| Young Woman in Blue | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Edgar Degas |
| Year | 1884 |
| Type | Pastel over charcoal on buff paper |
| Dimensions | 61.6 cm× 47 cm(24.25 in× 18.5 in) |
| Location | Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis |
Young Woman in Blue is a drawing by French artist Edgar Degas, created in 1884. It is currently in the permanent collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
The subject appears to be a young saleswoman, observed in a Parisian hat shop. She is seen from above and behind, and her back is straitlaced and proper. Her hair is tied in a tight bun at the base of her skull, and her straight bangs are over her eyes. Her jacket is a deep blue and is the focal point of the drawing. She looks impatient, her arms crossed and her nose up in the air, and she seems to be absorbed in herself, paying little to no attention to the customers around her. [1]
According to Mary Cassatt, Degas' protégée and friend, Degas often asked her to pose for him after going with her to the dressmaker's or the milliner's. He often asked her to assume a role or a stance he saw while out with her, especially if the pose was difficult. This separated Degas from the other Impressionists of the time, as working in a studio is decidedly not spontaneous. His focus on the figure was also decidedly not following the Impressionist school, keeping his work mainly focused on women in Parisian life. [2]
Degas also desired to revive the pastel as an art form; a form which had fallen out of style in the 19th century.
Young Woman in Blue was sold at Degas' estate sale, part 2, in December 1918, after the artist's death. It was purchased by the Galerie Georges Petit, in Tabelaux. It was purchased by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1938, using the Delavan Smith Fund. [3]
Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot was a French painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Suzanne Valadon was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.
Jean-Louis Forain was a French Impressionist painter and printmaker, working in media including oils, watercolour, pastel, etching and lithograph. Compared to many of his Impressionist colleagues, he was more successful during his lifetime, but his reputation is now much less exalted.
Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando is an oil on canvas painting by the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas. Painted in 1879 and exhibited at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris that same year, it is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London. It is Degas's only circus painting, and Miss La La is the only identifiable person of color in Degas's works. The special identity of Miss La La and the great skills Degas used in painting her performance in the circus made this piece of art important, widely appreciated but, at the same time, controversial.
The Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building is an exhibit building located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, in the U.S. state of Vermont. It was built as a memorial to the museum's founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, and her husband, James Watson Webb II. It is home to the museum's European Paintings Collection. The collection is shown in six period rooms relocated from Electra and J. Watson Webb's 1930s New York City apartment at 740 Park Avenue.
Little Girl in a Blue Armchair is an 1878 oil painting by the American painter, printmaker, pastelist, and connoisseur Mary Cassatt. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Edgar Degas made some changes in the painting.
Paule Gobillard was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter who was heavily influenced by the Impressionists. She is the niece of Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet, the brother of Édouard Manet, who taught her lessons in painting as part of her education upon being orphaned at an early age. She was unknown in the art scene compared to her relatives. She exhibited with the Société des Indépendants in 1904 and in 1926.
La Parisienne is an oil painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, completed in 1874 and now displayed at the National Museum Cardiff. The work, which was one of seven presented by Renoir at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, is often referred to as The Blue Lady(French: La Dame en Bleu) and is one of the centre-pieces of the National Museum's art collection.
After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself is a pastel drawing by Edgar Degas, made between 1890 and 1895. Since 1959, it has been in the collection of the National Gallery, London. This work is one in a series of pastels and oils that Degas created depicting female nudes. Originally, Degas exhibited his works at Impressionist exhibitions in Paris, where he gained a loyal following.
Woman Ironing is a 1904 oil painting by Pablo Picasso that was completed during the artist's Blue Period (1901—1904). This evocative image, painted in neutral tones of blue and gray, depicts an emaciated woman with hollowed eyes, sunken cheeks, and bent form, as she presses down on an iron with all her will. A recurrent subject matter for Picasso during this time is the desolation of social outsiders. This painting, as the rest of his works of the Blue Period, is inspired by his life in Spain but was painted in Paris.
Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Mary Cassatt. The painting depicts a mother and her child in front of a mirror. The painting provides a glimpse of the domestic life of a mother and her child, evoking religious iconography from the Italian Renaissance. However, portrayals of a mother and her child are common in Cassatt's work, so it is possible that this similarity is coincidental rather than intentional.
The American artist Mary Cassatt painted The Cup of Tea in Paris ca. 1879–1881. The painting depicts Mary's sister Lydia Cassatt in a typical, upper class-Parisian ritual of afternoon tea. Scholars have observed that Cassatt's choice to employ vivid colors, loose brushstrokes, and unique perspective to portray the scene makes it a quintessentially Impressionist painting.
Prostitution in Impressionist painting was a common subject in the art of the period. Prostitution was a very widespread phenomenon in nineteenth-century Paris and although an accepted practice among the nineteenth century bourgeoisie, it was nevertheless a topic that remained largely taboo in polite society. As a result, Impressionist works depicting the prostitute often became the subject of scandal, and particularly venomous criticism. Some works showed her with considerable sympathy, while others attempted to impart an agency to her; likewise some work showed high-class courtesans, and others prostitutes awaiting clients on the streets. In addition to the sexual revulsion/attraction the figure of the prostitute stirred, she functioned as a sign of modernity, a clear sign of the entanglement of sex, class, power and money.
Singer with a Glove by Edgar Degas, originally titled Chanteuse de Café, la chanteuse au gant, is an 1878 pastel drawing on canvas 53.2 x 41 cm. Degas was a French artist known for his pastels, paintings, sculptures, prints, and charcoal drawings. This pastel is part of a series of works that have cafe-concert singers as their subject. Degas was a habitué of those places, especially the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, and he uses them as the settings for many of his works.
Girl Arranging Her Hair is an 1886 painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The painting currently is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. It was originally exhibited at the Eighth and last Impressionist exhibition, which opened on May 15, 1886.
At the Races in the Countryside or Carriage at the Races is an 1869 oil painting by the French painter Edgar Degas. The painting, which depicts a scene of a family in a horse-drawn carriage in the countryside, is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The painting was shown at the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874.