Artist

Edgar Degas — the painter of frozen movement

1834, Paris — 1934, Paris

Impressionism (rejected), Realism

Timeline

1834

Born in Paris into a family of bankers

1855

Visited Ingres and painted a self-portrait in charcoal

1856

Three years of study in Italy (Naples, Rome, Florence)

1865

First Paris Salon

1872

Stay in New Orleans, The Cotton Office

1874

First Impressionist exhibition

1881

Scandal over *The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen*

1894

Dreyfus Affair, break with Pissarro

1917

Died in Paris at age 83

Paris, April 1881, 35 Boulevard des Capucines. Inthe former studio of photographer Nadar, where the 6th Impressionist Exhibition is being held, a glass display case stands in the center of the room. Inside is a pigmented wax figurine one meter tall, dressed in a real tulle tutu, wearing real ballet slippers, and topped with a human-hair wig tied with a satin ribbon. She is a young ballerina, about fourteen years old, standing with her hands clasped behind her back, her chin lifted, and her gaze fixed on a distant point. Her name is Marie van Goethem. She is a student at the Paris Opera. The artist who sculpted it, Edgar Degas, has just unveiled The Little Dancer, aged fourteen.

The scandal erupted immediately. Critics spoke of fetishism, simianism, and a “petit rat de l’Opéra” portrayed as a freak show attraction. Joris-Karl Huysmans, who would later defend the work, wrote that the statue “shakes up every preconceived notion.” This was the first time a pigmented wax sculpture, clad in real fabric, had been exhibited in a serious artistic setting. It was also the only sculpture Degas would exhibit during his lifetime. Upon his death in 1917, 150 other wax and clay models were discovered in his studio—secret sculptures that no one had ever seen.

This scene encapsulates the essence of Degas. The formal transgression (a mix of materials, real clothing on a sculpture), the fascination with movement (ballet, the suspended moment of dance), absolute discretion (a single public unveiling in eighty years of life), and the paradox of identity: Edgar Degas, a faithful participant in all eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886, nevertheless rejected the label of “Impressionist” throughout his life. He preferred to define himself as a “realist” or an “independent.”

This article recounts the unique life story of this member of the Parisian upper class, born in 1834, the son of a banker, trained at the school of Ingres, who spent sixty years painting, drawing in pastels, engraving, and sculpting movement —that of the dancers at the Opera, jockeys at the racetrack, bathers emerging from the tub, and ironers at work. Movement always captured at an unexpected moment, in an off-center composition, before or after the action —never in the traditional heroic pose of Western painting.

Paris, 1834 — The Childhood of a Cosmopolitan Upper-Class Man

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas was born on July 19, 1834, in Paris, at 8 rue Saint-Georges in the 9th arrondissement. His family belonged to the international Parisian upper middle class. His father, Auguste De Gas (1807–1874), managed the Paris branch of the family’s Neapolitan bank, which had been founded by his own father, René-Hilaire De Gas, a banker who had been based in Naples since the French Revolution. The family thus had two homes: Paris and Naples. Edgar would speak Italian fluently throughout his life.

His mother, Célestine Musson (1815–1847), was a Creole from New Orleans. She came from a family of cotton merchants who had been settled in Louisiana since the 18th century. This dual cosmopolitan heritage —an Italian-French banker on his father’s side and American merchants on his mother’s—would shape several key moments in Edgar’s life, notably his stay in New Orleans in 1872–1873.

Edgar was the eldest of five children. His two brothers, Achille and René, emigrated to the United States in the 1860s to join the maternal branch of the family in New Orleans. His two sisters, Thérèse and Marguerite, remained in Europe—Thérèse married her cousin Edmondo Morbilli and settled in Naples.

1847: Edgar was thirteen years old when his mother, Célestine, died at the age of just 32. The early loss of his mother left a deep mark on the child. His father, Auguste, a widower at age 40, never remarried. Edgar grew up in an austere, male-dominated household, raised in part by his paternal grandmother and by the nuns at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he attended high school.

1853: Edgar earned his baccalaureate in the humanities at age 19. His father enrolled him in the Paris Faculty of Law —a path consistent with their bourgeois social status and his father’s expectations. Edgar dropped out of law school after a few months. He told his father of his decision to become a painter. Auguste De Gas, unlike many bourgeois fathers of the time, accepted this. He was himself a discerning art lover —he frequented Parisian galleries, collected old masterpieces, and encouraged his children’sintellectual independence. Edgar’s artistic career thus enjoyed family support from the very beginning.

