The Ballet Drawings of Edgar Degas

Dancer Executing Port de Bras, c. 1880 , c. 1880-85
Edgar Degas, (1834-1917)

Fine Art Reproduction
Reproduction Size: 10.5 x 8 in.

This reproduction is a new, individually printed and proofed, superior quality, giclee* process, fine art print.
It is printed on 100% cotton rag acid-free, heavyweight fine art paper with a luxurious textured watercolor paper finish and archival pigment inks to ensure permanence.
Created for collectors, it IS NOT A POSTER or mass produced print on low quality, inexpensive paper.

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) remains the most important pastel painter in world art. He greatly advanced pastel's total range of effects. Following the opening of trade with Japan in 1854, many French artists, including Degas, were increasingly influenced by Japanese art especially the woodcut masters Hokasai and Hiroshige and their flattened compositions and bright colors.

Degas’ interest in ballet dancers intensified in the 1870s, and he eventually produced more than 1000 drawings, paintings and sculptures on the subject. These are not traditional portraits, but studies that address the movement of the human body, exploring the physicality and discipline of the dancers. His many pastel drawings also included café concert singers and later in life quiet studies of women in the privacy of their bath (toilette).

Always pushing to make his colors luminescent, he experimented with crosshatching, paints and pastel; he combined pastel with every medium, and surfaces of paper, cardboard and canvas. He mixed his pastels with gouache and watercolor, and steamed them to soften pigments.

Deteriorating vision in the 1890s led to eventual blindness and the end of his career as an artist. He died in 1917 at the age of eighty-three.
Original Medium: Black Chalk, Pastels on Paper. Reproduction: Fine Art Paper; colored pigment inks
Image Size: 10.5 x 8 inches printed on larger paper to allow ample borders for framing
PayPal only please. Prints ship in a heavy protective cardboard tube

**the giclee process produces a high quality, fine art reproduction from a high-resolution digital file of an image. The file is then printed with a high-resolution photo generation printer on a fine art paper. Most artists and working photographers today use the giclee process to produce reproductions of their original artwork and photographs.

As with any original art or fine art reproduction, it is recommended that prints are framed and displayed under glass to prevent color fade or shift over the years.