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Degas Paintings Pictures GalleryAdvanced Photoshop Pictures Gallery - 17 image entries
Contest Directions: 
Past Saturday the artistic world celebrated the 174th birthday of one of the most famous French artists - Edgar Degas. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, even though he more preferred to be called a realist.
Degas started painting seriously very early in his life. Obsessed with painting, he turned his room into an artist studio by the age of 18. His father - a wealthy French banker - was originally against Edgar's love for art and wanted him to become a lawyer instead. At the age of 21, Degas dropped out of Law school and went to Italy for three years where he copied the works of Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. Degas talent flourished under the guidance of his first teacher
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, whose first advice to Edgar was "draw lines, young man, many lines..."
To celebrate the 174th birthday of Edgar Degas, photoshop his works any way you wish. Some examples are - showing how his paintings would be different if he created them nowadays, including modern elements in his works, making them promote and endorse products and services, including celebrities and politicians in his art, hiring Degas to do movie posters, etc.
Here's a good example.
And, please, NO REMBRANDT chops in this contest, you pranksters :)
Tag pix degas paintings
Top 17 Contest Gallery Pictures
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| | Edgar Degas (born in Paris on 19th July 1834 – on 27th September 1917) is the French painter. He is one of the most outstanding and most original representatives of impressionist movement.
Biography
Degas was born on 19th July, 1834 in Paris, in a well-off aristocratic family of Augustin De Gas and Célestine Musson. He was the eldest among five children. At the age of 13 Edgar lost his mother, which came as a great shock to him. Later, in his youth, under the influence of new social ideas, Edgar changed his surname from de Gas to less “aristocratic” Degas.
Early Life
Degas early in his childhood had shown the signs of his interest towards painting. However, his father expected him to become a lawyer, although Edgar had no interest and capabilities towards jurisprudence, and material well-being of the family allowed him to carry-on with the painting without particularly caring about livelihood.
At 20 years (1854), Degas joined the apprenticeship at the workshop of artist Lamothe, who was quite famous at that time, and had been a student of great Ingres. Courbet and Delacroix have a certain influence on the creativity of Degas, however for him till the end of his life he considered Ingres as the authority of artist. Edgar studied the works of great masters at the Louvre. During his life time, he visited Italy several times (where lived his relatives from the side of father). In Italy he had the opportunity to see the masterpieces of great Italian artists. He was particularly interested in ancient Italian masters like Mantegna, Bellini, Ghirlandaio and Zotto.
In the late sixties of XIXth century Edgar Degas opened his own workshop in Paris. His main creativity was the portrait painting. Degas paid a lot of attention on historical canvases. Degas’ well-known self-portrait with cylinder and gloves is also from this period. In the early 60’s, during a trip to Normandy (which he later visited not once), Degas was fascinated by horses, which since then became one of the most favorite subject for his paintings, and along with ballet they are a sort of visiting card for his art.
Trips to Italy and influence of XVth century Italian masters admired Degas to make a group portrait named The Bellelli Family. Classical traditions in the composition of this canvas are very close to the typical characters, that positively distinguishes this work of artist.
Impressionists
In 1861 Degas meets Édouard Manet. Their friendship lasted till the death of Manet. Being an authoritative person among young artists, an informal head of Batinol group, Manet introduced Degas with young artists who were later known as impressionists.
The years in 1860’s in France were marked with satiation of young progressive intellectuals by the bourgeois foundations of the Empire of Napoleon III. A new wave of artists broke the traditional notions about paintings, subjects and the heroes of the paintings, bringing simple scenes from the life of Napoleon’s France into their work. Manner and brightness of their creativity was also close to Edgar Degas. He, however, unlike impressionists, was more like a social artist; deviating from the traditions of classicism and romanticism of old painting schools of France, he paid more attention not on the abstract of daily images from modern life, but on the subjects related to daily, often toiling of his contemporaries.
Impressionists paid more attention on light (Manet and Monet's works may be recollected), whereas Edgar Degas paid more attention on the movement. Even particular success of historical painting of Degas “Misfortunes of the city of Orleans” in the Salon of 1865 did not stop the artist from his conscious desire to represent the modern life in a new manner considered a bit revolutionary at that time. Critics often agree that, despite Degas' unwillingness (unlike impressionists) to work in open-air, fundamentally their creativity in general is very similar, that, in turn allows us to reckon Edgar Degas among the league of impressionists. It must be noted that Degas rejected the term “impressionism”, as well as some artistic principles of innovator artists, and towards the end of his life he kept away from their company. It is necessary to remind, that the division of painting, like the division of painters on the basis of styles, is more or less conventional.
Twilight
Almost ten years before his death Degas practically ceased painting. However at 80 years he was already a well-known artist, his works were sold at prices that were fabulous at that time.
Edgar Degas died on 27th September, 1917 in Paris at the age of 83 as a recognized master and a painter of authority who was rightly considered as one of the brightest representatives of impressionism and an original creator. |
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