Caillebotte Cassatt Degas Manet Monet Morisot Pissarro Renoir

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Degas is most famous for his hundreds of ballet paintings. This ballerina bends forward, balancing on one foot. By painting a ballet position that lasts ever so briefly, Degas captures the lively tension of the moment and creates an energetic piece of art.

Dancing out of poverty
Ballerinas in Degas' day almost always came from poor families. Most grew up in one-room apartments in the slums of Paris. The mother of an aspiring ballerina might be a seamstress or washerwoman hoping to give her daughter a better life. If a young girl were lucky, she would be accepted into the Académie Royale, the opera's dance school, at the age of eight, and make her stage debut by the time she was fifteen.

The powder of butterflies' wings
Pastels come in sticks, like chalk, but are softer. They are made by mixing pigments of different colors with chalk or clay. As he grew older, Degas preferred pastels to oil paints. He was beginning to lose his eyesight, and painting with oils required more precision and sharper eyesight than drawing with pastels. Also, he could work faster with pastels, switching quickly from one color to another without waiting for paint to dry. Above all, Degas loved the effects he could create with pastels, which were once likened to the "powder of a butterfly's wings."

Shimmering colors
The orange and blue-green colors in the dancers' dresses are "complementary" meaning they are opposite one another on the color wheel. When used side by side, each color makes the other seem more vibrant. The orange flecks shimmer against the blue-green.

"It is the movement of people and things that distracts and even consoles me. If the leaves of the trees did not move, how sad the trees would be and we, too."
- Edgar Degas

Look how vibrant this shade of orange is when it is next to its complementary color of blue-green. The same orange appears less brilliant next to a color that is closer to it on the color wheel. The farther apart two colors are on the color wheel, the more vibrant they appear when seen side by side. (See color wheel on page 47.)