Edgar degas biography summary of 10

Where did edgar degas live

Both a painter and sculptor, Degas enjoyed capturing female dancers and played with unusual angles and ideas around centering. His work influenced several major modern artists, including Pablo Picasso. As an adult, Degas reverted his last name back to the original spelling. Their family were members of the middle class with nobler pretensions.

For many years, the Degas family spelled their name "de Gas"; the preposition "de" suggesting a land-owning aristocratic background which they did not actually have. Degas came from a very musical household — his mother was an amateur opera singer and his father occasionally arranged for musicians to give recitals in their home. Degas also displayed a remarkable skill for drawing and painting as a child, a talent encouraged by his father, who was a knowledgeable art lover.

In , at the age of 18, he received permission to "copy" at the Louvre in Paris. During the 19th century, aspiring artists developed their technique by attempting to replicate the works of the masters. He produced several impressive copies of Raphael as well, studying the work of more contemporary painters such as Ingres and Delacroix.

However, after only one year of study, Degas left school to spend three years traveling, painting and studying in Italy. He painted painstaking copies of the works of the great Italian renaissance painters Michelangelo and da Vinci , developing a reverence for classical linearity that remained a distinguishing feature of even his most modern paintings.