I.

Introduction

Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French painter and sculptor, known especially for his paintings of ballet dancers. Other subjects that he frequently returned to include horse races, women bathing, and portraits of friends and relatives. Degas combined a modern focus on the creation of unusual compositions and the rendering of movement with a traditional emphasis on skillful drawing. An accomplished sculptor as well as painter, he molded, in wax and clay, exquisite small statues of dancers, female bathers, and horses in motion.

Degas is usually classed with the impressionists, but he stood somewhat apart from the other artists in this group. He did not share the impressionists’ fascination with natural light and its effects, and he disliked painting directly from nature, preferring instead to work in the studio. Moreover, Degas had little interest in landscape—the primary subject matter of the impressionists—and concentrated instead on the human figure. Also unlike the impressionists, Degas was interested in drawing and emphasized line in his work. However, Degas showed his work in seven of the eight exhibitions that the impressionists organized between 1874 and 1886. See also Impressionism.