dancers in the classroom

Dancers in the classroom

Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French painter and sculptor, is considered one of the major representatives of Impressionism through its innovative composition and its prospect analysis movement. He was also one of the most active organizers impressionist movements, although his artistic ideas were distinct from those of his Impressionist friends. His real name Hilaire Germain Edgar de Gas, he was born in Paris in July 1834 in a large noble family of bankers, wealthy and cultured. After briefly studying law, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts under the direction of Lamothe, a pupil of Ingres , a painter whom he was always devote boundless admiration . There he acquired a mastery of design that will always be a major feature of his art. Degas assiduously frequented the Paris Opera, as a spectator, but also behind the scenes , home to the dance , where he was introduced by a musician friend of the orchestra. Degas carefully observed the most spontaneous, natural and harmless gestures, moments of rest where the concentration and relaxes the body relaxes after a grueling effort learning and implacable rigor.

The scene takes place at the Opera de Paris. Degas chose here to paint dancers in a dance hall where they are supposed to repeat. The painter through unfrozen characters, give a vivid picture, a realistic picture of the table. Array elements showing that Degas wanted in this table showed the realism of the scene is highlighted by the dancer in the foreground sitting on the piano without embarrassment , scratching the back, one with a fan, the little dog and watering can used to wet the floor to prevent slipping. This table shows the power of Degas to make the movement and spontaneity. It can also highlight ...

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...earances, the characteristic elements of the choreography we recover in this work. An unmistakable painting characters enhanced by a sometimes extreme deletion reduced to a vague architectural framework, combined with a research movement that generally favor Degas looking shadows playing in the tissues of tutus decor rather than the expressiveness of dancers, and finally working in space with a subtle perspective out of a table in the first closed first, and come in all kinds of matches, all at the same time dividing and uniting the table. So we can say that this work corresponds to its title: a class, because it is a course circling the Choreography is found diffusely in all of this work of Degas. We are therefore in the presence of a complex work , yet surprisingly shifted close to his subject, in a roundabout way , as if the painting itself became a choreography.