Sometimes exhibiting with the Impressionists, Edgar Degas (page 33) was strongly influenced by their coloring and used it in realistic scenes of Paris life, the race track, and the opera ballet. Degas, son of a wealthy banker, received a thorough classical education and learned painting from a pupil of Ingres. In his compositions, he preserved a classical sense of order which was quite foreign to Impressionist aims. As he said, “No art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I accomplish is the result of reflection upon and study of the old masters....” Yet he reshaped conventional ideas of composition by drawing his subjects from life and refining his outlines after the example of Japanese prints. These Oriental colored woodcuts, which also influenced Manet, Whistler, and many others, came to Paris first as wrapping in boxes of china; they were discovered by painters, who found inspiration in their simple lines and decorative flat areas of color. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (page 35), like Degas, saw his pictures as both realistic and decorative. As a delicate boy of fourteen he injured both his legs so that they failed to grow. His father, Count Alphonse de Toulouse, had no patience with his weakling heir, but his mother encouraged him to paint. In 1885 he turned his back upon the academic style and, taking hints from the free brushwork of the Impressionists and from Japanese designs, Lautrec began to paint his pictures of Parisian night life, circus performers, and cabaret entertainers. Degas, at first hostile toward him, eventually declared, “Well, Lautrec, I can see you are one of our trade.” Vincent van Gogh (page 37) was a Dutchman who came to Paris in 1886 and met the Impressionists. He possessed a deep sincerity, but also had a difficult, flaring temper which alienated many people. After working unsuccessfully as a picture dealer, a tutor, and a lay preacher, he turned to art as a means of expressing his passionate emotions. At first he used dark, somber colors like those of his countryman Rembrandt; then seeing the Impressionists’ canvases, he adopted their brilliant colors. But their painting of merely optical impressions could not satisfy his urge for emotional expression. While he borrowed their bright palette, he used colors for emotional effects, and in his hands the broken brushwork became a nervous, intensely expressive agent to record his inner feelings. His whole remarkable career as an artist fell within the ten years before 1890, when he shot himself to escape insanity.