![]() Of the last to go, but even I couldn’t stay till the end…”ĭegas never married nor had any children. ![]() “…What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him I was one Of Degas’ confrontational behaviour and loss of his friends, Renoir once commented: He became frustrated and disgruntled with life and became very argumentative and his friends began to desert him. Alas, with age came his dissatisfaction with life in general. His financial situation had improved by this time through the sale of his art and he developed a love for collecting works of art of the old Masters such as El Greco as well as works by his contemporaries, Manet, Pissarro and Cézanne. Degas was a leading-light within this group and proved to be a great organiser. However, Degas did not like the label “Impressionists”, which the media had attached to his group of painters. The first of their exhibitions was held in 1874 and it was dubbed an Impressionist Exhibition. It was also in this period of his life that Degas came together with a group of like-minded artists and together they put on independent exhibitions of their art works. Art historians believe it was during this time that Degas produced some of his greatest works. Having always lived a relatively wealthy existence in which his art was mainly a hobby and for his own pleasure, Degas suddenly found himself having to paint pictures to sell and by so doing, put food on his table. A careful scrutiny of his father’s estate revealed that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts and Degas, wanting to preserve the good name of the family, had little choice but to sell his house and a large quantity of his art work to service the debt. He returned to Paris the following year but sadly in 1874 his father died. With the conclusion of the war midway through 1871, his military life came to an end and the next year he went New Orleans where his brother, René, and other relatives lived. Degas enlisted in the National Guard and his military duties gave him little time for painting. His painting career was temporarily halted for two years with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The artist was Édouard Manet, who was a key figure in the change-over from Realism to Impressionism and somebody who was to He was still copying paintings at the Louvre and it was said that in 1864, whilst working on a copy of Velazquez’s portrait that he met another artist engaged in the same work. His painting genre slowly changed from that of a history painter to one of a painter of contemporary subjects. He returned to France in 1859 and moved intoĪ Paris studio. ![]() It was during this time that he studied the works of the great Italian Renaissance painters, such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts and a year later journeyed to Italy where he stayed for three years, part of this time was spent living with his aunt in Naples. “.Draw lines, young man, and still more lines,īoth from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist…” In 1855 he met the great French Neoclassical painter Ingres, who was his idol, and who offered Degas advice, which he was never to forget: He had been always interested in art and in his teenage years wanted to eventually become a famous history painter and paint pictures depicting great moments in history. This art genre had achieved immense popularity in France in the Edgar was very half-hearted about his father’s career choice and failed with his studies. However his father had planned for his son to study law and enrolled him in the Faculty of Law at the When he left school he registered as a copyist in the Louvre. He finished his schooling at the age of nineteen and attained a baccalaureate in literature. He began school life at the age of eleven and at about this time dropped the use of the ostentatious spelling of the family name for the surname he is known by now, Degas. After the death of his mother when he was five years old, he was brought up jointly by his father and grandfather. His father was a banker and Edgar was brought up in a moderately wealthy family environment. Born in Paris in 1834, he was one of fiveĬhildren of Augustine and Célestine De Gas. It was painted in 1876 by the French painter and sculptor and one of the founders of Impressionism, Edgar Degas.ĭegas was born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas. It has had many titles but finally in 1893 the painting was simply called L’Absinthe. Today I am featuring a painting, which may My Daily Art Display the other day featured one of the great American Realist artist Edward Hopper’s 1927 painting Automat and we looked at thetheme of loneliness and isolation in an urban environment. ![]()
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