Art History News: Edgar Degas at Auction

Sotheby’s London Impressionist & Modern Evening Sale 3rd February 2015

Edgar Degas, Quatre Danseuses, est. £3 – 5 million / $4.6 – 7.7 million

Executed shortly after the turn of the century, Edgar Degas’ highly expressive Quatre Danseuses depicts one of the artist’s favourite subjects – ballet dancers preparing for a performance. Throughout his career, Degas’ treatment of this subject underwent a radical metamorphosis, and in his later years he developed a highly expressive use of materials. In Quatre Danseuses the artist’s vibrant markings, applied in coat after coat of coloured chalk, achieve an effect that appears to be painted. By the end of his career Degas had become a modern artist whose expressive techniques influenced many more of the greatest colourists that followed.

Sotheby’s London Sales of Impressionist and Modern Art on 5 & 6 February 2014

The collection is also distinguished by masterful Impressionist works, including a sublime pastel by Edgar Degas depicting a woman at her toilette – a theme central to the artist’s oeuvre that underlines his mastery of pastel.Dating from circa1893,

Femme s’essuyant les pieds is a work of genius in its subtlety of line and the boldness of its composition (est. est. £1-1.5 million/$1.5-2 million)

Sotheby’s 4 November 2009

One of Edgar Degas’ finest racing pictures, Avant la course, painted circa1882-88 will also be offered (est. $4/6 million). The artist’s exploration of the world of the racetrack and steeplechase developed in tandem with his survey of other aspects of the modern world, notably the world of dance. In his depictions of equestrian subjects, Degas moved from the precise delineation of complex arrangements of figures in space in the first half of his career to a much broader, more atmospheric approach in the latter half, when the present work was executed. Avant la course is composed of flat modernist patches of color in which the artist employed great contrasts of light and dark forms and asserted the dynamism of the composition over any specificity of details.

Bonhams Impressionist & Modern Art auction on 3 February 2015

Edgar Degas' 1885 oil on canvas, Scène de ballet, is to be offered at the Impressionist & Modern Art auction on 3 February 2015 at Bonhams New Bond Street. The work, a wonderful example of Degas' ground-breaking work in the mid-1880s, is estimated at £2,500,000-3,500,000.

Degas' fascination with the dancers of the Paris Opéra was the source of more than 1,000 paintings, pastels, charcoal drawings and prints, which together earned the artist the reputation as the greatest painter of the Paris ballet. He obsessively readdressed the subject, using it to explore a number of revolutionary styles and innovative techniques.

In Scène de ballet, Degas depicts not only the row of on-stage dancers in the background, but also the girls off-stage, stretching and chatting in the foreground. The artist sought to cover all aspects of the ballet, from the initial rehearsals and preparations through to the bright lights and thrilling spectacle of the final performance.

The ballet became for Degas a lens through which he could experiment with light, color and movement, all the while observing and documenting the contemporary social milieu. Performances brought together the social classes, providing a cross section of society, and Degas depicted the drawn, tired faces of the dancers, who usually came from the most impoverished area of the city, alongside the affluent and predatory abonnés (season-ticket holders) who hung around backstage to proposition the girls.

As such, a behind-the-curtain image such as Scène de ballet shares something of the social commentary of Degas' earlier paintings of café culture and brothels which established his fame. But this similarity of subject belies the significant difference between this 1885 painting and those which went before.

The mid-1880s was a crucial few years in Degas' development. Previously, the artist had been working in a tight, precise style founded on exquisite draftsmanship. From around 1885, however, he developed a new style of which Scène de ballet is a prime example – looser, brighter, and more abstracted in form.

Works such as Scène de ballet represent a turning point for Degas. The skirts, faces and bodies of the dancers are conjured from clouds of pigment, while the stage-set background is created using layer upon layer of paint applied directly with the artist's thumbs. We see, too, the beginnings of the bursting vibrancy – ultramarines, turquoises, russets, cardamom reds, roses pinks and flashes of brightest yellows – for which his late bathers and dancers were so celebrated.

Only a year after Degas painted Scène de ballet, he took part in his final Impressionist group show, and began his withdrawal from the public art world. But his experimentation with the possibilities of color and form continued until his death in 1917, culminating in the staggeringly modern late works which 20th-century masters such as Picasso and Matisse found so inspiring.

India Phillips, Director and Head of the Impressionist & Modern Art Department at Bonhams, said: 'Degas is the painter of the ballet. No other artist has captured the movements, costumes and spectacle of the dance in the same way. Scène de ballet is as iconic an image as you could hope for, and we are honored to be offering it for sale.'