Brief Biography-Edgar Degas was from Paris; he was baptized Hilaire-Germain-Edgar de Gas but preferred the name Degas. His father was a banker and his mother who was from a wealthy family died when he was thirteen. He studied law until the age of eighteen when he convinced his father he wanted to be a painter. He set up a studio in the family house and was tutored by one Louis Lamothe who had been tutored by Dominique Ingres. He met the 75-year-old Ingres through a family friend called Valpincon who had one of Ingres's paintings. Ingres wanted Valpincon to release the painting for an exhibition but refused to do so, Edgar convinced him to release it and Valpincon brought him to see Ingres who gave him advice on painting. Edgar travelled Italy during the 1850s, staying in Naples and Florence where he painted several portraits, notably "The Bellelli Family" who were his cousins. Besides Ingres he was also influenced by Eugene Delacroix. In the 1862, he became friends with Edouard Manet and they had a good degree of influence on each other. Edgar was called up to join the artillery when the war with Prussia broke out in and his eyesight was damaged during the siege of Paris in 1871. In 1874 when his father died it was revealed that the family had serious financial difficulties and he was forced to sell his house and all his paintings to bail them out. He subsequently struggled to produce enough painting to support himself adequately. He received a considerable amount of criticism about his work, however by 1886 when he was painting dancers at the Paris Opera things picked up somewhat. He became good friends with Mary Cassatt, but is believed they weren't lovers, Edgar never married. His eyesight began to fail in the late 1880s and he withdrew from public life doing fewer paintings, he found it easier to do sculpture. His later years were steeped in depression as he had become a recluse. He was upset at the exoneration of Dreyfus in his espionage affair in 1897 and fell out with some friends over it, notably Pissarro, as Edgar he was anti-Semitic. In 1912, he was evicted from his studio and with poor eyesight he gave up working. He lived a life of solitude until his death in 1917