Impressionist Sculptors and Oil Paintings by Edgar Degas

One of the most popular Impressionist artists was Edgar Degas. This French painter was known for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. His works capture the feeling of a moment in time. Many of these paintings were inspired by the landscapes he saw and the people he met. His oil paintings are considered some of his most famous works.

French Impressionist painter
Edgar Degas was a French painter known for off-balance compositions and experiments with color and form. He was also known for his friendships with other Impressionist artists and his reverence for old masters. Throughout his career, Degas worked in many different materials and found that each posed unique challenges.

During his mature years, Edgar Degas' popularity skyrocketed. However, his reputation was affected by the Dreyfus Affair, a scandal that divided France during the 1890s. While this scandal did not affect Degas's paintings, it tarnished his reputation as a prominent anti-Semite. In fact, he publicly denounced his friendships with Jewish artists. In the end, his anti-Semitic views cost him a lot of respect in art circles.

Sculptor
The French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas is one of the most well known and respected artists of all time. He is most known for his oil paintings and pastel drawings. However, he was also a talented sculptor. His sculptures are equally as impressive and popular. He has created many pieces that are sure to be a conversation piece among art lovers.

Most of the sculptures in the National Gallery of Art's collection are by Degas himself. The artist used a variety of materials to create his works, including beeswax, air-dried clay, plastiline, and non-drying clay. In some cases, he would assemble his own armatures from wire, wood, and metal pins. Some of his sculptures used discarded objects for filler, like cork stoppers and rope.

Historical painter
Edgar Degas was born into a wealthy banking family and was educated at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Degas's parents encouraged his artistic talents and took him to many of the museums in the city. At an early age, he began copying the paintings of Italian Renaissance masters at the Louvre. In 1855, he enrolled in the Ecole and studied under the artist Louis Lamothe. Lamothe taught Degas in a traditional academic style, stressing the importance of draftsmanship.

In the late 1860s, Degas began painting contemporary scenes. His work often depicted life in bourgeois Paris. He began painting women at work, including maids, laundresses, and dancers. His works are notable for the theatricality of their scenes.

Dancer
In his more than 1,000 paintings, the French artist Edgar Degas captured the ballet world through the movement of the dancer. In many of his works, the artist focused on private moments offstage, as well as varying degrees of opacity and transparency to convey the movement of the dancer. His paintings also highlight the contrasting elements of reality and art.

The work's style is unromantic and unsentimental, presenting the ballet world in a real, raw, and moving way. Degas did not romanticize the ballet, but he did manage to capture the beauty, ugliness, and anguish of dancers.

Bather
The pastel Four Bathers by Edgar Degas was one of the artist's most ambitious works. Degas layered pastels in fixative on translucent tracing paper, pieced them together, and mounted them to create a single composition. These works were found in the artist's studio at the time of his death.

The bather's milky skin, and flowing figure are both very pleasing to the eye. Degas's use of pastel adds a sexy edge to the piece. Her posture on the lip of the bath makes her appear leaning toward the viewer. The painting exemplifies Degas' appreciation for feminine beauty.

Parisian cafe society
Degas' depictions of modern Parisian women have earned him a place among the greats of Impressionism. His observance of naturalistic movement and the quality of line in his work distinguish Degas's work from those of his contemporaries. Unlike the Impressionists, however, he eschewed the detached brush strokes that typify their paintings.

This painting shows a couple in a cafe. The woman is wearing a black dress and the man is wearing a white vest. They are both drinking absinthe. Absinthe was a popular drink in Paris. The woman is a prominent actress, while the man is an eccentric personality. Degas has painted these characters as if they were a snapshot of a moment in time. While painting the cafe scene, Degas asked friends to pose as the figures. Among them are Ellen Andre, a famous actress, and Marcellin Desboutin, an engraver and artist.

Musical background
Before picking up a brush, Edgar Degas was an avid listener of music. After the death of his father in 1874, he grew disenchanted with the world of high society and instead found a more creative outlet in the cafe-concert scene. Many of his paintings feature the performers of these events, who often served as his models. In these works, Degas is especially drawn to the gestures and movement of the people.

During the early part of his career, Degas studied with Nicolas Soutzo and Louis Lamothe, two artists who taught him about the traditional art education system. His initial goal was to be a historical painter. Traditionally, historical painters portray grand historical and religious scenes, often using a frieze-like presentation. However, Degas continued working on his famous painting The Young Spartans into his later years.