Edgar Degas born in Paris on 19 July 1834 was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Degas began his schooling at age eleven, enrolling in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Degas began to paint early in life. By the time he graduated in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artist's studio.
Degas was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. He studied drawing there with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Ingres. Degas is often identified as an Impressionist, an understandable but insufficient description. Impressionism originated in the 1860s and 1870s and grew, in part, from the realism of such painters as Courbet and Corot. The Impressionists painted the realities of the world around them using bright, "dazzling" colors, concentrating primarily on the effects of light, and hoping to infuse their scenes with immediacy.
His scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists—most notably Mary Cassatt and Édouard Manet—all relate him intimately to the Impressionist movement. Degas's style reflects his deep respect for the old masters and his great admiration for Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix. Degas began with conventional historical paintings such as The Daughter of Jephthah and The Young Spartans, in which his gradual progress toward a less idealized treatment of the figure is already apparent.
During his early career, Degas also painted portraits of individuals and groups; an example of the latter is The Bellelli Family, an ambitious and psychologically poignant portrayal of his aunt, her husband, and their children. From 1870 Degas increasingly painted ballet subjects, partly because they sold well and provided him with needed income after his brother's debts had left the family bankrupt. The changes to his palette, brushwork, and sense of composition all evidence the influence that both the Impressionist movement and modern photography, with its spontaneous images and off-kilter angles, had on his work.
Degas had mastered not only the traditional medium of oil on canvas, but pastel as well. The dry medium, which he applied in complex layers and textures, enabled him more easily to reconcile his facility for line with a growing interest in expressive color. Degas's work remained the same throughout his life. He always painted indoors, preferring to work in his studio, either from memory, photographs, or live models.