A moving day out with Degas

MOVEMENT IS the theme of the Degas exhibition drawing beguiled crowds to the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. Ballet and the dancers of the Paris Opera fascinated the artist, whose vast body of work is synonymous with beauty. But there is far more to Edgar Degas than gorgeous colours and light. He is a realist and a risk-taker, a social historian without equal who was influenced by Ingres and Delacroix. Degas records the life that unfolds around him: he sees everything, writes EILEEN BATTERSBY

He does not idealise the young women he paints; he captures their weariness, their frustrations and possibly, as in The Dance Lesson– a large oil on canvas from around 1879, in which a girl in a red sweater slumps dejectedly in a corner while two dancers chat and, farther across the canvas, a class appears about to begin – their despair. They don't smile prettily; they slump, bend, scratch and stretch.

The life facing a member of the corps de ballet was one not of bouquets and curtain calls but of hard work and disapproval from sections of society that doubted the morality of dancing for a living. Degas is clear-eyed yet sympathetic, at times tender, but never sentimental and not even particularly romantic. Where Renoir features luscious chocolate-box beauties, Degas depicts real people at their least self-conscious. It was he who best caught the France of the Third Republic, in works such as In a Cafe, a painting also known as The Absinthe Drinker(1875-6), and it is his paintings that invariably appear on the covers of the novels of his friend Émile Zola.

That is not to say the works on show are not beautiful, but it is a rare, gritty beauty emanating from colour, form and absolute candour. Degas's palette is both vivid and muted: many of the works are executed in pastel, others in strikingly effective chalk and charcoal. The viewer is compelled to believein these works.

There is also a sense of narrative; he is offering not portraits but scenes of life. In The Rehearsal, a large oil on canvas from around 1874, Degas the observer shows the old dancing master, a former dancer, working with some of the dancers while others stand or sit and wait their turn.

Waiting is important in these pictures, and is shown in a range of moods, from anticipation, as dancers prepare to go on stage, to the boredom of an endless lesson. Degas leaves no doubt about there being a world beyond the studio windows.

Photography began to emerge during his early life, just as film would dominate his final years. Both mediums are important to Degas, and this must-see show includes some of his photographs. One of them, a black-and-white shot in which a dancer adjusts the strap of her costume, is hauntingly graceful, a moment in time.

Many of the pictures are intimate backstage or rehearsal-room scenes, glimpses of work in progress, preparation rather than performance. Yet Degas is never voyeuristic. His dancers are robust and athletic, above all human. In Dancers in the Green Room, from about 1879, the dancers are preparing to go onstage. One of them adjusts the bow at the back of her tutu while a colleague ties, or perhaps chalks, her shoe. Either way, she is balancing her foot on a prone double bass. Their bodies, not their faces, are the focus. Degas the consummate draftsman respects the physical effort far more than ethereal effect. A study of legs in black chalk is not unlike the work of the Renaissance master Leonardo.

Among all the pictures, photographs and pioneering films of movement is Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, a work that divided opinion. It is a painted bronze figure clad in muslin and silk. The girl looks every inch a dancer, holding her position, eyes closed, possibly dreaming of future fame. The original, modelled in wax, had been dressed to appear as lifelike as possible. The superb exhibition catalogue describes what happened when the figure was displayed at the sixth Impressionist exhibition, in the spring of 1881: "The sculpture prompted a heated and sustained debate between zealous detractors on one side and outspoken supporters on the other. Their responses can be broadly divided into three groups . . . One focused on its shocking subject, another on the startling realism of the work, and a third on its innovative physical construction. Although depictions of various kinds of dancers dated back to ancient times, a frank representation in sculpted form of a ballerina from modern-day Paris was unprecedented. Also complicating matters was the fact that the individual chosen – thin, uncomely and dressed for the classroom rather than the stage – did not correspond with popular notions of the ballerina . . . In the eyes of several she was implicitly immoral, a 'rat from the opera . . . learning her craft with all of her evil instincts and vicious inclinations.' " Others applauded Degas's realism and exactness.

Little Dancer Aged Fourteenwas the culmination of many sketches and drawings, including Five Studies for a Pair of Legs, that resulted from Degas's having decided to draw the young girl, Marie van Goethem, repeatedly and from multiple angles. She is obviously also the model for Three Studies of a Dancer in Fourth Position, in charcoal and pastel from around 1878-81.

WHO WAS EDGAR DEGAS?Born in Paris in 1834 into wealth based on the bank founded by his grandfather, the young Degas was pointed towards the law. He thought otherwise and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. Then, at 22, bored by days spent copying works at the Louvre, he set off alone for Italy, to study the masters. On his return to Paris he became friendly with Manet, the Impressionist with whom Degas had most in common. Both preferred the city and looked to narrative more than to mood – although Degas can convey a subject's state of mind with the merest glance.

He is that extraordinary mixture of a modern who looked to the past. Aloof by nature, and obsessive, he believed the artist should be solitary. He collected art and dedicated himself to his work. There were no scandals; he never married, he had no children. Apparently he was quite a snob and perfected an awkward style of argument that confounded all comers. When his father died the truth about the family’s failing fortune surfaced, and Degas had no option but to sell off his collection to help.

In ways he is the Henry James of Impressionism. Degas is multisided; his range is vast. The Cotton Exchange, New Orleans (1873)or Portraits at the Stock Exchange (1878-9)may seem light years removed from the dancers dominating the Royal Academy show, but they are not. Degas was interested in everything: horse racing, the circus, the rich and the poor mingling in the street, dancers at the Paris Opera. For the last nine years of his life, until his lonely death, in 1917, he was almost blind and impoverished, though very famous. He refused Sacha Guitry's request that he participate in a film about living French artists. Guitry was determined if not very honourable, and he hid behind a tree to sneak some footage of Degas. This little film is also included in the exhibition. Degas walks slowly towards the camera. People recognise him. The elderly artist, private to the last, walks on, eyes down.

Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movementis at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, until December 11th