Edgar Degas: A Passionately Informed Modernism

Edgar Degas - Self-Portrait - c. 1857–58 - Oil on paper, mounted on canvas - 10 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. (26 x 19.1 cm) - Clark Museum - Williamstown, MAHaving been born into a rich Franco-Italian banking family, Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was never short of money and never doubted his vocation as a painter. Indeed, his family encouraged him. Nevertheless, he was a shy, insecure, and aloof young man, which one can gather from his early self-portraits.

Degas made nearly forty self-portraits between 1854 and 1864, during his extensive travels in Italy. He studied Old Master paintings and developed his own style. His self-portraits were experiments, and most of them remained in his studio until his death. 

In the work featured here, painted when the artist was around twenty-three years old, Degas reveals a inwardness that suggests the mannerist influence of Jacopo Pontormo—combined with Degas’ own ideas about modernism and his informed understanding of art, past and present. Interestingly, he gave up painting his own face at age thirty-one. It was the faces of others that commanded his attention.