Welcome to the Deep Dive. Our mission is always
to take these complex worlds, arts, history,
science, distill that essential knowledge from
the sources, and really give you the full context,
but, you know, without the information overload.
And today we're diving into someone who's just
fascinatingly complex. contradictory even, one
of the 19th century's most brilliant figures,
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas. Better known, of
course, is Edgar Degas. Exactly. And we hit the
central paradox right away, don't we? You look
in any art history book, Degas is right there,
key founder of Impressionism. He was in seven
of the eight independent shows between, what,
1874 and 1886. But this is the kicker, if you'd
actually call him an Impressionist to his face.
Oh, he would not have liked that. No. Deeply
offended. He absolutely rejected the term. He
preferred, well, realist or maybe even more pointedly,
a classical artist painting modern life. He really
was a walking contradiction. Absolutely. And
that's our goal today, isn't it? To get past
that simple label, you know, the ballet painter.
We need to uncover the difficult. sophisticated,
technically brilliant artist who somehow bridged
that huge gap between Renaissance draftsmanship
and, well, the radical fleeting subjects of modern
Paris. How did he fuse that classical rigor with,
say, laundresses or jotties? That's the question.
It is. And we've got a deep stack of sources
here covering everything, really. His early ambitions,
you know, wanting to be a history painter. Then
the financial crisis that sort of pushed him
into modernity. His compositional innovations,
which were groundbreaking. And we also have to
touch on the controversies, his personality,
his politics. They were thorny, to say the least.
Definitely. So by the end of this deep dive,
you should have a really thorough, nuanced picture
of this pivotal figure in 19th century art. OK,
so to understand that rigor. in degas art we
really have to look at his upbringing right that
sounds quite rigorous itself it was he was born
hilaire germain edgar degas 1834 paris moderately
wealthy family his father augustin degas was
a banker pretty prominent and his mother celestine
muson degas she had interesting roots creole
from new orleans that's right her family had
settled there uh Decades earlier. And there's
a small detail the sources mention, but it feels
telling. As an adult, he dropped the aristocratic
Degas spelling. Just became Degas. Simpler. Simpler.
And that little change dropping the dead, it
feels quite symbolic, maybe moving away from
that inherited aristocracy, identifying more
as a man of the new professional age. Whereas
his brother René stuck with the more grandiose
Degas. Exactly. René refused to make that change.
So this early choice, it kind of mirrors his
later rejection of, say, academic art for modern
subjects. It's an interesting parallel. Life
wasn't entirely smooth, though. His mother died
when he was only 13. Yes, a huge loss. So the
main influences after that were his father, who
was highly cultured, and interestingly, a set
of unmarried uncles. And his father had very
traditional expectations for him, career -wise.
Law school at the University of Paris. That was
the plan after he graduated from the Lycée Louis
-Lagrange in 1853. A very prestigious school.
But Degas, well, he wasn't feeling the law career.
Applied very little effort, apparently. And pivoted
almost immediately to art. Pretty much registered
as a copyist in the Louvre. That tells you something
right there. He was serious. He wanted the foundation,
the techniques the old masters had. He wasn't
looking for shortcuts. And then came that really
pivotal moment, the encounter with Ingres, Jean
-Auguste Dominique Ingres in 1855, the titan
of neoclassicism. A figure Degas absolutely revered.
You can see why. Anger represented the highest
standards of drawing, of classical precision.
And Anger gave him that crucial piece of advice.
The famous line, draw lines, young man, and still
more lines, both from life and from memory, and
you will become a good artist. That sums up Degas'
entire artistic ethos, really. Something he never
abandoned. Never. Even when painting dancers
or jockeys, that emphasis on line, on the drawing
underneath, it's always there. It's what fundamentally
separates him from someone like Monet, right?
Absolutely. Monet was all about color, light,
atmosphere. Degas was structure first, line first.
And Gray's advice led him to thrive under Louis
Lamothe at the École des Beaux -Arts, who followed
that same style. And that classical foundation
got cemented during his big trip to Italy. Three
years, 1856 to 1859. Yeah, and this wasn't just
tourism. He was there to study. Michelangelo,
Raphael, Titian. But even then, his way of copying
was, well, unconventional. Already showing his
unique eye. How so? You'd think copying Raphael
means copying the whole thing. Not necessarily
for Degas. The sources say he'd often focus on
specific bits that grabbed him, like a secondary
figure way in the background, or just a single
head from a group. Interesting. So he's treating
that detail almost like a mini portrait. Exactly.
