Edgar Degas, the Genesis of a Modern Technique Against the Grain
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 4 min read
Edgar Degas, like Georges Seurat, belongs to the group of innovators trained in the classical school. But Degas, unlike Seurat, attended classes at the École des Beaux-Arts only very briefly and preferred to go directly to Italy to study.
His modernity was thus born from the study of the classical masters he admired and from the practical application of advice he received from the undisputed master of the line, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres himself.
A look back at a classical, yet unacademic, formation.
Cosmopolitan Roots
The family environment played a decisive role in supporting the young man's vocation.
His grandfather, René Hilaire, forced into exile in Naples during the French Revolution, had founded a prosperous banking dynasty there.
Edgar's father, Auguste de Gas, married a young woman of Haitian and Louisiana descent and settled in Paris, where the future painter was to be born. This businessman, an enlightened art lover close to great collectors, quickly perceived his son's potential and encouraged him to persevere in this demanding path—exceptional behaviour when one considers the initial reactions of the parents of Manet, Monet, or Cézanne.
Edgar chose the career of a painter, even though he enrolled in law school. Having obtained his baccalaureate, he was eighteen in 1853; he frequented the studios of academic masters Félix-Joseph Barrias and Louis Lamothe, the latter himself being a disciple of Hippolyte Flandrin.
That same year, he obtained his copyist's card at the Louvre Museum and the Print Room and was able to begin his apprenticeship by copying the great masters.
Two years later, he was admitted 33rd to the École des Beaux-Arts, but the institution hardly held him for more than a few months at most. He preferred copying masters.
Degas visited national and provincial museums and then left for Italy; it was a long study trip financed by his father—an exceptional opportunity. For other art students, the trip to Italy was only possible through a state scholarship linked to winning the prestigious Prix de Rome.
Ingres’ Advice to the Young Degas, 1855
Degas had the opportunity to meet the undisputed master of the line and the last of the great history painters, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
It was in 1855. Monsieur Valpinçon senior, a friend of the family, had finally agreed to lend the master's famous Odalisque with a Turban for a retrospective. In this context, he went to the painter's studio accompanied by the young Degas.
Paul Valéry, Maurice Denis, and Étienne Moreau-Nélaton reported on this encounter, each adding different details, more or less anecdotal.
While the first transcriptions indicate that the old master encouraged drawing in the beginner:
"Draw lines, many lines, from memory or from nature; it is in this way that you will become a good artist."
Degas would deliberately choose to propagate a stricter version over the years... perhaps manipulated for the benefit of his detestation of the outdoors.
He specified that, having visited the master again, with his portfolios under his arm, the latter indeed urged him to continue in this path of the line from memory or from the masters, but added:
"never from nature"
The identification with Ingres’ classicism would take on ironic turns, Degas always maintaining a parodic tone. He appropriated the master's retort, who in his time had replied to a visitor surprised by the diversity of his canvases:
"Yes sir, I have several brushes"
Words that Degas would take as his own. He also practised copying various signatures, including that of Ingres, and parodied the master's monumental Apotheosis of Homer; not that he made a canvas in the manner of a Lautrec parodying Puvis de Chavannes, but he himself sat as Homer in a kind of tableau vivant, photographed by his friend Walter Barnes in 1885.
The Italian Journey, 1856-59
Between the summer of 1856 and the spring of 1859—biographers do not all agree on the dates of his first trip—the artist travelled through the Italian peninsula, exploring Naples, Rome, Florence, as well as essential stops in Viterbo, Orvieto, and Assisi.
He attended evening classes at the Villa Medici, that is, the French Academy in Rome, taking advantage of live models to perfect his figure drawing.
He associated with young artists like himself, including the painter Gustave Moreau, the sculptors Paul Dubois and Henri Chapu, as well as the composer Georges Bizet, not to mention the Cal’darrosti group—literally "Roasted Chestnuts"—which he joined.
Already, this future Impressionist had a poor opinion of outdoor painting, expressing profound boredom when faced with natural landscapes; the notes in his sketchbooks bear witness to this.
He expressed, still in those famous sketchbooks, the certainty that raw observation must be filtered by the work of memory, believing that his memories were worth much more than a simple sketch before the motif. One can easily anticipate his future disgust at the plein-airism of his Impressionist friends and colleagues.
He preferred to study the works of Raphael, Michelangelo, or Botticelli, harbouring the ambition to combine the spirit of a Mantegna with the chromatic brilliance of a Veronese.
Youthful canvases, such as the Roman Beggar Woman or the portrait of his grandfather, testify to a facility for drawing the human figure. To these beginnings must now be added Young Italian Woman: Presumed Portrait of the Countess of Castiglione, authenticated by the expertise of Michel Schulman in 2025.
At the end of his transalpine apprenticeship in the great tradition and remaining always a follower of Ingres’ classical precepts, the young Degas returned to Paris.
His primary objective then was to embrace the very prestigious career of a History painter, in the direct wake of the residents of the French Academy in Rome. He would make history without history painting.
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