Edgar Degas
1834–1917 · Impressionism
Biography
Edgar Degas (1834–1917), a Parisian painter and sculptor, exhibited with the Impressionists but preferred to call himself a Realist. He is famous for his dancers, racecourses and scenes of modern Paris.
From the artist’s life
Degas was also an excellent sculptor, and as early as the 1860s he made sculpted figures — mainly of dancers — as well as studies of female figures, mostly for his own amusement. In 1881, however, at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in Paris, he caused a sensation with his work The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (pictured), a realistic wax figure of a ballet student at the Paris Opera, the only sculpture he exhibited in his lifetime. Degas broke new ground by using wax and by dressing the figure in a cotton tutu. Critics ridiculed the sculpture for its “snub nose” and wicked face. Today, however, Degas is regarded as one of the finest sculptors of the period.
From the page of The Arabesque
