Edgar Degas - Danseuse debout, c. 1877

Edgar Degas was one of the founders of Impressionism, however, he didn’t like the term and preferred to call it “Realist” or “Independent”. Ballet dancers were one of his main subjects. “People call me the painter of dancing girls,” Degas once told Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard. “It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.”