Edgar Degas

Associated with Impressionism but sui generis. Degas's obsessive subject was modern movement: ballet dancers backstage and on stage, horse races, laundresses, café singers. He served in the National Guard during the Siege of Paris (1870–71) and, like Manet, documented the Franco-Prussian War from inside. His sculptures — particularly the Little Dancer Aged Fourteen — introduced raw texture and realism into a form that had remained idealised since antiquity.

• Roles: Painter, Sculptor