Edgar degas biography wikipedia

Degas began by copying Italian Renaissance paintings at the Louvre and trained in the studio of Louis Lamothe, who taught in the traditional academic style, with its emphasis on line and its insistence on the crucial importance of draftsmanship.

Where was edgar degas born

Degas was also strongly influenced by the paintings and frescoes he saw during several long trips to Italy in the late s; he made many sketches and drawings of them in his notebooks. Yet despite the title, and the suggestion of classical drapery on some of the figures in the background, there is little that places the subject of this painting in ancient Greece.

His interest in ballet dancers intensified in the s, and eventually he produced approximately 1, works on the subject. These are not traditional portraits, but studies that address the movement of the human body, exploring the physicality and discipline of the dancers through the use of contorted postures and unexpected vantage points.

Edgar degas nationality

In Dancer Adjusting Her Slipper ; Degas absorbed artistic tradition and outside influences and reinterpreted them in innovative ways. Following the opening of trade with Japan in , many French artists, including Degas, were increasingly influenced by Japanese prints. But whereas his contemporaries often infused their paintings with Eastern imagery , Degas abstracted from these prints their inventive compositions and points of view, particularly in his use of cropping and asymmetry.

Degas had also observed how sixteenth-century Italian Mannerists similarly framed their subjects, sometimes cutting off part of a figure. In her subdued attire she seems almost incidental to the riot of color that makes up the central floral arrangement. Even in a more traditional work of portraiture like the Duchessa di Montejasi with Her Daughters, Elena and Camilla ca.

Degas had a lively, scientific interest in a wide range of media, including engraving , monotype , and photography. Before , he generally used oils for his completed works But after , he began using pastels more frequently, even in finished works, such as Portraits at the Stock Exchange ca.