This initial financial security is key to understanding Degas’s entire career. As Manet wrote, “Degas never needed to sell.” For decades, his family’s wealth allowed him to paint freely,experiment with unusual techniques, and refuse the commercial compromises that weighed on his Impressionist colleagues Monet, Pissarro, and Sisley.

Early Career — Lamothe, Ingres, the Trip to Italy

1853–1855: Degas began his artistic training in the studio of Félix-Joseph Barrias, a neoclassical history painter. He then joined the studio of Louis Lamothe (1822–1869), a painter from Lyon and a direct disciple of Ingres. Lamothe trained Degas in the precision of drawing, the importance of the line, and the Ingresque discipline that would, in fact, remain the technical backbone of Degas’s entire body of work.

1855: Edgar was 21 years old. That same year, he painted the self-portrait that would later be used as the featured image for this article— Self-Portrait with a Charcoal Holder (Musée d’Orsay). The painting depicts him seated, looking directly at the viewer, charcoal in hand —a silent declaration of his artistic identity. It is the work of a rigorous young painter who is choosing his path.

Also in 1855: a pivotal visit to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres himself. Degas went to see the old master (Ingres was 75 at the time) accompanied by his friend Édouard Valpinçon. According to his own words, recounted much later, Degas asked Ingres for career advice. Ingres replied with a phrase that has become famous in art history:

“Draw lines, young man—lots of lines—from life or from memory, and you’ll become a good artist.”

— Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Edgar Degas, 1855

This approach would shape Degas’s entire career. He would remain, above all, a draftsman. Even when he painted in oils or pastels, or sculpted, the line would be the foundational element of his work. This Ingresque influence set him apart radically from the other Impressionists—Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley—who favored colorful brushstrokes and the dissolution of line in light.

1856–1859: Three years in Italy. Degas stayed in Naples with his paternal family, then traveled to Rome, Florence, Siena, and Perugia. He copied the old masters — Raphael, Mantegna, Botticelli, Leonardo, Pontormo, and Rosso Fiorentino. He filled dozens of sketchbooks with drawings, studies, and notes. This grand tour of Italy was, in fact, the comprehensive academic training that he had refused in Paris (he was never a student at the École des Beaux-Arts).

1859: Return to Paris at the age of 25. Degas moved into a studio on Rue Mondovi, near Place de la Concorde. He would live and paint there for the first twenty years of his career.

1865–1872 — Historical Paintings and the First Ballets

Like Manet a few years before him, Degas began his public career with ambitious historical scenes —the traditional path for a painter trained in the academic tradition. Between 1860 and 1865, he painted several large historical compositions: Spartan Girls Teasing Boys (1860, National Gallery, London), Semiramis Building Babylon (1861, Musée d’Orsay), and Medieval Battle Scene (1865, Musée d’Orsay).

1865: Degas exhibits his first work at the Paris Salon — Medieval Battle Scene, exhibited under number 583. The critical reception was mixed. The painting was decent but failed to stand out amid the abundance of academic works at the Salon.

Beginning in 1866–1867, Degas made a decisive shift. He gradually abandoned historical subjects to turn his attention to modern life —just as Édouard Manet had done before him. He began painting family portraits (The Bellelli Family, 1858–1867, Musée d’Orsay—one of his major early works), horse racing scenes (the Steeplechases, the racetracks at Longchamp and Auteuil), and soon— the ballets of the Paris Opera.

1868: Degas exhibited his first ballet scene at the Salon — Portrait of Mlle. Eugénie Fiocre: From the Ballet “La Source” (Brooklyn Museum, New York). The painting depicts prima ballerina Eugénie Fiocre in an oriental costume, accompanied by a real white horse on stage. It is a behind-the-scenes depiction rather than a scene from the performance. According to Universalis, “the painting, which, incidentally, only very vaguely evokes the stage, received little attention.”

But he had found his angle. The Paris Opera Ballet would become Degas’s primary subject for the next fifty years. More than 1,500 documented works (paintings, pastels, drawings, monotypes, and sculptures) would be devoted to this theme. No painter in the history of Western art has devoted such a significant portion of his or her body of work to a single subject.

October 1872–March 1873: a unique episode in Degas’s life. He spent five months in New Orleans with the American branches of his maternal family —the Mussons, cotton merchants. There he painted about ten works, including his most important painting from that period: The Cotton Office in New Orleans (1873, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau). The painting depicts the family’s businessmen —his uncle Michel Musson in the foreground, his brothers René and Achille De Gas seated in the office—amid the commercial reality of a cotton firm. It is, in fact,one of the first modern paintings devoted to office work —a subject that did not exist in Western iconography before Degas.

