Degas Ballet Dancers

Six masterly studies by great French painter, painstakingly reproduced in postcard form: The Dance Examination, The Dance Class, Dancer in a Rose Dress, The Rehearsal, 2 more. Captions.

Through Edgar Degas’s beloved paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Susan Goldman Rubin conveys the wonder and excitement of the ballet world. Degas is one of the most celebrated painters of the impressionist movement, and his ballerina paintings are among the most favorite of his fans. In his artwork, Degas captures every moment, from the relentless hours of practice to the glamour of appearing on stage, revealing a dancer’s journey from novice to prima ballerina. Observing young students, Degas drew their poses again and again, determined to achieve perfection. The book includes a brief biography of his entire life, endnotes, bibliography, where to see his paintings, and an index.

Edgar Degas (18341917) is best known for his luminous studies of dancers. Illustrated with drawings, pastels, paintings, prints and sculpture, as well as photographs taken by the artist and his contemporaries, and samples of film from the period, this text follows the development of Degas's ballet imagery.

He addressed the routine of the practice room, the drabness of backstage life, the moment of transformation as performers left or entered the stage, and the squalid, amorous adventures between the ballerinas and the black-suited, top-hatted, and often sinister gentlemen who sought their favors after a performance.

In the City of Lights, at the dawn of a new age, begins an unforgettable story of great love, great art—and the most painful choices of the heart. With this fresh and vibrantly imagined portrait of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, readers are transported through the eyes of a young Parisian ballerina to an era of light and movement. An ambitious and enterprising farm girl, Alexandrie joins the prestigious Paris Opera ballet with hopes of securing not only her place in society but her family’s financial future. Her plan is soon derailed, however, when she falls in love with the enigmatic artist whose paintings of the offstage lives of the ballerinas scandalized society and revolutionized the art world. As Alexandrie is drawn deeper into Degas’s art and Paris’s secrets, will she risk everything for her dreams of love and of becoming the ballet’s star dancer?

Edgar Degas' images of ballet dancers and women lost in thought and free from conscious restraint are brought to life in this text, which rejects some classical interpretations and illustrates the novelty of Degas' style.