Ballet Rehearsal On Stage Edgar Degas

Ballet Rehearsal On Stage by Edgar Degas, oil on canvas 1874, is a painting of groups of ballet dancers on a theatre stage, standing, sitting, stretching, warming up and practicing their dance in various poses, brightly lit by stage lights beneath the cavernous darkness of the proscenium arch. Degas composes the scene with an off-centre, tilted view from the side of the stage. The bright whites of the ballerinas' tutus and costumes contrast with the darkness of the scenery behind them and the flatness of the grey stage floor. Degas utilises his enormous skills in drawing and long study of the figure to depict a variety of complex poses in motion, as the dancers stretch and strain in motion and repose, capturing a moment in time with a complex number of figures. 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.