Degas The Dance Class Essay

But Degas's academic training, and his own personal predilection toward Realism, set him apart from his peers, and he rejected the label 'Impressionist' preferring to describe himself as an 'Independent.' His inherited wealth gave him the comfort to find his own way, and later it also enabled him to withdraw from the Paris art world and sell pictures at his discretion.He was intrigued by the human figure, and in his many images of women - dancers, singers, and laundresses - he strove to capture the body in unusual positions.To achieve this, rather than compose the figures in a more orderly and centered fashion, he has dispersed them about the canvas, leaving a chair incongruously placed in the center foreground.

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Here, the father is suggested to be emotionally distant from his wife and daughters, while the mother stands dignified and decisive.

Giovanna on the left is clearly the mother's favored daughter, while Giuliana, with one leg poised, is positioned just so to suggest a division in her allegiance.

Degas's academic training encouraged a strong classical tendency in his art, which conflicted with the approach of the Impressionists.

While he valued line as a means to describe contours and to lend solid compositional structure to a picture, they favored color, and more concentration on surface texture.

Born into a wealthy Franco-Italian family, he was encouraged from an early age to pursue the arts, though not as a long-term career.

Following his graduation in 1853 with a baccalaureate in literature, the eighteen-year-old Degas registered at the Louvre as a copyist, which he claimed later in life is the foundation for any true artist.

This portrait, with its subdued palette and its unconventional grouping of figures, such as the man having his back to the viewer, demonstrates the impact of Realism on the young Degas.

He created it over the course of several trips to Italy, spanning 3-4 years.

Always remembered as an Impressionist, Edgar Degas was a member of the seminal group of Paris artists who began to exhibit together in the 1870s.

He shared many of their novel techniques, was intrigued by the challenge of capturing effects of light and attracted to scenes of urban leisure.