Boy's Head
Edgar Degas (Paris 1834 - Paris 1917)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1899
Materials
Pencil on paper
Measurements
375 x 342 mm
Order this imageCollection
Mottisfont, Hampshire
NT 769723
Summary
Pencil drawing on paper, Boy's Head by Edgar Degas (Paris 1834 - Paris 1917), 1899
Full description
Degas abandoned his legal studies to train as an artist, becoming one of the most influential French painters and sculptors of his day. He was best known for his obsessive studies of dancers and women bathing, of real girls and women moving, balancing and twisting within unusual, off-centre compositions. Degas made sketches in a wide range of media as he interrogated his subjects from every angle. However, his work is almost never about them as individuals: he doesn’t paint people so much as figures engaged in poses or activities that intrigue him. In this drawing, he seems to have abandoned an initial attempt to define this boy’s rear-view profile, beginning again nearby. With his delicately shaped ear and soft tendrils of hair, this youth looks almost like a classical statue – Degas did draw from sculpture as well as live models in his endless exploration of the human form.
Provenance
The Artist's Studio; Sale Galerie Georges Petit, Paris 4ème Vente Degas, 2-4 July 1919 Lot 122B; Derek Hill, by whom presented through The National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund), 1996
Credit line
Mottisfont Abbey,The Derek Hill Collection (presented to the National Trust through the National Art-Collections Fund in 1996)
Makers and roles
Edgar Degas (Paris 1834 - Paris 1917), artist