Degas died on 27 September 1917, in Paris, leaving behind in his studio an important collection of drawings and paintings by his contemporaries as well as a number of statues crafted in wax and metal, which were cast in bronze after his death.
In his personal life Degas was a confirmed bachelor but a devoted friend to those who could conquer the barrier of prickliness he erected around himself.
Though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries, his involvement with the other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, and his bold color experiments, served to finally tie him to the Impressionist movement as one of its greatest early artists.
His paintings, pastels, drawings, and sculpture—most of the latter were not intended for exhibition, and were discovered only after his death—are on prominent display in many museums.
Although Degas had no formal pupils, he greatly influenced several important painters, most notably Jean-Louis Forain, Mary Cassatt, and Walter Sickert; his greatest admirer may have been Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
He copied the Old Masters
in the Louvre and made regular visits to his grandfather, René-Hilaire Degas, in Naples and his aunt and godmother, Laure Bellelli, in Florence from 1854-59 while studying and copying Renaissance and Ancient Art.
In 1859, Degas had a studio in the Rue Madame, Paris, concentrating on portraiture and historical subjects.
(The impressionist style of painting is characterized by capturing a momentary glimpse of a scene or object with the use of unmixed primary colors in small strokes to simulate actual reflected light.) 1
Degas’ art began to reflect his change of views when he replaced the traditional, realism of the Old Master themes and captured an impressionistic view of the ordinary life around him.
His father, Augustin de Gas, was a prosperous Neapolitan banker, his mother, Celestine Musson, was from New Orleans and belonged to a French family that settled in America.
From 1845 to 1852 he received a classical education at Lycee Louis-le-Gran. His mother, Marie Célestine Musson, was from a French family in New Orleans and died when he was thirteen.
As a promising artist in the conventional mode, and in the several years following 1860, Degas had a number of paintings accepted in the Salon.
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In the 1890's Degas continued to work with his favorite themes of dancers, bathers and jockeys.
Degas spend three years in Italy where he copied the old masters.
There he also met his long-time friends Henri Rouart, Paul Valpinçon and Ludovic Halevy. But I fear that their heads are as weak as mine, and two such noodles would be a funny sort of guarantee for a new household.” 2
Edgar left New Orleans in 1873 and gave up the idea of getting married.
In 1874, Edgar Degas exhibited his works in the first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris.
From 1865 he continued exhibiting at the Paris Salon until 1870, when he served in the Artillery in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1872 René, his youngest brother, persuaded Edgar, who was beginning to have eye trouble, to accompany him to Louisiana to their uncle Michael Musson’s home in New Orleans.
By 1877, Degas was forced to sell his work and sacrifice most of his income to help pay the debts of his brother René, who had contributed to most of the loss of the De Gas family fortune and bank in Paris, by poor business decisions. This style and inspirations are reflected in his painting of ballerinas and opera singers in the theatre, jockeys at the racecourse, or the spontaneous gestures of a woman yawning, ironing, holding a hat or women bathing.
Returning to Paris in 1859, he painted portraits of his family and friends and a number of historical subjects.
During the period from 1865 to 1870 Degas exhibited each year at the Paris Salon. After this date all Degas’ paintings were shown commercially by Durand-Ruel.
In the last 20 years of his life, Degas’ eyesight deteriorated further and he worked mostly in pastel.
The suite of nudes Degas exhibited in the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886 produced "the most concentrated body of critical writing on the artist during his lifetime. His last public exhibition was in 1886. In 1908 he more or less gave up art altogether. By the time he was eighteen Degas had also obtained permission to copy at the Louvre.
In 1854 he was to visit wealthy uncles, aunts, and cousins in Naples and Florence.
In the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, Degas began increasingly to work in two new media that did not require intense visual acuity: sculpture and pastel. Degas was not well known to the public, and his true artistic stature did not become evident until after his death.