Son of banker, Edgar Degas grew up in a Parisian bourgeois milieu cultivated near the Luxembourg Gardens. During the first twenty years of his career, he experimented with all genres with a special attraction for portraits. If Degas is attached to the great movement of the Impressionists, there finds its place in the name of freedom of painting promoted by the group. In the open air, he prefers "what one sees only in his memory." Although the instigator most ardent Impressionist exhibitions, he never could abide neither the movement nor to others, and choosing his own artistic path.