Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell

Enlightening exhibition at the National Gallery looking at pastel drawings by Degas from the Burrell collections alongside some of the National Gallery’s own pictures.

Working in pastel allowed Degas to draw in colour and to develop new ways of representing modern life. I’m not a great fan of Degas’ paintings but these had a lovely fresh life to them and worked like snapshots of a time. A good example of this was “At the jewellers” showing a cropped picture of a woman looking at the wares in the counter.

I loved the section on horse racing particularly a picture of jockey’s in the rain and a picture of woman looking through field glasses at us. Is it saying something about the gaze? We are looking in detail at her and for once she looks back in with even greater intensity.

The commentary was good particularly about the technical details of how Degas used pastels and a special fixer made only for him.

Of course there were lots of pictures of dancers and of women at their toilette. I liked one of dancers and their chaperones as I’d not thought about that relationship before. I do find the toilette ones quiet voyeuristic though.

Closes on 7 May 2017

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