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Degas Fine Art Reproductions

Edgar Degas - French Realist - 1834 - 1917

Dancers in Pink by Edgar Degas

A keen observer of women, Degas cultivated an objectivity that allowed him to catch his subjects in poses as natural and spontaneous as those in a photograph. After 1880, pastel became Degas' preferred medium. Its sharper colors allowed greater surface patterning, indicative of a modernism not-yet born.

Ballet Rehearsal by Edgar Degas

Degas' enthusiasm for the expressions of the human form, its movement, line and contour is captured in this delightful canvas with the ballet dancers of the Paris Opera. It is ravishingly beautiful - dramatic and moving - with the striking effect he creates with light playing against the shadows. Interestingly, Degas seats us above the stage, as voyeurs.

Degas Sculpture

Little Dancer of Degas
Norton Simon Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1881 A.D

Although Degas is mainly known as a painter, sculpting was almost as important in his life.

He began seriously to sculpt when he was in his early forties and, although he probably had no thought of exhibiting most of his sculpture, his modeling increasingly became a major part of his work.

At the time of his death his studio contained more than one-hundred and fifty wax models which he had made of dancing girls, race horses and women working or bathing.

With failing eyesight, sculpting became his principal medium of expression at the end of his career.

Degas said, "Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty."

The only sculpture exhibited by Degas in his lifetime, the wax version of the Little Dancer, caused a furor when first exhibited in 1881 because of its stark realism as Degas was clearly using the sculpture to question accepted ideas of art.

A sympathetic critic observed: "The terrible truthfulness of this statuette is a source of obvious discomfort...all their notions about sculpture, about that cold, inanimate whiteness, those memorable stereotypes replicated for centuries, are demolished. The fact is that, on first blow M. Degas has overturned the conventions of sculpture."

This sculpture focuses on the subject of dancing, which spirit only Degas can reflect.

The Dance Lesson by Edgar Degas

Degas was a sympathetic observer of the ballet dancer at work in preparation and rehearsal. His keyhole view encompassed the sublime and the mundane. At center, Jules Perrot instructs a dancer, while others rest showing no sign of the gracefulness they will display later on. (Note the dancer scratching her back!) Perhaps the greatest draftsman of his contemporaries, the involved arrangement of figures reveals the thoroughness of Degas' technical mastery.

More World Renown Art

• Howard Behrens
• Claude Monet
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Vincent Willem van Gogh

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