Subject

Unlike most Impressionists, Degas never worked from nature. “Art is not a sport,” wrote this cool, cynical intellectual, the very image of the Paris dandy. Instead, he roamed behind the scenes of such popular city haunts as the opera, ballet, and racetrack. In this scene from the then-popular Robert Le Diable (Robert the Devil) opera, the spirits of dead nuns who have broken their vows dance wildly in a ghostly moonlit cloister, hoping to lure the hero Robert to damnation. Painting from an audience member’s view-point, Degas is more interested in what is going on at the edge of the theater’s orchestra pit than on the stage. Several musicians and audience members are painted as portraits of Degas’ opera-loving friends. Viewing this painting, we can almost reach out and touch the slicked-down hair of the man in the right foreground, as he and the gentlemen near him look in every direction except toward the stage. What or who is the bearded man with the opera glasses (far left) eyeing? The painting’s focus is a far cry from the moralizing themes of French Academy art. Perhaps Degas was making fun of this heavy, melo- dramatic opera, with its ties to a traditional, Romantic past that the Impressionists wanted to escape.

  Style

The daring composition (like a photograph taken by someone in the audience) shows how photography influenced the Impressionists. As they gaze toward the painting’s edges, Degas’ subjects seem to say that life goes on outside this painting. The artist often made quick, location sketches with “essence”‑ oil paint thinned with turpentine ‑ and then painted a finished work in his studio. Like other Impressionists, Degas was fascinated with light, but he preferred artificial light to the en plein air kind. Notice how this painting’s three light sources create different moods: the bright lamps lighting the musicians’ scores, the eerie cast of footlights on the per- formers and the moonlight created by gas lights over the stage. “The fascinating thing,” Degas said, “is not to show the source of light, but the effect of light.”

  Artist

To Degas, a painting was “something which requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime.” In his studio, Degas loved to experiment with composition and light, but unlike most Impressionists, he often painted from memory or imagination. He also worked in a variety of materials, including pastel, pastel-paint combinations, and sculpture. When a financial crisis forced him to sell his work in the mid-1870s, he turned to monotype prints (made by applying coloured or black paint to a metal plate) which could be turned out quickly. However, he continued to paint until his eyesight grew too weak at the end of his life.