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Lot Essay
Depicting a group of dancers waiting in the wings, Edgar Degas’s Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra) offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the glittering world of the Paris Opéra. Caught in a moment of unguarded activity, the ballerinas gather offstage, taking advantage of the entr’acte to pause and prepare for their return to the spotlight. The costumes are sumptuous, the colors radiant, and this impromptu moment, cast in a frieze-like arrangement, seems no less choreographed than the dance itself. A striking vision of the artist’s most iconic motif, Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra) dates from the period during which Degas—known as “the painter of dancers”—was fully immersed in the world of ballet (J. DeVonyar and R. Kendall, Degas and the Dance, exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts, 2002, p. 13).
Inaugurated in 1875, Charles Garnier’s Nouvel Opéra de Paris was the place to see and be seen for the Parisian upper-class. Enthusiasts would purchase annual subscriptions and subscribers, known as abonnés, were granted free run of the theatre, including the coulisses, or backstage, practice rooms, and foyers de la danse, where the dancers gathered before, during, and after a performance. In the present work, the besuited figure to the right is an abonné, shown here amid the congregating ballerinas who appear so used to his presence that they hardly notice him at all.
Such access engendered proximity, which Degas, an abonné himself both experienced and gave image to: his candid depiction of the dancers in the wings suggests an intimate knowledge of the backstage world. As the journalist, and the artist’s contemporary, François Thiébault-Sisson recalled, “Degas comes here [to the Opéra] in the mornings. He watches all the exercises in which the movements are analyzed, he establishes by successive features the various gradations, half-tempos and all the subtleties. When evening comes, at the performances, when he observes an attitude or a gesture, his memories of the morning recur and guide him in his notations, and nothing in the most complicated steps escapes him” (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, London, 1988, p. 167).
In spite of this dedicated attention and interest, however, Degas rarely recorded the specifics of a production or practice sequence. Instead, he borrowed various elements of the costumes, sets, and choreography which he then reconfigured in a new composition when back in his studio in the 9th arrondissement. His paintings, as such, were far from faithful transcriptions but rather evocations of the atmosphere and feeling of a performance. In the example of Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra), Degas conjured the glamour, excitement, and suspense that characterized life backstage.
This heightened sense of emotion is suggested by the rapid brushwork in the present painting. Indeed, Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra) anticipates the “abstract elements” that would dominate Degas’s late-career output (J. Sutherland Boggs, “The Late Years: 1890-1912” in Degas, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, p. 481). Moving away from the more linear style that had defined his earlier work, the artist, here, has adopted a looser, more spontaneous approach that made color its central formal consideration. Instead of painting the elaborate, highly detailed sets that the Opéra was famous for, Degas instead provides only a vague sketch of his performers’ surroundings. The soft planes of yellow and ochre that define the scenery reveal the influence of Japonisme on Degas who, like his fellow Impressionists, admired Ukiyo-e prints for their flat planes of color and novel framing devices.
The emphasis on the decorative can also be seen in the painting’s frieze-like arrangement, a format Degas used from the late 1870s through the turn of the century, which imbues his scenes with a narrative quality. In Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra), this is further underscored by the horizontality of the composition, which lends itself to the various, concurrent actions that make up a performance: the frenzied action of being on stage and the brief respite of time in the wings.
Certainly, Degas was intrigued by all elements that constituted an evening at the Opéra. It is fitting that the artist would seek to paint all that he witnessed as no subject affected Degas more profoundly than the ballet. Scholars estimate that more than half his oeuvre was devoted to the world of dance, and the theme offered Degas seemingly infinite opportunities to represent the human body in motion. When asked by the art collector Louisine Havemeyer why he painted so many ballet dancers, Degas himself replied, “Because, madame, it is all that is left us of the combined movements of the Greeks” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 2002, p. 234).
Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra) was previously in the collection of Adolphe and Elisabeth Friedmann. The Friedmanns were devoted art collectors and lenders, owning several paintings and drawings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Eugène Boudin, and Johan Jongkind in addition to a number of works by Degas, many of which were purchased from his second posthumous studio sale held in 1918.
Inaugurated in 1875, Charles Garnier’s Nouvel Opéra de Paris was the place to see and be seen for the Parisian upper-class. Enthusiasts would purchase annual subscriptions and subscribers, known as abonnés, were granted free run of the theatre, including the coulisses, or backstage, practice rooms, and foyers de la danse, where the dancers gathered before, during, and after a performance. In the present work, the besuited figure to the right is an abonné, shown here amid the congregating ballerinas who appear so used to his presence that they hardly notice him at all.
Such access engendered proximity, which Degas, an abonné himself both experienced and gave image to: his candid depiction of the dancers in the wings suggests an intimate knowledge of the backstage world. As the journalist, and the artist’s contemporary, François Thiébault-Sisson recalled, “Degas comes here [to the Opéra] in the mornings. He watches all the exercises in which the movements are analyzed, he establishes by successive features the various gradations, half-tempos and all the subtleties. When evening comes, at the performances, when he observes an attitude or a gesture, his memories of the morning recur and guide him in his notations, and nothing in the most complicated steps escapes him” (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, London, 1988, p. 167).
In spite of this dedicated attention and interest, however, Degas rarely recorded the specifics of a production or practice sequence. Instead, he borrowed various elements of the costumes, sets, and choreography which he then reconfigured in a new composition when back in his studio in the 9th arrondissement. His paintings, as such, were far from faithful transcriptions but rather evocations of the atmosphere and feeling of a performance. In the example of Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra), Degas conjured the glamour, excitement, and suspense that characterized life backstage.
This heightened sense of emotion is suggested by the rapid brushwork in the present painting. Indeed, Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra) anticipates the “abstract elements” that would dominate Degas’s late-career output (J. Sutherland Boggs, “The Late Years: 1890-1912” in Degas, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988, p. 481). Moving away from the more linear style that had defined his earlier work, the artist, here, has adopted a looser, more spontaneous approach that made color its central formal consideration. Instead of painting the elaborate, highly detailed sets that the Opéra was famous for, Degas instead provides only a vague sketch of his performers’ surroundings. The soft planes of yellow and ochre that define the scenery reveal the influence of Japonisme on Degas who, like his fellow Impressionists, admired Ukiyo-e prints for their flat planes of color and novel framing devices.
The emphasis on the decorative can also be seen in the painting’s frieze-like arrangement, a format Degas used from the late 1870s through the turn of the century, which imbues his scenes with a narrative quality. In Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra), this is further underscored by the horizontality of the composition, which lends itself to the various, concurrent actions that make up a performance: the frenzied action of being on stage and the brief respite of time in the wings.
Certainly, Degas was intrigued by all elements that constituted an evening at the Opéra. It is fitting that the artist would seek to paint all that he witnessed as no subject affected Degas more profoundly than the ballet. Scholars estimate that more than half his oeuvre was devoted to the world of dance, and the theme offered Degas seemingly infinite opportunities to represent the human body in motion. When asked by the art collector Louisine Havemeyer why he painted so many ballet dancers, Degas himself replied, “Because, madame, it is all that is left us of the combined movements of the Greeks” (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 2002, p. 234).
Danseuses (Les coulisses de l'Opéra) was previously in the collection of Adolphe and Elisabeth Friedmann. The Friedmanns were devoted art collectors and lenders, owning several paintings and drawings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Eugène Boudin, and Johan Jongkind in addition to a number of works by Degas, many of which were purchased from his second posthumous studio sale held in 1918.