*The Cotton Office* would be the first French work acquired by a provincial French museum (Pau, 1878)—Degas would be deeply proud of this.

The Painter of the Frozen Moment

What truly defines Degas—and sets him apart from all his Impressionist contemporaries—is his approach to movement.

The other Impressionists— Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir —painted light. They went out into nature, set up their easels outdoors, and captured the variations in light on the Seine, in the fields, and on the facades of cathedrals. For them, movement is that of the clouds, the wind, and the sun as it shifts. It is an atmospheric movement.

Degas, on the other hand, paints human movement. The movement of the dancers as they stretch at the barre, rest their legs on the ledge, and collapse from exhaustion after their workout. The movement of jockeys as they gallop or stand still on the track. The movement of bathers stepping out of the tub, drying their shoulders, and combing their hair. The movement of ironers pressing down on the iron, stretching as they yawn.

And Degas captures this movement in an unlikely moment. Not in the heroic pose that Western painting had favored for five centuries—the balanced, composed, resolute pose. But inthe fleeting moment before or after the action, in the fatigue following exertion, in the involuntary yawn, in the nervous scratching of the back, in the squinting of the eyes under the gaslight.

This capture of the moment is what makes it technically unique in the history of Western painting. Degas invented a new pictorial temporality —that of photography, which he himself had been practicing since the 1880s. But before the invention of moving photography (the chronophotographs of Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge in the 1880s), no one in Western painting had depicted human movement with such effortless precision.

Degas asserted, in response to the Impressionist plein air painters:

“I don’t want to lose my mind in the face of nature.”

— Edgar Degas, as quoted by Daniel Halévy

He refused to paint outdoors. He preferredthe studio, where he reconstructed—from memory or based on sketches —the scenes he had observed at the theater, the circus, the racetrack, and behind the scenes at the Opera. This deliberate distance from nature is, in fact, the very condition of his absolute precision: Degas is able to freeze a movement precisely because he observed it and then reconstructed it, not because he captured it on the spot.

1874–1886 — The Eight Impressionist Exhibitions

Starting in 1874, Degas participated in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886 (all except the one in 1882). Statistically speaking, he was one of the movement’s most loyal artists —on par with Camille Pissarro (who participated in all eight) and Berthe Morisot (seven out of eight).

Yet Degas rejected the label “Impressionist” throughout his life . According to several contemporary accounts, he preferred to describe himself as a “realist” or an “independent.” Several fundamental disagreements set him apart from the movement’s core:

1. A rejection of the outdoors. Degas never painted outdoors. He openly despised the plein air style practiced by Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir. For him, art was a matter of the studio, of composition, and of memory.

2. The defense of drawing. Whereas the purist Impressionists dissolve the line into color, Degas remains faithful to Ingres’s approach: line first, color second. This classical lineage sets him radically apart from the Impressionist revolution in color.

3. Distrust of the art market. Degas, a wealthy man, had no need to sell his work. He criticized his friends Monet and Renoir when they agreed to market their work to dealers such as Durand-Ruel.

4. The group’s political organization. Beginning in 1879, Degas attempted to have a clause included in the bylaws of the Society of Independent Artists, which organized the exhibitions, prohibiting dual participation in both the official Salon and the Impressionist exhibitions. This clause deeply divided the group. Monet, Renoir, and Sisley refused—they wanted to continue exhibiting at the Salon for commercial reasons. Degas, Pissarro, and Berthe Morisot supported the clause. This led to lasting internal tensions.

As historian Pierre Cabanne wrote, “[Degas’s] position, almost on the fringes of the Impressionist movement, was beginning to emerge.” Degas was part of the group out of loyalty to his friends (Pissarro in particular), for the opportunity to exhibit his work (the Salon frustrated him), and out of a conviction in the anti-academic struggle. But he was not an Impressionist in the canonical sense. He was his own man.

The Paris Opera Ballet

Ballet is, without a doubt, Edgar Degas’s primary subject. Nearly half of his body of work —paintings, pastels, drawings, monotypes, and sculptures—is devoted to the dancers of the Opera.

