Edgar Degas works at Lightner Museum

Posted on March 5, 2019 by PluggedInto in Art, St. Johns // 0 Comments

SAINT AUGUSTINE – A rare look at the works of pioneering artist Edgar Degas comes to St. Augustine’s Lightner Museum in Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist – Works on Paper by the Artist and His Circle. Edgar Degas, one of the leading lights of the 19th-century art scene, is best known for his enchanting paintings of ballet dancers on and off the stage. But little is widely known about the enigmatic artist’s life and personality.

Featuring over 50 original works by Degas, The Lightner Museum offers unique insights into Degas’ inner world and the opportunity to see rarely exhibited works from the private collection of curator Robert Flynn Johnson.

Degas two

“Through his art, his words, and the circle of his friends and colleagues represented in the exhibition, the private persona of this elusive artist may emerge,” Johnson says. Johnson’s collection of drawings, prints, photographs, monotypes, and sculpture includes three unique self-portraits of the artist himself as well as Degas portraits of family members and fellow artists such as Mary Cassatt and Édouard Manet, just to name a few. Included are works on paper by Cassatt and Manet along with etchings and prints by many other famous members of Degas’ artistic circle. Works by Jean Leon Gerome, Honore Daumier, Pierre Puvis de Chavanne, Jean Everett Millais, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Alfred Stevens, Camille Pissarro, Gustave Moreau, Paul Cézanne and Eadweard Muybridge offer a fascinating look at the artist’s life and times. The exhibit also features a collection of beautifully colored monotype prints commissioned by Degas’ art dealer Ambroise Vollard, never before shown alongside Degas’ work.

Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist is on view at the Lightner from April 12 – June 16, 2019. A fully illustrated catalog written by Degas scholar and Curator of the Royal Academy of Art, Ann Dumas accompanies the exhibit.

This exhibition was organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA in association with Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA.