Доргие читатели!

В октябре мы знакомим вас с творчеством Эдгара Дега не так, как мы делали это на протяжении года. Если раньше у вас была возможность узнать основные факты биографии художников, а также совершить виртуальное путешествие в музеи, в которых хранятся полотна великих мастеров, то в этом месяце мы хотим предоставить вам возможность познакомиться с некоторыми картинами живописца на английском языке. Вы прочитаете о содержании сюжета произведений, а также узнаете, какие были сделаны творческие находки и какие художественные приемы впервые использованы мастером кисти в истории живописи того времени на примере картин “Women Combing Their Hair”, “Two Laundresses”, “The Dancing Class”.

The Dancing Class

Collection Harry Payne Bingham, New York

Compared to Degas’ earlier treatment of the dancing class in the opera in rue Le Peletier, this painting shows how quickly the artist advanced into the world of movement and casual effect which he was to make his own.

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Two Laundresses

Two Laundresses

Collection Howard J. Sachs, Stamford, Connecticut

Degas has not been the first nineteenth-century artist to paint laundresses. Daumier had done a series of them in which he curiously ennobled the typical washerwoman of the Paris streets bearing her heavy basket and tugging a child after her. Degas’ version is more gracious and more decorative, and typically he has set one figure against the other, enjoying the contrast of poses, the repetition of shapes in the turned heads and the baskets of fresh linen. His outlines are at the same time secure and fluid; and, as often, he has studied the thrust of the figure in action, balancing its load. He has further composed the figures to suggest a moment: one laundress moves to the left, the other to the right as though they were passing and about to move away from one another. The bright color (particularly in the yellow background on the right) thrusts the figures forward, stressing their silhouettes. In a lesser artist the picture would have turned into a mere poster, but so strong is Degas’ feeling for the simplified forms and so sensitively does the contrast the modeled heads with the summary treatments of the rest, that the work is remarkably solid in effect. The influence of Oriental art is clearly apparent in the large flat areas and in the contours which remind one of Japanese prints.    

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Women Combing their Hair

The Philips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Though seemingly a composition of three women, the model is evidently the same girl seen in three different poses and combined into a single picture. This idea of putting together in one composition multiple views of one model is new to art, and Degas used it over and over again. Here he added a background to suggest a beach, and in the upper background a touch of green, to suggest grass and trees.

The drawing is delicately inclusive, capturing the form of the figures with a masterly grace. Here and there the artist   has added more solid modeling to suggest a kind of sculptural approach, or accented a line or a profile to give strength to his design.

The repetitions, of the whites in the dresses and the tones of the hair, unify this unusual composition. Later Degas in his sculpture would condense many views of the same figure into three-dimensional form.

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