Starting in the 1870s, Degas had gained special access to the backstage areas of the Paris Opera. He frequented boththe old Opera House on Rue Le Peletier (which burned down in 1873) and the new Opéra Garnier (inaugurated in 1875). He attended rehearsals, dance lessons, posing sessions, and watched the dancers as they waited backstage. He sketched on the spot, amassed numerous sketches, and then finalized his compositions in his studio.

Three recurring elements characterize his ballet scenes:

1. Behind the scenes rather than on stage. Degas rarely painted the performance itself. He was interested in the moments invisible to the audience: the morning dance class, the wait between acts, the exhaustion after practice, and getting dressed backstage. It is the hidden side of ballet that he reveals.

2. Off-center framing. The compositions are asymmetrical, partial, and photographic in a pre-photographic sense. A dancer might occupy one corner of the frame, with the rest being empty space or the stage floor. Parts of legs enter the frame from the edge. Glances are cut off by elements of the set.

3. Actual social status. The “petits rats” of the Paris Opera in the 1870s were, in fact, working-class girls (most often aged 10 to 14) recruited from Parisian working-class neighborhoods to jointhe Opera’s dance school. Their social status was precarious: they were poorly paid, exposed to male subscribers who lurked backstage ( the “old subscribers”), and often forced into romantic or financial arrangements just to survive. Degas painted this material reality without either romanticizing or condemning it. A dispassionate observation of a social condition.

Major works from the ballet cycle: The Dance Class (1873–1876, Musée d’Orsay), The Star or Dancer on Stage (1876–1877, Musée d’Orsay), The Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen (1880–1881, wax sculpture; original at the NGA in Washington, bronze version at the Musée d’Orsay), Blue Dancers (1893, Musée d’Orsay).

Friendship with Mary Cassatt—Forty Stormy Years

The friendship between Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt is, in fact, one of the best-documented and most complex in the entire history of 19th-century Western painting. It lasted from 1877 to 1917 —a span of forty years.

1877: Degas knocked on the door ofthe studio on Rue de Laval where Mary Cassatt was working. He formally invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists. Cassatt accepted. The Beginning of a Friendship.

For forty years, Degas served as Cassatt’s artistic mentor:

He taught her how to master pastel —a technique that would become one of Cassatt’s hallmarks
He introduced her to printmaking and etching —a field in which Cassatt would become a leading printmaker
He collaborated directly with her on certain works—notably Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878, NGA, Washington), for which Degas personally painted the background (as confirmed by recent infrared photography)
He gave her a Brussels Griffon puppy (a breed that Cassatt would keep for the rest of her life)
He proposes the joint project for the magazine *Le Jour et la Nuit* (1879–1880, abandoned due to lack of funds)

But their friendship was not without its conflicts. Degas had a difficult personality —suspicious, sarcastic, and at times cruel. Several arguments marked their relationship, followed each time by reconciliations. Cassatt deeply admired Degas but never allowed herself to be subjugated. She painted under his influence without ever becoming a mere imitation.

The relationship was never romantic. No correspondence or contemporary accounts suggest a romantic affair between them. It was an intense artistic and intellectual friendship—at times competitive, but deeply respectful. Cassatt destroyed nearly all of the correspondence she exchanged with Degas before her own death in 1926—a gesture that might suggest a private emotional dimension, but which does not allow for any historical conclusions.

1915: Three years before Degas’s death, the two artists exhibited together in a charity exhibition in New York organized to support women’s suffrage. A historical irony: Degas, who had no particular sympathy for militant feminism, agreed to participate out of friendship for Cassatt and out of loyalty to their forty-year artistic partnership.

The Female Nude and the Bather

Beginning in the 1880s, Degas developed a second major series in his body of work—that of female nudes, and more specifically, bathers.

These works, primarily executed in pastel on cardboard or paper, depict nude women engaged in the intimate gestures of bathing: stepping out of the tub (the low, round bathtub typical of bourgeois and working-class homes of the time), drying their shoulders, combing their hair, rubbing the back of their neck, and looking at themselves in a mirror.

Degas’s treatment of these scenes was radically new in Western painting. Before him, the female nude was depicted according to three classical conventions:

The Mythological Nude: Venus, Diana, Andromeda (Renaissance, Academic Painting)
The Allegorical Nude: Truth, Virtue, and the Republic (19th Academic Exhibition)
The Coded Sexual Nude: Odalisques, Orientalist Bathers (Ingres, Gérôme, Bouguereau)

Degas breaks with this convention. His nudes are neither mythological, nor allegorical, nor eroticized in the conventional sense. They are ordinary women engaged in ordinary acts of personal hygiene. Degas stated on several occasions (according to Daniel Halévy):

“Until now, the nude has always been depicted in poses that imply an audience. My women, on the other hand, are simple, honest people who concern themselves with nothing but their physical well-being.”

