Reknowned artist Edgar Degas was born in Paris, France, on July 19, 1834. He was the son of a banker named Augustin de Gas and his wife Celestine Musson de Gas. The family was moderately wealthy and lived a good life in Paris of the 19th century. Degas actually begain his school at the age of 11 and immediately started on the path of an artist by enrolling in the Lycee Louis Grand. He actually started painting very seriously at an early age and by the time he was 18 he had turned a room in his own home into a studio. Expected to go to law school, as was the course with aristocratic men of the age, Degas dropped out at the age of twenty to devote his life to his painting. More often than not Degas is described as an Impressionist. By the later part of the 1960s, Degas had developed his own painting style. His style was considered different from that of the more conventional art world. He specialized in painting women at work, opera performers, dancers and the like. He also painted cafe life extensively. He utilized bold strokes and vibrant colors in much of his more famous works. In many ways, his paintings have come to be considered "snapshots," freezing moments of life accurately and very completely. He also tended to paint from rather unusual angles. He had a self-expressed goal, which he hoped to realize in his work, of bewitching the truth.
Historical linens of Edgar Degas:
These were complex, large works with the help of which, the artist hoped to become famous by exhibiting them in Salon. The young artist, who wanted to exhibit his creative works in the Salon, in the first half of the 1860s, is drawn to historical subjects: "Spartan Girls Challenging Boys" (1860), "Semiramis Building Babylon” (1861), "Alexander and Bucephalus" (1861-1862) "The Daughter of Jephthah (1859-1860), "Medieval War Scene" ("The Suffering of the City of New Orleans") (1865). The paintings were dark in color and dry with regard to form. In the first of his enlisted paintings, the movement of human figures on canvas is devoid of refined elegance, they were sharp and angular, action takes place against a background of normal day-to-day scenery.
In fact, Degas never finished any of these works despite many preparatory drawings and oil canvases. For instance, in "Young Spartans Exercising”, he ignored the historical precision so as to present a theme of ancient history in a different and clearly in a modern way. He painted the entire painting under the high classical influence of Poussin but gave features of "children of Montmartre" to the characters in the painting and the features of a youth from the Parisian suburbs, which were familiar to him.
In " Semiramis Building Babylon”, Degas created an exciting original work but it looked like that he himself was not sure in the right direction of his pursuits. The aim to achieve perfection in art played a cruel joke on Degas: the movement towards reality was the self-aim of the artist. Such creative works gave rise to talks about the failure or inability of Degas in this genre. However, it is necessary to note that Edgar himself suggested to fix some of the paintings, which was beyond the power of others, who could not fill the topic with their own images. |