Using the old masters, not just for technique,
but to sharpen his eye for individual psychology,
isolating those little moments of human intensity.
Okay. That makes sense then. Why his first big
ambition was to be a history painter. That was
the top tier in the French Academy. The highest
goal. And his early works show it. Things like
Alexander and Bucephalus, the Daughter of Jephthah,
Semiramis building Babylon around 1860, all aimed
at that grand tradition. But the work that really
signaled where he was heading, the blend of technique
and psychology, was the Bellelli family. Started
in Italy around 1858. Yes. Intended for the Salon,
the big official exhibition. But it wasn't history.
It was this powerful contemporary portrait of
his aunt, uncle, and their two daughters. And
when you look at it, the psychological tension
is just, wow. The sources really highlight this.
It's not just a formal picture. What makes it
so poignant? Well, it's the spacing, isn't it?
The way the figures are grouped, but also so
isolated. The uncle, Gennaro Bellelli, he's standing
apart, back slightly turned, looks quite distant.
And the aunt, Lore. She's in black. very upright,
severe almost. You feel this deep melancholy,
this tension, this emotional distance from her
husband. And the two girls, they connect the
composition, but they seem very formal, restrained.
So he's using that classical, meticulous draftsmanship
to expose the uncomfortable emotional reality
of this mid -19th century family. It's that blend
of classical skill and modern psychological subject
matter that's so groundbreaking. He finally did
exhibit at the Salon in 1865, but it was with
a History painting, scene of war, the Middle
Ages. And it barely got noticed. Seems the establishment
wasn't quite ready for what he was about to unleash.
So that lack of success with history painting,
maybe that was the push he needed. It seems like
it. After that 1865 salon, he pretty much stopped
trying those classical or historical narratives.
Right, because his next submission, 1866, scene
from the steeplechase. The Fallen Jockey, that's
a total pivot, isn't it? Absolutely definitive.
Contemporary subject matter. Racehorses, jockeys,
the spectacle of modern Paris. And this commitment
to the now was definitely influenced by his friendship
with Manet. Edward Manet. They met a couple of
years earlier, possibly copying Velazquez and
Louvre. That's the story, yeah. But the real
catalyst, the thing that really forced him to
paint for a living, wasn't just artistic choice.
It was a series of... Pretty major shocks, financial,
personal, starting around the early 1870s. Okay,
what happened first? Well, the Franco -Prussian
War in 1870, he enlisted in the National Guard.
And it was during rifle training, wasn't it,
that they discovered his eyesight problem? Exactly,
defective eyesight. It became a lifelong worry,
progressively getting worse. And this is crucial
because, as we'll talk about, it pushed him towards
certain mediums later on, maybe even contributed
to his isolation. After the war, there's the
famous trip to New Orleans in 1872. Yes, visiting
his mother's family, his Creole relatives. His
uncle, Michel Misson, lived there on Esplanade
Avenue. And this trip produced one of his most
distinctive works, a cotton office in New Orleans.
Which just this incredibly detailed, complex
interior scene. A real snapshot of American business
life through his relatives. And remarkably, the
sources point out this was the only painting
of his life bought by a museum during his lifetime.
Incredible, isn't it? The museum in Powell bought
it. It really underscores how, well. precarious
his financial situation was about to become.
He wasn't exactly a commercial success yet. And
that precariousness became reality when he got
back to Paris. His father died in 1873. And the
aftermath was catastrophic. It turned out his
brother, Rene, had run up enormous business debts,
bad banking decisions. The family name, which
Degas valued highly, was on the line. Reputation
meant everything. It did. So Degas, driven by
this strong sense of family honor, took charge.
He sold his house, sold his inherited collection
of old master art, basically liquidated assets
to pay off René's debts. Wow. So overnight, the
formerly comfortable artist is forced to rely
entirely on selling his own work. For the first
time in his life, yes. Completely reliant on
art sales. And it's an amazing historical footnote.
