Research Paper On Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas was a very famous French impressionist artist.He was one of the first founders of impressionism. Although he resisted the name impressionism, he preferred the word “realist”.He was famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He was even more famous for his paintings of dancers, more than half of his works are of dancers. He was born July 19, 1834, in Paris, France. He died September 27, 1917, in Paris, France. He was born into a semi rich family, he was the oldest out of five children his mother was a Creole from New Orleans, Louisiana, which she soon died when he was thirteen. His Father Augustin Degas was a banker. He soon began to do paintings very early in his life. At eighteen he graduated from the

He had a strong passion for it, and was very prepared for it by his rigorous academic trainings and very close studies of classic historical art. Edgars father wanted him to go to law school, he went to the University of Paris but did not apply himself very well. Soon afterwards he moved in with his aunt's family in Naples where he painted one of his most famous works Bellelli Family. His Artistic career began when he returned to Paris to begin on some historical paintings, such as the Alexander and Bucephalus and the Daughter of Jephthah, which was created in 1859-1860, Semiramis Building Babylon was created in 1860, and another of Degas historical paintings is Young and Spartans which was made in 1860. In 1873 Edgar's brother Rene was in serious business debt, so Edgar began to sell some of his works in order for him to pay off his brothers debt to keep the family's reputation good. Even Though Edgar was called an impressionist he was more seen as an anti-impressionist to the critics that came to his art shows. Degas style was very mature and distinguished, for some of his unfinished passages. He blames his eye problems on not finishing some of his