Le Foyer de la Danse á l’Opéra, by Edgar Degas

 

Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was born in Paris. As the son of a wealthy banker he was free to paint without having to worry about making an income from his art. He was not particularly sociable, being regarded by his contemporaries as being a somewhat forbidding character.

Despite having sympathies with the principles of Impressionism, and being acutely aware of the opportunities offered by exploring the boundaries of light and colour, his prime interest was in capturing movement, primarily that of racehorses and of people at work.

Ballet dancers often featured in his work, with Le Foyer de la Danse á l’Opéra, painted in 1872, being a prime example. His method of work involved close observation and analysis of a scene, recorded by numerous sketches, before he worked on the final painting in his studio.

The painting conveys an atmosphere of uninterrupted activity, being a snapshot of the Opera dancers hard at work, either keeping in shape or practicing their routines. Nothing is posed and there is no awareness by any of the dancers or other subjects of anyone else being present. There is a variety of activity going on – some dancers are at the barre, one is resting on a chair, and one is being coached by an instructor while other dancers look on and a violinist prepares to play.

The painting has been carefully constructed to draw the viewer in. The centre of the canvas is virtually empty, with all the features of interest being arranged towards the sides and edges, thus forcing the eye to move around and give the painting more attention than might otherwise have been the case. The groups on either side are linked by the red line of the barre and the other splashes of red on the canvas – a sash on the extreme right and a fan on the foreground chair - also lead the eye to complete the frame by drifting to the painter’s signature at the bottom left.

The open space in the centre, and the apparently random arrangement of people and furniture, accentuate the life and immediacy of the painting. A mirror reflects a group outside the composition and a girl whisks past a half-open door – perhaps she is on her way to another dance studio. Everything suggests that there is movement beyond what we can see.

Le Foyer de la Danse á l’Opéra is exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

© John Welford

Radium

 

Radium (Ra) is an element with the number 88 on the periodic table. When freshly prepared it is a brilliant white metal that quickly darkens when exposed to the air. It glows in the dark, giving a faint bluish-green luminescence.

It was discovered in 1898 by the double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie (1867-1934), who failed to recognise just how dangerous it was. She was unaware that it was a million times more radioactive than uranium and highly carcinogenic. She regularly handled radium and other radioactive elements without taking protective measures and even kept lumps of radium in her desk because she liked the way it glowed. Her work undoubtedly led to her death from a form of leukaemia, and even today some of her personal papers have to be stored in lead-lined cases and are considered to be too dangerous to handle without wearing protective clothing.

During the years before the full dangers presented by radium were appreciated, it would take the lives of many more people who worked with it in ignorance of the dangers to which they were unwittingly exposed.

Radium was added to many patent medicines and products such as hair cream and toothpaste, because the glow was thought to indicate health-giving properties, when the precise opposite was the case.

In 1917, the US Radium Corporation produced a brand of luminous paint called Undark, invented by Dr Sabin von Sochocky. The corporation supplied the US military with it in the form of luminescent watch dials and instrument faces. Although the company’s managers and scientists protected themselves by using lead screens and protective clothing when handling radium, these precautions were not extended to their employees, who were mainly young women hired to paint the watch dials with radium paint.

The girls were so impressed by the luminescence of Undark that they used it as make-up and to decorate their fingernails. One radium worker is known to have painted her teeth with it before going on a date, so that her smile would glow in the dark.

Encouraged by their managers, the workers regularly shaped their brushes by using their lips and tongues, which led many of them ingesting considerable quantities of radium.

The results were devastating, with many of the women developing mouth cancers, bone fractures and what was termed “radium jaw”, a type of necrosis. There were hundreds of premature deaths.

When these cases were brought to public attention, the company denied the claims and organised a medical cover-up. Eventually, justice was done when the subsequent court case became a cornerstone of labour safety law.

Radium also took the life of the inventor of Undark. Dr von Sochocky died in 1928 from aplastic anaemia, the same disease that would kill Marie Curie in 1934.

© John Welford