Hyman Bloom admired works by artists such as Soutine ("Carcass of Beef", 1924) and Rembrandt ("Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp", 1632; "The Slaughtered Ox", 1655) that explored similar themes. He called the colors of a decaying corpse he had seen in a morgue "harrowing" and yet "beautiful...iridescent and pearly." Many of Bloom's paintings feature rabbis, usually holding the Torah. According to Bloom, his intentions were more artistic than religious. He began questioning his Jewish faith early in life, and painted rabbis, he claimed, because that was what he knew. Over the course of his career he produced dozens of paintings of
The Dance Lesson The Dance Lesson The Dance Lesson (sometimes known as The Dancing Lesson) is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist Edgar Degas created around 1879. It is currently kept at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. There is at least one other work by Degas by this title, also made in about 1879, which is a pastel. The painting is the first of a series of about 40 pictures that Degas painted in this horizontal, frieze-like format. It measures . To the far left is a double bass with an exhausted dancer wearing a bright orange