Degas in Practice: Behind the Models

Brilliant four week online course from the National Gallery focusing on the female subjects and models in Degas’s work.

The course complimented the excellent exhibition on the gallery looking at Degas’s “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando” and was delivered via a variety of speakers, a style I like as it gives different viewpoints in a longer course.

In week one Aliki Braine gave us an overview of the artists life and main subjects. This was followed the next week by talks from Daphne Barbour from the National Gallery in Washington and Johanna Conybeare talking about his process from drawings to making small sculptures to work from.

Week three saw the return of Braine as a replacement speaker who picked up the talk on Degas and women looking at the women in his life and the subjects he chose to depict. She discussed why we often view him as a misogynist now and whether that was justified. Denise Murrell from the Met then looked at his trip to New Orleans early in his career and the effect of viewing a black community. She read passages from his letter which compared the people around him to silhouettes against he light and how this motif reappeared later in his work.

Finally week four was Jacqui Ansell discussing the clothing and lack of clothing in Degas’s work from the various fashions of the time and what they tell us about the class of the people wearing them and the difference between clothing and costume.

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