Day 319 - Degas


November 14, 2022

Gallery 816 contains a number of Degas works executed in oil and pastel. Today's selection is an 1879 pastel called "The Dance Lesson." Measuring, I would guess,  28 inches high and 25 inches wide, it contains only two figures, a young dancer standing at the barre and a seated violinist who presumably provided the music for the lesson. 

Areas of the image seem to me curiously flat, as if the violinist had been cut out and superimposed over the dancer; indeed, his right shoulder seems to cut off her ballet slipper. The palette is simple: aside from the ivory tutu , a small red hair bow, and the flesh tones of the faces, the dancer's limbs, and the violinist's hands, it consists of various shades of brown.  But the work presents a striking contrast of horizontal lines and diagonals, and of lines in the two figures that echo each other. The barre, the wall paneling, and the dancer's outstretched and raised right leg lead the eye horizontally; at a right angle are the dancer's head, torso, and standing leg .  All else is at a diagonal.  The angle of the dancer's left arm mirrors that of the rising hem of her tutu, her turned-out left foot, and the violinist's head and bow.  Along a different diagonal, the violin juts out toward the viewer.  The composition is fascinating; I think I could  discover new elements at every viewing. 

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