Two Dancers Edgar Degas

Two Dancers by Edgar Degas, pastel on cardboard c. 1905, is a painting of two ballerinas standing in different dance poses, one facing the viewer with her head turned in profile and holding a fan, the other dancer facing the colourful, pale blue stage scenery. The figures counterpoint each other in the positions of their arms. Degas defines the relief-like forms of the dancers in thick, expressive outlines with soft, harmonious tones that merge the costumes of the figures with the luminous colours of the background. Complex layers of blue, orange and grey form flattened textured areas of warm and cool colours over the warm cardboard ground. Degas captures the light, colour and atmosphere of the stage setting, as well as the form, movement, and muscular strain of the formal dance moves of the two young ballet dancers. Edgar Degas (Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, 1834 - 1917) was a French painter, draftsman, sculptor, printmaker, a founder of the school of Impressionism, and a classical painter of dancers and scenes from modern life. Degas began to paint early in life, and after meeting the French classicist J.A.D. Ingres, Degas studied drawing in the manner of Ingres at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Louis Lamothe. Degas lived for 3 years in Italy, where he made many copies after Michelangelo and the masters of the Italian Renaissance. Establishing his Paris studio, the artist exhibited as a history painter but began to turn to subject matter from contemporary life, under the influence of his friend Edouard Manet. Disenfranchised from the official Paris Salon, Degas joined ranks with the independent Impressionist group and exhibited at their first show in 1874, though his classical approach, lack of spontaneity, and disdain of plein-air easel painting left him little in common with much of the group. Degas painted many portraits with profound psychological insight, many scenes from contemporary life and genre paintings, and devoted half of his life's work to colourful pictures of ballet dancers and classical female figures. Degas' bold experiments in colour which crossed boundaries between Realism, Impressionism, and Modern painting, his original compositional methods, and his painstaking, calculated classical drawing combined with the artist's cantankerous rejection of rigid rules, combined to create one of the most original and beloved body of works in the history of art.