Swaying Dancer Dancer in Green Edgar Degas Playing Cards

Swaying Dancer (Dancer in Green) by Edgar Degas, pastel and gouache on paper 1877-1879, is a painting of a young ballerina viewed from the front, side stage, performing a complex dance move standing on one leg with arms extended. In the foreground of the tall, vertical composition, the legs and tutu of another dancer are cropped as if in a photograph. Behind the dancers a line of dancers in orange costumes await to perform. Degas uses his knowledge of movement, sense of realism, and precise classical drawing to construct an elaborate, kinetic composition that captures a fleeting moment of time and artistic movement. Degas deeply identified and empathized with the work and long hours of practice of dancers, who were the subject of nearly half of his art. 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.