"Dream a Dream"

6 x 8"

oil on panel
sold

The most enthusiastic audiences for Edgar Degas' ballerinas are little girls.  Especially popular is the bronze sculpture you'll find in several art museums The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer - it's real to those young girls in a way that one-dimensional paintings are not.  It's one of those moments that art impacts a human being at an early age.

An art historian wrote an interesting article for Vanity Fair and claimed Degas was "a bona fide misogynist".  He apparently took pleasure in watching his dancer/models contort in agony and even referred to them as his "little monkey girls".  Degas never married, known to be anti-Semitic - a result from the Dreyfus Affair when a French military officer, who was Jewish, was wrongfully accused of treason.  He blamed his family's business difficulties on Jewish competitors and grew more and more resentful. His bitter prejudice cost him many friends and certainly the respect of his more-tolerant Parisian artists friends and peers.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a little girl is mesmerized while viewing Dega's Dancers Practicing at the Barre, with the sculpture The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer next to her.

"Chin Up"

6 x 6"

oil on panel
sold

You might have run across Edgar Dega's sculpture of the young ballerina in several different art museums.  You're not crazy.  This Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  When I visited the museum, it was not encased in a glass box, which made a huge difference in appreciating this perfect figurative sculpture.  And I mean perfect.

Degas painted young ballet dancers numerous times.  At rehearsals, stretching exercises and lessons in ballet studios.  He drew them in pastels and charcoal, painted them in oils.  The model for Little Dancer was Marie van Goethem who posed for the only sculpture exhibited in Dega's lifetime in 1881.  Little Dancer was originally executed in wax and later cast in bronze around 1922, after Dega's death.  Which is why you maybe have seen one yourself.

"Tiny Dancers"

12 x 12"

oil on masonite
sold

Degas' 'Little Dancer' is always a chick magnet in any museum - the Philadelphia Museum of Art has an unobstructed view of the sculpture, which is quite pleasing. The painting behind the little patron is Monet's 'The Sheltered Path'.

Please click here for a larger view.

Have a great holiday -

"Dance Hall"

9 x 12"
oil on masonite
sold

Another new painting, also a personal favorite - it was one that flowed and I love that feeling. From the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC - a woman admiring Edgar Degas' 'Four Dancers'.

Please click here for a larger view.

"Amazing Grace"

6 x 8"
oil on masonite
sold

As I worked on the paintings for my solo show - I decided to include a few smaller pieces that demonstrate a more-painterly side of me. I will describe them as more of a glimpse of a figure, where the edges tend to be soft, the details are lessened - with the emphasis being on the color and the light. This painting is one of those smaller, more intimate pieces now on exhibit at the Morris & Whiteside Galleries - a patron of the Phillips Collection viewing one of Degas' beautiful, graceful ballet scenes.

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"Either Way"

12 x 12"

oil on masonite
sold

Children go into a museum of art with little concern of how profound it is to be in the company of the original pieces - they only know what speaks to them visually. Not too different than most adults. And not a bad thing. Degas didn't paint Woman Viewed From Behind for the purpose of admiration - I'm pretty sure he hoped the viewer would respond to his interpretation of the moment. I can go either way. There are times when I stand frozen, in awe that I'm looking at a painting that I've loved all my life, but only in books - and many times when I'm pulled in simply by the image. Either way, it's always an experience.

From the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Please click here for a larger view.