Looking And Seeing: The Visual Challenges Of Artist Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas (Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas) was one of the most significant artists and painters of the 19th century. Despite rejecting the label, he was a prominent figure in the Impressionist Movement.  

Born in Paris in 1834, Degas came from a family with a mixed cultural background from New Orleans and Haiti. However, as an adult, he distanced himself from this artificiality. After graduating from Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1845, Degas intended to pursue art education. Yet, his father expected him to become a lawyer, so he enrolled at the University of Paris to study law. Unsurprisingly, Degas didn’t excel as a student in this field, and after a few years, he transferred to the École des Beaux-Arts. There, he began serious training in art and drawing, providing him the opportunity to develop his talent.  

Degas had the remarkable ability to depict various subjects with accuracy and artistic interpretation through simple drawings. As his style matured, this skill allowed him to portray dancers, café patrons, and people seemingly caught off guard in their daily lives. In 1856, Degas traveled to Italy and began working on his first masterpiece, a painting of his aunt and her family.

Degas aspired to be a “history painter,” an artist who depicted historical scenes in a dramatic yet traditional manner. However, during his time in Italy working on the *Portrait of the Bellelli Family*, Degas became eager to depict real life as it was and began to follow the Realism movement. This portrait was innovative without being unsettling.

After the war, Degas moved to New Orleans. There, he created one of his most famous works, *A Cotton Office in New Orleans*. Once again, Degas sketched the individuals separately—his brother reading a newspaper and his father-in-law prominently in the foreground—before assembling the composition of the painting. His commitment to realism and meticulous planning created a chaotic, seemingly random “snapshot” effect in the portrayal. He unified all the figures in the space through the use of color.  

In 1874, Degas learned of his brother’s significant debts following their father’s death. To pay off these debts, he was forced to sell his personal art collection and began painting subjects that could sell. Despite these challenges, Degas produced some of his most iconic works during this period, notably his depictions of ballerinas. Dancers were popular and sold well, but there was another reason for his focus on this subject. Degas suffered from retinopathy, a condition that impaired his ability to distinguish colors and heightened his sensitivity to light. As his retinal disease progressed, bright light became unbearable, so he preferred working indoors, often in the dim lighting of ballet studios and opera houses.  

Completed in 1876, *The Dance Class* exemplifies Degas’ continued commitment to realism and capturing fleeting moments. Instead of depicting a performance, he portrayed a rehearsal, emphasizing the dancers not as ethereal figures gracefully moving through space but as laborers performing a craft. His mastery of draftsmanship allowed him to subtly imply movement; the dancers yawn, slump with fatigue, and appear to be resting as the instructor taps his stick on the floor, counting the rhythm. By the 1880s, Degas had become a regular presence at the Garnier Opéra, attending both performances and rehearsals.  

Through his depictions of dancers, Degas explored not just the staged performances but also the backstage world—rehearsal rooms, the dancers’ preparations and anxieties before a performance, and their relaxed, everyday moments afterward. By the late 19th century, the golden age of Romantic ballet had devolved into a tawdry cabaret rife with exploitative sexual politics and power imbalances. Many female dancers came from impoverished backgrounds, joining the academy as children to support their families. Once there, they were at the mercy of the Opéra’s harsh culture, where wealthy male patrons wielded the power to make or break their fortunes.  

Degas’ fascination with these backstage dynamics is evident in works like *L’Étoile* (1879), where a partially hidden figure in a black tuxedo lurks behind a young ballerina on stage. This enigmatic figure hints at the complex and often troubling power dynamics of the ballet world during that era.

By his forties, Degas had lost much of his vision. His deteriorating eyesight profoundly affected his work, which became increasingly sketch-like and rough in execution. In fact, the spacing of his shading lines grew wider as his visual acuity declined.

Microbiology Specialist

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