The Dancers of Degas

Edgar Degas was one of the foremost impressionist and realist painters of the 1800s. The Dancer paintings done by Edgar Degas are arguably some of his most complex works he’d ever accomplish. In the article Dancers By Edgar Degas written by Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall, the authors say that, “Dancers is one of the most chromatically complex, densely worked, and thematically nuanced pastels made by Degas at any point in his career.” They ascribed the success of these paintings to the use of a medium which had already been deemed useless, along with the choice of color, the method of application, and the figures, and by doing so created some of the most life like and hauntingly beautiful paintings of his time.

For the medium, or the material that is being painted on, Degas chose to use pastels on canvas. The use of pastels had previously been written off, as the end result was often times not permanent and could apparently easily disintegrate. Degas managed to put layer over layer over layer of pastel color and made something spectacular. He put so many on sometime that his canvas had “the surface appearance of a cork board mat.” In later dancer painting, this technique went to an extreme when he layered 4 different pastel colors on top of each other, creating a almost stone like quality on the canvas, far from the dusty, unattractive way it was said to look.

Degas subjects for the Dancer paintings were of course dancers. He obtained all his models from the  dancers of the French Opera House. He did not usually capture them however, glorified on stage, but back at the barre and in their rehearsals doing everyday tasks. He would often take the most beautiful positions and make them monochromatic, only to put them in color later in another piece. The way he depicted the wings of the stage was one of the most revelled pieces that he ever created. A peek backstage into the wings was a rare view, and the way Degas did it was by showing them not even paying attention to the stage, and even sometime not even their full bodies, just little glimpses of calves and feet. Edgar Degas created this quality to his dancers that was not previously shown in any works of art. He made his dancers life-like. Not sullied by the pounds of powder and makeup worn in the style of the day. He had this ability to look past all that and actually see the women as they were. The dancers had these beautiful flesh tones despite the stage make-up that was very unlike other paintings of the day such as the landscapes, people and building done by Paul Cézanne. Degas went so far as to actually become an Abonné, wealthy men who were famous for being allowed backstage and paid ‘special’ attention to the dancers, to get the pieces and poses he wanted.

Edgar Degas went out of his way to make sure that all of his paintings had a certain integrity. At the time he was born, impressionist artists were all that was around. Artists from Monet to de Goya were all painting in the same style as Degas, but what set him apart was that he refused to settle to other standards just because people thought the end result would be unsatisfactory. His dancer paintings are hailed now as some of the most realistic depictions of that setting today. Degas Dancers had a truth to them that went beyond the surface, literally and figuratively, that still captivates onlookers and make them wonder about the mysterious life of the beautiful dancers alighting the canvas.


Works Cited
DeVonyar, Jill, and Kendall. "“Dancers” By Edgar Degas." Record Of The Princeton
University Art Museum 66.(2007): 30-40. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 24 Apr. 2012.