The Dance Class essays

The Dance Class essays Edgar Degas, a French painter and sculptor whose innovative composition, skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement, makes himself one of the masters of modern art in the late nineteenth century. He was 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. One of his known particular paintings done in oil, The Dance Class, was exhibited in 1876 at the second Impressionist exhibition. Reflecting the concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour set Edgar Degas apart from the other impressionist painters. The Dance Class, one of Degass greatest pieces of artwork, portrays a dance class conducted by the famous ballet master Jules Perrot. The work is generally thought to be a tribute to the teacher rather than a depiction of an actual dance class conducted by him. The scene is a careful arrangement of what seems to be a random collection of postures and poses. He depicts a rehearsal in which the dancers are on stage, resting or waiting to perform from an oblique angle of vision. One ballerina, who is the central focus of the composition, dances while the others are practicing around her, presumably waiting for their turns. Some adjust their costumes while others just sit or stand in various postures. The women in the background that are on the right are the dancers mothers who are chaperoning their young girls during the rehearsals. Like most of the dancers in Degass works, these ballerinas are not performing but rather doing their own thing. Each ballerina is doing somethin g different. These ballerinas in different poses and postures on different grounds also bring forth movement into the composition. Interesting as it is, the dancer performs a graceful arabes...