— Edgar Degas, as quoted by Daniel Halévy

This de-eroticization of the female nude was, for its time, profoundly modern. But it has also been the subject ofnuanced critical interpretations. Some commentators (notably the art historian Eunice Lipton) have seen in the overhead framing that Degas frequently employed— a bird’s-eye view, as if through a keyhole—a voyeuristic dimension that contradicts the stated de-eroticization. The debate remains open among art historians. What is factually established is that Degas never acknowledged such an aspect in his work, and that he publicly maintained the observational dignity of his project on the nude.

Major works from the “Bathers” series: The Bathtub (1886, Orsay), After the Bath, Woman Drying Off (c. 1890–1895, Musée d’Orsay), The Toilette (1885, Hermitage).

The Secret Sculpture — 150 Models Discovered After His Death

Degas is best known as a painter and pastel artist. But he was also a major —yet little-known— sculptor. Almost all of his sculptural work was not revealeduntil after his death.

Starting in the 1860s and 1870s, Degas began sculpting figurines out of pigmented wax or raw clay in his studio. He initially used them as preparatory studies for his paintings—studying a dancer’s movement in three dimensions allowed him to better capture it on canvas. But little by little, these small sculptures became works of art in their own right.

Degas exhibited only one sculpture during his lifetime: The Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, in April 1881, at the 6th Impressionist Exhibition. Height: 98 cm; pigmented wax; dressed in a real tulle tutu, real ballet shoes, and a human-hair wig with a satin ribbon. The sculpture scandalized the critics:

Joris-Karl Huysmans, a future defender, wrote: “This terrible and unsettling statuette made such a strong impression that it became famous.”
Other critics speak of fetishism, simianism, and freak show acts
But some praisethe technical boldness and the formal innovation

Shocked by the harsh criticism, Degas never again exhibited any of his sculptures publicly. He continued to sculpt in secret in his studio until his death.

In 1917, upon Degas’s death, his heirs and executors discovered more than 150 wax and clay models in his studio on Rue Victor-Massé (where he had lived since 1890). Many were in poor condition —the wax had deteriorated, and the internal wire frames were rusted. A decision was made: to cast the best-preserved models in bronze.

Between 1919 and 1932, the bronze caster Adrien Hébrard produced 74 bronze sculptures based on Degas’s wax models. These bronzes are now scattered among major international museums —the Musée d’Orsay (which holds the largest collection in France), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

The Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen — the original wax model — is housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington (gift of Paul Mellon). The bronze versions created by Hébrard are scattered among some twenty museums, including the Musée d’Orsay.

This little-known sculptural work establishes Degas, in retrospect, as one of the most important French sculptors of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Before Calder and the invention of kinetic sculpture in 1930, Degas had already introduced movement into Western sculpture— thirty years before Calder, and without realizing it.

Blindness, Withdrawal, The End

Starting in the 1880s, Degas began to suffer from vision problems. The disease progressed slowly—likely degenerative choroidal retinitis or glaucoma. His vision gradually deteriorated over the course of thirty years.

This gradual loss of sight has two major consequences for the work:

1. The Shift Toward Pastel and Sculpture. Beginning in the 1890s, Degas painted less and less in oils. He favored pastel (which allows for close-up viewing and a more immediate gestural quality) and sculpture (which relies on touch). His later works are almost all pastels in vibrant colors—a palette that grew more vivid as his eyesight declined, as if to compensate for his weakened perception.

2. Gradual withdrawal. Degas, who had become cantankerous with age, gradually withdrew from the Parisian art world. He broke off ties with several friends. The period between 1894 and 1900 was marked by his public stance against Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus Affair —a stance that caused a rift with his friend Camille Pissarro (who was Jewish) for the last years of their lives. This episode, which is historically documented, remainsthe most difficult aspect of Degas’s biography. It is mentioned here as a matter of fact without making it the focus of this article.

1908: Degas is virtually blind. He hardly paints anymore. He lives in seclusion in his apartment-studio at 6 Boulevard de Clichy, where he moved in 1897. His housekeeper, Zoé Closier, assists him with all his daily activities.

