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Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, 'Ballet Dancers', 1888

About the work

Dressed in vibrant orange and turquoise tutus, a frieze of five ballet dancers assemble off-stage after a demanding performance. Such dancers were an enduring inspiration for Degas who throughout his long career produced multiple studies, pastels and oil paintings of dancers rehearsing, performing and resting. The dancer, alone or in groups, provided the artist with unlimited opportunity to study the female figure, drapery and lighting effects.

This works shows the complex pastel technique favoured by Degas during the 1880s, layering, blending and smudging the tones to create the effect of rich, pulsating colour. The scene’s apparent naturalism belies careful composition. Sharp stabs of pure pastel bring out rich highlights. Degas made numerous studies of individual dancers, then combining them into such group sequences. This is one of five pastels showing this particular composition, none of them identical.

Key facts

Full title
Ballet Dancers
Artist
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Artist dates
1834 - 1917
Date made
1888
Medium and support
Pastel on paper
Dimensions
62.5 × 70.8 cm
Inscription summary
Signed
Acquisition credit
On loan from a private collection
Inventory number
L1250
Location
Not on display
Image copyright
On loan from a private collection, © Private collection
Collection
Main Collection

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

More works by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas

(Showing 6 of 16 works)
After the Bath, Woman drying herself
After the Bath, Woman drying herself
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
A woman sits beside a bath, drying her hair. She pitches forward, one arm raised to rub the towel on her neck, the other reaching back awkwardly, perhaps to steady herself or perhaps to grasp the towel on the back of the chair. The ungainly but authentic-looking pose makes it easy to believe that...
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At the Café de Châteaudun
At the Café de Châteaudun
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
This is an early example of Degas’s cafe or cafe-concert scenes. Cafes were an important part of Parisian social life, and also provided artists with a rich source of visual spectacle, characters and ‘types’.Two men seated at a corner table examine a newspaper. The figure facing us points to an a...
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Ballet Dancers
Ballet Dancers
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
The dancers in Degas’s painting are clouded in a mist of tulle, but two striking heads of red hair seem to anchor the blurred forms moving in space. Arms and legs curve and stretch, delicate white skirts toss and sway. The white tutus depicted here are the practice dress worn by the younger dance...
Room 43
Beach Scene
Beach Scene
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
A maid combs the hair of a girl who has been swimming; her bathing suit is stretched out on the ground to dry. Other objects – two parasols, a basket and a summer bonnet – are scattered around. A family group (some members wrapped in towels) is leaving the shoreline, as other people stroll in the...
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Carlo Pellegrini
Carlo Pellegrini
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Not on display
Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure')
Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure')
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Women combing their hair, or having it combed, often appear in Degas’s work, and this painting is one of his boldest treatments of the subject. A maid, wearing her servant’s uniform, combs the hair of her seated mistress, who is not yet fully dressed. Pulled back by the force of the strokes, the...
Room 45
Head of a Woman
Head of a Woman
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Not on display
Head of a Woman
Head of a Woman
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Not on display
Hélène Rouart in her Father's Study
Hélène Rouart in her Father's Study
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Hélène Rouart stands in her father’s study, her hands resting on the back of his empty chair. Works from his art collection can be seen behind her, including three Egyptian statues in a glass case and, above her, a Chinese wall hanging. Although Degas set down the final composition with little su...
Room 11
Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando
Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
The Cirque Fernando was built in 1875 near the Place Pigalle in Paris, close to where Degas lived. He saw Miss La La perform there several times. Born Anna Albertine Olga Brown (1858-1945), she was a mixed-race circus performer famous for her feats of strength. Olga is especially known as the inv...
Room 43
Peasant Girls bathing in the Sea at Dusk
Peasant Girls bathing in the Sea at Dusk
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Room 43
Portrait of Elena Carafa
Portrait of Elena Carafa
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Elena Carafa was Degas’s first cousin. Her mother, Stefanina, the Duchessa Montejasi-Cicerale, was the youngest sister of Degas’s father. Like many members of Degas’s family they lived in Naples, which Degas himself returned to in the winter of 1873–4, when he accompanied his dying father there....
Room 43
Princess Pauline de Metternich
Princess Pauline de Metternich
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Princess Pauline Sander (1836–1921) was the wife of Prince Richard Metternich, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at the court of Napoleon III from 1860 to 1871. Known as the ‘ambassadress of pleasure’, she was a glamorous figure in Parisian high society during the Second Empire. A pioneer of fashio...
Room 41
Promenade beside the Sea
Promenade beside the Sea
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
Room 39
Ukrainian Dancers
Ukrainian Dancers
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
In the late 1890s a number of dance troupes from Eastern Europe visited Paris and performed at the Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris and at a brasserie near Degas’s Montmartre home. This pastel may have been one of three showing ‘dancers in Russian costume’ that Degas showed a...
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Young Spartans Exercising
Young Spartans Exercising
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
The painting illustrates a passage from the Life of Lycurgus by the Roman historian Plutarch, which describes how Spartan girls were ordered to engage in exercise – including running, wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin – and to challenge boys. However, this may be a scene of courtship...
Room 41
You've viewed 6 of 16 works