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Lot Essay
At the time of his death in 1917 at the age of eighty-three, Edgar Degas's studio was filled with pastel and charcoal drawings. Two years after his death, the preeminent dealers of modernism—Bernheim-Jeune, Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard— organized a series of auctions selling Degas's personal collection of Impressionist paintings, as well as the privileged contents of his studio. The present work was among the rigorous preparatory drawings of ballerinas—the subject for which the artist is know best known— that were sold with Degas' estate.
In this figure study, Degas recorded a trio of dancers, each wearing a balletic costume of a sleeveless leotard and voluminous tulle tutu, exposing their arms, shoulder blades and spines, as well as their stockinged legs. The artist was fascinated by the natural gestures of the dancers at rest, awaiting their turn to practice or perform: here they stretch, twist and lean, forming unexpected, oblique angles with their bodies.
In the present work the figures overlap slightly with one another, as if they occupy the same space; yet they might equally represent studies of the same dancer, observed at different moments in time. The leftmost brunette faces us and leans forward; she balances easily on one foot, like a stork, while fixing the ribbon of the silk slipper on her other foot. The second figure stands erect with her back to us, her feet splayed and slightly spread, while adjusting her shoulder strap with her opposite hand. The third figure stands contrapposto with her hands on her hips and the toe of her right pointe shoe pressed into the floor. Each of these specific, unselfconscious poses might have informed the pose of a dancer in one of Degas's larger painted compositions, set in the rehearsal studios or the wings of the stage at the Parisian Opéra.
Etude de danseuses was featured in the 1998 exhibition, Degas and the Little Dancer. This installation was organized around Degas's well-known wax sculpture of the same title and highlighted several related drawings, including the present work. The exhibition traveled from the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha to The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Williamstown and the Baltimore Museum of Art, and was accompanied by a major exhibition catalogue written by art historian Richard Kendall, one of the most prolific Degas scholars of the twentieth century.
In this figure study, Degas recorded a trio of dancers, each wearing a balletic costume of a sleeveless leotard and voluminous tulle tutu, exposing their arms, shoulder blades and spines, as well as their stockinged legs. The artist was fascinated by the natural gestures of the dancers at rest, awaiting their turn to practice or perform: here they stretch, twist and lean, forming unexpected, oblique angles with their bodies.
In the present work the figures overlap slightly with one another, as if they occupy the same space; yet they might equally represent studies of the same dancer, observed at different moments in time. The leftmost brunette faces us and leans forward; she balances easily on one foot, like a stork, while fixing the ribbon of the silk slipper on her other foot. The second figure stands erect with her back to us, her feet splayed and slightly spread, while adjusting her shoulder strap with her opposite hand. The third figure stands contrapposto with her hands on her hips and the toe of her right pointe shoe pressed into the floor. Each of these specific, unselfconscious poses might have informed the pose of a dancer in one of Degas's larger painted compositions, set in the rehearsal studios or the wings of the stage at the Parisian Opéra.
Etude de danseuses was featured in the 1998 exhibition, Degas and the Little Dancer. This installation was organized around Degas's well-known wax sculpture of the same title and highlighted several related drawings, including the present work. The exhibition traveled from the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha to The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Williamstown and the Baltimore Museum of Art, and was accompanied by a major exhibition catalogue written by art historian Richard Kendall, one of the most prolific Degas scholars of the twentieth century.