Edgar Degas: 14 essential works to understand the impressionist painter

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is one of the most emblematic representatives of Impressionism, even though he did not feel totally comfortable with the label of this movement of French origin.

Degas differed from some postulates of the Impressionist movement. For example, he did not work outdoors and did not limit his interest only to lighting effects. Her look was different. He was interested in transience, but not only in light but in movement and framing. How much interest the strange, singular, inadvertent, almost unsightly movement aroused him! He made numerous notes before working on the canvases in his studio.

Let's get to know some of his works to understand not only his artistic achievements, but also the evolution of his idea of ​​painting and the transformation of him over time.

1. Male nude (1856)

Edgar Degas dedicated a good part of his work to nudes. Although he devoted himself with special dedication to the female nude, the male nude did not disappear from his thematic horizon. This is the case of the present canvas, whose lines show us a Degas still linked to academicism, and who puts into practice with great mastery the technique of

scorzo. The work gains great verismo, despite the fact that some sections are unfinished.

2. Spartan youth provoking the boys (1860-1862)

Again Degas introduces the nude into his canvases, but nudity is not the main theme. This time it is about the genre of historical painting, and refers to the stories of Classical Antiquity. The scene represents the Spartan youth provoking the boys. The Musée d'Orsay, in an article titled Degas and the nude, comment that this table:

It evokes antiquity but above all it offers the artist the opportunity to present his research on the body, based on the multiple studies carried out previously. The rigor of his drawing is undoubtedly in keeping with the teaching he has received, but the attention to the gestures seems totally original.

3. The Bellelli family (1862)

On The Bellelli family Degas represents his paternal aunt, Laure, mourning the recent death of her father. This appears in a sanguine that hangs on the wall, right next to Laure. The scene is completed with Baron Bellelli, Laure's husband, and his two daughters, Giulia and Giovanna. Degas lived with them while studying in Italy. At this stage, Degas still responded to the usual demands of the art market, both in pictorial genres and techniques. However, the dog in the lower right corner is striking, appearing partially out of plane.

4. The parade or Horses in front of the stands (1868)

The parade or Horses in front of the stands It is one of the first canvases by Edgar Degas dedicated to the equestrian theme. Here Degas places great importance on both the light and the instantaneous movement captured in the drawing, as expressed by the horse propping up the composition's flight line. This will be of greater importance to the painter than the faces of the jokers or the details of the audience. The subject is justified by the importance that the racetracks had acquired in those years.

5. Inside or Rape (1869)

Investigators are torn between two interpretations: a brothel scene or a rape. These themes were not frequent in Degas, but at that time he felt the influence of the realism.

The tension between the characters is symbolized by the physical separation and their postures. As the man leans against the door and reaches his hand toward his groin, he watches the scene from above in control. The woman, with her back to her single bed and to the sewing kit on her work table, appears in her underwear and with one shoulder exposed, looking at the floor, physically defeated and spatially dominated.

6. The Opera Orchestra or The musicians of the orchestra (1870)

Also known as The musicians of the orchestra, this painting represents a detail of the musicians of the ballet orchestra in a moment of the performance. There is no pose. Once again, Degas has frozen an instant; He has chosen to partially cut what happens on stage and focus attention on the musicians in the orchestra pit, who are rarely attended by the public during the performance. Among the musicians, and marking the center of the composition, is the bassoonist D. Dihau, friend of Edgar Degas.

7. Dance class (1874)

The impressionist painter was very interested in the dancers' essays, full of complex and novel images that he was studying with great effort. He was not interested in pose or idyllic beauty but, on the contrary, retaining inadvertent details and positions unrecorded by the memory of a spectator eager for stunts. The training time offers an image of fatigue, a second of distraction, rest, work, effort. Degas thus breaks with the image of delicate grace and pleasure, by showing the intensity of effort physical and study, which allows you to vindicate the dignity of the trade and, with it, the dignity of everything job artistic.

8. The singer with gloves (1878)

Again the fleeting moment has been captured by the painter. It is the turn of the singing profession. The woman is portrayed at the exact moment when she opens her mouth and raises her hand, signaling a high point in the performance. The light comes from below, from where the painter observes almost as if it were a close-up close-up. The colors are vivid and contrasting.

