My study of Edgar Degas provides an arena for the examination of how artistic production can elucidate the complexities of cultural diversity, particularly through the evolution of artistic identity through overlapping cultural influences. Previous scholarship on Degas has been mainly Francophile in orientation, while my work focuses on the parameters of artistic reciprocity between Degas and nineteenth-century Italian art, artists and critics. Degas spent the majority of his formative years (July 1856-April 1860) traveling and studying in Italy, with extended periods in Rome, Naples and Florence. He actively sketched after the Italian Renaissance masters, participated in life drawing sessions at the Villa Medici, and partook in artistic exchange through friendships established in the social atmosphere of cafés. Familial bonds, through blood and marriage, to Naples and Florence provided Degas with additional ties to the peninsula. His camaraderie with Italian artists and critics did not end upon his return to Paris. Rather, these Italian artists became a vital part of Degas' social circle, with whom he travelled, dined, and participated in a variety of artistic exchanges. These exchanges fundamentally impacted Degas' oeuvre, as well as those of the Italians. Exploring Degas' connections with the art community of Italy allows a reevaluation of the traditional understanding of Degas as a French artist. It focuses attention on the impact that Italian aesthetics had on the formation of Degas' style which has been historically understood as tied to Parisian modernism. Degas provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of multicultural influences arising from his attention to the artistic methodology of the French Academy, his Italian lineage and his role as a French tourist and artist in Italy. Finding the structure of the École too constrictive and instead preferring to forge a parallel route to Academicism, Degas traveled to the peninsula outside of the sphere of the French Academy. He relied on a shared language, culture and familial connections to remain abroad longer and travel more extensively than many of his contemporaries. As a result Degas is much more rooted in the Italian culture than any of his French contemporaries. The many dimensions and experiences of Degas' Italian sojourn affected the burgeoning career of an artist who intended to join the ranks of the history painters, and instead found himself a critical observer of contemporary life. What I elucidate in this dissertation is how deeply rooted Degas is in the language, cultures and history of Italy. These unbreakable ties, the many aspects of the Italian cultures in which he feels at home are absorbed and brought back to Paris and into his oeuvre. This study seeks to demonstrate that Degas was neither wholly French nor Italian (or for that matter, American), rather his multiple dimensions make for an international, truly cosmopolitan artist in the second half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, I engage and explore the social and artistic relationships of a group of artists who were acutely aware of the pressures of nationalism and the boundaries of nations, but while conceding to these realities, did not want to be limited by such demarcations. This reading of the evidence allows for a more meaningful investigation of the modalities of the formation of artistic identity and dialogue in the nineteenth century.

La Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (1881) de l’artiste français Edgar Degas (1834-1917) représente et déforme plusieurs catégories sociales et artistiques de son époque. L’œuvre peut ainsi être lue comme une mise en abyme à la fois des changements sociaux et des peurs qu’ils suscitent quant aux redéfinitions du rôle et de la place de la sculpture dans l’art et de l’art, des classes sociales, de la science et de la femme dans la société qui s’opèrent dans la seconde moitié du 19e siècle. D’une mise en contexte de l’œuvre à une analyse de la figure de la ballerine, en passant par une lecture du monde de la poupée et de la criminalité, nous chercherons à montrer comment l’œuvre offre une lecture subversive des valeurs qui sous-tendent ces catégories structurelles du Paris industriel. Ce jeu des catégories fait de la Petite danseuse une œuvre instable et ambiguë à l’image, peut-être exacerbée, de la société. La sculpture de Degas joue avec et surtout entre ces divers pôles de la société parisienne, décloisonnant ceux-ci et proposant une autre façon de comprendre la société contemporaine. Prenant ancrage dans un discours critique postmoderne, féministe et postcolonialist, le présent travail se propose ainsi de réactualiser la fonction critique de l’œuvre. / The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1881) of French artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917) represents and deconstructs all at once, many social and artistic categories of its own time. The work represents social changes and the fear that they generate as it relates to the place of sculpture in art and of art, social classes, science and women’s role in society. Degas’ sculpture plays with and between these structures, deconstructing them and offering new ways of understanding contemporary society. After putting the work in context, we look at the link it has with dolls, how it addresses criminality, and how it questions the ballerina image. The Little Dancer then becomes an ambiguous, unstable and indefinable work reflecting in an acute way its society. Rooted in postmodernism, feminism and postcolonialism, we will explain how the sculpture offers a subversive reading of the values subtending industrial 19th Century Parisian constructs.

La Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (1881) de l’artiste français Edgar Degas (1834-1917) représente et déforme plusieurs catégories sociales et artistiques de son époque. L’œuvre peut ainsi être lue comme une mise en abyme à la fois des changements sociaux et des peurs qu’ils suscitent quant aux redéfinitions du rôle et de la place de la sculpture dans l’art et de l’art, des classes sociales, de la science et de la femme dans la société qui s’opèrent dans la seconde moitié du 19e siècle. D’une mise en contexte de l’œuvre à une analyse de la figure de la ballerine, en passant par une lecture du monde de la poupée et de la criminalité, nous chercherons à montrer comment l’œuvre offre une lecture subversive des valeurs qui sous-tendent ces catégories structurelles du Paris industriel. Ce jeu des catégories fait de la Petite danseuse une œuvre instable et ambiguë à l’image, peut-être exacerbée, de la société. La sculpture de Degas joue avec et surtout entre ces divers pôles de la société parisienne, décloisonnant ceux-ci et proposant une autre façon de comprendre la société contemporaine. Prenant ancrage dans un discours critique postmoderne, féministe et postcolonialist, le présent travail se propose ainsi de réactualiser la fonction critique de l’œuvre. / The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1881) of French artist Edgar Degas (1834-1917) represents and deconstructs all at once, many social and artistic categories of its own time. The work represents social changes and the fear that they generate as it relates to the place of sculpture in art and of art, social classes, science and women’s role in society. Degas’ sculpture plays with and between these structures, deconstructing them and offering new ways of understanding contemporary society. After putting the work in context, we look at the link it has with dolls, how it addresses criminality, and how it questions the ballerina image. The Little Dancer then becomes an ambiguous, unstable and indefinable work reflecting in an acute way its society. Rooted in postmodernism, feminism and postcolonialism, we will explain how the sculpture offers a subversive reading of the values subtending industrial 19th Century Parisian constructs.

The context in which any artist creates an artwork is integral to understanding its significance, and one crucial aspect of context is how a work was created. When first looking at how Edgar Degas created his dancer paintings, his process seems simple- he watched the dancers and then painted what he saw. However, that is only a surface examination of a much more complicated system of observation, practice, repetition, mastery, and reproduction. This thesis investigates how Degas bridged the gap between observation and understanding of balletic technique; how deep his knowledge of balletic technique was; and if Degas did have a deep understanding of balletic technique, what process he utilized to gain that knowledge. It reconstructs the process Degas utilized to learn and then reproduce the repertoire of the Paris Opéra ballet by pairing visual analysis of specific works with my own knowledge of ballet technique as a dancer of twenty years. Ultimately, this study reveals that Degas learned how to dance classical ballet by mimicking the process ballerinas used to learn how to dance: first watching, then doing, and finally performing.

