simcoe/ART

French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas is well know as the “painter of dancers”. In his long life (1834-1917), over half of his paintings, sculptures, drawings and sketches were of ballet dancers. Like a man obsessed, Degas was fascinated by the dancers, their movements, their stances, and their appearance. But what few know is that Degas didn’t just set up his easel and canvas back stage at the Paris Operahouse. For as informal and “in the moment” as his paintings  seem, most of Degas’ work took place in his studio. For an ensemble painting such as The Dance Class, he would have individuals come into the studio and create studies of them holding a pose for hours at a time.

Late in his career, Degas took up the newly minted art of photography as a new way to study form. He began to take photographs of dancers posing, the negatives of which still survive. He also at this time used the camera as an aid in his series of bathing women. However, he used photographs as modellos for only a brief period of time. He decided that he could derive better details with sketches by his own hand. However, when we look at some of his extant photographs next to the paintings that came from them (see above), for me at least, it brings art into real life — we see the subjects as real people, not imaginary creations. It also sheds an interesting light on the origins of photography as an art, in and of itself.