Dancers
c. 1896
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
Drawings
Dancers, c. 1896. Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917). Pastel with charcoal on tracing paper mounted on paper and backed with gray board; sheet: 55.7 x 41.4 cm (21 15/16 x 16 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade 1916.1043 Degas depicted the ballet in more than 1,000 paintings, prints, pastels, and sculptures. He preferred private, offstage moments to glamorous curtain calls or artfully constructed compositions. Here, three dancers stretch together in the wings, unaware of the viewer’s presence. Powdery layers of yellow, orange, and pink pastel create a rough surface characteristic of Degas’s late work in the medium. He invented special techniques that allowed him to build layer upon layer of color with varying degrees of opacity and transparency. This pastel’s rich surface and intense, vibrating palette is the result of such innovative methods. Degas joined six separate irregularly shaped sheets of paper to make this work, and their connections are faintly visible on its surface.
- Maker/Artist
- Degas, Edgar
- Classification
- Drawing
- Formatted Medium
- pastel with charcoal on tracing paper mounted on paper and backed with gray board
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 55.7 x 41.4 cm (21 15/16 x 16 5/16 in.)
- Inscribed
- Inscription: inscribed, lower left, in pastel: Degas
- Departments
- Drawings
- Accession Number
- 1916.1043
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade
- Exhibitions
- French Art Since Eighteen Hundred, The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition, The Silver Jubilee Exhibition, French Drawings and Watercolors from French Public and Private Collections, 19th and 20th Century French Art and Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Loans, Works of Edgar Degas, 35th Anniversary Exhibition, The Dance in Art, Art and the Stage, Creativity in Art and Science, 1860-1960, Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum, Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement, Masterworks from The Phillips Collection, Mary Cassatt and the Feminine Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Paris, Pure Color: Pastels from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art, <em>Cleveland Art Loan Exposition</em>. Cleveland School of Art, Kinney & Levan Building, Cleveland (November 25–December 17, 1913)., <em>Inaugural Exhibition</em>. Minneapolis Institute of Arts (January 7–February 7, 1915).
- Rights Statement
- CC0
- Museum Location
- 101A Prints & Drawings
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