It was always said that Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas , the great impressionist painter, became a hermit for the last 20 or 30 years of his life and that his great days as an artist were over. In n fact, he was obsessively painting the female figure, creating some of the most original and dazzling pictures of his life, pictures that profoundly influenced the art of the 20th century. On the eve of a major exhibition of late works by Degas at London's National Gallery, Richard Kendall , who put together the exhibition, discusses the late flowering of Degas's talent with artists including Howard Hodgkin and Paula Rego , and explores the influence of his work on, among others, Piccasso and Matisse.