Descendant of Poussin and Ingres (when Ingres fell down in the fit from which he never recovered, it was his pupil who carried him out of his studio), Degas worships drawing, and line is with him a cult. Japanese art has helped to mould his style, as it influenced many of the Impressionists. His oil-paintings, though for the most part correct in draughtsmanship, are frequently wiry and academic in technique. Colour was never his strong point, and it is in his pastels that we find the achievement of his life. In a masterly essay on this artist, Thèodore Duret writes: “Degas has proved once more that, with genius, subject is a secondary matter, merely its opportunity, one may say. It is out of itself, out of its inner consciousness, that the poetry and the beauty discovered in its production are drawn. His work will thus remain one of the most powerful, the most complete, and the most instinct with vitality amongst that of the masters of the nineteenth century.” Of Degas personally little is known. He comes of an old bourgeoise family, and at one time it is said that he possessed considerable financial means, which he sacrificed in order to save a brother from financial disaster. Although seventy years of age he still works with excessive labour at the art over which he has gained such a mastery. Scorning wealth, publicity, and popularity, he lives a life of complete isolation, dispensing with friends, able to more than hold his own against enemies. [Illustration: DANCING GIRL · E. DEGAS ] He has had two pupils whose names stand out prominently in the art of to-day, the American artist Miss Mary Cassatt (referred to elsewhere in this volume) and the caricaturist Forain. Degas has always had a bitter wit, the dread of his contemporaries, and many of his sayings have passed into history. During the height of the battle which raged around the Impressionists during the seventies, he remarked concerning the academic painters and critics: “On nous fusille, mais on fouille nos poches,” or, in other words, “They cover us with injuries, yet they make use of our ideas.” In him Whistler met his match. “My dear friend,” he said once to that great artist, “you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at all.” Upon another occasion, speaking of Whistler when the latter was having a number of photographic portraits taken, he observed sarcastically, “You cannot talk to him; he throws his cloak around him—and goes off to the photographer.” It was not likely that two such spirits would appreciate each other.