Dancers Preparing For An Audition |
Technically Degas differed from the other
Impressionists because he 'never adopted the Impressionist colour fleck',
according to one art historian. He continually fought against the title
Impressionist, and refused to paint en
plein air. As he said himself, 'no art was ever less spontaneous than
mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the Old
Masters. Despite this, his subject matter (scenes of Parisian life),
his composition (often off-center), experimentation with vivid colour
and his friendship with key Impressionist artists including Edouard Manet,
all bring him within the fold of the Impressionist school. His paintings
often blurred the distinction between portraiture and genre, and he became
fascinated with movement, particularly hightlighted in his ballet paintings:
Ballet Rehearsal on the Set, 1874 (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), Dance Class,
1874 (Musee d'Orsay), Dancing Examination, 1874 (The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York), The Star, 1876 (Musee d'Orsay) and Dancers Practising
at the Bar, 1876 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
As he became older, he often left large
sections of his paintings slightly unfinished. He blamed an eye condition
for this, although his contemporaries were to point out that anyone with
'inadequate vision' could hardly have executed such wonderful paintings.
For all his artistic developments, some habits remained constant. For
example, he always preferred to work in his studio and figures remained
his primary subject matter. He painted very few landscapes in his time.
He was a careful artist, and always planned his works impeccably. After
about 1880, his preferred medium became pastel as he sketched dancers
and milliners, mainly from memory of earlier works. In 1881 he exhibited
his now famous Little Dancer, a bronze sculpture. Towards the end of his
life, as his eyesight began to fail, he turned more and more to sculpture,
modelling figures and horses. He became quite wealthy during his career
and amassed such a large collection of art
that he considered owning a private museum to house it. Instead, it was
auctioned off a year after he died. He died in 1917. He was 83 years old.
His last years were lonely, as he had outlived many of his friends.
Degas had no formal pupils, but he went
on to influence a generation of other artists including Jean-Louis Forain
(French Impressionist/Illustrator), Mary Cassatt (American painter and
printmaker), and Walter Sickert (English Impressionist).
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