Le présent mémoire propose de retracer les parcours d’Edgar Degas et d’Auguste Rodin afin de comprendre comment ces deux artistes en sont arrivés à s’intéresser aux corps féminins en mouvement, au point de faire des états de corps plutôt que des états d’âme leur sujet de prédilection. Partant du fait que le premier avait d’abord songé à renouveler la peinture d’histoire et que le second s’inspirait volontiers de sources littéraires pour ses monuments, nous avons concentré notre approche sur la perte progressive de tout substrat narratif dans leur traitement des figures féminines. Nous examinons comment ce déplacement les dispense de l’impératif de créer des personnages vraisemblables pour diriger l’intérêt vers le modèle posant et les conditions de production de l’atelier. Il en résulte un curieux renversement des procédés qui, dans la tradition académique, assignaient le talent de l’artiste à la réalisation de la beauté idéale. Alors que les corps de femmes représentés par les deux artistes se livrent à des contorsions qui les défigurent avant de les faire éclater en fragments, Degas et Rodin multiplient les traces de leur dialogue avec le matériau et signalent leur volonté d’en finir avec certaines conventions de leur médium. Ces choix ne peuvent pas s’expliquer en dehors des bouleversements socioéconomiques importants qui traversent la période, affectant la condition féminine mais aussi celle des artistes, de leurs institutions et de leur marché. / This thesis proposes to follow the development of Edgar Degas’ and Auguste Rodin’s work to understand how those two artists came to take a quasi-exclusive interest in female bodies, to the point that physical rather than emotional states became the main focus of their oeuvre. Considering that the former was tempted by history painting and that the latter did not hesitate, at first, to borrow from literary sources for his monuments, we focus our approach on the progressive elimination of all narrative subtexts in their representations of female figures. We examine how this move displaced the interest from character and role playing to focus on the physical presence of the model and on the working conditions prevailing in the atelier. This results in a complete overthrowing of the academic rules enrolling artistic talent in the service of ideal beauty. While their female bodies become so contorted that they end up disfigured before exploding into fragments, the two artists make themselves more present as the producers of their work, leaving traces of their manipulations and structural inventions in their mediums. These strategies are of course inseparable from the important socioeconomic changes that mark the period and modify not only the condition of women but also the status of artists, the authority of art institutions and the nature of the art market.

Throughout the history of art, the pastel medium has been considered a medium of secondary interest. Despite its pulsating textures, vibrant colors, and unique receptivity to touch, this medium has been recognized above all for its swiftness in stroke and subsequent ability of the artist to record images of fleeting moments and ideas almost instantaneously. The focus on the advantageous rapidity of the pastel, however, hindered the pastel medium's potential as a mere preliminary technique to working with grander mediums, such as oil paint, thus failing to recognize the prominence of pastel in capturing character. This research endeavor focuses on a very specific era with comparably high usage of pastel-- late nineteenth-century Paris--and the distinctive characteristic that defines said era--the hyper-sexuality of the Parisian prostitute. The eminent presence of prostitution and the consequential iconography of female sexuality in late nineteenth-century Paris defined the world of French Bohemia and seeped into the artistic exchange of the era. Although holding a traditionally subsidiary position to other historically primary mediums, the pastel medium prevailed in communicating the sexuality, sensuality, and promiscuity of the sinful female in Paris at the close of the century. The pastel works of prominent artists in the nightlife milieu such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas which revolve around the theme of prostitution serve as key illustrations of the distinctive ability of the ephemeral medium to capture the mood and personality--and therefore the sensual quintessence--of its subject. Through contextual and visual analysis, this research endeavor thus ultimately aims to lift the traditionally secondary pastel medium to one of impressive proportions, emphasizing its unique advantages and raising its overall credence.

This thesis provides an overview of the engagement with the material culture of Assyria, unearthed in the Middle East from 1845 onwards by British and French archaeologists. It sets the artistic discovery of Assyria within the visual culture of the period through reference not only to painting but also to illustrated newspapers, books, journals, performances and popular entertainments. The thesis presents a more vigorous, interlinked, and widespread engagement than previous studies have indicated, primarily by providing a comprehensive corpus of artistic responses. The artistic connections between Britain and France were close. Works influenced by Assyria were published, exhibited and reviewed in the contemporary press, on both sides of the English Channel. Some artists, such as Gustave Doré, successfully maintained careers in both London and Paris. It is therefore often meaningless to speak of a wholly ‘French’ or ‘British’ reception, since these responses were coloured by artistic crosscurrents that operated in both directions, a crucial theme to be explored in this dissertation. In Britain, print culture also transported to the regions, away from large metropolitan centres, knowledge of Assyria and Assyrian-inspired art through its appeal to the market for biblical images. Assyria benefited from the explosion in graphical communication. This thesis examines the artistic response to Assyria within a chronological framework. It begins with an overview of the initial period in the 1850s that traces the first British discoveries. Chapter Two explores the different artistic turn Assyria took in the 1860s. Chapter Three deals with the French reception in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter Four concludes the British reception up to 1900, and Chapter Five deals with the twentieth century. The thesis contends that far from being a niche subject engaged with a particular group of artists, Assyrian art was a major rediscovery that affected all fields of visual culture in the nineteenth century.