Dancers as Degas Saw Them

Edgar Degas was born in Paris to a wealthy family of bankers in 1854. He received a thorough education in the classics, and after his father began to recognize his potential as an artist, he was encouraged to learn as much as he could from the famed art of the Italian Renaissance. For that reason, Degas’ earlier works are predominantly historical paintings of classic scenes. However, partially due to his budding friendship with the gutsy Édouard Manet, Degas eventually departed from historical painting and instead focused on modern life: laundresses, milliners, circus performers, horses, jockeys, and ballerinas. As his subject matter shifted, so did his style, becoming more gestural. Eventually, Degas became one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, although he preferred to be called a “Realist.”

Degas is best known for his robust series of ballerina themed paintings, pastels, and sculptures. His art explores the behind the scenes life at the Paris Opera during the late 19^th and early 20^th century, unveiling the world behind the graceful movement of the dancers on stage. The product of a peculiar fascination, Degas’ dancers were shocking to his original audience, for they challenged the conventional perception of ballet at the time in which they were created. While the general public saw mythological beauty, Degas saw grit. While the dancers were frequently hypersexualized, Degas saw exhausted human forms. While the public saw perfect uniformity and coordination in the final product, Degas saw tireless discipline and preparation. By his death in 1917, Degas had constructed an entirely new perception of ballerinas, and in so doing, offered unique insight that has shaped the way we perceive ballerinas today.

Artist: Edgar Degas

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer

Date: 1922 (cast), 2018 (tutu)

Medium: Partially tinted bronze, cotton tarlatan, silk satin, and wood

Ascension number: 29.100.370

As Edgar Degas observed the ballerinas at the Paris Opera, he was fascinated by the tension between graceful movement and muscular strain, discipline, and final product. He had seen this same dynamic in horses and jockeys but was most enamored by this element in the form of the ballet dancers. Originally sculpted in wax, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer perhaps most effectively portrays this juxtaposition with her rigid posture, the muscular toning of her limbs, and the look of weariness in her expression. The model for this sculpture was a young student at the Paris Opera, named Marie Van Goethem, who would have spent the vast majority of her time building up her agility and endurance. The diminutive form of the Little Dancer exemplifies all of the rigor that Degas' art sought to portray.  

The Vine

Artist: Harriet Whitney Frishmuth

Date: 1921; revised 1923: this cast 1924

Medium: Bronze

Ascension number: 27.66

In the eyes of the general public, a ballerina was expected to put on a certain mythological, nymph-like air. Regardless of how physically exerting her performance was, the audience could only see effortless agility and coordination. This sculpture is not of any particular dancer, but its model was Desha Delteil, a Slovenian ballerina, and it was inspired by the growing popularity of dancers like Anna Pavlova, a renowned Russian ballerina who rose to fame at the very beginning of the 20^th century. The body of this fantastical nude is smooth, and she does not seem to be straining herself at all. This ecstatic pose of apparent effortlessness is precisely what Edgar Degas’ audience would have expected to see when they first encountered his work.

Dancer Stretching

Artist: Edgar Degas

Date: c.1882-85

Medium: Pastel on pale blue-gray paper

Ascension number: AP 1968.04

This sketch is of an unknown model, and Degas never bothered to sign his signature on it. Even so, this study of a dancer mid-stretch exemplifies the kind of unedited moments that Degas was passionate about capturing. The goal of his art was to show the tedious labor behind the glamorous performance of every ballet on stage. This picture is of a hard-working ballerina, taking a moment to rub her head and stretch her exhausted limbs, a scene that Degas’ original audience would not have been accustomed to seeing at all.

Dora, from the Ballet Queens series

Issued by William S. Kimball and Company

Date: 1889

Medium: Commercial color lithograph

Ascension number: 63.350.216.182.18

Ballet dancers were frequently sexualized and viewed as a commodity, generalized as having the same reputation as the dancers at the Moulin Rouge several blocks away. This lithograph, which in reality was a form of pornography in that day, depicts ballerinas in a way that is rather toy-like and not at all accurate. This image would have been mass-produced and sold in packs similarly to how baseball cards are today. The image of this woman was clearly drawn up for someone’s pleasure and contrasts greatly with the images created by Degas.

The Ballet Class

Artist: Edgar Degas

Date: 1871-1874

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Musée d’Orsay 

This is a painting of about twenty dancers at the Paris Opera, receiving instruction from their director. In the way that Degas depicts this moment, each dancer is distinct in appearance and personality. Some Dancers stand, poised, ready to move into the next position of the choreography, while others sit, scratching their back or adjusting their costume. While this behind the scene look exposes his audience to what they would not normally apprehend, this entire image captures Degas’ appreciation of the extensive preparation behind every performance.

Opera Rats

Artist: Gustave Doré

Date: 1854

Medium: lithograph

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

The dancers in Gustave Doré’s satirical lithograph are like ghosts. Doré seems to be critiquing a common perspective that would imply that ballerinas lack individuality and that their work serves a very superficial purpose. They float across the stage in a uniform fashion, without exhibiting any emotion or any particular skill. These ballerinas are not athletic artists so much as they are mass-produced perfection, existing only for the entertainment and temporal pleasure of their audience. This is the very perception of ballerinas that Edgar Degas’ art sought to dispel.