Carefully reproduced from a rare 1923 limited edition, most of these magnificent drawings are unavailable elsewhere in published form. Dancers, nudes, portraits, travel scenes, and more. 100 drawings, including 8 in full color.
Forty-one full-page, six half-page drawings depict dancers on stage, in the classroom, and at rehearsals. Charming, spirited views of dancers pirouetting, executing grand battements and ports de bras, practicing at the barre, and more.
DEGAS BY HIMSELF is a milestone in published approaches to the work of this remarkable figure. No other book has illustrated so many of Degas' works in colour, including his best-known paintings and sketches, as well as many works that will be unfamiliar to most people. The book draws on a range of sources - the artist's own notebooks and letters, as well as anecdotes and memoirs from his intimate circle - to trace a vivid portrait of Degas and reveal intimate aspects of his life and personality. His notebooks and letters show him as a forceful and expressive writer; there are letters to friends and customers, urgent messages to exhibitors at the Impressionist exhibition and, finally, a number of short and sad letters from his last years. Degas was also known as a wit and conversationalist, provoking a number of his friends to write down his words for posterity. For the first time, reminiscences and reported remarks have been brought together, conjuring up an unexpected picture of the artist as a man of wisdom and good humour.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was one of the outstanding draughtsmen of the 19th century: drawing was not only a central tenet of his art, but essential to his existence. Through an examination of the artist's drawings and pastels, Christopher Lloyd reveals the development of Degas's style as well the story of his life, including his complicated relationship with the Impressionists. Following a broadly chronological approach, the author discusses the various subject areas, not only the images of dancers (which form over half of Degas's total oeuvre) but also of nudes and milliners, and the less well-known racehorse and landscape drawings. He covers his whole career, from when Degas was copying the Old Masters to learn his craft to when he ceased work in 1912 because of failing eyesight, setting him within the artistic context of the period. Lloyd's extensive research, which includes consulting the artist's detailed notebooks, has resulted in a comprehensive exposition with, at its heart, some 250 pencil, black-chalk, pen-and-ink, and charcoal drawings and pastels of timeless appeal.
An introduction to the life and work of nineteenth-century French artist Edgar Degas, discussing his cultural and historical importance, and including a chronology and over one hundred color illustrations with explanatory captions.
French artist Edgar Degas was famous for his drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking. Although a member of the Impressionists, with Monet, Pissaro and Renoir his work focused on indoor subjects, particularly his acutely observed pieces on ballerinas. His masterful studies of real life resonate still today and he remains one of the most popular painters in the world. This beautiful new book showcases all of his major works (including Ballet Rehearsal, The Star and The Ballet Class), with detailed captions, and a long essay on life, art and influences.
The nude figure was critical to the art of Edgar Degas throughout his life, and yet his expansive body of work on this subject has been overshadowed by his celebrated portraits and dancers. Degas and the Nude is the first book in a generation to explore the artist's treatment of the nude from his early years in the 1850s and 1860s, through his triumphs in the 1880s and 1890s, all the way to his last decades, when the theme dominated his artistic production in all media. With essays by leading critics, the book aims to provide a new interpretation of Degas's evolving conception of the nude and to situate it in the subject's broader context among his peers in 19th-century France. Among the scores of reproductions is one of the most important of Degas's early paintings, Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which exerted a lifelong influence on the artist's treatment of the female nude and includes poses poses repeated throughout his career. Also included are monotypes of the late 1870s, which illustrate Degas's most explicitly sexual depictions of women in Parisian brothels, and pictures portraying the daily life of women wherever they resided. Together these iterations range over more than a half-century of virtuoso achievement and manifest a groundbreaking look at the evolution of this master artist.
Reproduces all of the significant pages from Degas's 1877 sketchbook, placing Degas both within the context of the cultivated salon of the Halévy family and the larger world of late 19th-century Paris.
A lavish new investigation into the Paris Opera’s influence on Edgar Degas's painting. From his debut in the 1860s up to his final works after 1900, the Paris Opera formed a focal point of Edgar Degas's paintings. He explored the theater's various spaces—auditorium and stage, private boxes, foyers, and dance studios—and painted those who frequented them: dancers, singers, orchestral musicians, audience members, and subscribers watching from the wings. This theater presented a microcosm of infinite possibilities, allowing him to experiment with multiple points of view, contrasting lighting, motion, and the precision of movement. This catalog, created in concert with an exhibition at the Muse´e d'Orsay in Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, considers the Paris Opera’s influence on Degas as a whole, examining not only his passionate relationship with the house and his musical tastes, but also the infinite resources of the opera's marvelous toolbox. Filled with striking reproductions of Degas’s work and including insightful essays by leading curators and scholars, Degas at the Opera offers admission into the world of Degas and the Paris Opera of the nineteenth century.