Who Is Known For Painting Ballet Dancers?

Edgar Degas Dancers Ballerina Painting Ballerina Sculpture

No affair how many muses inspired them, sure Impressionist artists are associated with a single, signature subject field. From Claude Monet'southward Water Lilies to the female parent-daughter relationships captured by Mary Cassatt, each theme offers viewers a glimpse into the artist's interests, influences, and experiences.

While most Impressionists opted to explore their favorite subjects merely in oils, French creative personEdgar Degastook it a step farther, rendering his beloved ballerinas in paint, pastel, pencil, ink, and even wax.

Background

In the 1870s, Degas helped pioneer Impressionism. Like his young man French artists, he employed quick brushstrokes and used vivid color in his paintings. Different other Impressionists, still, Degas was not preoccupied with low-cal and nature. Instead, he was fascinated by movement and people—making ballerinas his ideal subject field.

"People phone call me the painter of dancing girls," Degas told Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard. "It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering motion and painting pretty clothes."

'The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage' (c. 1784) (Photo via Met Museum Public Domain)

With a sketchbook in hand, Degas regularly visited thePalais Garnier, Paris' premier opera firm, to discover ballet classes and picket rehearsals. He also invited ballet dancers to pose in his studio, allowing him to document their pirouettes and pliés with unprecedented precision.

Throughout his career, he produced approximately 1,500 depictions of dancers, culminating in a collection of paintings, pastels, and sculptures that contain over half of his entire oeuvre. Many of these pieces were created later 1880, when his eyesight was failing and he opted to work well-nigh exclusively on studies of ballerinas and similarly voyeuristic Japanese-inspired portraits of women bathing.

Drawings

Degas' pastel drawings of dancers are amongst his nigh well-known works. Many of the pieces, including The Star (1878), capture the spectacle of the ballet through idealized compositions, frenzied sketches, and backdrops spotlit with saturated colour.

Similarly, some pastel studies, similar Dancers at the Barre (1900), bear witness the ballerinas every bit they warm upward.

'Dancers at the Barre' (c. 1900) (Photo: Google Art Projection via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

As a draughtsman, Degas often experimented with different mediums, blending planes of pastel and watercolor washes with assuming, black ink. This avant-garde hybrid of drawing and monotype printmaking is evident in many of his works, includingTwo Dancers Inbound the Stage (c. 1877-1878), a piece defined by dramatic contrasts in colour, texture, and line.

Paintings

Unlike his pastels, Degas' oil paintings of dancers do non typically showcase on-stage performances. Instead, pieces like The Dance Class (1874) and The Trip the light fantastic toe Lesson(1879) offer a realistic glimpse into what goes on behind the curtain, featuring the girls as they quietly stretch, calmly rest, and listlessly listen to their instructor.

These pieces are often cropped similar candid photographs, enabling them to serve equally snapshots of everyday life. This is especially evident in The Rehearsal (1874), a painting that seemingly places as much emphasis on its spiral staircase as its star dancers.

Sculpture

Unlike pastel drawings and paintings on canvas, Degas did not produce a comprehensive collection of ballerina-inspired sculptures. Notwithstanding, the one that he did create—Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen—has get ane of his most famous dancer depictions.

Degas sculpted the wax figurine in 1880 and exhibited it at the sixth Impressionist exhibition the following year. The 40-inch sculpture is modeled afterward Marie van Goethem, a French ballet student. With emphasis on authenticity, Degas originally depicted her in a classical pose and dressed her in an authentic tutu and a wig of real hair.

Following his death in 1917, 28 bronze replicas were cast from the wax model. Today, they remain a highlight of some of the world's most famous museums, illustrating the timeless charm and indelible legacy of Degas' dancers.