Degas

The Rehearsal, The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1873credit here

Ballet Rehearsal, Exhibited at Glasgow Museum, Glasgow, 1876credit here

L'etoile, Exhibited at Musee d'Orsay, Paris, 1878credit here

Opinion: I chose Degas as an artist and not merely one piece because I found myself drawn to too many of his paintings of ballerinas and dancers. I have always admired the art of ballet and like how the movement and grace of the ballerinas is not just communicated through the figures themselves but through Degas’s very brush strokes and style of painting. 

Theory: Degas was an impressionist painter whose fascination with movement and light led him to the ballet school. He had several methods of bringing the viewer into his pictorial space. These methods included, cutting the cutting off the space (as by a staircase) and arranging the figures in a random manner. “By seeming to stand on the same surface with them, viewers are drawn into their space” (Gardner, Page 910). Loving the way the light shimmered on the tutu, Degas used this to create patterns of light splotches that communicated the Impressionist notion of depicting a moment in time. The moment theme is also shown by the painterly style that contributes to the movement of the piece.