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Lot Essay
Danseuse tirant son maillot (La Précaution) is an elegant example of the iconic subject that preoccupied Edgar Degas for decades: the spontaneous gestures of the ballet dancer. When the great collector and writer Edmond de Goncourt first visited Degas's studio in February 1874, he praised Degas's turn towards the ballet, writing in his journal, "He has fallen in love with modern life, and out of all the subjects of modern life he has chosen washerwomen and ballet dancers...It is a world of pink and white, of female flesh in lawn and gauze, the most delightful of pretexts for using pale, soft tints" (quoted in R. Baldick, ed., Pages from the Goncourt Journal: Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, New York, 2007, p. 206).
The present work, drawn in the first half of the 1880s, depicts a young dancer of the Parisian opera in the midst of a dress rehearsal. She sits on a bench with her legs askew and leans forward to tug at her silk stockings—a casual, unselfconscious posture that could easily be repeated or altered in a related work of pastel or oil paint. This composition is comprised of the "pale, soft tints" that so enchanted Goncourt. Degas applied a veil of white pastel to convey the buoyant, sheer layers of tulle that form the dancer's skirt, as well as the subtle glow of sunlight that streamed through the tall windows lining the dance studio and that reflected off of its shiny wooden floors. This nearly monochromatic palette is punctuated by touches of pink in the dancer's stocking, as well as the bright blue flowers that both adorn her hair and the off-shoulder sleeve of her costume.
This pastel first belonged to the publisher and patron Georges Charpentier, who was a champion of both modern French artists and novelists, including close friends Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola. Degas's Danseuse tirant son maillot (La Précaution) was sold at Charpentier's estate sale in Paris in 1907, alongside other works on paper by Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
The present work, drawn in the first half of the 1880s, depicts a young dancer of the Parisian opera in the midst of a dress rehearsal. She sits on a bench with her legs askew and leans forward to tug at her silk stockings—a casual, unselfconscious posture that could easily be repeated or altered in a related work of pastel or oil paint. This composition is comprised of the "pale, soft tints" that so enchanted Goncourt. Degas applied a veil of white pastel to convey the buoyant, sheer layers of tulle that form the dancer's skirt, as well as the subtle glow of sunlight that streamed through the tall windows lining the dance studio and that reflected off of its shiny wooden floors. This nearly monochromatic palette is punctuated by touches of pink in the dancer's stocking, as well as the bright blue flowers that both adorn her hair and the off-shoulder sleeve of her costume.
This pastel first belonged to the publisher and patron Georges Charpentier, who was a champion of both modern French artists and novelists, including close friends Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola. Degas's Danseuse tirant son maillot (La Précaution) was sold at Charpentier's estate sale in Paris in 1907, alongside other works on paper by Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.