Degas

I have still a few tombs at the Montmartre cemetery to show you and to comment on.
Here is the one (a family grave) of Edgar Degas, whose family name actually was De Gas. He was born in 1834 in Paris, where he also died in 1917*, at the age of 81.

Degas belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family and had hardly any money problems. His father was a banker and an art lover and actually encouraged his son towards an artistic career. His mother was Creole, from New Orleans.

After some short law studies Degas travelled around Europe and studied painting. He spent several years in Italy. He was in the beginning concentrating on portraits (here a later self-portrait), and then made a lot of horse-racing paintings. He became friend with Manet and later (around 1865) also with Monet, Renoir and the other future impressionist painters, to which family he definitely belongs, although he was never a landscape painter.

These painters belonged to the so called “Groupe des Batignolles” of which I talked earlier (April 3). Degas lived at that time just across the street to the Café Guerbois (of which I also have talked), where they all regularly met.

He then started to concentrate more on themes like theatre, dance and music. As he did not have to worry about selling his paintings for living, he could more or less paint what he liked. He was a painter of movements and his ballet paintings are examples on this.

He started to not see so well as from the 70’s and concentrated more on pastels and sculptures – oil painting was too meticulous for him.

He became completely blind in 1911 and did not produce anything the last six years of his life. He never married.

*/ ... or in Saint-Valéry sur Somme. See comments (added late 15/5).

Groupe des Batignolles

A couple of days ago, I talked about Edouard Manet (http://www.impressionniste.net/manet.htm) and the "Groupe des Batignolles" (Renoir, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas). This is the place where the members of the group met. It was then a café, called Guerbois. Unfortunately it looks different today. They all lived close to the café, including Emile Zola (http://www.alalettre.com/Zola-bio.htm) who often joined the group and made some "publicity" about their activities (the painting part, not the drinking part). On the painting (by Fantin-Latour), you can see around Manet, among others, Monet, Renoir, Zola.

All this happened around 1869 and 1875 and it was the beginning of the "impressionisme".

Zola moved quite often, but remained in the same area.

You can see a picture of his grave at the Montmartre cemetery. He actually moved also from there. He is now in the Paris Panthéon, together with some other "heroes".