1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Degas, Hilaire Germaine Edgard

DEGAS, HILAIRE GERMAIN EDGARD (1834–1917), French painter (see 7.931). The Impressionist years, in which such typical canvases as "Women in a Cafe" and "Danseuses à la Barre" (sold in 1912 for 119,100 francs) showed Degas's complete break with the academic painters, his realistic outlook, and his mastery of matériel, notably pastel, ended with the eighth Impressionist Exhibition 1886, where he continued his realistic studies of modern life, showing drawings of the nude, of workwomen, and of jockeys. This marked his withdrawal from all public exhibitions. In the following years, until his death in 1917, Degas mainly concentrated on drawings and pastels of the nude, chiefly women at their toilets or in the bath, interspersed with returns to his favourite ballet subjects. At one time he almost abandoned the use of colour but returned thereto later. In his last years, ill-health and a forced removal from his studio prevented his working. Besides pastel and oil colour Degas also handled his favourite subjects in etching, aquatint and lithography. His work is to be seen in the Luxembourg (Caillebotte collection), the Louvre (Camondo collection), the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, Boston (U.S.A.) Museum, the National Gallery, Berlin, and many private collections. Though closely associated with the impressionists and showing their sensitiveness to atmospheric colour, Degas was never one of them. An admirer of Ingres, and the great classical draughtsmen, he was himself a classic in his impersonal outlook. The increasing preoccupation of his art was the expression of form, chiefly by line, and to this must be ascribed his later concentration on the nude and temporary abandonment of colour. His figures are never impressions, but an elaborate synthesis of many sketches and much observation. An uncompromising realist in his subjects, Degas found in the art of the Far East a starting-point for combining the most ordinary and ungraceful attitudes of everyday life into an original, intricate and harmonious design.

See also P. Lafond, Degas (1918); A. J. Meier-Graefe, Degas (1920).