Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas was a French artist known for his pastels and oil paintings, more than half of his works depicting dancers. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in Italy, he first meant to be a history painter, then brought its methods to contemporary subjects such as ballet dancers, bathing women, racehorses and jockeys. Regarded as a founder of Impressionism, he helped organise the eight Impressionist exhibitions of 1874–1886 and showed in all but one, yet he rejected the term and preferred to be called a realist. The Dreyfus Affair intensified his antisemitism; after 1890 his eyesight worsened, and he apparently stopped working in 1912.