KEY POINTS:
While his depictions of ballet dancers - which have graced the lids of chocolate boxes and calendar pages the world over - may look slightly quaint to the eye now, at the time of their creation artist Edgar Degas was considered quite a revolutionary.
His choice of subject matter aside, Degas pushed the boundaries of composition and colour and was one of a group of artists who banded together to show their work independently of the conventional Paris Salon. On April 15, 1874, he hung his work alongside contemporaries Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-August Renoir and Berthed Morisot in what would be the first of eight of the soon-to-be-dubbed Impressionist Exhibitions.
But there is more to Degas' work than the ballet scenes he made his name with as a new exhibition of art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra demonstrates.
Degas: Master of French Art spans his career from early portraiture and historical subjects, through to his documenting of modern life and late experimental paintings and photography.
Putting together the exhibition, the first of its kind in the world, was a labour of love for NGA senior curator of international art Jane Kinsman, who spent three years researching and scouring the globe looking for examples of Degas' work from throughout his career.
"What really motivated me was the fact that very little of Degas' work has been seen in Australia. A lot of people are aware of his art but they don't really know very much about him or how diverse his talents really were," she says.
One of the major themes throughout the exhibition is Degas' transformation as an artist and his recurring experimentation, leading to his mature and distinctive style. It traces the development of his work from the finely-crafted early paintings to those possessing a more brilliant palette and looser brushwork, concluding with radical later works which include finger painting.
"I've always been fascinated by how an artist evolves and I really wanted to show how Degas progressed and developed through his career," says Kinsman.
"He was an extraordinary talent who was as skilled at painting as he was with sculpture and creating monotypes. He had a facility for anything he put his mind to."
The show's 120 paintings, drawings, monotypes, sculptures and prints have been drawn from 45 collections, public and private, from all over the world including the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Kinsman says putting the works together took a fair bit of negotiating but she got virtually everything she wanted for the one-off show. An extra bonus was a donation from painter Margaret Oley, one of the few Australians to own a Degas, who has given the NGA a sketch of a young ballet dancer.
One of the standouts of the exhibition is Degas' sculpture Little Dancer aged Fourteen. A mixed media cast created from bronze, gauze and satin (the original was constructed of skin-tinted wax, real hair, a ribbon, tutu and ballet shoes), the sculpture caused an outcry when it was displayed at the Impressionist exhibition of 1881.
"People were really astounded that Degas hadn't tried to idealise her at all," says Kinsman. "He had taken an entirely new approach to sculpture and thrown down the gauntlet to the art world with his experimentation."
His masterpiece The Dance Class (1876) is a tour de force showcase of his skill and vision. Conceived as a look behind the scenes at the workings of a ballet company, one could be mistaken for thinking Degas had copied the work from a snapshot - if one had been available at the time.
The spontaneity of the protagonists - one scratching her back, another adjusting a ribbon around her neck and a young girl fiddling with her pearl earring while a little dog scampers around her ankles - looks completely unrehearsed.
So, too, does the stance of ballet master Jules Perrot, one arm casually resting on his time stick while the other directs a dancer in front of him. Adding to its "stolen moment" look is the movement Degas has managed to imbue in his dancers' tutus. They positively flit across the canvas.
But despite looking as though he has simply recreated a fleeting image, The Dance Class took Degas years to design and paint, says Kinsman.
"The whole scene was not a real experience that Degas saw at all. He carefully painted and sketched each individual figure, then fitted them all together rather like a jigsaw puzzle. He was a real perfectionist and hated to part with any of his paintings. His agent had to literally prise them out of his hands."
Just as the world of ballet fascinated Degas, so too did horse racing and the exhibition is rich with examples from this period of his career.
What piqued his interest was the movement the majestic beasts made as they flew toward the finish line or when they simply walked around the track before a race.
Horses apart, the one constant throughout his career was plainly his love for women and not just the pretty young ballerinas or society maidens. Degas was equally as happy to paint laundresses and prostitutes.
Bathing women were another favourite, and while there is something of the voyeur in these works, his figures are not sexualised; they are adored.
Looking through the exhibition it's easy to understand how Degas came to influence so many of the artists that came after him.
"Matisse and Picasso were both avid collectors of his work," says Kinsman. "He was one of the key artists of the 19th century and his influence trickles down to artists today."
Exhibition
What: Degas: Master of French Art
Where and when: National Gallery of Art, Canberra, to March 22
On the web: www.nga.gov.au
