An artist who captured the grace and beauty of ballet dancers and race horses, Edgar Hilaire-Germain Degas (1834–1917) was born on this day in Paris. The son of a wealthy banker, he abandoned law for art.

"No art was ever less spontaneous than mine," he once said. "What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament I know nothing."

Degas celebrated the female body, its harmony of movement and passion of expression. "What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming," he joked.

Unlike his Impressionist peers who painted outdoors, Degas preferred the studio. Inspired by photography and Japanese composition, he painted from memory. Motion intrigued him more than light, and nearly half of his 2,000 works were about dance.

“You must have a high concept not of what you are doing, but of what you may do someday. Without that there’s no point to working," he believed.

When his vision faded in the 1890s, Degas turned to sculpture and pastels. He mixed memory with grace, explaining, “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”