Dancing with Degas

Today we visited the new exhibition at the Royal Academy called "Degas at the Ballet" which is dedicated to Degas's paintings, sculptures and drawings of ballet dancers, as well as a look into the development of the photography of the moving figure.

We felt that far to much space was dedicated to the latter subject, and that it was added to the exhibition to flesh out what would actually have been a fairly small show.

The show was roughly in chronological order which we think is a good idea. The first room was of his earlier drawings and paintings, which included some of his best known works.

All through the exhibition it was very interesting to compare the working drawings with the finished paintings. This was particularly true of the room which concentrated on the drawings which he did as a basis for his well known statue of the young ballet dancer.

A few rooms then were more about the development of photography of the moving figure. These were very interesting, but we felt that there was to much of them and that they only had a peripheral connection with Degas painting. A whole room was dedicated to Degas own photographic efforts, which again were interesting, but we felt were only put in to flesh out the exhibition.

Finally we came to two rooms dedicated to his later paintings. The colour in these two rooms was much more powerful than that of his earlier paintings, and the pastels really stood out. It was very interesting to see his paintings of Russian dancers painted quite late in his life.

We enjoyed the exhibition very much, but felt that as I have said before to much space was given to photography. It would also have been interesting to see a few of his non-ballet paintings, and possibly even some of his contemporaries, particularly Those whom he influenced such as Mary Cassat.