To anyone who is not an artist it must seem rather strange that Degas who could do anything – for whom setting down what he saw presented no difficulties at all – should have continued to draw the same poses year after year – often, it would seem, with increasing difficulty. Just as a classical dancer repeats the same movements again and again, in order to achieve a greater perfection of line and balance, so Degas repeats the same motifs, it was one of the things that gave him so much sympathy with dancers. He was continually struggling to achieve an idea of perfect form, but this did not prevent him looking for the truth in what might seem an artificial situation. Kenneth Clark, The Romantic Rebellion 1973
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas, born 19 July 1834 Paris. Degas: Passion for Perfection, Sky Arts 2020
What makes Degas fascinating and really very alive to a 21st century audience is that he is more interested in process than in the end result. ibid. Jane Munro, curator and keeper of paintings, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
You can see the intellectual understanding that underpins his work, particularly his curiosity for the work of earlier ages. ibid. Tim Knox, director The Fitzwilliam Museum
Make portraits of people in typical familiar poses, being sure to give above all their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies. ibid. Degas
The Cotton Office in New Orleans was exhibited in the second Impressionist Exhibition of 1876, and was the first painting by the artist to enter the French Public Collection. ibid.
I can get along very well without even going out of my own house. With a bowl of soup and three old brushes, you can make the finest landscape ever painted. ibid. Degas: An Intimate Portrait by Ambroise Vollard
One of the most extraordinary works that has ever been made … No artist had ever attempted to capture the rippling heart-breaking evanescence of life like this. Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr s2e1: Water Lilies, Channel 5 2021
Handcart: Snow-Covered Road at Honfleur: Claude Monet. Sister Wendy Beckett, BBC
She seems to be cocooned in ice: Camille on Her Deathbed: Claude Monet. ibid.
The man who has been hailed as the Father of Impressionism, a movement that arguably kickstarted western modern art. Art on the BBC: Monet: The French Revolutionary, Katy Hessel reporting, BBC 2022
Monet has been chocolate-boxed to death. ibid.
In the last quarter of his life, Monet focused his attention on the surface of his water garden ponds. ibid.
She [Berthe Morisot] acquired her own reputation by distinguished and beautiful colouring and dash. She was as much admired for her beauty as for her talent. A French critic sums up her qualities as follows: ‘All her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman’s work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality, which one would hardly have expected. Her water-colours, particularly, belong to a superior art: some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky, sea or a forest background and everything shows a sure and masterly fancy, for which our time can furnish no analogy. A series of Berthe Morisot’s pictures looks like a veritable bouquet, whose brilliancy is less due to the colour-schemes which are comparatively soft (grey and blue) than to the absolute correctness of the values. A hundred canvases and perhaps 300 water-colours attest this talent of high mark. Normandy coasts, scenes with pearly skies and turquoise horizons, radiant gardens of Nice, fruit-laden orchards, girls in white dresses, with big hats wreathed in flowers, young women in ball-dresses and flowers are the favourite themes of this artist.’ Encyclopaedia Americana 1920
On December 22nd 2000 three of the world’s greatest art treasures were stolen from the National Museum in Stockholm. Together the Rembrandt and two Renoir paintings were valued at $50,000,000. Art of the Heist s1e6: The Big Sting