Degas' Dancers

Most famous for his paintings and pastel drawings of ballet dancers (of which is numbered at about 1500 pieces) Edgar Degas' passion was showing modern living in unusual and interesting new ways.  He liked to play with compositions, family portraits showed personality and emotion rather than static poses of  the subjects sitting looking forward.  Degas' paintings borrowed from Japanese prints cutting off (framing) his subjects in unusual ways, in doing this he worked at making the viewer feel like they were in the midst of the action.  He was known to paint his friends in his pieces.  In the painting called The Orchestra at the Opera, the main musician is a friend and really played the bassoon although a number of other friends are in the painting as well, depicted with instruments but they really didn't play! Degas wanted his paintings to look spontaneous and done quickly but actually he worked out his pieces with a lot of preliminary, detailed sketches and executed them  in his studio.  I learned these things from a book called "What Makes A Degas A Degas" written by Richard Muhlberger.