Edgar Degas

Nik Esposito

Humanities-2

5/6/11

Edgar Degas

He was born 19 July 1834 and died September 27, 1917. He was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He was one of the first impressionist painters, and was said to be a founder of it although he preferred to call it realism. He is especially identified with the subject of the dance, and over half his works depict dancers. He wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classic art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life.

Impressionism: 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 such painters 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.