191 years ago today, on July 19, 1834 (June 13, 1834 lunar calendar), the French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas was born. Edgar Degas (1834.7.19~ 1917.9.27), born in Paris in 1834, was originally named Edgar Ilyre Germain Degas (EdgarHilaireGermaindeGas). He was born into a family of financial capitalists, and his grandfather was a painter, so he grew up in a family that was very concerned about art. After graduating from high school, Degas enrolled in a school of fine arts, and he studied Italian art in Italy, especially Renaissance art. At the same time, he studied in Louis? In the studio of Louis Lamott, Degas copied many paintings and drawings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; when he returned to Paris, he was already a skilled sketcher who had learned the techniques of the Ingres. This kind of sketch was a classical sketch, a kind of sketch studied in the academy (academic school), so that Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Pierre Auguste Renoir (Pierre-AugusteRenoir, 1841-1919), and Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) all rose up against this kind of sketch soon after, but Degas had a different attitude towards it, and he greatly admired the classical sketch. Degas had a natural penchant for sketching. He liked thin, coherent, and clear lines, which he saw as the guarantee of elegance and the only way to achieve the kind of beauty he admired. Line became his desire. In the use of the line, he reached a point where none of Angel's disciples or their followers could match. But soon, Degas's sharp intellect made him aware of a new artistic flow, that is, "realism." But this theory advocated abandoning the ancient Greek ideal of beauty and replacing it with a simple and sincere representation of what is seen. In order to approach the ideal of beauty without being divorced from reality, Degas's creative method is to use clean lines and use the skills of light and shade. If you want to depict reality, you must subordinate the technique to the individualization of the image, which is portrait painting. The portraits of Degas in his youth accurately express the excessive conformism of his belief in sketching, excellent technique, and delicate feeling. For example, the oil painting "The Berry Family" depicts the painter's uncle, parents, and two cousins. The size of the frame size and the complexity of the subject matter of this painting make one imagine the weight of the task. This is a realistic scene. But the painter failed to show a sense of space here, the extremely delicate sketches did not show a sense of volume, the harmonious and gentle colors (sky blue, white and black) did not achieve the tonal effect, the painter focused all his attention on the portrayal of the characters. The characters do not seem to pose, but it cannot be said that the painter caught them all at once. The painting shows the "good upbringing" of the noble family, their courtesy and law-abiding (the same is true of the painter), their indomitable and defiant air that never acts rashly. The appearance of the painter's aunt is expressed in detail, which in the painter's opinion can replace beauty, but it lacks the persuasive power of life. All the figures, as in Degas's mind, mainly evoke a sense of awe, just as the whole painting is awe-inspiring with its excellent sketches. This sense of awe is so strong that it leaves no room for artistic appeal. Let's take a look at Degas's "Cotton Acquisition Office" created after a trip to New Orleans in 1872. The intention of this painting is to depict a scene of contemporary life, following the fashion created by Manet and his realist and future Impressionist painters. This is a collection of family portraits, in which the space and environmental furnishings are gradually expanded into the depths, which Degas had never done before. Colour is often important in the treatment of such subjects, but Degas seems to have overlooked it; colours are tacky, such as the red on the walls. Moreover, although the figures in the paintings are very similar, the arrangement of the characters is completely accidental, so the composition is very loose. Degas tried to paint like a realist painter, but he did not believe in realism; as a result, he emphasized the vulgarity of the subject matter. The "Cotton Acquisition Office" marked the end of a period in Degas's style development that could be described as academic realism. He was a "captive of form" during this period. However, in some of Degas' sketches, there are also themes and conceptions that can prove that he is gradually emerging from this captive position, and these themes and conceptions are developed in the next period of his creation. From 1862, Degas began to take an interest in horse racing, which provided him with some somewhat complete subject matter. "Horse racing", created between 1877 and 1880, is easy to see: Degas's method of observation has undergone a fundamental change. The lines are only vaguely revealed, without breaking the color relationship arranged according to the shading. Colors form a unified whole, in which the tone that highlights the rider's figure is the same as the tone that shows the house on the horizon. From this unity of the visual image, from the "incompleteness" of the painting, there is also a sense of air that allows all objects in the painting to breathe freely. It is true that the form lacks three-dimensional sense, and the space is not expressed, but this is by no means a defect, because these factors do not affect the integrity of the impression. The figure in the foreground, whose back is cut off by the frame, is an unnecessary ingenuity of the painter. However, these riders combine and enliven the overall color effect. The dazzling yellow, rose, red, and light blue of their tops are in perfect harmony with the patches of green, blue-gray, and yellow-gray on the background. This effect is achieved by Degas immersing the figure in a rendered, breathable atmosphere. It is conceivable that he drew this painting from memory rather than from outside light; but his memory did not depict abstract shapes, but concrete images of "the unity of form and color". Degas is known to be a painter famous for his paintings of ballerinas. Indeed, no other subject has fascinated him so much, nor does it seem to have enabled him to create his own style. He wanted to draw a sense of space, to draw the impression of seeing three-dimensional shapes from the most unexpected angles, so he liked to choose subjects from ballets rather than outdoor scenes. While watching the rehearsal, Degas had the opportunity to see the most varied body postures from all aspects. Looking down from the stage, he could see the girls dancing or resting, and he could study the intricate shortening and the effect of stage lighting in human form. "Waiting to come out" was one of Degas' sketches in colored chalk. The layout of the painting couldn't have seemed more casual. Some of the dancers, we only see their legs, others only their bodies. Only one figure was fully visible, and her poses were complex and difficult to distinguish. We see her from above, with her head bowed forward and her left hand grasping her ankle, looking deliberately relaxed. Degas's paintings had no story at all. He wasn't interested in ballerinas because they were pretty girls. He doesn't seem to care about their moods. He observes them with the cold and objective attitude of the impressionist who observes the surrounding landscape. What he cares about is the interaction of light and shade in the shape of the human body, the way he can express movement or space. "The Lounge of the Ballet Theater" is a fascinating miniature painting, well composed and well unfolded in depth. The classicist mutual depictions meticulously and elegantly emphasize all the graceful gestures of the dancers. The main tones are gray, gray-blue, and dark yellow. But when we have seen enough of this painting, we will realize that it is not a masterpiece. Degas devoted his main energy to the subject of female nudity in his later years. He worked harder than anyone else to free the nude painting from the constraints of academic tradition. He was constantly studying the body, light, motion, the organs of the human body and their functions. He attempted to be a portrait painter of "man-beast", but his admiration for the human machine, its movement and vitality, was so great that the idea of cold reason was completely lost in his images. Not only that, but these images also reflected all his enthusiasm, and sometimes even all his struggles. Beginning in 1880, Degas painted mainly in pastels. Pastels enabled him to paint colors by sketching and to achieve rich color effects without compromising the sketch. "Bath" is a masterpiece of pastels that combines light and shape. More than a decade later, Degas painted another painting on the same subject, "Out of the Bath," in which the chalk lines are not so evenly painted, the body is not so smooth, and the color is richer and deeper. It seems that the naked woman appears in a starry shower of colors (white, yellow, blue, and purple). From this, it can be seen that during the last two decades of his creative activity, Degas not only achieved an unprecedented wealth of color effects, but also created his own unique form, using color dots to overcome the isolation of the form and make the form permeate the flow of color. Representative works * "Accountants and Daughters" (CountLepicandHisDaughters) * "Dance Class" * "Miss Lala of Fernand Circus" * "Dancer Adjusting Shoes" French painter and sculptor with high painting skills and carving skills. Painting skills are deep and elegant, many people can't match