Edgar Degas: Drawings and Pastels

A beautifully produced literary art book that restores a collection of drawings and pastels to the heart of the life story of one of the great artists of the 19th century

Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) was described as 'the most intelligent, the most demanding, the most merciless draughtsman in the world' by the poet and critic Paul Valery and today Degas is considered one of the outstanding draughtsman of the late nineteenth century. His powerful drawings and the pastles, which he himself characterized as 'orgies of colour', are some of the most compelling works in western art.

Drawing was not only the central tenet of Degas's art but also virtually a daily activity. Through an examination of the artist's drawings and pastels, which exist in great number and variety, Christopher Lloyd examines the development of Degas's style and outlines the story of his life in the contexts of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Following a broadly chronological approach, Lloyd discusses the wide range of Degas's work: the images of ballet dancers (which form over half of the artist's oeuvre), jockeys, laundresses, milliners and female nudes, as well as the less well-known landscape drawings. With over 200 illustrations that capture the most fleeting of subtleties and shades, this book provides a comprehensive and engaging account of the artist as draughtsman.

Contents List:

Introduction • 1. Beginnings 1853–1855 • 2. Italy 1856–1859 • 3. History Paintings 1860–1865 • 4. Changing Directions 1865–1870 • 5. Confronting the Modern World 1870–1879 • 6. Retreat into the Studio 1880–1890 • 7. Landscape Drawings • 8. ‘The Dying of the Light’ 1890–c. 1912

About the Author:

Christopher Lloyd worked in the Department of Western Art of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 1968 to 1988, combining curatorial duties with teaching. During that time he was appointed by Harvard University to a Fellowship at Villa I Tatti in Florence and was Visiting Research Curator of Early Italian Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was appointed Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures in the British Royal Collection in 1988 and retired from that post in 2005. He is now engaged in writing and organizing exhibitions on a wide variety of subjects. His publications include monographs on painters, catalogues of museum collections and surveys of the Royal Collection, as well as In Search of a Masterpiece: An Art Lover’s Guide to Great Britain and Ireland, Edgar Degas: Drawings and Pastels and Paul Cézanne: Drawings and Watercolours, all published by Thames & Hudson.