일레르 제르맹 에드가 드가(1834-1917) Degas, (Hilaire-Germain-) Edgar 고화질 명화

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Degas, (Hilaire-Germain-) Edgar (b. July 19, 1834, Paris, Fr.--d. Sept. 27, 1917, Paris)
French artist, acknowledged as the master of drawing the human figure in motion. Degas worked in many mediums, preferring pastel to all others. He is perhaps best known for his paintings, drawings, and bronzes of ballerinas and of race horses.
The art of Degas reflects a concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour. These characteristics set Degas apart from the other impressionist painters, although he took part in all but one of the 8 impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886. Degas was the son of a wealthy banker, and his aristocratic family background instilled into his early art a haughty yet sensitive quality of detachment. As he grew up, his idol was the painter Jean Auguste Ingres, whose example pointed him in the direction of a classical draftsmanship, stressing balance and clarity of outline. After beginning his artistic studies with Louis Lamothes, a pupil of Ingres, he started classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts but left in 1854 and went to Italy. He stayed there for 5 years, studying Italian art, especially Renaissance works.
Returning to Paris in 1859, he painted portraits of his family and friends and a number of historical subjects, in which he combined classical and romantic styles. In Paris, Degas came to know Édouard Manet, and in the late 1860s he turned to contemporary themes, painting both theatrical scenes and portraits with a strong emphasis on the social and intellectual implications of props and setting.
In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision. On a visit in 1872 to Louisiana, where he had relatives in the cotton business, he painted The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans (finished 1873; Musée Municipal, Pau, France), his only picture to be acquired by a museum in his lifetime. Other subjects from this period include the racetrack, the beach, and cafe interiors.

Degas, Edgar: Ballet dancers

Three Ballet Dancers, One with Dark Crimson Waist
1899 (170 Kb); Pastel on paper, 23 1/4 x 19 1/4 in; Barnes Foundation
Photograph by Charalambos Amvrosiou

Rehearsal of a Ballet on Stage

La danseuse aux chaussons

The Singer in Green
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dance Class at the Opéra
1872; detail; Musée d'Orsay, Paris

La classe de danse (The Dancing class)
c. 1873-75 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 85 x 75 cm (33 1/2 x 29 1/2 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The Rehearsal
c. 1873-78 (120 Kb); Oil on canvas, 41 x 61.7 cm (18 1/2 x 24 3/8 in); Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Ballet Rehearsal
1875; Gouache and Pastel on canvas, 21-3/4" x 27"; George G. Frelinghuysen Collection, N.Y.

Singer with a Glove
c. 1878 (110 Kb); Pastel and liquid medium on canvas, 52.8 x 41.1 cm (20 3/4 x 16 in); Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

L'etoile [La danseuse sur la scene] (The Star [Dancer on Stage])
1878 (150 Kb); Pastel on paper, 60 x 44 cm (23 5/8 x 17 3/8 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Danseuse assise
c. 1879-80 (130 Kb); "Seated Dancer"; Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on pasteboard, 63.5 x 48.7 cm (25 x 19 1/8 in); The Hermitage, St. Petersburg; No. GR 155-99. Formerly collection Otto Krebs, Holzdorf

Three Dancers in Violet Tutues
c. 1895-98; Signed lower left; Pastel on paper, 73.5 x 48.9 cm; The Phillips Family Collection (L.1339); on display at the Art Institute of Chicago (Degas Exhibition, 1996)

Four Dancers
c. 1899 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas, 151.1 x 180.2 cm (59 1/2 x 71 in); National Gallery of Art, Washington

Portraits in an Office

Aux courses en province (At the Races in the Country)
c. 1872 (120 Kb); Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 55.9 cm (14 3/8 x 22"); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Place de la Concorde
1875 (250 Kb); Oil on canvas, 78.4 x 117.5 cm (30 7/8 x 46 1/4 in); No. 3K 1399; Formerly collection Gerstenberg/Scharf, Berlin; Hermitage, St Petersburg

