Degas [antikvár]

Edgar Degas takes a place in 19th Century French Painting which is not at all easy to define precisely and briefly. Most of the great painters of the 19th Century can be identified with one of the particular trends of period, so that the essential features of these masters are clearly revealed. Ingres is identified with Classicism; Delacroix with Romanticism; Courbet with Realism; Monet, Sis-ley, Pissarro and, less distinctively, yet in certain important aspects, Manet and Renoir with Impressionism; Seurat and Signac within Neo-impressionism. Degas, however, stands in a category by himself. Although he follows in part the classical style of Ingres, shows touches of Realism, and to a greater extent of Impressionism, he never identifies himself completely with any one of these trends. He maintains his independence in human, artistic, and technical respects. He obeys the laws of his o\vn development in the solitude of his studio; he feels compelled to follow an individual law of growth to a greater extent than anyone else, except Cézanne, although the two dififeved greatly in detail. Degas and Cézanne are — each, however, in a radically different way—great, independent personalities in 19th Century painting, an epoch, that is marked by the formation of groups of similar artists. Considered in the light of sequence of style, which rules 19th Century French Painting — and the beginning of the 20th