A drawing by Degas

Edgar Degas, Three dancers 1889

Last week I went to an exhibition that showed part of a private collection. In this collection the owners bought the paintings they liked, based on their personal taste and not what was in fashion. This exhibition was about the paintings and drawings they bought from Impressionist artists and beyond, like Fauvism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism and Kubism.

But one of the things I loved most was this drawing by Edgar Degas. It shows his beloved dancers, but this is not a painting, but a sketch, with pastels on green paper. Degas was an excellent drawer, I read somwhere that he was the only modern artist who could draw like Rembrandt and Titiaan.

I loved this sketch from the first moment I saw it. It is very simple, but you can still imagine the dancers getting ready for a perfomance or a lesson, checking their clothes and warming up the shoes so they will be ready in a moment.

A quick sketch like this shows what a great artist Edgar Degas was.