Double Reflection

Matthew Dennison enjoys two exhibitions devoted to Degas that explore the artist’s thoughtful, reflective approach to his work–and his habit of revisiting favourite subjects.

- Matthew Dennison

NO art was ever less spontaneous than mine,’ confessed Edgar Degas. ‘Of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament I know nothing.’ Instead, the artist emphasised the importance of ‘reflection’. He revisited favourite subjects—milliners, laundresses, dancers at the barre, women bathing or arranging their hair, horses and race-goers at fashionable race meetings —‘over again, ten times, one hundred times’, driven by what one acquaintance labelled his ‘passion for perfection’.

Degas died a century ago. His death is commemorated in exhibitions at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum and the National Gallery in London. At the centre of the National’s show is an outstanding collection of Degas pastels and oil paintings on loan from Glasgow’s Burrell Collection. Highlights include The Rehearsal of the Ballet Dancers (1874), justly acclaimed for its bravura evocation of sun-flecked space and the inclusion—simultaneously humorous and poignant—of a wooden spiral staircase with a tortured tilt mirrors the pose of Degas’ half-glimpsed dancers.