NARRATOR:
The odd viewpoints, cropped forms, and tilting floors in this pastel may seem as casual as a snapshot. But Edgar Degas revealed:
DEGAS [ACTOR]:
"No art is less spontaneous than mine. I must re-do the same subject ten times, twenty times.”
NARRATOR:
Throughout his long career, Degas searched for technical mastery and innovation. He experimented with novel materials and methods to capture modern life, while aspiring to the technical virtuosity of the old masters.
In this work, Degas attached at least ten pieces of paper to the original sheet, which was the central composition. He then mounted the finished patchwork on cardboard. Examining the far right of the composition, for example, and the very thin added strips, we see how subtly his compositions evolved and how carefully they were plotted. In this work Degas also achieved a remarkable variety of textures, experimenting with pastel, gouache, distemper and essence—a range of pigments applied with various binders.
Degas made more than 600 paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs related to the dance. He frequently hired dancers to pose for him in his studio. Eventually, he compiled an extensive stock of figure drawings, which he later incorporated into paintings like this one.
Dancers in the Wings
c. 1876-1878
Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
On View
Combining pastel, pastel paste, gouache, distemper (glue-based paint), and peinture à l’essence (conventional paint drained of its oil), this picture is among the most technically sophisticated in Degas’s oeuvre. Color is applied wet, with a brush, for the reverse of a stage flat at left and in rapid, liquid skeins for the ornaments in the dancers’ hair, but dry pastel, rubbed over the bare laid paper, creates an airy effect in the tutus. Degas seems to have begun the composition with the dancer in pink and built it outward, adding nine strips of paper around the edges to make room for her companion, dressed as a butterfly. This costume has been identified with a specific ballet, La Source (The Spring), danced at the Paris Opéra in the 1875–76 season.
Details
- Artist Name: Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917)
- Title: Dancers in the Wings
- Date: c. 1876-1878
- Medium: Pastel, gouache, distemper, and "essence" on paper, mounted on board
- Dimensions: 27-1/4 x 19-3/4 in. (69.2 x 50.2 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1977.06.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
Madame de Clermont, Paris, 1899.
[Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, stock no. 1261, by at 1914 (possibly by 1912), sold 1928 to];
[Reid & Lefevre, London, stock no. 316/28, owned jointly with M. Knoedler & Co., Paris and New York, stock no. A603, sold 15 October 1929 to];
Mrs. Edouard L. Jonas (Mrs. H. Harris Jonas, 1884–1974), Paris and New York, to;
[Wildenstein, New York, sold 2 March 1977 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
[Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, stock no. 1261, by at 1914 (possibly by 1912), sold 1928 to];
[Reid & Lefevre, London, stock no. 316/28, owned jointly with M. Knoedler & Co., Paris and New York, stock no. A603, sold 15 October 1929 to];
Mrs. Edouard L. Jonas (Mrs. H. Harris Jonas, 1884–1974), Paris and New York, to;
[Wildenstein, New York, sold 2 March 1977 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
Exposition Centennale d'art français
- Paris, Grand Palais, 1900 to
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- Vanity Fair, p. 45
- McMullen, Roy, Degas: His Life, Times, and Work, p. 362-363
- Meier-Graefe, Julius, Degas,pl. XCIX
- Kendall, Richard and Jill DeVonyar, Degas and the Dance, exhibition catalogue,fig. 192, color p. 172
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- Alexandre, Arsène, Les Arts, p. iv
- Kent, S., Eyewitness Art: Composition, p. 53
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- The Great Artists: Their Lives, Works, and Inspiration, pp. 490-491
- Lemoisne, Paul-André, La Revue de l'Art,pl. 13 p. 104
- Degas: Art in the Making,2004, fig. 26 pp. 31-32
- Browse, Lillian, Degas Dancers, p. 59, 360
- Borgmeyer, Charles Louis, The Master Impressionists, p. 237
- Thomson, Richard, Edgar Degas: Waiting,fig. 26 pp. 42
- Frankfurter, Alfred, Art News, p. 11
- Maheux, Anne, Degas Pastels,n. 32, fig. 11, fig. 11a. fig. 16 pp. 29, 80, 30, 31
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