In this second article about reading dancing in paintings, I move on to its most formalised expression, in ballet, which came to dominate the work of several artists in the late nineteenth century, most notably that of Edgar Degas.

His ballet paintings came to concentrate on smaller groups of dancers, focussing more on their form and movement, as in Swaying Dancer (Dancer in Green) from 1877-79. This is painted not in oils, but a combination of pastel and gouache.

Depicting movement has always been a technical challenge. At the end of the century, Franz von Stuck appears to have used flowlines in his Dancers in 1896, rather than simple motion blur.

A decade after the dancing career of La Carmencita went into decline, John Singer Sargent used his virtuoso brushstrokes to capture her motion. His inspiration was the swish of Giovanni Boldini, in the movement of the fabric rather than its form.

Exotic dancing also featured in Orientalist paintings, with their erotic associations.

Théodore Chassériau painted this sketchy portrait of two Moorish Dancers in 1849, in the style of Delacroix.

Georges Rochegrosse’s undated Palace Entertainment shows a dancer with a musical group entertaining some Algerian men, her routine involving a pair of short swords.

The early Christian church had developed moral concerns over popular performing arts including music and dancing, and by the time of Hieronymus Bosch they were included alongside gambling in those who had gone to Hell.

Edward Poynter’s The Ionian Dance: Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos, Matura virgo et fingitur artubus (1895) quotes the ‘Roman’ Odes of Horace, and describes the ‘corruption’ of a young woman who learns the ‘lascivious’ movements of this particular dance. The Latin text may be translated as it pleases the mature virgin to be taught the movements of the Ionian Dance, and shapes her limbs. However, artubus may be a double entendre, as it can also refer to the sexual organs.

Poynter’s painting shows a shapely young woman, wearing nothing but a diaphanous dress, dancing vigorously in front of an audience of eight other women, who seem critically engaged in her performance. This appears decidedly Aesthetic, as well as more than a little risqué.

Although it may seem a paradoxical subject for the slow and painstaking Divisionist approach to painting, Georges Seurat’s Le Chahut (The Can-Can) (1889-90) is a well-known celebration of a dance that became notorious in its day.

It was an infamous dance from a reinterpretation of the martyrdom of John the Baptist that swept Europe and North America in the early twentieth century, that of Salome.

The paintings Gustave Moreau made of Salome initiated this, among them being this later oil version of The Apparition from 1876-77. Those prompted Gustave Flaubert to write a short story telling this radical rewriting of the martyrdom, from which Oscar Wilde wrote his play Salomé, and that in turn led Richard Strauss to write his opera. In 1906, the dancer and choreographer Maud Allan produced a show in Vienna featuring the Dance of the Seven Veils that had been included in both Wilde’s play and Strauss’s opera, and many considered to be nothing short of a striptease.

Strauss’s opera arrived in New York in 1907, and inspired Robert Henri to invite a Mademoiselle Voclexca to perform the notorious Dance of the Seven Veils in his studio. He then interpreted her dance into a series of paintings, including this Salome (1909), in which John’s head has been omitted altogether.

We’ve strayed a long way from faeries and country folk.

As Ovid nears the end of Book 13 of his Metamorphoses, Aeneas and his companions are in transit across the Mediterranean, heading towards Italy and destiny. He rushes them through a rapid succession of adventures before bringing them to Sicily for the closing stories in this book.

Ovid summarises much of Virgil’s Aeneid in just a few lines, taking Aeneas from Crete through Ithaca, Samos, Dodona, and Phaeacia, to land on Sicily, where Scylla and Charybdis threaten the safety of mariners. Scylla is combing the hair of Galatea, as the latter laments her tragic love-life. Wiping tears from her eyes, Galatea then tells us her story.

When he was only sixteen, Galatea had fallen in love with Acis, the son of the river nymph Symaethis, but the Cyclops Polyphemus fell in love with her. The Cyclops did his best to smarten himself up for her, while remaining deeply and murderously jealous of Acis.

Telemus, a seer, visited Sicily and warned Polyphemus that Ulysses would blind his single eye, as told in a separate story in Homer’s Odyssey. This inevitably upset the Cyclops, who climbed a coastal hill and sat there playing his reed pipes. Meanwhile, Galatea was lying in the arms of her lover Acis, hidden behind a rock on the beach.

Polyphemus then launched into a long soliloquy imploring Galatea to come to him and spurn Acis. When he saw the two lovers together, he grew angry, and shouted loudly at them that that would be their last embrace. Galatea dived into the sea, but her lover was buried by the side of a mountain hurled by the Cyclops. The blood of Acis was turned into a stream that gushed forth from a reed growing in a cleft in the rock, with him as its river-god.

Claude’s wonderful Coastal Landscape with Acis and Galatea (1657) is first and foremost a coastal landscape, but also tells Ovid’s story faithfully. Polyphemus is seen at the right, watching Acis and Galatea in their makeshift shelter down at the water’s edge, with Cupid sat beside them. Additional Nereids are tucked away in the trees at the left.

Nicolas Bertin’s Acis and Galatea from around 1700 also follows Ovid’s detail. At its centre, the two lovers are behind a rock pinnacle, with three cupids sealing their love. Polyphemus is already in a rage at the upper right, although he hasn’t yet armed himself with the huge boulder. Below the couple Bertin provides a link into Ovid’s greater narrative, with Scylla and Charybdis, and possibly the goddess Venus with her son Cupid by her breast.

Johann Heinrich Tischbein prefers a plainer account in his Acis and Galatea from 1758. Galatea is almost naked in the arms of Acis, as Polyphemus peers at them, a voyeur behind a tree trunk. There are now no cupids or other distractions.

Alexandre Charles Guillemot’s The Love of Acis and Galatea (1827) doesn’t pursue the theme of Polyphemus’ voyeurism, but returns to a more conventional composition of the Cyclops sitting on a distant hill. He also sows potential confusion: Polyphemus is holding his reed pipes, although they are harder to see, and the pipes on Acis’ back are extras that are perhaps a little too obvious.

Later in the nineteenth century, emphasis switched from the jealousy of Polyphemus at the sight of the couple together, to Tischbein’s theme of voyeurism.

Gustave Moreau’s first Galatea from about 1880 shows her resting naked, alone in the countryside with her eyes closed, as the Cyclops plays sinister voyeur. Surrounding them is a magical countryside, filled with strange plants recalling anemones, as would be more appropriate for a sea-nymph. Acis is nowhere to be seen.

Moreau’s second Galatea from near the end of his career in 1896 is dark, and shows Galatea and Polyphemus hemmed in within a deep canyon. Around her aren’t flowers but the seaweeds and corals more appropriate for a sea-nymph.

One of the masterpieces of Symbolism, Odilon Redon’s The Cyclops from about 1914 follows Redon’s personal theme of the eye and sight, and further develops that of voyeurism. Polyphemus’ face is now dominated by his single eye looking down over Galatea’s naked beauty, with Acis absent.

Curiously, none of the above paintings shows the moment of climax, or peripeteia, in which Polyphemus murders Acis.

Only Pompeo Batoni’s Acis and Galatea from 1761 shows the Cyclops, his reed pipes at his feet, hurling the boulder at Acis, so making clear the couple’s tragic fate.