The Royal Academy of Arts Shows "Edgar Degas and the Ballet"

Written by Rodney Trotter Saturday, 05 November 2011 23:37

London.- The Royal Academy of Arts is proud to present "Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement", comprising around 85 paintings, sculptures, pastels, drawings, prints and photographs by Edgar Degas, as well as photographs by his contemporaries and examples of early film. It will bring together selected material from public institutions and private collections in Europe and North America including both celebrated and little-known works by Degas.The exhibition will explore the fascinating links between Degas’s highly original way of viewing and recording the dance and the inventive experiments being made at the same time in photography by Jules-Etienne Marey and Eadweard Muybridge and in film-making by such pioneers as the Lumiere brothers. By presenting the artist in this context, the exhibition will demonstrate that Degas was far more than merely the creator of beautiful images of the ballet, but instead a modern, radical artist who thought profoundly about visual problems and was fully attuned to the technological developments of his time. "Degas and the Ballet" will be on view in the main galleries through December 11th.

Highlights of the exhibition will include such masterpieces as the celebrated sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (1880-81, cast. c.1922, Tate, London), which will be displayed with a group of outstanding preparatory drawings that together show the artist tracking around his subject like a cinematic eye; Dancer Posing for a Photograph (1875, Pushkin State Museum of Art, Moscow); Dancer on Pointe (c. 1877-78, Private collection); The Dance Lesson (c. 1879, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC); Dancers in a Rehearsal Room with a Double Bass (c. 1882-85, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); and Three Dancers (c. 1903, Beyeler Foundation, Basel). Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas was born in Paris in 1834. His father was a banker from a Neapolitan family and his mother a French Creole from New Orleans.

After studying briefly at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Degas travelled in Italy, largely teaching himself by copying works of art in museums and churches. From 1865 to 1870 he regularly submitted large historical compositions to the Salon, but in around 1870 he began to concentrate on subjects from modern life, including the dance. A leader of the Impressionists, Degas exhibited regularly at their group exhibitions. Apart from the dance, racehorses and bathing women were his principal subjects. Increasing blindness forced Degas to give up working in around 1912. He died in Montmartre in 1917.


The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate. The Academy was founded by George III in 1768. The 34 founding Members were a group of prominent artists and architects including Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir William Chambers who were determined to achieve professional standing for British art and architecture. They also wanted to provide a venue for exhibitions that would be open to the public; and to establish a school of art through which their skills and knowledge could be passed to future generations of practitioners. The Academy today continues to aspire, in the words of its eighteenth-century founders, ‘to promote the arts of design’, that is: to present a broad range of visual art to the widest possible audience; to stimulate debate, understanding and creation through education; and to provide a focus for the interests of artists and art-lovers. The Academy now enjoys an unrivalled reputation as a venue for exhibitions of international importance. One of the founding principles of the RA was to 'mount an annual exhibition open to all artists of distinguished merit' to finance the training of young artists in the RA Schools. Now known as the Summer Exhibition and held every year without interruption since 1769, the exhibition attracts around 10,000 works, the selection being carried out by Academicians chaired by the President.


The RA continues to fulfil its founders’ aims by mounting a continuous programme of internationally-acclaimed loan exhibitions, supported by extensive education programmes, seminars and debates. The Main Galleries and The Sackler Wing of Galleries host a variety of major exhibitions from all periods and art forms. Recent exhibitions have been Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600 - 1600; Monet in the 20th Century; Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830; China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795; From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg; Byzantium 330-1453 and The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters. The RA owns a major collection of works by Royal Academicians past and present together with the oldest and one of the best fine-art libraries in Britain. The Collection has received outstanding bequests such as the Michelangelo Tondo on display in the Sackler Wing of Galleries. Highlights from the Collection can be seen on free guided tours of the John Madejski Fine Rooms. The Academy's art school (it is known as 'The Schools' because each 'School' originally corresponded to a different element in the training of the artists that had to be mastered in a particular order) is the oldest in Britain. Past students include many famous British artists such as William Blake, JMW Turner, Edwin Landseer, JE Millais and, more recently, John Hoyland, Sir Anthony Caro and Sandra Blow. Today, 60 students study drawing, painting and printmaking on a three-year postgraduate course - the only such course currently available in Britain. Visit the academy's website at ... www.royalacademy.org.uk/

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