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By the Sea | |
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Edgar Degas is known mainly as a figure artist, but he also painted some landscapes. In 1869, a trip to the seaport of Boulogne, in northern France, inspired Degas to create over forty images of the seashore and sand dunes. These calm, empty scenes look very different from his lively ballet and racetrack paintings. Degas made his seaside pictures with pastels, an artist’s tool similar to crayons. Most artists think of pastels as good for sketching, but Degas used them for finished works as well. (By the Sea is considered finished because he signed it.) He became so skilled with pastels that eventually this became his favorite medium, or art-making material. Because pastels dry fairly quickly, he could instantly add more color to his compositions. Today Degas is still regarded as the most important pastel painter. Although a box of pastels is portable, Degas may not have painted this scene while looking at it. He preferred to work in his studio. Unlike many of his fellow Impressionist artists, he rarely painted outdoors. Partly this was because of vision problems, which began when he was in his thirties. He found bright lights unbearable and dreaded being out in the sun. Painting outdoors also went against his belief that a painting should come from an artist’s memory and imagination. |
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April 2009
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