Degas' Dancers
Degas painted and drew ballet dancers for more than thirty years, at rehearsal, in class and on stage.
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About the series
Ballet dancers are the subject most closely linked with Edgar Degas. From the early 1870s until his eyesight failed in the 1900s, he made hundreds of paintings, pastels, drawings and sculptures of dancers at the Paris Opéra.
He rarely showed a finished performance. Instead he painted rehearsal rooms, classes, dancers stretching, resting or tying a shoe, often from an unusual angle or with figures cut off by the frame, a habit shaped by Japanese prints and photography. Two versions of The Dance Class, from the mid-1870s, show the ballet master Jules Perrot leading a lesson: one is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the other in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Star, a dancer on stage in a pastel of about 1878, is also in the Musée d'Orsay. Many late works are in pastel, with intense colour.
A class or rehearsal scene suits a living room. Single dancers in upright formats pair well in a bedroom or hallway.
