The stunning paintings of young dancers and women by Edgar Degas are well loved by many arts patrons. Degas used his classical techniques and merged it with his avant-garde, impressionistic tendencies to create singular portraits of modern life in Paris during the late 1800s. There are a few things you might not know about this important artist, like these five facts:

Degas initially studied law.
At the request of his father, Degas enrolled into the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris. It didn’t suit him well, and Degas left the school two years later to study his true passion—art—at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Degas never married.
For all of the time he spent with women, drawing, painting, and obsessing over them, Degas never took a wife. He had intimate relationships throughout his life, occasionally with famous artistic women like Mary Cassatt, but the painter remained a bachelor until his death.

New Orleans was his second home.
Degas was born in Paris to a French father and American mother, who was from New Orleans, Louisiana. As an adult, Degas spent much of his time between the two cities, often staying for long periods in New Orleans during the French-Prussia War. His painting "The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans" was inspired by the city and was the only work purchased by a museum during his lifetime.

He collected art.
Degas was a rare type of artist who enjoyed financial success, unlike many of his contemporaries. This allowed him the ability to purchase artwork to create a collection that included work from Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh.

He stopped painting.
Toward the end of his life, Degas suffered from terrible sight problems. Embittered by this problem, Degas stopped painting altogether. He focused on sculpture, experimented with photography, and promoted his own work. By the time he died in 1917, he had stopped his artistic endeavors altogether.

Edgar Degas [Biography]
Edgar Degas Biography [Edgar Degas]
Edgar Degas Biography [Modern Art Muse]