The Psychology of Degas and His Relationship with Women

Silhouettes of ballerinas fill the frame as brushstrokes mimic the rhythm of song and dance. Intimate scenes of women captured through a foreign lens of someone grappling with cynicism. Edgar Degas is famously known for his depiction of women, but was this out of admiration or detest of the female experience itself? A closer look at his figures highlights the uncomfortable nature the viewer is greeted with. Unlike Impressionists such as Renoir and Tissot – artists who painted women with admiration – Degas often painted women in distressing and awkward stances. Understanding Degas’ figures deals with a multitude of layers of his own: contradictions of desire and detachment, admiration and disdain, each pressed into the canvas alongside the women he painted.

Born July 19th, 1834, in Paris, France, Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas was the son of a French-Italian banker from Napoli and an American-Creole woman from a prominent family in New Orleans. The stark difference in background between his parents resurfaces in his work like a fraying thread, small at first, but sticking out sorely as it unravels. At age thirteen, Edgar Degas, the oldest of five children, lost his mother, which paralyzed him emotionally and stunted his ability to form close romantic attachments to women. Degas drew inspiration from his upbringing and was encouraged to pursue the arts from an early age, although expectations of a full-fledged art career were low. After registering at the Louvre as a copyist and a brief stint in law school, Degas decided art was his passion and pursued it fully. Degas' talents flourished while he attended École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. As his technical mastery grew, so did the tension between the artist and the women who filled his canvas. 

Evidence adding to Degas’ disdain towards women comes from a well-known exchange with a hostess who once asked, 'Why do you paint women so ugly, Monsieur Degas?' to which he replied, 'Because, madam, women in general are ugly.' Many painters who knew the artist recall his detached nature around them, his close friend Édouard Manet even claiming Degas was 'not capable of loving a woman.' 

L'Étoile (1878) by Degas depicts a young ballerina dancing on stage, but closer observation reveals there is more than initially meets the eye. Dressed in a black tuxedo, a man lurks in the wings observing the ballerina. The sheer contrast in color between her and the male figure speaks volumes. Her figure is illuminated with pastels while he remains a flat, dark shadow with loose detail in the corner of the frame. Degas adorns the ballerina with red and brown flowers, and a tutu with hues matching the stage. This color choice is intentional and creates an illusory scene of her blending with the background. The identity of this man is not formally revealed, but due to the economic circumstances of many ballerinas, it is speculated that this ‘relationship’ was rooted in malice. Sponsors of ballerinas during that time were affluent men who took payment in various forms other than money. Degas’ decision to depict this bleak dynamic uncovers his true emotions toward women. Whether this ballerina was a woman of the night or simply a victim of her own socioeconomic class, Degas rendered her with a tenderness he withheld entirely from the man exploiting her. Does this suggest that his contempt was aimed at women, or at the world that failed them? 

Speculative comments and letters pertaining to Edgar Degas’ psychological fear of intimacy with women have emerged over the years, further feeding the claim. Artist Vincent van Gogh, a great admirer of Degas, hypothesized that his sexual impotence stemmed from the fear that intimacy would ‘cloud his creativity.’ In a letter to fellow painter Émile Bernard, van Gogh wrote, 'Degas lives like a little notary and does not love women because he knows that if he spent a lot of time kissing them, he would become mentally ill and inept.' He went on to argue this restraint was exactly what made Degas' paintings of intimacy between others so striking, noting that 'he paints them well, precisely because he himself is not at all pretentious about having erections.'

Yet for a man his close friend Manet insisted was ‘not capable of loving a woman,’ the historical record reveals a more intricate story. In 1889, Degas wrote to painter Giovanni Boldini ahead of a trip to Spain, anticipating ‘seductions’ in Andalusia and asking him to buy contraception in preparation. This is hardly the behavior of a man incapable of desire. In October 1890, painter Pierre-Georges Jeanniot confided to Paul Lafond that he believed Degas was 'haunted by thoughts of marriage.’ Nearly a decade later, between 1898 and 1899, Degas expressed romantic interest in Jeanne Baudot, a twenty-two-year-old painter and pupil of Renoir. According to Julie Manet’s diary, Degas mused, 'If I married Miss Baudot!…it would be a funny marriage,' and Manet herself actively encouraged the match. Although nothing came of this, it challenges the notion that Degas himself feared intimacy and was closed off to the idea of love.

The perplexity of Degas’ inner workings was not defined by a romantic relationship or a fruitful marriage, but by the connections he built through friendship and his quiet devotion to those closest to him. Was Degas a misunderstood man still mending the frayed thread of his emotionally charged maternal relationship, or was this a man who truly despised women? Mere hatred towards women seems to be a stretch, but disdain and utter discomfort are rather fitting. In the end, his brush accomplished what he himself never could. It held women close enough to study, but never close enough to be vulnerable. Degas' canvases reflect less the ambiguity of the female figure than the psychological portrait of the man who painted them.