Brief Biography-Edgar Degas was from Paris; he was baptised Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas but preferred Degas. His father was a banker, and his mother, from a wealthy family, died when he was thirteen. Degas studied law until he was eighteen before convincing his father to allow him to paint.
He set up a studio in the family house, and one Louis Lamothe, who Dominique Ingres had mentored, tutored him. He met the 75-year-old Ingres through a family friend called Valpincon, who had one of Ingres’s paintings. Ingres wanted Valpincon to produce the picture for an exhibition but refused to do so, Degas convinced him to release it, and Valpincon brought him to see Ingres, who gave him advice on painting.
Degas travelled through Italy during the 1850s, staying in Naples and Florence, where he painted several portraits, notably The Bellelli Family, his cousins. Besides Ingres, Eugene Delacroix influenced him. In 1862, he became friends with Edouard Manet, and they had a reasonable degree of influence on each other.
Degas joined the artillery when the war with Prussia broke out, and events damaged his eyesight during the Paris siege in 1871. In 1874 when his father died, his family had severe financial difficulties, and he had to sell his house and all his paintings to bail them out. Degas subsequently struggled to produce enough art to support himself adequately. He received a considerable amount of criticism about his work; however, by 1886, when he was painting dancers at the Paris Opera, things picked up somewhat.
He became good friends with Mary Cassatt; however, rumour had it they were not lovers; Degas never married. His eyesight began to fail in the late 1880s, and he withdrew from public life, doing fewer paintings; he found it easier to do sculpture. His later years were steeped in depression as Degas had become a recluse. He was upset at the exoneration of Dreyfus in his espionage affair in 1897 and fell out with some friends over it, notably Pissarro, as Degas was anti-Semitic. In 1912, he was evicted from his studio and, with poor eyesight, gave up working. Degas lived a life of solitude until he died in 1917.