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Lot Essay
From his first encounters with the ballet, Edgar Degas had been captivated by the fascinating world of the dance, drawn to the spectacle of the performances as they played out across the illustrious stages of Paris. While his Impressionist contemporaries—such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir—were obsessed with sunlight, seeking to capture its ephemeral effects on the world around them, Degas found infinite artistic potential in the shadowy corners of the much revered and frequented Paris Opera, from the stage wings, to its dressing rooms, to the private rehearsal studios. He quickly realized that the ballet offered him a subject that could set him apart from the rest of the avant-garde, as well as facilitating a complete immersion in his primary love: the depiction of the human form. As a result, these works became the site of Degas’s most daring and advanced artistic innovations, as he experimented with unexpected compositional and framing devices, adopted new perspectives and lighting effects, and delved into the visual possibilities of a range of diverse materials and media.
Executed circa 1879 and held in the same family collection for almost ninety years, Danseuses sur la scène is an exquisite example of the nuance and technical agility that characterized Degas’s work during this period. The composition depicts a coterie of dancers on stage, separated into two distinct groups. Towards the center of the sheet, a trio of women perform a carefully choreographed sequence of steps, their bodies packed tightly together as they elegantly maneuver themselves into the correct position. Behind, a line of performers in vibrant yellow, orange and blue wait for their turn to dance, their casual stances suggesting Degas has captured a scene from the middle of a rehearsal. Alternating between vigorous strokes of vibrant pastel and thin, tremulous lines of red chalk, the artist conjures an impression of their colorful costumes, from the wide, frothy layers of their tutus to the delicate scalloped necklines of their dresses. In particular, the touches of bright, cobalt blue and periwinkle in the skirts and bodices of the central trio catch the eye, contrasting against the passages of soft mauve and negative space of the sheet, lending the tutus a sense of density and weight.
Danseuses sur la scène is closely related to another work on paper by Degas, now held in the collection of the Cincinnati Museum of Art, which explores a similar pairing of three central dancers positioned high on the sheet, while a secondary row of figures in different costumes stand behind. While the two works share a number of striking similarities, particularly in the poses and silhouettes of the dancers, they also contain intriguing divergences, as Degas edited and altered certain elements to create a different range of visual tensions. For example, in the present Danseuses sur la scene, the woman to the left of the front group is filled with a distinct sense of energy as she twists dynamically to her left, her face hidden behind the outstretched arm of the lead dancer, as her own arms reach past her hips towards the edge of the skirts. These correspondences and disparities reveal Degas’s interest in exploring variation rather than repetition in his work, as he diligently revised and reworked a pose or motif to test its visual potential. “Make a drawing, begin it again, trace it, begin it again, and trace it again,” he later explained of his process (quoted in P. Lafond, Degas, Paris, 1918-1919, vol. 1, p. 20). As curator Jodi Hauptman has noted, “The results are chains of images—of ballerinas and bathers, alone or in ensembles—each both the same as and different from others in the group, proving that Degas saw iteration as an end in itself rather than a step toward something final or finished” (Degas: A Strange New Beauty, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016, p. 17).
Using a mixture of gouache, watercolor, pastel, pen, red chalk, charcoal and pencil, as well as traces of ink that suggest a lithographic or monotype base, Danseuses sur la scène is a remarkable example of the highly experimental approach to materials that marked Degas’s output during the late 1870s. It was common for Degas to mixed several techniques within a single image, moving seamlessly between drawing, print-making, painting or pastels, to create a complex, richly layered composition that emphasizes the tactility of his materials and challenges the eye. As a result, Degas’s works on paper from this period pose an intriguing challenge to viewers and scholars alike, as they attempt to tease apart his working method, and better understand his unique approach to his matière. In many instances, Degas deployed monotype printing to allow him to create multiple versions of the same core image over several sheets, creating double, triple and even in some cases quadruple, versions of a motif, in which the traces of ink disperse and disappear slightly further with each impression. Degas would then use these as a framework from which to further develop the image, taking a pencil, chalk or a brush to refine and rework the contours of his figures. Working in an instinctual and highly experimental manner, he would then add passages of color in a variety of media to fill out the image, creating a dynamic, layered surface that played with the opacity and texture of his materials.
In Danseuses sur la scène, this complex interplay of pigment results in an intriguing approach to form and sense of definition across the sheet. The clarity of the lines in red chalk and pencil emphasize the contours of the figures, yet at the same time, Degas blurs the boundaries between the dancers’ forms, contracting the space between the central trio of dancers and allowing their tutus to become a single, large masse of tulle, making it difficult to discern where one dancer begins and another ends. The work was acquired in 1937 by Elizabeth Paine Metcalf, daughter of the esteemed, Boston-based collector Robert Treat Paine II, who built an extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works through the 1920s and 1930s that included masterpieces by Degas, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. Robert Treat Paine II passed his great love of art down to his children, and Elizabeth began her own collecting journey not long after, acquiring works that complemented her father’s interests, while also embracing a new generation of artists. She continued her family’s legacy as a generous, erudite supporter of the arts, donating multiple artworks to The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston through the years.