L'absinthe
1876 (larger version, 140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 92 x 68 cm (36 1/4 x 26 3/4 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Since the characters are known, this picture could be considered as an example of Degas's portraiture or, alternatively, as a characteristic glimpse of the Parisian café. The woman is the actress Ellen Andrée, the man Marcellin Desboutin, painter, engraver and, at the same time, celebrated Bohemian character. The café where they are taking their refreshment is the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes. Desboutin --- a popular figure --- seems to have led the move of those concerned with the arts from their previous rendez-vous, the Café Guerbois, to the Nouvelle-Athènes. It was frequented by Manet and Degas, by some critics and literary men as well as painters and had an interested observer from across the Channel in the young George Moore. The painting shows Degas's favourite device of placing the figures off-centre with a large intervening area of space in the foreground. A forceful and original composition results from the mode of arrangement and the dark but harmoniously related tones of colour and shadow.
Degas evidently retained in memory a moment when his sitters were in pensive mood. He did not seek to flatter them or make a `pretty picture' (an idea he regarded with horror). On the other hand nothing could have been farther from his thoughts than to depict these familiar acquaintances as monsters of dissipation and degradation in order to draw a moral lesson. It might be observed, incidentally, that Desboutin was drinking nothing stronger than black coffee! In England, however, the persons represented were considered to be shockingly degraded an by an involved piece of reasoning the picture itself was regarded as a blow to morality. So it appeared to such Victorians as Sir William Blake Richmond and Water Crane when shown in London in 1893. The reaction in an instance of the deep suspicion with which Victorian England had regarded art in France since the early days of the Barbizon School and the need to find a lesson at all costs that was typical of the age. George Moore in trying to defend Degas was as unperceptive as any. `What a slut!' he had to say of poor Ellen Andrée and added, `the tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson', a remark for which he had later the grace to apologize.

Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando
1879; National Gallery, London
Always alert to the possibilities of novel arrangement in composition Degas found an unusual suggestion for the asymmetrical design he favoured in a turn at a circus in which space also took a new aspect. The painting was shown in the fourth Impressionist exhibition and described in the catalogue as Miss Lola au Cirque Fernando, though contemporary reference has since proved that the performer was in fact known as Lala or La La. She appears to have been a negress or mulatto noted for such feats as that shown in the picture where she is being hauled to the circus roof by a rope held between her teeth. The circus was in Montmartre and later became known as the Cirque Médrano, long being a popular resort and sketching-ground of artists.
Degas's investigation of how to give importance to the main figure when not centrally placed here takes a vertical instead of a lateral direction. The placing of the figure near the top of the canvas was obviously called for to suggest distance beneath. The sketch for the painting (in the Tate Gallery) shows only the performer's pose--the composition was worked out subsequently.

Les repasseuses (Women Ironing)
1884 (200 Kb); Oil on canvas, 76 x 81 cm (29 7/8 x 31 7/8 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris 

