Silly Supper: Degas' Ballerinas

As a child, I did want to learn ballet but my mum put me in piano classes instead (which I loathed). I've always liked the costume - the stiff, fanlike tutu and pointe shoe. And there's something just so graceful and beautiful about the dance itself. Lithe, sublime, precise, ethereal. So here we have Edgar Degas, a French Impressionist painter who made ballet a prevalent subject in many of his pieces. Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas in 1834, he wanted to become a history painter only to switch to painting contemporary life, while retaining the essence of classical painting. He explained that "no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and of the study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament, I know nothing".