Inspired by: Edgar Degas - The Absinthe Drinker

Absinthe (also known as La Fée Verte or ‘the green fairy’) was a green colored, highly alcoholic spirit. Poured over ice and served with water and a cube of sugar to soften the bitter taste. It was highly addictive and known to cause hallucinations. Its growing popularity and its negative social effects led to absinthe being banned in much of Europe and America.This cafe has been identified. It is "La Nouvelle Athènes", in Place Pigalle near Sacre-Coeur, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. At the time it was a meeting place for modern artists and a hotbed of intellectual bohemians. Degas asked people he knew to pose for the figures. Ellen André was an actress, and an artist's model, who posed for a number of other impressionists. Marcellin Desboutin was an engraver and artist. When criticism of the painting cast a slur on their reputations, Degas had to state publicly that they were not alcoholics. 'L'Absinthe' sparked controversy more than once. The painting was first shown, along with 25 of his paintings, in the Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877. The critics found it ugly and disgusting. It was then put into storage. It was shown again 16 years later, in England. The English critics viewed it as a warning lesson against absintheand the French in general. In May 1893, the work was bought for the amazing sum of 21,000 francs ($275,000 today) by Count Isaac de Camondo, who bequeathed it to the Louvre in 1908 and from there to the Musée d'Orsay. Its original title was Dans un Café, a name often used today. Other early titles were A sketch of a French Café and Figures at Café. It was changed to L'Absinthe when it was exhibited in England in 1893.

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Edgar Degas - Waiting

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Inspired by Edgar Degas - Waiting

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas affected disdain toward the improvised outdoor landscape studies for which many of the Impressionists became known. He clung to the habit of drawing on location in preparation for his pictures and insisted on finishing in the studio routinely with models. Degas considered himself a Realist painter. He attempted to paint things as they were, versus how he perceived them to be. Still, the art world considers him an Impressionist artist as he adopted their loose strokes and play on light.
Degas and the ballet are virtually synonymous. Dancers, shown in every phase of their complex and demanding art form, make up more than fifty percent of his abundant output. He created approximately 1,500 paintings, monotypes and drawings.
He was aware, from an early point in his studies, of the exhaustion of the ballerinas, and the extent to which they pushed the limits of their bodies. He was further conscious of the brevity of a dancer’s career. Here the chaperone’s face still displays youthful features, yet she is more than likely an ex-dancer. The younger woman represents what her forlorn looking companion once was.

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