The sources are very clear that the decade starting
right then, 1874, fueled by the sudden intense
financial need, it's precisely when he produced
a huge amount of his greatest work. Pressure
makes diamonds, I guess. Or masterpieces in this
case. And this financial pressure lined up perfectly
with his growing disillusionment with the official
salon. They weren't really accepting his modernizing
work anyway. So he threw his lot in with the
independent group. The ones who became known
as the Impressionists. He did. He was instrumental
in organizing their exhibitions, showed his work
in seven out of the eight shows. Which brings
us right back to that core contradiction. He's
participating, organizing, but fundamentally
disagreeing with their whole philosophy. Absolutely.
He had total disdain for their signature thing,
painting on plein air outdoors. He thought it
was sloppy, intellectually shallow. That famous
quote about wanting the government to use birdshot
on landscape painters. So telling, isn't it?
It just highlights how different his own studio
practice was. He wasn't chasing sunsets. No,
the total opposite. Working indoors, using memory,
sketches, models who posed again and again. And
increasingly, photography. He insisted, and this
is a key quote, no art was ever less spontaneous
than mine. What I do is the result of reflection
and of the study of the great masters, modern
subject, classical method. And his personality
didn't help smooth things over within the group
either, did it? He was argumentative. Constantly,
arguing with the core landscape guys like Monet.
And he caused friction by insisting they include
artists who weren't really impressionists at
all, like the satirist Forain or the genre painter
Raffaelli. So he wanted a broader church. But
they felt it diluted the brand, so to speak.
Pretty much. That insistence on including others,
that rancor, it definitely contributed to the
group finally falling apart after the last show
in 1886. Degas was critical to their start, but
also, well, a difficult collaborator who helped
push them to the end. Okay, so regardless of
the label impressionist, realist, whatever the
technical skill is, just undeniable. Once he
focused on modern life, he was seen as this supreme
draftsman. And the... Sources really emphasize
his ability to capture motion. He really was
a visual sociologist of movement, wasn't he?
Whether it's the effort of a woman washing, the
blur of a horse race, or the discipline of a
dancer, he understood anatomy under stress. Comes
right back to that Ingram's advice, the importance
of line and structure. Exactly. That deep classical
understanding of the figure is what let him capture
a fleeting pose and make it look completely natural,
completely convincing. And his style wasn't just
about movement. His compositions were revolutionary.
He started breaking the old framing rules, using
things like awkward cropping, unusual viewpoints.
He was capturing what we might call the accidental
framing of modern life, like looking through
a window or catching something out of the corner
of your eye. Think about Place de la Concorde
from 1875. Right. It feels like a snapshot. Yeah.
Figures cut off by the edge of the canvas, unbalanced.
It creates this real sense of movement of a moment
caught in time. It really does. And it connects
directly to the rise of photography, doesn't
it? That instantaneous quality cameras offered.
But it wasn't just photography influencing him,
was it? Japanese prints, too. Oh, massively.
Lucio Prince were flooding Paris then. He loved
their compositional tricks, the flat planes of
color, figures pushed to the side, dramatic diagonals,
those high vantage points that flatten everything
out. The orchestra at the opera around 1870.
That seems to pull all these ideas together.
It's a portrait, but also a genre scene. And
the viewpoint is just odd. Brilliantly odd. The
subject is the opera house, this professional
world. He shows it from the perspective of, like,
a distracted audience member. His friend, the
bassoonist Desiree Dihau, is there, but he's
just one guy in the pit. And the dancers on stage
are cut off. Severely. You just see their legs,
the bottom of their tutis. He's less interested
in the star performers and more in the whole
environment, how your eye scans across the scene,
how we consume spectacle in the modern city.
It's like an immersive viewpoint, almost cinematic.
It really is. It reinforces that Degas' subject
was often the experience of modern life itself,
seen through these deliberately, almost arbitrary
-seeming frames. Something else that defines
his later work especially is this idea of the
unfinished. You see incredibly detailed bits
right next to areas that look barely sketched.
Yeah, that's a complex one. He did often blame
his failing eyesight after 1870, said he couldn't
maintain the fine detail. But maybe that wasn't
the whole story. Probably not. He also admitted
he had this reluctance to just stop working on
something. He apparently said he preferred to
begin a hundred things and not finish one of
them. He was notoriously unwilling to call a
painting done. For him, finished maybe implied
there was nothing more to discover or fix. The
process of looking, adjusting, refining that
was continuous. So once that financial pressure
hit in the 1870s, his subjects shifted very deliberately
towards women at work. Milliners, laundresses.
