Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Culture
  3. Arts and photography

Read and listen for free for 14 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.0(1)

Edgar Degas

Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he first met the future impressionists at the Café Guerbois. He started his apprenticeship in 1853 at the studio of Louis-Ernest Barrias and, beginning in 1854, studied under Louis Lamothe, who revered Ingres above all others, and transmitted his adoration for this master to Edgar Degas. Starting in 1854 Degas travelled frequently to Italy: first to Naples, where he made the acquaintance of his numerous cousins, and then to Rome and Florence, where he copied tirelessly from the Old Masters. His drawings and sketches already revealed very clear preferences: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna, but also Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandaio, Titian, Fra Angelico, Uccello, and Botticelli. During the 1860s and 1870s he became a painter of racecourses, horses and jockeys. His fabulous painter’s memory retained the particularities of movement of horses wherever he saw them. After his first rather complex compositions depicting racecourses, Degas learned the art of translating the nobility and elegance of horses, their nervous movements, and the formal beauty of their musculature. Around the middle of the 1860s Degas made yet another discovery. In 1866 he painted his first composition with ballet as a subject, Mademoiselle Fiocre dans le ballet de la Source (Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet ‘The Spring’) (New York, Brooklyn Museum). Degas had always been a devotee of the theatre, but from now on it would become more and more the focus of his art. Degas’ first painting devoted solely to the ballet was Le Foyer de la danse à l’Opéra de la rue Le Peletier (The Dancing Anteroom at the Opera on Rue Le Peletier) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay). In a carefully constructed composition, with groups of figures balancing one another to the left and the right, each ballet dancer is involved in her own activity, each one is moving in a separate manner from the others. Extended observation and an immense number of sketches were essential to executing such a task. This is why Degas moved from the theatre on to the rehearsal halls, where the dancers practised and took their lessons. This was how Degas arrived at the second sphere of that immediate, everyday life that was to interest him. The ballet would remain his passion until the end of his days.


Authors:

  • Nathalia Brodskaya
  • Edgar Degas

Format:

  • E-book

Duration:

  • 178 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Culture
  • Arts and photography

More by Nathalia Brodskaya

Skip the list
  1. Pierre-Auguste Renoir et œuvres d'art

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  2. Claude Monet et œuvres d'art

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  3. Édouard Manet et œuvres d'art

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  4. L'Art Naïf 120 illustrations

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  5. Paul Cézanne et œuvres d'art

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  6. Pierre Bonnard et œuvres d'art

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  7. Mary Cassatt et œuvres d'art

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  8. Paul Gauguin

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  9. Impressionism 120 illustrations

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  10. Paul Cézanne y obras de arte

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book
  11. Impresionismo 120 ilustraciones

    Nathalia Brodskaya

    book

Best Of Series

Skip the list
  1. Chaïm Soutine

    Klaus H. Carl

    book
  2. Émile Gallé

    Émile Gallé

    book
  3. Peter Paul Rubens

    Maria Varshavskaya, Xenia Yegorova

    book
  4. Michelangelo da Caravaggio

    Félix Witting, M.L. Patrizi

    book
  5. Hieronymus Bosch

    Virginia Pitts Rembert

    book
  6. Auguste Rodin

    Rainer Maria Rilke

    book
  7. Rembrandt

    Émile Michel

    book
  8. Egon Schiele

    Esther Selsdon, Jeanette Zwingenberger

    book
  9. Ilya Repin

    Grigori Sternin, Jelena Kirillina

    book
  10. Gustav Klimt

    Jane Rogoyska, Patrick Bade

    book
  11. Ivan Shishkin

    Victoria Charles, Irina Shuvalova

    book

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5