Why did Edgar Degas Paint So Many Ballerinas?
It was during the 1870’s that Degas acquired his enduring reputation as a “painter of dancers”. The reasons for his interest in dance were numerous and diverse but certainly stem from his life-long enthusiasm for music and the opera. Indeed amongst his circle of friends could be counted the composers Emmanuel Chabrier and Ernest Reyer. The interior of the opera house also had many visual attractions – the possibility of unusual views onto the stage from balconies or the orchestral pit, contrasts between light and darkness, illusion and reality, beauty and banality … Degas seemed to be as interested in the effects of artificial light as others among the Impressionist group were interested in the effects of natural light. There is no evidence that Degas had amorous liaisons with any of the dancers (it would have been quite common at the time for members of his class to have mistresses amongst the corps de ballet) however Daniel Halévy, son of the writer Ludovic Halévy, maintained that
