Edgar Degas

Record yearlate 1860s–c. 1907

summaryConnected front-of-house, backstage, and training labor into a sustained cross-media corpus, while advancing formal experiments such as monotypes.

M rationaleThe long-running opera-house subject matter produced a significant artistic increment in spatial organization, observation of movement, and cross-media expression; the number of selected exhibition works is not treated as direct proof of the complete oeuvre or its scale.

attribution rationaleEdgar Degas .52; prehistory of ballet and theatre visual culture .10; model and scene inputs pending verification .18; material, printmaking, and contemporaneous exhibition teams .10; unresolved share .10. Shares are revisable research judgments.

overlap boundaryCounts only roughly forty years of paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, and related studies centered on opera-house stages, rehearsal rooms, backstage spaces, and dancers; the final state of the Little Dancer sculpture remains in a separate family.

Evidence gapsThe identities and working conditions of individual models have not been fully verified; roughly 100 works are an exhibition selection, not a complete catalogue; the share for model and scene inputs is reserved pending verification; each work needs to distinguish active posing, collaboration, and mere depiction.

Record year1860s–1900s

summaryUsed cropping, off-center viewpoints, and observation of movement to form a modern urban corpus across painting, pastel, and printmaking.

M rationaleThe mature corpus has an independent increment in subject matter, composition, and media; its scale exceeds that of the early family but does not equal modernism as a whole.

attribution rationaleEdgar Degas .57; prehistory of modern-life and realist art .13; model and scene inputs pending verification .12; material, printmaking, and contemporaneous exhibition teams .09; unresolved share .09. Shares are revisable research judgments.

overlap boundaryCounts works of modern life such as horse racing, cafés, and ironing women; excludes opera ballet, bathers and hair-combing, and independent-exhibition organizational service.

Evidence gapsThe precise scope of urban works still needs mapping against an authoritative catalogue; evidence on whether models were paid and consented is incomplete; the share for model and scene inputs is reserved pending verification; each work needs to distinguish active posing, collaboration, and mere depiction.

Record year1878–1881 and lifetime studies

summaryCombined wax, real fabric, hair, and movement studies into a publicly exhibited final sculptural work.

M rationaleA single core work, but its materials, pose, and public controversy produced a strong independent increment; valued as a major individual work of art.

attribution rationaleEdgar Degas .52; Marie van Goethem .16; prehistory of sculpture and wax modeling .10; lifetime studio and exhibition team .08; unresolved share .14. Shares are revisable research judgments.

overlap boundaryThe quantified core is the wax sculpture made by Degas himself and exhibited in 1881, together with its lifetime movement studies; posthumous bronze reproductions and the organization of the estate are listed separately as an unquantified transmission chain and are not fed back into this point.

Evidence gapsDetails of the model's compensation and consent are unknown; whether the other lifetime wax sculptures were intended for public display remains uncertain.

Record yearc. 1870s–1912

summaryUsed noncentral viewpoints, serial observation, and mixed media to form a mature corpus of figures.

M rationaleThe subjects of bathing and hair-combing, together with related pastel and monotype experiments, form an independent body of work narrower in scope than the opera-house series; limitations in the relation of viewing are included in the judgment, while the unverified catalogue remains an evidentiary gap rather than a direct reason to lower M.

attribution rationaleEdgar Degas .58; prehistory of figure painting and printmaking .13; model and scene inputs pending verification .12; material, printmaking, and contemporaneous exhibition teams .08; unresolved share .09. Shares are revisable research judgments.

overlap boundaryCounts non-stage figure works involving bathing, hair-combing, and similar subjects, along with closely connected pastel and monotype experiments; use of those media in other subjects is counted by the corresponding work families.

Evidence gapsA focused art-historical account and a mutually exclusive catalogue of works are lacking; models' consent and working conditions are unknown; the share for model and scene inputs is reserved pending verification; each work needs to distinguish active posing, collaboration, and mere depiction.

Record yearc. 1855–1865

summaryDeveloped rigorous line, the depiction of figure poses, and group composition, while producing independent early works.

M rationaleThis is a complete corpus of works, but its independent scope is narrower and its innovative intensity lower than those of the mature families; it is therefore at the scale of generally important artworks.

attribution rationaleEdgar Degas .62; prehistory of academic and classical painting .15; model and scene inputs pending verification .09; contemporaneous exhibition and sales chain .06; unresolved share .08. Shares are revisable research judgments.

overlap boundaryCounts only the principal corpus of portraits and history paintings before the turn toward modern life; it does not duplicate his later urban subjects or stage works.

Evidence gapsSpecific representative works and their reception history have not been checked item by item; the share for model and scene inputs is reserved pending verification; each work needs to distinguish active posing, collaboration, and mere depiction.

Record yearfrom 1873

summaryCo-initiated, with other artists, a channel for showing work independent of academic juries.

M rationaleEstimated as the cultural-service increment of jointly initiating an exhibition mechanism, with scope limited to organizational arrangements; it does not claim the full operations of multiple exhibitions or the value of Impressionist works.

attribution rationaleEdgar Degas .18; co-organizers of independent exhibitions .50; venue and operations collaborators .18; prehistory of independent exhibitions .06; unresolved share .08. Shares are revisable research judgments.

overlap boundaryCounts only the organizational increment of jointly initiating a jury-free independent-exhibition channel in 1873; subsequent participation does not equal continuing administrative labor, and the artistic value of exhibited works is already recorded in the work families.

Evidence gapsThe organizational, financial, and curatorial responsibilities for each exhibition have not been verified item by item; institutional sources differ between six and seven listed participations, pending comparison with exhibition-by-exhibition catalogues; the count does not directly enter the scoring. Specific individual roles in fundraising, venue work, cataloguing, and organizational arrangements for each occasion remain to be supplied.