13 Best Edgar Degas Paintings

Are you looking for the greatest Edgar Degas paintings? We’ve got you covered! We’ll show you his finest works, from The Bellelli Family to Race Horses!

Edgar Degas, a key player in the Impressionist movement, is recognized for his outstanding contributions to the world of art. His paintings, which frequently portray ballet, horse racing, and Parisian life, continue to enchant art collectors worldwide.

Degas’ distinct style and approach to art have left an everlasting imprint on the art world, elevating him to the status of a revered and famous artist.

Edgar Degas was a French painter born in Paris. The name he was given is Hilaire Germain Edgar, he’s a man who has spent his entire life in the city where he grew up.

While the artist was recognized as one of the world’s best impressionist painters, his paintings received varied reviews in the years following his death.

Some individuals thought he was overly concerned with depicting women in sexualized portraiture, which was one of the reasons the artist became estranged from modern art critics. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that his early works were both stunning and motivating.

Thus, this artist is among the finest in history, deserving of all the accolades bestowed upon him throughout his lifetime. Without further ado, let us go on the finest Edgar Degas paintings!

13 Best Edgar Degas Paintings

1. Ballet Rehearsal on Stage (1874)

If there is one item in art history that sticks out, it is Degas and his ballerinas. This painting is presently on display in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

This oil on canvas work from 1874 by the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas entitled “Ballet Rehearsal on Stage.” Degas developed a huge collection of dance-themed paintings.  He was a master at representing movement, a task that most artists welcomed.

This scenario was made in three different ways by Degas. This is the most substantial of the three. Degas wished to be regarded as a Realist rather than an Impressionist. 

He disliked the spontaneity of the impressionist approach.  Degas planned to paint this scenario by sketching all of the figures ahead of time further proof that he couldn’t have been an impressionist.

2. The Orchestra at the Opera (1870)

This is Degas’ earliest picture of the Opera and is often regarded as his ultimate departure from his early 1860s historical paintings. Degas’s famous paintings are currently housed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

An X-ray reveals that Degas slashed the canvas at the sides and top. As a result, the framing is more radical than he planned. The harp, box, as well as double bass, were brought in later, visually connecting the pit to the stage.

Degas demonstrates his knack for depicting human beings in various positions and relationships in this painting. The piece is packed with musicians who are entirely immersed in their trade, playing their instruments with expertise and passion.

Degas’s attention to detail shines through as he depicts the many instruments, the performers’ attentive looks, and the delicate motions of their hands and bodies.

3. The Tub (1886)

This pastel, shown at the ninth Impressionist exhibition in 1886, is one of a series of seven paintings done by Degas in the mid-1880s on the subject of women at their ablutions, a concept previously explored by the artist in a series of monotypes.

This amazing picture by Edgar Degas may be seen at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. “The Tub” is widely considered to be one of Degas’s greatest pastel drawings.

In it, a woman stands in a bathtub with her hair pulled back, bending at the waist so she can submerge her sponge in the water. His mastery of the technique is evident in his distinctive perspective, flowing lines, colder palette, and contrasting lines.

Degas’ bath painting series inspired Vincent van Gogh. During his first visit to Paris, Van Gogh had two big public exhibitions of new drawings and pastels that allowed him to get acquainted with Degas’ master of the human form.

4. In a Café (1873)

In Degas’s painting In a Café, a couple sits side by side in a café, appearing tired after a hard night. The woman looks into space, her shoulders drooping, and a pale beverage on the table in front of her. If you wish to view this painting in person, you may go to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The two characters are plainly out and about together, yet neither is paying attention to the other. They’re both engrossed in their own worlds. She exudes a droopy, self-absorbed appearance, whilst he leans forward and looks away, quite vacantly.

As is customary with Degas, the individual elements of this fascinating image have been precisely positioned. We are continuously compelled to look past, through, and beyond objects, to move our focus back and forth between the real and reflected space.

The off-center frame, which introduces empty spaces and slashes the man’s pipe and hand, was influenced by Japanese prints, but Degas employs it here to create a drunken slewing.

5. The Pink Dancers Before the Ballet (1884)

‘The Pink Dancers, Before the Ballet,’ by Edgar Degas, was made in Impressionism style in 1884 and is presently on display in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Similarly, in this situation, the artist paints and then repaints scenes of a single topic to produce a full vision or knowledge of anything (in this case, ballerinas). The artist may perfect his method via craft, and the artist may develop his art through technique.

The topic is virtually unnecessary to the medium, yet Degas’ obsession with ballerinas has deeper links to the Impressionist idea of painting than one might think at first appearance.

6. Place de la Concorde (1875)

For four decades following World War II, Place de la Concorde by Edgar Degas was thought to be lost until Russian officials put it on display in the Hermitage Museum, where it is still displayed to this day.

