There is an irony about the quiet of the main gallery of the Sachler Museum at Harvard University. It is here that the largest North American collection of the works of famed impressionist Edgar Hilaire-Germain Degas have been housed since August, and will remain until Nov. 27.

Degas is best known for his paintings of dancers and opera singers, and the quiet of the museum seems inappropriate for the works of a man who was so moved by the motion, music and pageantry of theater. But that is just the first aspect of an exhibit that somehow does not quite seem right.

The exhibit, titled "Degas at Harvard," is organized strangely, with photographs, sculptures, drawings and paintings all mixed together. There seems to be no particular order to the arrangement, except that in some cases similar subjects are paired together-bathers in one area, horses in another.

But despite such discontinuity, "Degas at Harvard" is a wonderful showcase because it goes beyond what most know about Degas and examines his development and growth as an artist, as well as explores the different mediums in which he worked and the wide range of his creativity.

Degas began his career as an artist at the ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris but left in 1855 to train in Italy. He spent five years there, primarily studying the works of the Renaissance. "Degas at Harvard" includes various charcoal drawings from this early period, including several studies for portraits as well as a study of "Lorenzo de'Medici and his Attendants" circa 1860, which Degas copied from the Chapel of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence. These early works are not indicative of Degas' creativity, but they demonstrate the classical style that was the basis of his training, as was the case for most of the major Impressionists.

When he returned to France, Degas focused much of his energy on horses and horse racing, and it was at this time that he began his work as an Impressionist. Degas was an avid studier of lines, and the undefined lines characteristic of his later Impressionistic works appear in some of his paintings of horse races, including "Horses and Riders on Road" (1860-62). But Degas' most interesting work with horses is found in "Horse Trotting" (1881-90), a small bronze cast of a horse inspired by a series of photographs taken by Edward Maybridge in 1872. Maybridge wondered if there was ever a point in a horse's stride when all four hooves left the ground, so he used photography to confirm that such a point, in fact, exists; "Horse Trotting" depicts a horse with all four hooves in the air.

Later in his career, around 1890, Degas began taking photographs of his own and while he is believed to have taken over 60, just two have been confirmed as having been taken by him. There are three photographs in the "Degas at Harvard" exhibit-one is a portrait and the other two are landscapes. It is these landscape photographs that inspired Degas to dabble in the abstract, beginning around 1895. Two of those abstract works are found in the exhibit.

Those looking for the most famous Degas works such as Place de la Concorde will be disappointed, but there are a number of paintings and drawings of dancers, opera singers and nude female bathers. The exhibit includes nine studies or paintings of nudes, the most interesting of which is a charcoal and pastel drawing titled "Young Woman Lying on a Chaise Lounge" (1895-1900). The traces of yellow and red pastel are what make this work unique, not because it is unusual for Degas to combine pastel and charcoal, but because unlike other works where he wanted the colored pastels to allow his figures to blend into their surroundings, in this case he did not want the color to distract from the beauty of the model.

Degas once said "Reproduce only what has struck you-that is the essential." "Degas at Harvard" includes many of the essential Degas, and even though it is oddly organized and lacks the works considered his greatest masterpieces, rarer works that show the full range of this master of multiple media make the exhibit worth a visit.

Admission to "Degas at Harvard" is free with a Brandeis ID.