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Degas

            The Ballet Class is an oil on canvas painting by Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, and was created approximately in the year 1880. This painting portrays two distinct groups of young female dancers in various arrangements and poses. In the upper left hand corner of the painting, a young ballerina wearing a yellow bow on her tutu performs an arabesque on pointe, while two other dancers practice their port de bras (arm positioning) in the floor-length mirror behind her. The mirror seems to open up the composition. An older female chaperone wearing a straw hat sits in a chair reading (possibly a newspaper) in the foreground. Two dancers are to the right of the chaperone. One dancer with really long hair is stretching her foot, and she is wearing a green bow on her tutu. The dancer to the right of her is adjusting the shoulder part of her costume with her left hand, and she has a reddish pink bow on her tutu. Half of the latter dancer's body is cut off at the edge of the painting. The entire center portion of this painting is deliberately left empty. The clusters of dancers are also on diagonals. A faint diagonal line is even visible in this painting. The wall is a vivid yellow, mirroring the bow on one the dancer's tutus. The Ballet Class almost appears to be two separate paintings fused together in the middle. The only thing that marries the two halves is the dark figure of the balding male teacher standing with the dancers on the right, and watching the dancers to the left. Like many of Degas" art works, the ballerinas shown in this painting are not actually performing, but they are shown in their natural environment of a dance classroom. .
             For the most part, the colors in this painting are somewhat muted, with the exception of the bows on the dancers" tutus and the bright yellow wall, which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the painting. The only dark colors in The Ballet Class are worn by the adults: the blackish gray outline of the male teacher, and the long dark blue dress that the chaperone is wearing.


Essays Related to Degas

1. Edgar Degas: Last Academic or First Modernist

... exotic cultures. This modernist trend manifested itself also in new materials, such as pastels, yellow wax, real hair, real cloth for sculptures, etc. Degas" interest for unconventional subjects. The interest on prostitutes, poor people, working class people is a sign of change in the society and a departure ... because hidden behind the apparent simplicity of the subject. This is an example of the influence that new photography technology had on Degas. This technology gave Degas a new way of point of view for his creativity. He was obsessed with movements. In "The Laundress", another sig...

  • Word Count: 1380
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Grade Level: High School

2. The Art and Times of Edgar Degas

... in real life. The strife towards photorealism due to the invention and increase in popularity of the camera is another point supporting why this painting can be classified as impressionistic. Degas and many of the impressionists took interest "with "instant," unposed photography" according to Eyewitness. "Blurring, unusual juxtapositions , and the accidental cropping off of ... figures in snapshots created the sense of movement and spontaneity that the Impressionist artists wanted to achieve. Degas was also inspired by the work of Edward Muybridge, whose freeze-frame photographs of huma...

  • Word Count: 1067
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

3. Degas Ballet Dancers

... banker, and his aristocratic family background instilled into his early art a haughty yet sensitive quality of detachment. Degas was part of a social circle who attended the theatre on a nightly basis. Through these visits Degas became a great admirer. As he grew up, his idol was the painter Jean Auguste Ingres, whose example ... to remind us that the artists of the Impressionist age were sensitively aware of contemporary life. Among the supreme masterpieces of the century are Degas's pictures of the ballet and its dancers. The impulse towards painting the contemporary scene came to him ...

  • Word Count: 537
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Edgar Degas

... On July 19th 1834 a new muse was brought into the world. This muse was Hilaire Germain Edgar de Gas, otherwise known as Edgar Degas, child of Pierre August Hyacinte de Gas and Celestine Musson. This birth took place in Paris on rue Saint George. Edgar had a French ... he changed to impressionism, as it was the impressionist movement that really influenced him. This was the beginning of a long and successful career for Edgar Degas as an impressionist artist. Although he created his paintings for him and his liking, many other great impressionist artists" influenced him. Two of these were ...

  • Word Count: 647
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Dancer Stretching

... museum's permanent collection (3:1). The focus of Dancer Stretching is a young ballerina captured in an unforeseen moment as she stretches. Typical to Degas' work, she is painted in a genre style rather than flawless and romantic, as traditional artists would have done (2:1). Her face indicates ... [she] is also under pressure, tired, and imperfect. [It] seems to be an intrusion into the otherwise guarded world of dance" (1:2). Edgar Degas" use of line is a primary and conspicuous element of this particular composition. The quality is outstandingly painterly as the lines are indistinct a...

  • Word Count: 1413
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Creative Drawing and Contemporary Art and Design

... with Impressionist drawing. There are two elements which affect my view of this; firstly, the desire to engage and capture images from modern life. Degas was described in the following way: "As a leading member of the Impressionist group, he shared his colleagues' fascination with modern sights and ... : "What is broadly similar about many Impressionist paintings is that they exhibit a certain degree of sketchiness or patchiness" (Smith, 1995, 24). Movement (Degas) Since I was a child I have always visited the theatre and dance, and I was amazed at how they moved so fast and they change...

  • Word Count: 1768
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

7. Impressionism

... As most work consisted of moving objects, the artist had to capture it. Photography, which was becoming increasingly popular was used by many artists, including Degas. He took photographs of models for his Ballet paintings, posing in such ways that would be impossible to hold for long periods of time. But ... of Impression - Manet. He met Manet while studying in Italy in 1861 while painting classical themes. He exhibited regularly with the Impressionists 1874-86. Degas was different from all other Impressionists because he would not paint outside. He would use pastels and sketch the scen...

  • Word Count: 1102
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

8. Mary Cassatt

... her colors were too bright and that her portraits were too accurate to be appropriately flattering to the subject. When she spied some pastels by Degas in a Paris art dealer's window, she knew she was not alone in her rebellion against the Salon. "I used to go and flatten ... of his art," she once wrote to a friend. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it." Soon after Degas's invitation, Cassatt exhibited eleven of her paintings with the Impressionists in 1879. The show was a tremendous success commercially and critically, as were subsequent exhibitions in ... 1880 and...

  • Word Count: 1730
  • Approx Pages: 7

9. Women Artist of the Impression

... other on a professional and sometimes personal basis, they never formed a group based on gender. They also worked alongside some of the best-known male Impressionist artists, such as Monet, Manet, Degas, and Pissarro. These four female Impressionists are Mary Stevenson Cassat (1844-1926), Berthe Morisot (1841-1916), Eva Gonzales (1849-1883), and Marie Bracquemond (1840-1916). Although they were women, it ... , In contrast, the mother is painted in darker fabrics and colors. In the mid 1880's, when impressionism began to dissolve, Morisot became very close to her colleagues, especially Re...

  • Word Count: 1732
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

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