Artistic Influences on Degas

Several artists influenced Degas’ style and the development of his artwork, most significantly, Louis Lamothe, J.A.D. Ingres, and Eugene Delacroix. 

Louis Lamothe was a French academic artist who studied under Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin.  He served as Degas’ teacher and taught him the styles of Ingres, whom Degas grew to greatly admire.  While Degas was in his studio Lamothe taught in a traditional Academic style emphasizing the line and its importance to draftsmanship. 

With the help of his friends the Valpincon family who owned some of Ingres’ artwork, Degas was able to meet Ingres, a man who had a lasting influence on Degas’ work.  Ingres was a lead figure in the neo-classical movement and was known for his emphasis on discipline and draftsmanship.  Throughout his life he remembered how Ingres had urged him to ‘draw lines, young man, many lines”.  With the influence of Ingres, throughout his career, Degas believed that drawing should be the basis for all artistic composition. 

Degas was also greatly influenced by Ingres’ rival, artist Eugene Delacroix.  Delacroix was an advocate of inspired color and movement which was influential in the development of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.  Degas was drawn to the severity of line as well as to the enchantment of color.  With the use of Delacroix’s color and Ingres’ lines Degas described himself as “a colourist with line”.