EDGAR DEGAS

by Sammi Oborn
Edgar Degas began going to school at a
very young age, he was eleven years old.
He began going to school at Lyce Louisle-Grand. He wehnt to school there all the
way until the year of 1853 and graduated in that same year. He graduated with his
baccalaureates in the subject of literature. After, he began to paint and create artwork at
his young age. He was about eighteen years old when this began to paint. Later on, his
father made him start in a law school to proceed with his education. The name of the
university he started his law school was at the University of Paris. This education
proceeded from 1853 in the month of November until the year of 1855 because he did not
want to proceed with that degree. He was offered an admission to study at Ecole des
Beaux-Arts. In 1856, he transferred into Italy and remained there for three years. During
that time, he really began to sprout and develop his character as an artist. He was
beginning to come into the world of art with a success in classical art. It didnt take very
long for him to be recognized in the classical art pieces he created. He was quite the
famous painter at the time and his artwork was all successful in the form of a portrait
scheme.

His Influences in art all came from when he was in Italy studying the artists of
Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and other artists of the Renaissance during their time
period. He studied the portraits of people and copied some of those artists famous
portraits to begin and understand the concept of painting people. Copying those pieces of
work helped him master the style of portrait, classical art. He painted in a style of
impressionism which was very popular in the 1860s and 1870s era. He not only studied
those other renaissance artists but artists such as Courbet and Corot. Those artists were
very into the realism. Realism included bright and spontaneous colors, effects from light,
and the real look of the world around them. Although Degas used those styles, he didnt
necessarily use the impressionist color scheme. The artists who reflected his artwork the
most were famous artists: Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet. Later he began to create his
own style of art. He didnt follow the lines of other styles. He painted horses and dancers.
He would go in and watch Ballerinas dance while painting them at the same time. He
never painted landscape paintings but, like I said, only ballerinas and horses.
His paintings werent symbolic or mythical. Neither were they abstract looking. Looking
at all of his pieces they look identical to realistic figures. People often said that his
paintings looked unfinished but, that was his style to get the viewers vision to focus on a
certain viewpoint of his pieces. Degas would blame his vision for the unfinished look. In
his artwork he would use oil pastels and oil paint on his canvass. Later on, he used the
medium of etching and started to create images of women drying themselves off with
towels.

This piece was called The Star 1876-1877. This

piece was created in Musee DOrsay, Paris, France
while he attended a show. The orientation of this
piece was portrait. This piece really caught my eye
because of the elegant ballerina posing in
arabesque. I am a dance myself and really enjoy
watching formal ballet shows and the dancers
themselves. I think the mediums that were used in
this piece were oil pastel and paints. The way the
dancer is posed makes her seem like she is enjoying
what she is doing during the moment. I believe that Edgar called this piece The star
because, she stuck out the most through out the entire show. The people blurred in the
background seem to push away a focus from them and directly onto The Star, the
performer. I though this piece was very successful in the form of color, design, mediums,
and focal point. The brightness in color of the dancer really caught my eye. It looked like
the light was pointed on her. The theme of this is significant to us human beings because
it shows that humans while stick out the most, doing what they love the most. You could
distinguish that the ballet dancer was the focal point because of the detail Degas put into
that certain character of the piece. The other characters in the piece are blurred out and
not even finished in their body figures. I think this went along with his concept of being
an unfinished piece. I found out that most of his pieces during the beginning of his career
all had a focus in the artwork he had designed.