00:26Always remembered as an impressionist, Edgar Degas was a member of the seminal group of Parisian artists, who began to exhibit together in the 1870s.
00:37He shared many of their novel techniques, was intrigued by the challenge of capturing effects of light, and attracted to scenes of urban leisure.
00:46But Degas' 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.
01:02His 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.
01:12The picture for dancers was created in 1899.
01:17Degas frequented the ballet and opera, where he found subjects not only in performance, but also within the unexpected frames, created by the angles of stage wings and practice room mirrors.
01:31Degas, an avid photographer, his compositions were often influenced by that new medium.
01:37Here, for example, the figures are clustered to the left, some cut off at the picture edge.
01:44We cannot even be certain that it is four dancers we see.
01:48Perhaps, instead, this is a single figure, moving as in the sequential photographs of running horses and men, by Edward Muybridge.
01:57The sketchy background of the stage set, painted in a broad, almost blurry manner, is typical of Degas' late works.
02:06But he trains a sudden sharp focus on the dancers' backs.
02:11Our eye follows the linked movements of their arms.
02:14As Degas described in a sonnet, the ribbon of her steps, twists and knots.
02:22Nowadays, Four Dances is located in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the United States.
02:29In this canvas, painted for the 1868 Salon, Degas combined for the first time in his work the narrative content, large-scale and complexity of history painting, with the representation of modern life, in this instance the ballet.
02:48Degas depicts the famous ballerina Eugenie Fayocle, at center in pale blue, in La Source, an elaborate production, with exotic costumes and sets that also included bodies of water on stage and live horses.
03:04Painting the dancers at a pause in their rehearsal, note the cast of ballet slippers, Degas captures them at a transitional moment between the imagined place and time of the ballet, and the private reveries of the present.
03:19The painting is now in the Brooklyn Collection in New York, the United States.
03:24The Bellelli sisters, Giovanna and Giuliana Bellelli, was painted in 1865-1866.
03:33Degas' enduring interest in the human figure was shaped by his academic training, but he approached it in innovative ways.
03:42He captured strange postures from unusual angles under artificial light, he rejected the academic ideal of the mythical or historical subject, and instead sought his figures in modern situations.
03:57These two sisters show the polarity between the types of women, ones that follow the rules and go by societal standards, and ones that do not.
04:08Antigone is opposite from her sister because of their clashing views on the burial of their brother.
04:15Due to this clash, Antigone chooses to go against the society values, and follows her own values.
04:23Today, the Bellelli sisters, Giovanna and Giuliana Bellelli, is in Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, the United States.
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