And of course, dancers. These weren't romantic
depictions, though. They were driven partly by
economics. Dancers especially sold well. And
they eventually made up more than half his entire
output. But he didn't paint them like glamorous
stars on stage. Rarely. Mostly backstage, in
rehearsal rooms. Stretching, exhausted, tying
a shoe, adjusting a strap. He focused on their
status as professionals, doing a tough job. The
sheer grind behind the performance. The labor
involved. What about the milliners and laundresses?
The milliner series, Women Making Hats, that's
often seen as him reflecting on his own art.
You know, the milliner carefully arranging ribbons
and fabrics, just like Degas meticulously arranged
elements in his paintings. Both skilled workers
manipulating materials. And the laundresses.
They allowed him to study bodies under physical
strain. bending, stretching, pressing heavy irons,
the reality of working -class female labor. Then
later, his subjects shift again, becoming much
more intimate, women bathing, drying themselves,
combing their hair, like in the tub. Right. And
it's in these late news, ironically, that his
classical drawing starts to give way a bit more
to the color techniques he supposedly disliked
in the Impressionists. How so? Well, the strict
definition of form relaxes. The underlying structure
is still rigorous, classic Degas, but the color
becomes much more expressive, more abstract almost.
Backgrounds dissolve into pure texture and hue.
It's a fascinating late career synthesis, really.
His love of line finally reconciling with that
modern obsession with color. And that late move
towards expressive color, it was helped along
by him moving beyond just oil paint, right? Especially
into pastel. His eyesight must have played a
role there, too. It seems very likely pastel
allowed for bolder strokes, maybe less demanding
on failing vision than fine oil work. And by
the late 1870s, he wasn't just using castel.
He was an absolute master of it. It wasn't just
like chalk drawings, though, was it? No, not
at all. It's important to realize he applied
pastel this dry medium in really complex layers
and textures. He'd build up these dense surfaces,
sometimes using fixative or even water to bind
to the layers. He could get a richness and depth
that really rivaled oil paint. So pastel was
the perfect solution for him in a way. It let
him keep that focus on drawing the ingress line.
But also embrace the vibrant, expressive color
that modern art was exploring. You see it beautifully
in things like Blue Dancers from 1897. It's a
perfect fusion. Beyond pastel, he was also really
into printmaking. Monotypes, specifically. He
made hundreds. Around 300, yeah. Mainly mid -1870s
to mid -80s, then again in the early 90s. He
was fascinated by these reproductive processes.
Can you just quickly explain what a monotype
is for anyone unfamiliar? Sure. Monotype means
single print. Basically, you paint or draw directly
onto a smooth plate, usually metal, with ink.
Then you run it through a press onto paper. So
you only get one good print. Usually just one
strong one, maybe a second, weaker ghost print.
Because the ink is applied directly and often
wiped away to create highlights, the image is
basically destroyed in the printing. It blurs
the line between drawing and printmaking. Diggus
loved that quality. And he often worked back
into them. Frequently reworked the printed image
with pastel, just doubling down on that mixed
media approach he favored. His exploration of
technology didn't end there either. Photography
became a real passion later on in the late 1880s.
A serious passion, not just snapshots. He staged
elaborate photo shoots, often photographing his
friends like Renoir and Mallarmé under dramatic
lamplight. Very controlled compositions. And
he used photos as reference material. Extensively.
Photos of dancers, nudes, they fed directly back
into his drawings and paintings. It just reinforces
again how much his work was studio -based, thought
-out, not spontaneous plein air stuff. Okay,
now we have to tackle the big public controversy
of his career. The sculpture. The little dancer
of 14 years. 1881. The only one he ever showed
publicly. And it was designed to provoke, wasn't
it? It wasn't traditional bronze or marble. It
was wax, nearly life size and mixed media realism
pushed to the extreme. Real hair, real cloth
tutus, satin ribbons. Exactly. It was hyper realistic.
