Edgar Degas

Draftsman of modern life — dancers, milliners, laundresses, and bathers caught in unguarded moments. Degas resisted the Impressionist label, preferring to call himself a 'realist' or 'independent', and his careful preparatory drawing sets him apart from colleagues who painted entirely en plein air. He was obsessed with movement and observation: more than half of his output depicts the ballet, not as glamour but as labor, with dancers stretching, scratching, adjusting their shoes. As his eyesight failed in later life he turned increasingly to pastel and to small wax sculptures, building three-dimensional studies of motion that anticipate the kinetic experiments of the next century.