Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle. 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 frequently traveled to Italy where he copied from the Old Masters. His drawings and sketches already revealed very clear preferences, especially in Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna. After his first compositions, which depicted horses, Degas made yet another discovery. His 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__, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). In a carefully constructed composition, with groups of fi gures balancing one another to the left and the right, each ballet dancer is involved in her own activity, each moving in a separate manner from the others. Extended observation and an immense number of sketches were essential to executing such a task. Ballet would remain his passion until the end.

lgli/1906981388Degas

lgrsnf/1906981388Degas

Edgar Degas (Best of)

N V Brodskai︠a︡; Edgar Degas; ProQuest (Firm)

Nathalia Brodskaya; Edgar Degas

Bade, Patrick

Sirrocco-Parkstone International

Confidential Concepts, Inc., New York, USA, 2012

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Storia della pittura, ©1966

0

lg1046247

{"isbns":["1906981388","9781906981389"],"last_page":200,"publisher":"Parkstone","series":"Best Of Collection"}

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.

<p>Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle. 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 frequently traveled to Italy where he copied from the Old Masters. His drawings and sketches already revealed very clear preferences, especially in Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna. After his first compositions, which depicted horses, Degas made yet another discovery. His first painting devoted solely to the ballet was <i>Le Foyer de la danse à l’Opéra de la rue Le</i></p>
<p><i>Peletier</i> (<i>The Dancing Anteroom at the Opera on Rue Le Peletier</i>, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). In a carefully constructed composition, with groups of fi gures balancing one another to the left and the right, each ballet dancer is involved in her own activity, each moving in a separate manner from the others. Extended observation and an immense number of sketches were essential to executing such a task. Ballet would remain his passion until the end.</p>

"Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, born in Paris began to paint early in life. In 1853, he registered as a copyist in the Louvre and two years later he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he studied under Louise Lamothe, an old pupil of Ingres. In 1856 he travelled to Italy to paint and study the works of the great Italian Renaisance painters. In 1872, Degas began an extended stay in New Orleans where he produced A Cotton Office in New Orleans. He formed the Société Anonyme des Artistes alongside other painters such as Monet and Sisley, with whom he would organise the Impressionist Exhibitions (1874-1886). Exhibitede there were ten paintings of nude women as well as his only sculpture displayed publicly during his lifetime, Little Ballet Dancer, which astonoshed Degas contemporaries for its realism."--Jacket

Examines the life and work of the nineteenth-century artist Edgar Degas, who loved to paint scenes of Paris and the people who worked and lived there.

2013-11-22