Degas Collection
Born in 1834, and later to become one of the leading lights of Impressionism, Edgar Degas was not the cheeriest of souls. There are, he once said, some kinds of success that are indistinguishable from panic. This sentiment – that success is sometimes to be feared as much as it might be prized – marked him out from many of his contemporaries, but not nearly as much as his paintings. The Impressionist style lived up to its name, but outside a Degas painting, rarely does it capture the fleeting feelings of loneliness and toil which can often be as inspiring as more satisfying emotions.
The Degas collection at the Burrell features one of his high points as a painter: La Repetition (The Rehearsal), an intimate portrayal of the privations of trainee ballerinas. Degas’ use of framing – cutting off the action on the left of the canvas with a tight coil of spiral staircase – focuses your eyes on the dancers themselves, their feet twisted into uncomfortable positions you can almost feel; their physical grace still unsure of itself. He is no less forgiving in other paintings at the Burrell. His portrait of his friend Louis Edmond Duranty shows a writer suffering and tired in his study, while his nude paintings and pastels of women – painted at the peak of his career – are some of the most honest appraisals of the female form there are.
Degas towers over 19th-century art, a master of craft. But he was also, as art critic Robert Hughes put it, ‘an engine for looking’. He saw everything his contemporaries missed in their quest for beauty.