Dancer {Fixing Dress} - Print after Edgar Degas (1880-1882 Ballet Series)

Dancer {Fixing Dress} is a print based on the series of pastel on paper works by the French Impressionist Edgar Degas, completed between 1880–1882. It is a reproduction of the early example of the more than 200 pastels, paintings, mixed media drawings and sculptures of ballerinas depicted by Degas from the early 1880s. These works were regarded for their vibrant colouring and steep perspective. This print distills Degas' revolutionary ethos: 'Dancers/Ballerinas were to me a pretext for rendering movement.' It embodies his obsession with capturing the ephemeral moment where theatrical artifice yields to human vulnerability." The dancer/ballerina series follows his earlier studies of both lower and middle-class women, where he looked at the moment when they let their public face drop and pretence gave way to an awareness of the reality of both themselves and their surroundings. With dancers/ballerinas he was primarily interested in the contrast between their beauty and grace on stage and the reality of the physical and physiological toil such artifice took on the performers.