When the Franco-Prussian war began in 1870, Degas enlisted in the French National Guard artillery. It was during his service in the army that he learned he might lose his eyesight, which would have a tragic impact on his life.
In 1872, Degas went to New Orleans to visit his mother’s relatives who were cotton traders. Although the purpose of the trip was business, he sketched a great deal. Though by nature disinclined to react with much emotion, he was happy with his new impressions all the same. For the 1874 Impressionist exhibition, Degas contributed canvases and drawings with motifs that, from then on, would forever be associated with him: the theatre, ballet classes, washerwomen, racetracks, and nudes. In the exhibition that followed, portraits, milliners, and paintings executed from impressions of New Orleans appeared. Cabarets and the circus would come later. At the beginning of his development as an Impressionist, two paintings represented extremely important steps.
Degas was the only painter of his generation who took photography seriously. He took intrest in it rather late, in the middle of the 1880s, and bought a camera around 1895. This proves that the unique features of Degas’ compositions do not relate to the direct influence of the camera, but to the specificity of his own vision of the world. When he began to take photographs himself, it was his vision that influenced the compositions of his photographs, not the other way around.
In 1876, Degas painted The Absinthe Drinker (Glass of Absinthe). At that time the artists had already abandoned the Café Guerbois and reunited at La Nouvelle Athènes in the Place Pigalle. Degas had lived in this neighbourhood for a large portion of his life: in rue Blanche, rue Fontaine, and rue Saint-Georges. He could now regularly be found in the evenings on the terrace of La Nouvelle Athènes with Édouard Manet, Émile Zola, and various Impressionists and critics. For his new painting he asked his friend, engraver Marcellin Desboutin, just back from Florence, and the pretty actress Ellen Andrée to pose for him. Ellen Andrée would later pose at the same location, on the terrace of La Nouvelle Athènes, for Manet’s The Plum, and also for Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party on the island of Croissy