Edgar Degas painted the impressionist piece The Dancing Class in 1871. The painting is oil on canvas that is approximately 85 X 75 cm. Edgar Degas was a French artist, acknowledged as the master of drawing the human figure in motion. Degas worked in many mediums, preferring pastel to all others. He is perhaps best known for his paintings, drawings, and bronzes of ballerinas and of race horses.
Degas" The Dancing Class is a work of art. Degas captures the ballet class on canvas just like a photogragh. It seems very real and delicate at the same time.
Degas" piece belongs to the Impressionist period when the fleeting moment was caputured by many artists of the period. The art of Degas reflects a concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour. These characteristics set Degas apart from the other impressionist painters. In the early 1870s the female ballet dancer became his favorite theme. He sketched from a live model in his studio and combined poses into groupings that depicted rehearsal and performance scenes in which dancers on stage, entering the stage, and resting or waiting to perform are shown simultaneously and in counterpoint, often from an oblique angle of vision.
Degas was the son of a wealthy banker, and his aristocratic family background instilled into his early art a haughty yet sensitive quality of detachment. Degas was part of a social circle who attended the theatre on a nightly basis. Through these visits Degas became a great admirer. As he grew up, his idol was the painter Jean Auguste Ingres, whose example pointed him in the direction of a classical draftsmanship, stressing balance and clarity of outline. After beginning his artistic studies with Louis Lamothes, a pupil of Ingres, he started classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts but left in 1854 and went to Italy. He stayed there for 5 years, studying Italian art, especially Renaissance works.
