Day 318 - Degas

 November 8, 2022

Gallery 815, devoted to Degas, is another treasure trove.  His paintings line the walls, but at its center is a bronze statue called “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.”  First modeled in wax and exhibited in 1881, the statue, aat about three feet in height, is significantly larger than the bronzes in the previous gallery. The dancer stands at rest, her weight on her left foot, her right foot slightly flexed and raised, her head thrust back. and her eyes closed; her facial expression suggests that she is lost in an adolescent's dream of perfection and success. She wears a pale pink tutu (restored a few years ago).  But what I’d never noticed before, and what makes the work irresistible to me, is the back of the statue: her hands are clasped behind her back, palms facing up, and her tight braid is bound by a wide yellow ribbon tied in a bow.  

The paintings cover a 30-year period from Degas’ student days in the early 1850s to the early 1880s. They include a number of ballet studio scenes, but also striking images of an old, haggard Italian woman (Degas studied in Italy, a fact I hadn’t known), a laundress at work, and a young woman whose hand covers her mouth, apparently to hide her sadness.

Degas is, of course, known for his use of unusual perspectives, and what's notable to me is that he employed these from an early point in his career.  The painting of a male nude, measuring about 30 inches high and 16 inches wide and painted in 1856 when the artist was about 22,  is a case in point. I assume (the label doesn't say) that the supine subject of the painting was a model in an art class. What seems to me quite unusual is Degas' choice to paint the body on a diagonal, so that the man's head appears to emerge toward us while his legs recede into the background.  I'm equally struck by the frankness of the rendering: Degas captures the man's bony ribcage and sinewy arms, and our eyes (well, mine, anyway) are inevitably drawn to his rather large, reddish penis. 

In a work executed some 25 to 30 years later (ca. 1882-1885), entitled "Dancers in the Rehearsal Room With a Double Bass," the paneling on the wall, the double bass on the floor in the foreground, and the line of dancers in the background all form a strong diagonal leading toward the back of the painting, which measures about 48 inches wide and 16 inches high. Breaking this diagonal  is the  dancer in the foreground, who faces the viewer as she leans forward to tie her slipper.  Both her frontal position and the yellow sash of her tutu lend immense visual interest to the painting, whose palette, aside from the white tutus, otherwise consists largely of various shades of brown.

As I'm getting ready to leave, a tour group comes in.  The guide has virtually nothing to say about Degas' style; instead, she talks about ballet dancers, who came primarily from the lower classes, were largely exploited during their relatively brief dance careers, and were then let go with no way to make a living. The guide also mentions Mrs. Horace Havermeyer, who, I learn, was Mrs. Domino Sugar,  and whose collection of Degas occupies most of four  galleries at the Met. I have a lot more Degas to go!