Over the next few days I want to share with you some of the wonderful art that I saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) this week. Today it’s Edgar Degas that I feature. A French painter and sculptor, he was born in 1834 and died in 1917.
He is famous for his dancers and especially the “Little Dancer” sculpture that he did. But did you know that the original piece, made of wax, stood in his studio for forty years. After he died his heirs decided to make bronze casts of it. They are completely bronze apart from the dancer’s gauze tutu and silk ribbon. There were less than thirty copies made and many of them can now be seen in some of the world’s most best museums including Philadelphia and the National Gallery in Washington DC.
And continuing the ballet/dancer theme, this painting “The Ballet Class”, he painted in oil on canvas in 1880. The information provided by the painting said, “Degas spent a great deal of time in the corridors and rehearsal rooms of the Opera, where he would have seen mothers like this one managing their young daughters’ careers.”
And another really interesting thing that I discovered at the PMA is their cell phone tour program. You can dial this number, 267-519-5646 and punch in a number that relates to a particular painting, this one is #364, and hear more about the painting. How cool is that? Go ahead, give it a try.
How cool is that???!!!!
The Studio 