Edgar Degas in 10 Paintings

1. The Bellelli Family, 1858–1867

Degas’s first major painting, The Bellelli Family, was the largest canvas he ever painted. It was made in his early 20s when he was studying in Italy. In it, his aunt Laura Bellelli is depicted with her husband, Baron Gennaro Bellelli, and their two daughters.

The painting has homeliness and austerity combined. On the left of it, Laura Bellelli stands stoic with her eldest daughter, Giulia. On the wall next to her face is a drawing of Laura’s father, who the family is mourning for. On the right, the youngest daughter holds a much more relaxed pose, sitting on a chair with one leg tucked under the other.

2. Scene of War in the Middle Ages, 1865

Throughout his education, Degas was influenced by the great masters, whether it be French Neoclassicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Renaissance painters, or writings on ancient Greek and Latin histories. It is, therefore, not surprising that he started his career with historical paintings. Among the multiple paintings Degas submitted to the Paris Salon in previous years, Scene of a War in the Middle Ages was the first to get accepted.

This is an enigmatic painting. There is no specific historical moment or literary reference in it. Nude women appear on the left side, some more wounded than others. On the top left side of the painting, a city burns. This painting could be a generic depiction of a war scene and the sexual violence women faced at the time. The scene’s ambiguity has led to other interpretations and names, like The Misfortunes of the City of Orléans. Despite its acceptance to the Paris Salon, the painting did not attract much attention.

3. A Cotton Office in New Orleans, 1873

Later on, Degas departed from historical paintings to focus on the everyday themes of his time. A Cotton Office in New Orleans illustrates this change. He painted this piece while visiting New Orleans. There, part of his family made a living as cotton brokers, which inevitably enabled slavery in the American South. However, this painting does not show the exploitative part of the cotton industry.

Several of his relatives appear in the painting: René Degas is reading the newspaper almost at the center of the composition, and Achille Degas can be found next to a window. Degas’s maternal relatives from the Musson family are included as well. The painting was part of the 1876 Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, alongside works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro.

4. The Dance Class, 1874

Degas’s major artistic legacy is undeniably his ballerinas. The Dance Class depicts the behind-the-scenes of the ballet world. In the canvas, girls are stretching, rehearsing certain movements and poses, or resting. Their dance master, Jules Perrot, watches one of the ballerinas performing.

The mirror offers us a glimpse of the other side of the room with a window and a look at more girls standing on a platform with their mothers. Next to the mirror, a poster of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell is barely visible yet it is a tribute to the commissioner of the painting, Jean-Baptiste Faure, an opera singer. This painting was also part of the Impressionist Exhibition in 1876.

5. Dancers, Pink, and Green, c. 1890

At first glance, Degas’s ballerinas look like innocent depictions of girls. However, as information about the 19th-century ballet world resurfaced, these paintings recently were subject to more contextualized interpretations.

Paintings like Dancers, Pink, and Green not only show talented ballerinas but also sexually exploited girls. Prostitution was part of their job. These girls came from lower classes, and their parents encouraged them to enter the theater to make money, no matter the cost. Men from the upper classes, who enjoyed ballet, often demanded services from the girls and even had access to rehearsals.

6. Dancers Practicing at the Barre, 1877

Despite the numerous connections with the Impressionists, Edgar Degas did not consider himself one of them. He rejected crucial ideas such as immediacy that other disciples from the art movement upheld. Monet’s art is thus a prime example of Impressionism. As for Degas, even though his paintings look like impressions of a moment, they were carefully planned. Rather than painting en plein air, Degas worked in a studio. He went as far as demanding his models to stay in the same contorted pose for long periods.

Japonisme surged in the second half of the 19th century as Japanese woodcut prints (ukiyo-e) were imported in large numbers to Europe. Degas became an avid collector of these Japanese paintings and let them inform his artistic practices. In Dancers Practicing at the Barre, Degas assigned most of the canvas space to the floor. This is because, contrary to the composition found in classical Western paintings, Degas arranged his canvas in a way he believed aligned with the philosophy of Japanese art—the beauty of empty space (Yohaku no bi)—which earned Degas praise of the French poet Paul Valéry. The flatness of the wall and the diagonal arrangement of the ballerinas are further indications of the Japonisme.

7. In a Café (The Absinthe Drinker), 1875–1876

Degas instead identified himself as a Realist. He liked the urban settings where he could capture the harsh realities of Parisians. Unlike Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s vivacious parties in Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, the people in Degas’s compositions look far from happy.

In a Café shows us a man and a woman sitting next to each other in silence. The woman’s posture and expression are particularly sorrowful. This painting is also known as The Absinthe Drinker, referring to the highly popular and harmful liquor on the table. The models for this painting were Ellen André, a model and actress, and Marcellin Desboutin, another artist and engraver. Once again, this canvas was part of the Impressionist exhibition of 1876.

8. Woman Ironing, 1876–1877

Another of Edgar Degas’s recurrent subjects was women working as laundresses, milliners, and dressmakers. Degas was attracted to their physicality and poses while working. Despite the long work hours these women went through each day, they were part of what was deemed the most impoverished sectors of the city, which associated many of them with prostitution. Once again, what could seem like an innocent image of a woman working hides a painful reality for women in the 19th century.

9. Landscape with Smokestacks, c. 1890

Aside from his preference for urban scenes, Degas painted countryside landscapes like Landscape with Smokestacks in 1890. He still did not practice painting en plein air like the Impressionists would do but rather relied more on memory than on immediate observation. Moreover, this landscape is an example of a monotype, an innovative printing technique; he essentially applied pastels on a plate before pressing it to transfer the image to a piece of paper.

10. After the Bath, c. 1895

Women bathing was another common and controversial theme of Degas. Nudes like the ones featured in his series, After the Bath, were scandalous even during his time, as nude women were historically either goddesses or depicted to convey allegorical messages. On the other hand, the woman in After the Bath is a far cry from Diana’s bathing or any other mythological character.

Degas’s 1895 After the Bath presents a real, mortal woman. She is not idealized but twisted near a bathtub in an awkward position with her legs open. Feminist art historians have questioned the painter’s obsession with intimate bathing scenes since it could reflect the misogyny of the 19th century. Most of these women look vulnerable but unaware, with their backs facing the viewer and their bodies entirely susceptible to any voyeuristic gaze.

This is only a small portion of Edgar Degas’s work that nevertheless touches on crucial topics of his art and life. It also shows how art can hide deeply concerning stories no matter their aesthetic beauty.