And the reaction was, well, mostly hostile. Critics
called it appalling ugliness. They couldn't handle
the realism. They struggled with it. The combination
of traditional sculpture technique with real
everyday materials. She looked too real, too
common. maybe. Not the idealized form they expected
from sculpture. But not everyone hated it. Huysmans,
the critic, saw its importance. J .K. Heisman's,
yes, a key naturalist critic. He got it immediately.
Said Degas had revolutionized the traditions
of sculpture, which arguably he had. And Degas
himself clearly valued sculpture highly. He said,
drawing is a way of thinking, modeling another.
Put it on the same level intellectually. He did.
Yet, even though he went on to make about 150
more wax sculptures over the years, he kept them
all private. hidden away in his studio. Which
leads us straight into that really tricky posthumous
bronze controversy. After he died in 1917, they
found all these waxes, many damaged. Right. And
his heirs wanted to preserve this hidden part
of his work. They consulted a founder, Adrian
Hebrard. And Hebrard decided some could be cast.
He deemed 74 of the waxes stable enough to cast
in bronze. And he oversaw that casting process
between 1919 and 1936. This is why almost all
the Degas bronzes you see in museums today, apart
from that original wax little dancer, are posthumous
casts. They're called simulages. What does simulages
mean exactly? Why is that term important? It's
crucial. It means they are cast made from a mold
that might not have been taken directly from
Degas' original wax, but possibly from an intermediate
plaster cast or even another bronze copy. So
while they represent his original forms, they
were cast years after his death without his supervision.
Raising questions about accuracy. surface detail,
his final intentions, especially since he never
chose to cast them in bronze himself. Precisely.
And the whole thing got even more complicated
in 2004. Suddenly, this new group of 73 plaster
casts surfaced. They looked very similar to the
original waxes. Another layer of complexity.
What happened then? Bronzes were then cast from
these new plasters, and it just ignited a huge
controversy. Are these plasters legitimate intermediate
steps Degas made? Or are they later maybe unauthorized
copies? Where did they come from? And the reaction
from scholars. Tells you everything. Most major
Degas experts just declined to comment, refused
to get drawn into this really charged, high -stakes
debate about authenticity. It just shows how
difficult it is to manage the legacy of an artist
like Degas who kept so much hidden, so much unfinished.
Moving from his complicated art to his complicated
life. Degas the man sounds, well, difficult,
secretive, argumentative. Notoriously so. He
lived a very outwardly simple, uneventful life.
He had this belief, quite stark really, that
the artist must live alone and his private life
must remain unknown. He really cultivated that
image, didn't he? The misanthropic bachelor.
George Moore calling him an old curmudgeon sounds
about right from the sources. Seems fair. Known
for his wit, but a wit that could easily turn
cruel. And while he started out moving in, you
know, vaguely left -leaning Republican circles.
Signs of prejudice started showing up early.
They did. There's that anecdote, maybe minor,
but telling of him firing a model just because
he found out she was Protestant. And this prejudice
seemed to escalate later, particularly his anti
-Semitism. Scholars even link it to some of his
paintings. Yes, specifically the 1879 work Portraits
at the Stock Exchange. Modern experts widely
see anti -Semitic sentiment in it. It depicts
the Jewish banker, Ernest May. How so? What do
they point to? Well, they argue the way Degas
depicts May's facial features, particularly the
exaggerated nose and his posture, which seems
sort of overly eager, almost grasping. They say
it closely mirrors the visual tropes used in
anti -Semitic cartoons and publications that
were common in Paris then. That's really important
context. It takes it beyond just personal views
and shows it potentially reflected in the artwork
itself. Maybe a turning point in his politics.
And the real breaking point, the thing that solidified
these views publicly was the Dreyfus affair,
that huge political crisis that just tore France
apart in the 1890s and early 1900s. Alfred Dreyfus,
the Jewish army captain falsely accused of treason.
It split the country. Dreyfusards versus anti
-Dreyfusards. And Degas was vehemently anti -Dreyfusard.
