Buy essay on Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas (19 July 1834, Paris – September 27, 1917) is a French painter, one of the most prominent and most original representatives of the impressionist movement.
When we think about the work of Edgar Degas, we come to the conclusion that all it has inexplicable properties. However, there are signs that we constantly find in almost all the paintings and drawings, and the most important is his enthusiasm for the state of equilibrium. A dancer or a circus performer, jockey on a horse or just sitter, Degas has always sought to achieve balance and fit figures into the surrounding space. Gravity and the relation of man to the ground are the hallmarks of his works.
Edgar Degas was born in Paris and that is why in 1855 he entered the School of Fine Arts. At this time, Degas made frequent trips to Italy, where he studied the art of old masters and classical principles of composition. In 1862, he met with Edouard Manet and other Impressionists, with whom later participated in art exhibitions.
The works by Degas, which were performed before 1860, are mostly portraits of friends and relatives; the culmination of this period was the establishment of the master’s group portrait Family Bellamy. In the late 1860’s Degas began to paint scenes of urban life, depicting the life of art studios, theaters and cafes. In 1870`s he often depicted the dancers and horse races. The freshness, immediacy and dynamism of these works bring them closer to the art of the Impressionists. One of the most famous works of this period is the Dance class (1872, Paris, Louvre).
Works by Degas of 1880`s reflect his fascination with Japanese engraving and photography. At that time Degas turned to pastels, and often portrayed shop milliners, laundresses, etc. In these years, Degas simplified and cleared his drawing of all the excess so that he could with the help of only one circuit to transmit the look of moving muscles of the human body. The most famous works of that period are the Presser (1884) and the Nude, brushing her Hair (1885). As the images of women were shown without any idealization, Degas often was blamed in being misogynist. After 1890 Degas’s paintings have become more sculptural in nature. The contours were stressed with thick, drawn by coal-line; the purple, pink and green colors, giving the voicing started to dominate.
In 1880-s Degas began to work in sculpture; mostly because of increasing disease of his eyes. Degas created his statue from clay or wax, which he inflicted on the skeleton, and many of them were ruined due to the imperfections of this technique. About 150 statues remaining in his studio after his death were cast in bronze.
Degas created a tremendous amount of preparatory sketches and finished works. His paintings can serve as evidence of the artist creative process consistency; and they show how the pastel compositions featuring dance scenes consisted of the individual movements and postures outlines.
Degas died in Paris. In addition to paintings and sculptures, he left a note and a large collection of engravings and paintings of the 19th century. In this collection, sold at auction in 1918, there were the works of the greatest masters of French painting, such as Ingres, Delacroix and Gauguin.
As it was already mentioned, to sculpt a small wax sculpture Degas began in the late 1860’s, and, as his eyesight was deteriorating, the artist more and more attention paid to this genre. The topics of his sculptures repeated the themes of his paintings – dancers, bathers, or galloping horsemen. These works Degas sculpted for himself, they replaced him sketches that is why only few sculptures he drove to the end. Only one his sculpture “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dance” was auctioned during his life. Sculptures, molded from wax were very fragile and unstable, but about 70 survived works were found in Degas` studio after his death; the artist’s heirs transferred them to a bronze. Degas never worked with bronze. The first samples of these sculptures appeared in 1921. For many years it was believed that the original wax sculptures haven’t been saved, but they were found in a basement in 1954. The following year, all the wax sculptures by Degas were bought by the American collector Paul Mellon, who, gave a small portion of works the Louvre, but still is the owner of most of them. From each wax sculpture there were done about 20-25 casts, thus the total number of copies is around 1500. Some of them can be seen in major museums around the world, and in some places, for example in Glipoteke Nude Carlsberg, Copenhagen.
It is necessary to mention that in February 2009 in London there was an auction with the works of impressionists and modernists. Sotheby’s organized an auction on February 3, and the main sculpture of the evening was “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dance” by Degas.
So lot number 8 was the bronze sculpture by Degas “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dance” (Wax original, created in 1879-1881, cast in bronze in 1922. Bronze, muslin skirt and satin ribbon, wooden stand. Height: 105 cm). Sotheby’s experts estimated it at 12.9 million pounds (12.8-17.1 million US dollars). Sold it was over 13.257.250 £! (R&R Bond Gallery).
It was said at the auction that the sculpture was one of 28 copies, made after the death of the author. The original “Dancers” was the first and the only sculpture of Degas, which appeared at an exhibition during the artist’s life. That time, in 1881, the sculpture shocked the audience – nobody had ever dared to depict the dancers in such a way. As Professor Antea Callen writes in his book “Demonstrative body”, the loathing of the bourgeois critics and audiences have been caused by the fact that Degas not just naturalistically portrayed a girl, he gave her face the “degenerative” features that were absent in the model – the daughter of the laundress and tailor Marie van Goethem. At the time, the theory of Cesare Lombroso was popular, which explained the importance of applying to the methods of science in criminology: the criminals were different from all other people by “atavistic” external look, which gave evidence of the backwardness in development. Degas strengthened the effect of his sculpture, holding close to it the drawings depicting the killers, whose faces were strikingly similar to the “criminal character types” of Lombroso. In addition, he ordered to put “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dance” in the glass case, which was a novelty for the lovers of art that time. Today’s audience has become accustomed to the fact that the sculptures are exhibited in glass “boxes”. The materials that Degas used in sculpture were unconventional: the artist modeled the figure of a girl of wax, put on the real bodice, and pointes on the figure; he even did her hair out of human hair. It turned out outrageously naturalistic – the sculpture looked like a wax figure from the Museum of Madame Tussauds. With his “installation” Degas anticipated many discoveries of artists of XX century, who believed that the context in which the viewer perceives a work of art is its integral part.
Edgar Degas’s sculpture “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dance”, created in1879-1881 is an outstanding and remarkable artwork which stаnds оutsidе the mаinstrеam of ninеteеnth-century French sculpture. The sculptor was never interested in creating public monuments, but there was one exception: The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer. It was shоwn in the sixth Imprеssiоnist еxhibitiоn in Pаris in 1881, but it didn’t lооk like thе wоrk оf Impressionism. Modеlеd in wаx and wеаring a rеаl bоdice, stоckings, shоes, tulle skirt, and horsehair wig with a satin ribbon, the figure astonished the audience, but was not understood. Just now it is understood and is considered to be and outstanding artwork of the 19th century.

Endnotes

Newlands, Anne., Degas, Edgar. Meet Edgar Degas. (1988). p. 14.
2 Vincent, Clare. “Edgar Degas (1834–1917): Bronze Sculpture”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.
3 Newlands, Anne., Degas, Edgar. Meet Edgar Degas. (1988). p. 14.
4 Kendall, Richard., Degas, Edgar., Druick, Douglas W., Beale, Arthur,. Joslyn Art Museum. Degas and The Little Dancer. (1998). p. 22.
5 Kisselgoff, Anna. Dance, Degas, Faure, and French Romanticism. The New York Times. (January 20, 1985). p. 9.
6 Growe, Bernd. Edgar Degas, 1834-1917. (2001). p. 77.

7 Vincent, Clare. “Edgar Degas (1834–1917): Bronze Sculpture”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.