1912: Degas left Boulevard de Clichy and moved to 6 Boulevard Clichy, then to Rue Ballu. His last public appearance was atthe opening of the Camondo Collection at the Louvre in 1911. Count Isaac de Camondo’s bequest to the Louvre included several works by Degas—marking the first major institutional recognition of the artist in France during his lifetime.

September 27, 1917: Edgar Degas died in Paris, in his apartment on Rue Ballu, at the age of 83. World War I was raging—his death went relatively unnoticed amid the conflict. He was buried at the Montmartre Cemetery in the De Gas family vault.

He never married. He never had children. He never had a studio-school or any official students. His entire life was devoted to a single project: depicting human movement through drawing, painting, pastels, and sculpture.

Posterity — the unsung inventor

When he died in 1917, Degas was recognized as one of the great French painters of the 19th century. But the full extent of his historical contribution would only become apparent gradually over the course of the 20th century.

Several milestones:

1918: A major posthumous sale from his studio (1st sale, May 6–8, 1918) at Georges Petit in Paris. More than 1,700 lots, including drawings, pastels, paintings, and sculptures. The sale attracted the most prominent international collectors. The next two sales (December 1918 and April 1919) dispersed the remainder of the studio’s collection.

1919–1932: The bronze caster Adrien Hébrard produced the 74 bronze sculptures based on Degas’s studio wax models. These bronzes would become Degas’spublic sculptures.

1937: Major retrospective exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie, the first major institutional tribute in France.

1988: Major traveling exhibition in Paris, Ottawa, and New York (organized by Henri Loyrette and Jean Sutherland Boggs).

2012: Exhibition Degas and the Nude at the Musée d’Orsay (curated by George T. M. Shackelford).

2017: Centennial of his death; numerous international exhibitions.

Today, Edgar Degas is widely recognized as one of the three or four most important French painters of the 19th century, on a par with Manet, Monet, and Cézanne. His influence on 20th-century art is considerable:

— Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), who associated with Degas in the 1880s, drew directly from his depiction of café-concert scenes and brothels — Edward Hopper (1882–1967), an American painter, acknowledged his connection to Degas in terms of his photographic framing and intimate urban scenes — Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) and Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) recognized the importance of Degas’s sculptures in redefining modern sculpture — Alexander Calder (1898–1976)—although no direct connection has been documented— unwittingly continued the revolution in sculptural movement pioneered by Degas

As art historian Pierre Cabanne summarized in his seminal biography (1958):

“Degas is undoubtedly the greatest French draftsman of the 19th century. He is also one of the greatest sculptors—and he was the only one who didn’t know it.”

— Pierre Cabanne, Edgar Degas*, Pierre Tisné, Paris, 1958*

How to View His Works

In Paris

Musée d’Orsay — the world’s largest collection of works by Degas. More than 350 works: paintings, pastels, drawings, sculptures, and monotypes. Major works not to be missed:

The Bellelli Family (1858–1867) — a major early work
The Tub (1886) — iconic pastel
The Dance Class (1873–1876) — a pastel masterpiece from the ballet series
L’Étoile (1876–1877) — a dancer taking a bow
The Fourteen-Year-Old Little Dancer (bronze version) — iconic sculpture
Ironers (1884) — a scene of modern women at work
Absinthe (1875–1876) — a scene from a Parisian café

Musée d’Orangerie — a few works from the Walter-Guillaume collection.

In the United States

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York —a rich collection thanks to the 1929 Havemeyer bequest (through which Mary Cassatt had arranged for the purchase of several Degas works for her collector friends).

National Gallery of Art, Washington — holdsthe original wax model of *The Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen* (gift of Paul Mellon).

In the United Kingdom

National Gallery, London — Little Spartan Girls (1860) and several major works.

In Denmark

Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen — home to one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Degas bronzes.

Edgar Degas — the painter of frozen movement

Paris, 1834 — The Childhood of a Cosmopolitan Upper-Class Man

Early Career — Lamothe, Ingres, the Trip to Italy

1865–1872 — Historical Paintings and the First Ballets

The Painter of the Frozen Moment

1874–1886 — The Eight Impressionist Exhibitions

The Paris Opera Ballet

Friendship with Mary Cassatt—Forty Stormy Years

The Female Nude and the Bather

The Secret Sculpture — 150 Models Discovered After His Death

Blindness, Withdrawal, The End

Posterity — the unsung inventor

How to View His Works

Further Reading

Institutional sources cited

Primary sources cited

Leading Modern Studies

Institutional Documentation

See also on Hors Cadre