Fiercely so, the sources say. And this stance
really amplified his anti -Semitism. It did,
with devastating personal results. He systematically
broke ties with all his Jewish friends, publicly
disowned friendships with Jewish artists he'd
known before. This argumentative, rigid nature
just led to profound isolation. One by one, friends
just couldn't take it anymore. Exactly. Renoir's
comment is just heartbreaking, isn't it? What
a creature he was that Degas, all his friends
had to leave him. I was one of the last to go,
but even I couldn't stay till the end. It really
underscores the tragedy. A man with such deep
psychological insight in his paintings seemed
incapable of maintaining basic human connection
in his own life. It's a stark contrast. Yet,
despite all this difficulty, his professional
life did involve some incredibly important, if...
ultimately complex partnerships, Mary Cassatt
stands out. The American painter. Their connection
seemed immediate. It did. Degas invited her to
show with the Impressionists in 1877. They had
a lot in common, affluent backgrounds, fiercely
independent spirits, neither ever married, and
crucially, a shared dedication to figure painting,
trying to keep it relevant against the rising
tide of landscape. They were often seen studying
together at the Louvre. And their partnership
went deep into the studio, technically. Degas
made these really innovative prints of Cassatt
looking at art, experimenting with process. And
she studied printmaking with him directly. Right
there in his studio, using his press, between
1879 and 1880. She also posed for him. She's
in his millinery series. And importantly, she
was instrumental in helping him sell his work
in America. That provided vital income for him
after his family's financial mess. But as seems
to be the pattern with Degas, the collaboration
eventually fractured. Abruptly, the technical
side ended when he suddenly pulled out of a Prince
journal they were planning together. And the
personal relationship suffered too. The Dreyfus
affair again? It created an unbridgeable gap.
Cassatt was strongly pro -Dreyfus, totally opposed
to his anti -Dreyfusar position. There's that
telling story about the portrait he painted of
her, Mary Cassatt seated, holding cards. Yes,
Cassatt eventually sold it. And she said, quite
forcefully, she didn't want people to know she'd
posed for it because she felt it made her look
like a repugnant person. Wow. speaks volumes
about the emotional toll of being subjected to
Degas' intense, maybe unforgiving psychological
gaze. It really does. But what's fascinating
is, despite that rift, despite her feelings about
that portrait, the sources confirm they kept
visiting each other right up until his death
in 1917. So the professional respect, maybe some
deeper bond, managed to survive the political
and personal clashes. It seems so. Beyond Cassatt,
you know, he was also important for Suzanne Valadon.
He bought her first drawings, taught her soft
ground etching. And we have to mention Manet
again. Their rivalry, their dynamic, was key
in pushing Degas towards contemporary scenes.
That relationship is still generating major exhibitions
even now. Absolutely. And although Degas didn't
have formal students in the traditional sense,
his influence was huge. His methods, the line,
the viewpoints, the study of movement, they profoundly
affected younger artists. Jean -Louis Foran,
Walter Sickert, Cassatt herself, and maybe most
significantly, Henri de Toulouse -Lautrec. Toulouse
-Trec really carried that Degas gaze into the
next generation, didn't he? He absolutely did.
Into the cabarets and brothels of Montmartre.
Hashtag outro. So as we wrap up this deep dive,
Edgar Degas really resists any simple box, doesn't
he? He's just defined by these powerful contradictions.
He really is. You've got the reluctant modernist,
a founder of the Impressionist shows who hated
the name, insisted he was a classical academic
artist who just happened to paint modern life.
You've got the meticulous draftsman following
Ingress, using that incredible skill to show
the reality of working women, the tired laundress,
the disciplined dancer, capturing those fleeting,
almost random moments of Paris. And then there's
the man. Misanthropic, demanding privacy, whose
cruel wit and rigid politics drove friends away.
Yet this is the artist revered for creating some
of the most profound, psychologically complex
portraits ever made. Exposing the inner lives,
the isolation of the people he observed. His
lasting importance, it seems, lies in that unique
synthesis. Taking the highest technical standards
of the old masters. And applying them with this
disruptive modern viewpoint, influenced by photography
by Japanese prints. He really was the bridge.
between, say, 15th century tradition and the
20th century way of seeing. Which brings us to
our final provocative thought for you to consider.
Degas believed famously that a painter needed
no personal life. It led him to deep solitude
and, sadly, to prejudice. He pushed people away.
So the question is, did that self -imposed isolation
that made he necessary distance and difficult
detachment, did it actually give him the unique
perspective he needed? Was it required to capture
that profound, often uncomfortable psychological
isolation, that raw truth we see in his greatest
work? It's a compelling question to think about
as you look again at the work of this brilliant,
difficult, utterly contradictory artist.