My homage to Degas

In the center, the Little Dancer, is a sculpture by Edgar Degas I saw at the Louvre.

I did this still life. Painting? Nope. At this National Gallery site you create your own still life. There are apples, oranges, books, vases, and everything you need for a still life. It's very interesting because you can change light, shadow and add what you want. I loved the mirror showing the front image of the dancer instead of the back. It is a Magritte touch I guess.

There are other activities at the site The Art Zone and children can have fun.

Degas's intimacy of his dancers

In Degas's numerous paintings of ballet dancers there is always this atmosphere of women concentrated in themselves. It is not a place where the dancers talk to each other about their problems or victories.

It seems they are thinking if the clothes are well adjusted, if their postures are fine, movements correct, everything related with their own performances.

They are self-conscious an maybe fearing any tiny little thing wrong can ruin it all.

I don't know why for me they always finish in standing ovation.

Degas and Monet in 1873: two paintings two universes

Right: Portraits in a New Orleans Cotton office, 1873, by Degas

Left: Boulevard des Capucines, 1873, by Monet

Both paintings dated 1873 each depicting a moment in time, a transitory moment.

Monet give us the lights and colours of this fraction of time at the street and Degas, a more narrative description of what each person was doing in this moment of time showing 14 men working at his uncle's cotton office.

" Michael Musson is sitting in the foreground, checking the cotton; René de Gas is reading the paper; Achille de Gas is leaning by the window; Musson’s partner James Prestridge is on a stool, discussing a deal with a client. Musson’s son-in-law, William Bell, is offering the wares to a client, to inspect the quality." (here)

Once again we can see that the Impressionism is a group of painters that shared same concerns but each one has a history and a whole universe of their own.

Women and Mirrors - Degas, Kirchner and Picasso

Top: Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), The Dancing Class (ca. 1870). Bottom left: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner(German, 1880-1938), Woman at the Mirror (1912). Bottom right: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1882-1973), Girl Before a Mirror (1932)