In Place de la Concorde, Edgar Degas depicts his friend, artist, archeologist, as well as art patron Ludovic-Napoleon Lepic, as a flaneur, an archetype vital to each Paris street in the middle of the second half of the 20th century.

This family, like others seen in the artwork, is not from the Parisian working class.  They are clientele and acquaintances of Degas.  He sold his artwork to such households.

7. The Star (1878)

The Star, which is also known as Dancer on Stage, is a well-known painting by the French artist Edgar Degas, completed in 1878.

This masterwork is currently housed in the Musee d’Orsay, where you may pay a visit with your family and view it for yourself. Many art enthusiasts enjoy works in the Impressionist style.

This was one of the first times he used pastel over a monotype, a printing method he had just recently learned. The monotype process, which involves depositing or wiping away oily ink on a metal plate and then printing via a press, may actually generate two pictures, the first much darker than the second.

Young ballet students were dubbed Opera Rats for their “scuttling” around the stage in fast steps, a deliberate dig at their low-income background.

The sculpture, with her arms painfully stretched behind her back and her best efforts to keep her head held high, represents the sexually predatory position young girls were put into in order to be able to support themselves, and their families, and pursue their careers as dancers.

8. Race Horses (1885-1888)

Race Horses by Edgar Degas is now on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, Degas painted racing scenes, changing his horses and jockeys from one image to the next.

All of the characters in this piece have appeared in previous works, and several of the stances have pedigrees even more illustrious than the horses.

Despite its unique medium – pastel on a simple, untreated wood – this artwork stands out. Degas used the wood to color the sky and distant countryside, which depicts a Normandy village, as well as to produce a warm undertone that complements the turf in the foreground.

9. The Millinery Shop (1884-1890)

The Millinery Shop at the Art Institute of Chicago is Degas’s biggest and one-of-a-kind museum-scale work on the topic. In this roughly square canvas, a milliner sits at an angle behind a table of hats on wooden supports, studying the unresolved shape of an unfinished hat.

She along with the five hats that are shown to her right are represented from a slightly higher perspective, evoking the sense of coming across trendy hats in a show window or inside a shop.

The work’s X-radiography reveals that alterations to the original composition are closely related to a sequence of pastels. In two of these pieces, the woman wore a large round hat and was definitely a client, in addition to carrying a hat.

10. Interior (1868-1869)

Edgar Degas painted the interior on canvas in 1868-69. The Philadelphia Museum of Art now owns the picture.

Despite the painting’s abundance of detail, the drama happening between the lovers defies interpretation. Scholars believe the scenario depicts scenes from two works by Émile Zola that depict sad, stressful interactions between lovers.

Behind the woman is a circular table with a lamp and a sewing box with a piece of clothes. A white corset is on the floor. The woman’s hat and cloak are carefully arranged on the single bed’s foot end.

11. Young Spartans Exercising (1860)

Young Spartans Exercising is an original work of art by Edgar Degas, a French impressionist.  It is presently in the National Gallery of London.

The artwork depicts a scene from Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, in which Spartan ladies were obliged to partake in exercise, such as sprinting and throwing both the discus and javelin, and to combat guys.

Degas’ revisitation of the boys’ faces is frequently discussed in art criticism since the artist is said to have modified the characteristics of the youngsters from the classic handsome Greek ideal to a more urban modernistic aspect.

The Art Institute of Chicago has a separate version of the picture, also from circa 1860. This version is unfinished, with the same groups of young people in the foreground but a drastically changed background.

12. The Bellelli Family (1858-1867)

The Bellelli Family by Edgar Degas is on display in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. A young Degas created this somewhat unsettlingly dysfunctional family picture, which includes members of his own large Italian family.

This artwork was created while Degas was visiting his aunt, Laure de Gas, the Baroness Bellelli. The Baroness is shown with her husband, Baron Gennaro Bellelli, as well as their two children, Giulia and Giovanna. By the looks of this portrait, they are not a happy family.

The picture’s massive scale, straightforward arrangement, and sober, chilly colors all work together to create an oppressive atmosphere. The people appear reserved, as though striving to make a good impression for the family photo.

13. Young Woman with Ibis (1857–1858)

Degas sketched this arrangement in a journal on his second visit to Rome in 1857-1858. It is presently on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Originally intended to show a sad woman, the painting took on a mysterious aspect when Degas added the fictional Middle Eastern metropolis, pink flowers, and two scarlet ibises between 1860 and 1862.

The colorful ibises, in contrast to the precise finish of the person and cityscape, are just drawn in. Degas did not complete several of his early works, most of which he saved until his death, including this one.