The ballet dancers immortalized in Edgar Degas' legendary 19th-century paintings enjoyed some company this week, when real life dancers of the Artists of The Australian Ballet took a field trip.
Dancers Evie Ferris and Georgia Scott-Hunter, as well as 6-year-old ballerina Mena Deboil, posed alongside Degas' beloved Impressionist works during a preview for the upcoming "Degas: A New Vision" exhibition at Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria. The show will feature over 200 of Degas' artworks, ranging from depictions of ballet rehearsal to moments in the opera hall, the race track and cafes.
"From the beginning to the very end he was a wonderful artist," exhibition curator Henri Loyrette, the former director of The Louvre and Musée d'Orsay, explained to Vogue. "Since the beginning he made great judgement and made wonderful artistic choices ... and he was always moving and looking at what could happen, so you keep discovering many things looking at his work."
Degas surely had a profuse imagination, one which continues to enchant viewers to this day. But whether even he could have predicted that 200 years in the future, young ballerinas would be arabesque-ing alongside his works in a massive retrospective in his honor -- well, it seems doubtful.
"Degas: A New Vision" runs until Sept. 18, 2016, at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia. For more on the artist, check out our past coverage of a Degas-centric exhibition at MoMA earlier this year.
