Edgar Degas
Überraschte Frau, 1919/1921

Alfred Flechtheim and Edgar Degas

The French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas exhibited together with contemporary Impressionist artists. However, his works differ as a result of the delicate use of lines and their precisely structured pictorial composition. His career as an artist after breaking off his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was primarily marked by trips to Italy and the USA, as well as the intensive study and copying of works by major artists in local museums. During this time he met Eduard Manet and later became acquainted with Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and other contemporaries such as Émile Zola. His favourite subject was the portrait that followed a brief period working in the style of history painters. He focused on subjects such as Parisian nightlife, ballet, horse-racing and women, capturing the latter grooming themselves or at work. Apart from oil paintings he also created numerous works in pastel chalk, drawings and, particularly late in life, sculptures, as he found these easier to make in the face of his worsening blindness. Works by Degas were shown at annual exhibitions of works by the Impressionists and at the Paris Salon.

Degas’ works were frequently included in solo and group exhibitions at Flechtheim’s galleries. He was principally backed by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. An exhibition of his sculptures was held in 1926 in Flechtheim’s gallery in Berlin. This was then shown at the Galerie Thannhauser in Munich and the Galerie Arnold in Dresden.

Degas’ open anti-Semitism, that ultimately led to the artist’s isolation when he was old, did not seem to have played a role later, either with regard to the interest Flechtheim showed for his work or the confiscation at a later date of various works by Degas by the National Socialists.