Executed circa 1879 and held in the same family collection for almost ninety years, Danseuses sur la scène is an exquisite example of the nuance and technical agility that characterized Degas’s work during this period. The composition depicts a coterie of dancers on stage, separated into two distinct groups. Towards the center of the sheet, a trio of women perform a carefully choreographed sequence of steps, their bodies packed tightly together as they elegantly maneuver themselves into the correct position. Behind, a line of performers in vibrant yellow, orange and blue wait for their turn to dance, their casual stances suggesting Degas has captured a scene from the middle of a rehearsal. Alternating between vigorous strokes of vibrant pastel and thin, tremulous lines of red chalk, the artist conjures an impression of their colorful costumes, from the wide, frothy layers of their tutus to the delicate scalloped necklines of their dresses. In particular, the touches of bright, cobalt blue and periwinkle in the skirts and bodices of the central trio catch the eye, contrasting against the passages of soft mauve and negative space of the sheet, lending the tutus a sense of density and weight.
Danseuses sur la scène is closely related to another work on paper by Degas, now held in the collection of the Cincinnati Museum of Art, which explores a similar pairing of three central dancers positioned high on the sheet, while a secondary row of figures in different costumes stand behind. While the two works share a number of striking similarities, particularly in the poses and silhouettes of the dancers, they also contain intriguing divergences, as Degas edited and altered certain elements to create a different range of visual tensions. For example, in the present Danseuses sur la scene, the woman to the left of the front group is filled with a distinct sense of energy as she twists dynamically to her left, her face hidden behind the outstretched arm of the lead dancer, as her own arms reach past her hips towards the edge of the skirts. These correspondences and disparities reveal Degas’s interest in exploring variation rather than repetition in his work, as he diligently revised and reworked a pose or motif to test its visual potential. “Make a drawing, begin it again, trace it, begin it again, and trace it again,” he later explained of his process (quoted in P. Lafond, Degas, Paris, 1918-1919, vol. 1, p. 20). As curator Jodi Hauptman has noted, “The results are chains of images—of ballerinas and bathers, alone or in ensembles—each both the same as and different from others in the group, proving that Degas saw iteration as an end in itself rather than a step toward something final or finished” (Degas: A Strange New Beauty, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016, p. 17).
Using a mixture of gouache, watercolor, pastel, pen, red chalk, charcoal and pencil, as well as traces of ink that suggest a lithographic or monotype base, Danseuses sur la scène is a remarkable example of the highly experimental approach to materials that marked Degas’s output during the late 1870s. It was common for Degas to mixed several techniques within a single image, moving seamlessly between drawing, print-making, painting or pastels, to create a complex, richly layered composition that emphasizes the tactility of his materials and challenges the eye. As a result, Degas’s works on paper from this period pose an intriguing challenge to viewers and scholars alike, as they attempt to tease apart his working method, and better understand his unique approach to his matière. In many instances, Degas deployed monotype printing to allow him to create multiple versions of the same core image over several sheets, creating double, triple and even in some cases quadruple, versions of a motif, in which the traces of ink disperse and disappear slightly further with each impression. Degas would then use these as a framework from which to further develop the image, taking a pencil, chalk or a brush to refine and rework the contours of his figures. Working in an instinctual and highly experimental manner, he would then add passages of color in a variety of media to fill out the image, creating a dynamic, layered surface that played with the opacity and texture of his materials.
In Danseuses sur la scène, this complex interplay of pigment results in an intriguing approach to form and sense of definition across the sheet. The clarity of the lines in red chalk and pencil emphasize the contours of the figures, yet at the same time, Degas blurs the boundaries between the dancers’ forms, contracting the space between the central trio of dancers and allowing their tutus to become a single, large masse of tulle, making it difficult to discern where one dancer begins and another ends. The work was acquired in 1937 by Elizabeth Paine Metcalf, daughter of the esteemed, Boston-based collector Robert Treat Paine II, who built an extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works through the 1920s and 1930s that included masterpieces by Degas, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. Robert Treat Paine II passed his great love of art down to his children, and Elizabeth began her own collecting journey not long after, acquiring works that complemented her father’s interests, while also embracing a new generation of artists. She continued her family’s legacy as a generous, erudite supporter of the arts, donating multiple artworks to The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston through the years.