9. Portrait of Henri Michel-Lévy (1878)

On this canvas, Degas offers a portrait of Henri Michel-Lévy, an editor and painter with whom he maintained a friendship. The leading character is accompanied by the attributes of the trade: his brushes, materials, his works (referring to the background) and a mannequin that lies on the ground. The painter has chosen to portray an apparently casual moment, by means of thick spots of paint, clearly determined.

See also Impressionism: characteristics, works and most important artists.

10. Miss Lala at the Circus Fernando (1879)

The circus was also a place of fascination for Degas, as well as for his contemporaries Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec. By then, on the Boulevard Montmartre, the Fernando circus had been installed, where Miss Lala was demonstrating her jaw strength. This is the scene that Degas represents: the acrobat hangs on a rope, which she barely holds on to with her teeth. The artist has applied the technique of scorzo and it has made the viewer feel as a direct witness, almost a participant in the act.

11. The little 14-year-old ballerina (1881)

This was the only sculpture that Degas exhibited in life, but it was not the only one that he made. After her death, about 150 sculptures were found in her workshop, made of wax or clay. Most were made in her later years, when her increasing blindness prevented her from painting. The piece aroused all kinds of criticism for the supposed lack of beauty of the face of the apprentice, called Marie van Goethem. It was originally made in wax, with a cotton tutu and set on a wooden base. However, years later, various bronze casting replicas were made, now available in different museum rooms around the world.

12. Waiting (1882)

The painter Edgar Degas shows here his particular gaze on the profession of dancers. It exalts a moment of waiting that not only involves the dancer, but also the woman who accompanies her, who provides support and protects the young woman. The effort is not just individual. Family commitment is part of what is necessary for such a career.

The position is complex and deliberately lacking in Apollonian beauty. The two women are concentrated in the upper left corner of the painting. The young woman opens her feet and flexes her back, trying to reach her ankles with her hand.

13. The bathtub or The tub (1892)

Degas devoted a whole series to the representation of the female nude in everyday activities such as taking a bath, combing her hair or dressing. She was very natural, and by leaving her face out, he turned all his attention to her body anatomy.

For the pose of this figure, it seems to have been inspired by the work Squatting aphrodite or Aphrodite crouching, subject of which there is more than one version. The attributes of the toilet appear with a false perspective, following the rhetoric of Japanese art, which so mobilized the Impressionists.

14. Ballerinas in blue (1897)

The four dancers in this pastel painting, taken together, form a kind of irregular pentagon. To represent them, Degas has chosen a chopped plane or raised perspective. He has enveloped the dancers in a predominantly blue atmosphere. At the scene, the young women adjust their costumes, probably waiting for the moment to go on the scene. Degas demonstrates mastery in the treatment of perspective, line, lighting and color.

See also Claude Monet and his works.

Edgar Degas biography

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, better known as Edgar Degas, was a painter, sculptor and photographer born in Paris on July 19, 1834. He enrolled at the Sorbonne University School of Law in 1853, but soon dropped out of school to pursue painting. In 1855 he met the neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and he himself enrolled in the School of Fine Arts.

He lived for a period of three years in Italy, in which he devoted himself to copying the great masters and began the famous portrait The Bellelli family. He returned to Paris in 1859 and, at first, devoted himself to historical painting, mythology and biblical stories. In 1864 he met Édouard Manet, who greatly influenced the conception of his painting. From that relationship, Degas turned to contemporary themes and focused on compositional methods.

He enlisted in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, but his sight problem did not allow him to continue for long. He briefly lives in New Orleans in 1872 and returns to Paris in 1873. On the death of his father in 1874, his brother's debts force him to produce prolifically in order to pay them off. It is the great period of the dancers, his best-selling song.

The constant rejections of the Official Art Hall led him to join the Impressionist movement, where he actively participated in the organization of exhibitions. However, he did not agree with all the principles of the movement and advocated that the exhibitions include other styles.

He also dabbled in photography. Many of the images he took were used as study material for the elaboration of his paintings, whether they were portraits or genre scenes.

An eye disease led him to lose his vision progressively, which implied his withdrawal from painting and, for a period, his approach to sculpture. Even so, in his last years he ended up leaving the artistic activity to which he had absolutely devoted himself, rejecting any love or family commitment. Isolated, Edgar Degas died in Paris on September 27, 1917.

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