Editing Edgar Degas (section)

==Artistic style==
[[File:Edgar Degas - The Ballet Class - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''[[The Ballet Class (Degas, Musée d'Orsay)|The Dance Class (La Classe de Danse)]]'', 1873–1876, oil on canvas]]
Degas is often identified as an [[Impressionist]], an understandable but insufficient description. Impressionism originated in the 1860s and 1870s and grew, in part, from the realism of painters such as [[Courbet]] and [[Corot]]. The Impressionists painted the realities of the world around them using bright, "dazzling" colors, concentrating primarily on the effects of light, and hoping to infuse their scenes with immediacy. They wanted to express their visual experience in that exact moment.<ref>Clay 1973, p. 28.</ref>

Technically, Degas differs from the Impressionists in that he continually belittled their practice of painting ''[[en plein air]]''.<ref>Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 11</ref>

<blockquote>You know what I think of people who work out in the open. If I were the government I would have a special brigade of [[gendarmes]] to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/degaspor00voll Vollard, Ambroise, ''Degas: an intimate portrait''], Crown, New York, 1937, p. 56</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Pellegrinibydegas.jpg|thumb|upright=.6|''Carlo Pellegrini'', {{Circa|1876}}; watercolor, oil and pastel on paper]]
"He was often as anti-impressionist as the critics who reviewed the shows", according to art historian [[Carol Armstrong]]; as Degas himself explained, "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing."<ref>Armstrong 1991, p. 22</ref> Nonetheless, he is described more accurately as an Impressionist than as a member of any other movement. His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists—most notably [[Mary Cassatt]] and Manet—all relate him intimately to the Impressionist movement.<ref name="Roskill, 1983, p. 33">Roskill 1983, p. 33</ref>

Degas's style reflects his deep respect for the old masters (he was an enthusiastic copyist well into middle age)<ref>Baumann, et al. 1994, p. 151</ref> and his great admiration for Ingres and Delacroix. He was also a collector of [[Ukiyo-e|Japanese prints]], whose compositional principles influenced his work, as did the vigorous realism of popular illustrators such as Daumier and [[Paul Gavarni|Gavarni]]. Although famous for horses and dancers, Degas began with conventional historical paintings such as ''The Daughter of Jephthah'' ({{Circa|1859–61}}) and ''[[Young Spartans Exercising]]'' ({{Circa|1860–62}}), in which his gradual progress toward a less idealized treatment of the figure is already apparent. During his early career, Degas also painted portraits of individuals and groups; an example of the latter is ''[[The Bellelli Family]]'' ({{Circa|1858–67}}), an ambitious and psychologically poignant portrayal of his aunt, her husband, and their children.<ref>Baumann, et al. 1994, p. 189</ref> In this painting, as in ''Young Spartans Exercising'' and many later works, Degas was drawn to the tensions present between men and women.<ref>Shackelford, et al. 2011, pp. 60–61</ref> In his early paintings, Degas already evidenced the mature style that he would later develop more fully by cropping subjects awkwardly and by choosing unusual viewpoints.<ref>Gordon and Forge 1988, pp. 120–126, 137</ref>

[[File:Edgar Degas - In a Café - Google Art Project 2.jpg|thumb|upright|left|{{Lang|fr|[[L'Absinthe]]}}, 1876, oil on canvas]]
By the late 1860s, Degas had shifted from his initial forays into history painting to an original observation of contemporary life. Racecourse scenes provided an opportunity to depict horses and their riders in a modern context. He began to paint women at work, [[Hatmaking|milliners]] and [[laundry|laundresses]].<ref name="Lubrich-2022" /> His milliner series is interpreted as artistic self-reflection.<ref name="Lubrich-2022">{{Cite journal |last=Lubrich |first=Naomi |title="Ceci n'est pas un chapeau: What is Art and what is Fashion in Degas's Millinery Series?" |journal=Fashion Theory |publication-date=2022}}</ref>

''Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source'', exhibited in the Salon of 1868, was his first major work to introduce a subject with which he would become especially identified, dancers.<ref>Dumas 1988, p. 9.</ref> In many subsequent paintings, dancers were shown backstage or in rehearsal, emphasizing their status as professionals doing a job. From 1870 Degas increasingly painted [[ballet]] subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother's debts had left the family bankrupt.<ref name="Growe 1992">Growe 1992</ref> Degas began to paint café life as well, in works such as {{Lang|fr|[[L'Absinthe]]}} and ''Singer with a Glove''. His paintings often hinted at narrative content in a way that was highly ambiguous; for example, ''[[Interior (Degas)|Interior]]'' (which has also been called ''The Rape'') has presented a conundrum to art historians in search of a literary source—''[[Thérèse Raquin]]'' has been suggested<ref>Reff 1976, pp. 200–204</ref>—but it may be a depiction of [[prostitution]].<ref>Krämer 2007</ref>

As his subject matter changed, so, too, did Degas's technique. The dark palette that bore the influence of Dutch painting gave way to the use of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. Paintings such as ''[[Place de la Concorde (painting)|Place de la Concorde]]'' read as "snapshots," freezing moments of time to portray them accurately, imparting a sense of movement. The lack of color in the 1874 ''Ballet Rehearsal on Stage'' and the 1876 ''The Ballet Instructor'' can be said to link with his interest in the new technique of photography. The changes to his palette, brushwork, and sense of composition all evidence the influence that both the Impressionist movement and modern photography, with its spontaneous images and off-kilter angles, had on his work.<ref name="Roskill, 1983, p. 33"/>

[[File:Edgar Degas Place de la Concorde.jpg|thumb|''[[Place de la Concorde (painting)|Place de la Concorde]]'', 1875, oil on canvas, [[Hermitage Museum]], St. Petersburg]]
Blurring the distinction between portraiture and [[Genre works|genre]] pieces, he painted his bassoonist friend, [[Désiré Dihau]], in ''[[The Orchestra of the Opera]]'' (c. 1870) as one of fourteen musicians in an orchestra pit, viewed as though by a member of the audience. Above the musicians can be seen only the legs and tutus of the dancers onstage, their figures cropped by the edge of the painting. Art historian Charles Stuckey has compared the viewpoint to that of a distracted spectator at a ballet, and says that "it is Degas' fascination with the depiction of movement, including the movement of a spectator's eyes as during a random glance, that is properly speaking 'Impressionist'."<ref>Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 28</ref>

[[File:Edgar Degas - Orchestra Musicians - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright|left|''Musicians in the Orchestra'', 1872, oil on canvas]]
Degas's mature style is distinguished by conspicuously unfinished passages, even in otherwise tightly rendered paintings. He frequently blamed his eye troubles for his inability to finish, an explanation that met with some skepticism from colleagues and collectors who reasoned, as Stuckey explains, that "his pictures could hardly have been executed by anyone with inadequate vision".<ref name="Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 29"/> The artist provided another clue when he described his predilection "to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them",<ref>Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 50</ref> and was in any case notoriously reluctant to consider a painting complete.<ref>Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 30</ref>

His interest in portraiture led Degas to study carefully the ways in which a person's social stature or form of employment may be revealed by their [[physiognomy]], posture, dress, and other attributes. In his 1879 ''[[Portraits, At the Stock Exchange]]'', he portrayed a group of Jewish businessmen with a hint of anti-Semitism. In 1881, he exhibited two pastels, ''Criminal Physiognomies'', that depicted juvenile gang members recently convicted of murder in the "Abadie Affair". Degas had attended their trial with sketchbook in hand, and his numerous drawings of the defendants reveal his interest in the [[atavism|atavistic]] features thought by some 19th-century scientists to be evidence of innate criminality.<ref>{{cite book |title=Degas and The Little Dancer |first=Richard |last= Kendall |year=1998 |pages= 78–85 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-300-07497-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O4pupXRt8NUC&pg=PA78 |display-authors=etal}}</ref> In his paintings of dancers and laundresses, he reveals their occupations not only by their dress and activities but also by their body type: his ballerinas exhibit an athletic physicality, while his laundresses are heavy and solid.<ref>Muehlig 1979, p. 6</ref>

