Degas landscapes

by Richard Kendall

Degas is renowned for his masterful studies of the human body - powerfully rendered paintings of dancers, jockeys, washerwomen and bathers. It is less well known, however, that he also produced challenging and varied landscapes at almost every phase of his career - from his early travels in Italy, to his association with the Impressionist movement, and into his final decades. Remarkably, Degas chose the subject of landscape for his only one-person show in 1892. This lavishly illustrated book by Richard Kendall is the first to deal with Degas' landscapes, relating them to his other work and to his evolving views of art. Kendall demolishes the myth of Degas' indifference to the landscape itself and to the painters of landscape art. He traces Degas' first experiments in watercolour, oil and etching; his progress as a painter of equestrian scenes and pastel seascapes in the 1860s; and his association with Pissarro, Cassatt and Gauguin and rivalry with Monet and Cezanne in the middle of his