Edgar Degas: The Impressionist Realist

Edgar Degas - Les repasseuses (Women Ironing) - 1884 - Oil on canvas - 29 7/8 x 31 7/8 in. (76 x 81 cm) - Musee d'Orsay, Paris (click photo for larger image)"I want to look through the keyhole," French artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917) once said. A keen intelligence and precise objectivity characterize his work, and he was the only artist who truly bridged the gap between traditional academic art and the avant-garde movements of the late 19th an early 20th centuries. Degas was especially fond of the human figure—particularly female—which would emerge on his canvases as laundresses, ballet dancers, cabaret singers, milliners, prostitutes to women washing themselves. His ability to explore the language of art—its technical and tactile complexity, its refinement as well as its implicit energy—to a more extreme degree than any of his contemporaries, but without losing sight of his subject matter is wherein his greatness lies.