[[File:Edgar Degas - At the Races.jpg|thumb|''At the Races'', 1877–1880, oil on canvas, [[Musée d'Orsay]], Paris]]
By the later 1870s, Degas had mastered not only the traditional medium of [[oil paint|oil]] on [[canvas]], but pastel as well. The dry medium, which he applied in complex layers and textures, enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line with a growing interest in expressive color.<ref>Kendall 1996, pp. 93, 97</ref>

In the mid-1870s, he also returned to the medium of [[etching]], which he had neglected for ten years. At first he was guided in this by his old friend [[Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic]], himself an innovator in its use, and began experimenting with [[lithograph]]y and [[monotype]].<ref name="Thomson75">Thomson 1988, p. 75</ref>

He produced some 300 monotypes over two periods, from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s and again in the early 1890s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/art/e0019100/degas_a_strange_new_beauty_e0191000.htm|title=Degas: A Strange New Beauty|first=Louis|last=Gerber}}{{Dead link|date=April 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

He was especially fascinated by the effects produced by monotype and frequently reworked the printed images with pastel.<ref name="Thomson75" /> By 1880, sculpture had become one more strand to Degas's continuing endeavor to explore different media, although the artist displayed only one sculpture publicly during his lifetime.<ref>Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 182</ref>

[[File:Edgar Germain Hilaire Degas 029.jpg|thumb|left|''La Toilette'' (Woman Combing Her Hair), {{Circa|1884–1886}}, pastel on paper, [[Hermitage Museum]], St. Petersburg]]
These changes in media engendered the paintings that Degas would produce in later life. Degas began to draw and paint women drying themselves with towels, combing their hair, and bathing (see: ''[[After the Bath, Woman drying herself]]''). The strokes that model the form are scribbled more freely than before; backgrounds are simplified.<ref name="auto">Guillaud and Guillaud 1985, p. 48</ref>

The meticulous naturalism of his youth gave way to an increasing abstraction of form. Except for his characteristically brilliant draftsmanship and obsession with the figure, the pictures created in this late period of his life bear little superficial resemblance to his early paintings. In point of fact, these paintings—created late in his life and after the heyday of the Impressionist movement—most vividly use the coloristic techniques of Impressionism.<ref>Mannering 1994, pp. 70–77</ref><ref>[https://archive.org/details/edgarhilai00rich Rich, Daniel Catton, ''Edgar-Hilaire Germain Degas''], H.N. Abrams, New York, 1952, p. 6</ref>

For all the stylistic evolution, certain features of Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his [[studio]] from memory, photographs, or live models.<ref>Benedek "Style."</ref> The figure remained his primary subject; his few landscapes were produced from memory or imagination. It was not unusual for him to repeat a subject many times, varying the composition or treatment. He was a deliberative artist whose works, as Andrew Forge has written, "were prepared, calculated, practiced, developed in stages. They were made up of parts. The adjustment of each part to the whole, their linear arrangement, was the occasion for infinite reflection and experiment."<ref>Gordon and Forge 1988, p. 9</ref> Degas explained, "In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement".<ref name="Growe 1992"/> He was most interested in the presentation of his paintings, patronizing [[Pierre Cluzel]] as a framer, and disliking ornate styles of the day, often insisting on his choices for the framing as a condition of purchase.<ref>Blakenmore, Erin, "[https://daily.jstor.org/framing-degas/ Framing Degas: The French painter Edgar Degas was Impressionism's most energetic and inventive frame designer]", ''[[JSTOR Daily]]'', 16 October 2022.</ref>