Antiques for Sale > Paintings & Drawings

Soyer’s wife, Ida, was a featured dancer with the Helen Tamiris Modern Dance group throughout the 1930s and well into the 1940s. Helen Tamiris, together with Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, is considered one of the founders of Modern Dance.  As the artist’s son, David, has pointed out: This connection was an important element in Moses’ use of dancers and dance themes in his art. Many people think my father painted and drew dancers because he was influenced by Degas. He did love Degas, but the real reason he painted dancers is that he was surrounded by them!

To my child’s-eye memory, Ida was the most athletic in the group; the highest jumper, the longest leaper. She also studied, but did not perform, ballet. Ida and her dance colleagues served as Moses’ earliest models and as they grew older and moved to other aspects of their lives, he kept in close contact with later generations of dancers.