Curators’ Introduction: Discover Degas and Miss LaLa

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition focusing on Degas’s “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando”.

The co-curators Anne Robbins from the Muse D’Orsay and Chiara Di Stephano from National Gallery took us through the themes of the show and introduced us to new material which had been found.

They looked at the life of Miss La La (Anna Albertine Olga Brown) using newly discovered photographs of her then moved on to discuss the circus itself and how it became an inspiration for artists. They then took us through the studies for the painting and talked about how he developed the image. These included sketches made at the circus as well as drawings of Miss La La in his studio.

Some time was spent on the time Degas spent with family in New Orleans and the influence of seeing black people there and the effect of figures silhouetted against the bright light had on his art. Finally they outlined the ownership of the work until it came into the National Gallery collection in 1923 and the influence it had on artists who saw it.

I have since been to the excellent show and this talk was a very useful introduction to it.

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