Edgar Degas
Degas was born at 8 rue Saint-Georges on 19 July 1834, into a banking family. He spent almost his entire life within a short walk of the address.
8 rue Saint-Georges
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The house where Edgar Degas was born on 19 July 1834, on a quiet street in the 9th arrondissement — the district he would spend almost his entire life inside.
- 8 rue Saint-Georges, 75009 Paris
- Degas was born here on 19 July 1834
The place, briefly
Edgar Degas was born at 8 rue Saint-Georges on 19 July 1834, into a banking family with branches in Naples and New Orleans and money enough that he would never have to sell a painting to eat. The detail matters: it is the reason he could afford to be as difficult, as slow and as uninterested in pleasing anyone as he turned out to be.
What is remarkable about the address is how little he ever moved from it. The rue Saint-Georges sits in the 9th arrondissement, in the quarter that came to be called the Nouvelle Athènes, and Degas spent nearly the whole of his life within a few streets of where he was born — the studio on the rue Frochot, the long years on the rue Victor-Massé, the cafés on the place Pigalle, the Opera down the hill. He travelled, to Italy and to New Orleans, but he always came back to the same handful of blocks.
The building is private and there is nothing to see but the façade. It is worth standing in front of anyway, because the whole of Degas's Paris is a fifteen-minute walk from this door.
Key facts
- 19 July 1834
- Bankers, with branches in Naples and New Orleans
- The Nouvelle Athènes, 9th arrondissement
- Degas lived his whole life within a few streets of this address
- Private building — exterior only
Timeline
Edgar Degas is born at 8 rue Saint-Georges on 19 July.
He settles at 4 rue Frochot, a few minutes' walk north.
He dies at 6 boulevard de Clichy, still in the same quarter.
On the map
Questions before you go
Where was Edgar Degas born?
At 8 rue Saint-Georges in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, on 19 July 1834.
Can you visit the house?
No. It is a private building and there is nothing to see beyond the street façade.
Did Degas live in this quarter all his life?
Very nearly. Apart from travels to Italy and a stay in New Orleans, he spent his life within a small radius of his birthplace, in and around the Nouvelle Athènes quarter of the 9th.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Galerie Durand-Ruel, 11 rue Le Peletier
Paul Durand-Ruel's gallery, where the second Impressionist exhibition was held in 1876 — the dealer who kept buying the group's work through the years when almost nobody else would.
Visit the placeSalle Le Peletier
The theatre that housed the Paris Opera until it burned down in 1873. Its stage, rehearsal rooms and subscribers' foyer are the world behind Degas's dancers — and he went on painting it from memory long after it was ash.
Visit the placeOpéra-Comique (Salle Favart)
The Salle Favart, where Debussy's only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was first performed on 30 April 1902 — after nearly a decade of work and a dress rehearsal that turned into a public row.
Visit the placeBoussod, Valadon & Cie, 19 boulevard Montmartre
The Boussod, Valadon gallery on the boulevard Montmartre, where Berthe Morisot was given her first solo exhibition in 1892 — at the age of fifty-one, and three years before her death.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.