Race Horses
1885-88 (100 Kb); Pastel on panel, 11 7/8 x 16 in; Philadelphia Museum of Art
Race horses and Jockeys, even more than dancers, occupied Degas throughout his long career as an artist. Paul-Andre Lemoisne catalogued some ninety-one works in this category, spanning the period from 1860 to 1900--a number that did not include Degas's equestrian waxes and bronzes--and they embrace a range of sizes and mediums. As with the Paris Opera, the spectacle of the turf gave Degas the base material from which to forge images of modern life in an alloy that fused references to the art of the past with details observed from life and scrupulously documented. But more than any other of his subjects, this was a genre that fed upon itself and spawned countless variations and adjustments. From a repertory established very early, Degas proceeded to select individual jockeys and rearrange them, to repeat poses and refine them, until this hermetic world lost all connection with the reality of the race track...
This diminutive composition of Race Horses, which falls toward the end of the first phase in this development, is immediately distinguished by its unusual support. It is pastel, and not oil, on panel: the wood here, possibly light mahogany, is the kind that might be used for cigar boxes. Although pastel on panel is not a unique combination, it is extremely rare in Degas's oeuvre, and testifies to his continuing pleasure in experimenting with techniques and supports.
Using the amber, grainy surface of the wood to suggest a mackerel sky, as well as the hills in the background, Degas applied the pastel lightly, at times tentatively. He varied the degree of pressure on his crayon: at its most insistent, it achieves the bright sheen of the jockeys' silks, but it is much more active in describing the closely hatched, wispy grass that occupies most of the foreground. Here, the point of the pastel moved rapidly, in vertical zigzags that occasionally scratched the wood. Some scratch marks are visible on the underbelly of the central horse; however, in painting the riders and horses, Degas's penmanship changed again. He allowed the surface of the wood to stand as the dominant color of the horses, building up their forms with strokes of orange red, gray, black and white, with traces of green spilling over from the surrounding grass. There is also a lovely variety in the postures of the horses: the three jockeys in the foreground make up a closely linked unit, bound together not only in the interlocking of hooves, but also by the movement of the jockey in lime green, who turns around to catch the eye of his two companions. The serenity of this group contrasts with the rearing horse in the background, whose bridle is taut as his rider pulls him in--the single element of disorder in this otherwise quiet scene. The distant church tower with its attendant cluster of buildings and the pathways cutting across the hills, traced in white, create a sort of no-man's land, midway between the race track of Longchamp and the empty, barren hills of the late works.
-- Colin Bailey

Jockey on a Horse
n.d. (80 Kb); Paper, 6 1/2 x 8 1/4 in; Barnes Foundation
Photograph by Charalambos Amvrosiou

Woman Combing her Hair
c.1887-90; Louvre, Paris
Degas, in the Classic line of descent from Ingres as a draughtsman--and one of the greatest in Europe since the giants of the Renaissance--exchanged oil paint for pastel, as in this example, with a sense of greater freedom in being able to draw in the medium as well as to apply color. The word `classic' refers to his preoccupation with the human figure but not to any desire to depict an ideal type of humanity. Remarking that `la femme en général est laide' he showed no disposition to modify this supposed ugliness. He quickly abandoned the antique subject-matter of pictorial composition after his few early essays.
His meeting with Manet in 1862, his acquaintance with Berthe Morisot, Monet, Renoir and Pissarro and his introduction to the Impressionist dealer Durand-Ruel, all tended to draw him into the current of Realism and Impressionism, though open-air landscape painting did not interest him in the least. Realism required that the nude should be depicted in a situation of credible reality and not artificially posed as some character of fable. Impressionism no doubt contributed the idea that just as the landscape painter caught transient effects of light so it was possible to catch natural and transient phases of movement in the living model. The credible reality was usually that of bathers in the open. Degas made a logical enlargement of his field of study in depicting women in various stages of undress at their toilet or getting into and out of le tub. With its unconventional pose, this pastel shows the concentrated force of form and color he was able to attain.


There are many great paintings to remind us that the artists of the Impressionist age were sensitively aware of contemporary life. Among the supreme masterpieces of the century are Degas's pictures of the ballet and its dancers. The impulse towards painting the contemporary scene came to him not only from Courbet and Manet but from his friend, the critic Duranty, the exponent of the aesthetics of naturalism. Yet in the particular direction of his tastes and his conception of design he was entirely individual. To study and convey movement was a chosen task, first undertaken on the race course and then in his many pictures of the Opera, viewed from behind the scenes, in the wings, or from the orchestra stalls during a performance. After 1880, Pastel became Degas's preferred medium. He used sharper colors and gave greater attention to surface patterning, depicting milliners, laundresses, and groups of dancers against backgrounds now only sketchily indicated. For the poses, he depended more and more on memory or earlier drawings. Although he became guarded and withdrawn late in life, Degas retained strong friendships with literary people. In 1881 he exhibited a sculpture, Little Dancer (a bronze casting of which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), and as his eyesight failed thereafter he turned increasingly to sculpture, modeling figures and horses in wax over metal armatures. These sculptures remained in his studio in disrepair and were cast in bronze only after his death.

Photographs by Mark Harden.