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Lot Essay
Known to many as the painter of dance, Degas focused on the ballet throughout his career. His life-long commitment to this subject matter allowed him to develop his balletic vocabulary through its application to paintings, drawings, as well as sculpture. As a draughtsman, his skills were rooted in his time spent at the Académie and his practice of sketching from living models. Bolstered by this background, Degas sought above all to depict the mutable nuances of the dancers’ bodies.
The theme of the dancers had entered Degas' works almost incidentally, in his 1869 painting L'orchestre de l'Opéra (Lemoisne no. 182; Musée d’Orsay). That picture, showing Degas' musician friends playing their instruments, featured dancers in the background, as though this group portrait were instead a snapshot taken during a performance of the ballet. In 1872, Degas returned to the theme with another painting that was subsequently owned by the Havemeyers, Ballet de Robert le Diable (Lemoisne no. 295; The Metropolitan Museum of Art). From that point onwards, he became increasingly interested in avoiding the grandeur of the spectacle of the ballet and the prima ballerina, and instead focused on the minor players, on rehearsals, on the goings-on behind the scenes. In the later years, he became increasingly captivated by dancers at rest in informal positions, like the one portrayed in the present work. With rich contours and subtle bursts of color, the artist draws attention to the torques of the dancer’s limbs. Degas has blurred her facial features, reducing her face to a simple formula—as if her identity was less relevant than her body for his artistic needs.
In the late nineteenth century, the Paris Opéra was a main fixture in the Parisian cultural scene with a glamorous and well-heeled audience. The ballerinas entered the École de ballet around age seven and would go through rigorous selection and training before being approved for a career as a classical dancer. The process was physically demanding, and few students passed the entrance exams into the corps de ballet. The dancers were then classified into the following five categories by status: étoiles, premières danseuses, sujets, coryphées and quadrilles. Degas depicted each of them at one point in his career.
While some of his early works showing various aspects of the ballet were executed in oils, a confluence of events in the mid-1870s appears to have drawn him towards pastels. In the 1988 catalogue for the Degas exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was pointed out that in 1875 Emile Gavet had sold a large collection of pastels by Millet. At the same time, there had been a wave of concern about the impermanence of oils, about their potential to change color, as had happened in several of Manet's canvases. While some of these fears were doubtless exaggerated, this may nonetheless have encouraged Degas to explore a medium which at that point remained unfashionable, employed by few other than his friend Giuseppe De Nittis, who may likewise have provided an impetus. Within a short time he had more than mastered the medium, with an incredible versatility and virtuosity, prompting Renoir to declare: “When one sees his pastels!...To think that with a medium which is so unpleasant to handle, he has succeeded in rediscovering the tone of frescos” (quoted in G. Adriani, Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings, London, 1985, p. 62).
By the 1880s, Degas attained an international reputation for his signature theme after his participation in several of the 1870s Impressionist exhibitions where he showcased dancer subject pictures. In 1880, during the period that Danseuse debout, de profil was executed, the critic Jules Claretie was moved to enthuse: “The ballet dancer deserved a special painter, in love with the white gauze of her skirts, with the silk of her tights, which the pink touch of her satin slippers, their soles powdered with resin. There is one artist of exceptional talent whose exacting eye has captured on canvas or translated into pastel or watercolor—and even, on occasion, sculpted—the seductive bizarreries of such a world. It is Monsieur Degas, who deals with the subject as a master, and knows precisely how a ribbon is tied on a dancer's skirt, the wrinkle of the tights over the instep, the tension the silk gives to ankle tendons” (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, London, 1988, p. 183).
The theme of the dancers had entered Degas' works almost incidentally, in his 1869 painting L'orchestre de l'Opéra (Lemoisne no. 182; Musée d’Orsay). That picture, showing Degas' musician friends playing their instruments, featured dancers in the background, as though this group portrait were instead a snapshot taken during a performance of the ballet. In 1872, Degas returned to the theme with another painting that was subsequently owned by the Havemeyers, Ballet de Robert le Diable (Lemoisne no. 295; The Metropolitan Museum of Art). From that point onwards, he became increasingly interested in avoiding the grandeur of the spectacle of the ballet and the prima ballerina, and instead focused on the minor players, on rehearsals, on the goings-on behind the scenes. In the later years, he became increasingly captivated by dancers at rest in informal positions, like the one portrayed in the present work. With rich contours and subtle bursts of color, the artist draws attention to the torques of the dancer’s limbs. Degas has blurred her facial features, reducing her face to a simple formula—as if her identity was less relevant than her body for his artistic needs.
In the late nineteenth century, the Paris Opéra was a main fixture in the Parisian cultural scene with a glamorous and well-heeled audience. The ballerinas entered the École de ballet around age seven and would go through rigorous selection and training before being approved for a career as a classical dancer. The process was physically demanding, and few students passed the entrance exams into the corps de ballet. The dancers were then classified into the following five categories by status: étoiles, premières danseuses, sujets, coryphées and quadrilles. Degas depicted each of them at one point in his career.
While some of his early works showing various aspects of the ballet were executed in oils, a confluence of events in the mid-1870s appears to have drawn him towards pastels. In the 1988 catalogue for the Degas exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was pointed out that in 1875 Emile Gavet had sold a large collection of pastels by Millet. At the same time, there had been a wave of concern about the impermanence of oils, about their potential to change color, as had happened in several of Manet's canvases. While some of these fears were doubtless exaggerated, this may nonetheless have encouraged Degas to explore a medium which at that point remained unfashionable, employed by few other than his friend Giuseppe De Nittis, who may likewise have provided an impetus. Within a short time he had more than mastered the medium, with an incredible versatility and virtuosity, prompting Renoir to declare: “When one sees his pastels!...To think that with a medium which is so unpleasant to handle, he has succeeded in rediscovering the tone of frescos” (quoted in G. Adriani, Degas: Pastels, Oil Sketches, Drawings, London, 1985, p. 62).
By the 1880s, Degas attained an international reputation for his signature theme after his participation in several of the 1870s Impressionist exhibitions where he showcased dancer subject pictures. In 1880, during the period that Danseuse debout, de profil was executed, the critic Jules Claretie was moved to enthuse: “The ballet dancer deserved a special painter, in love with the white gauze of her skirts, with the silk of her tights, which the pink touch of her satin slippers, their soles powdered with resin. There is one artist of exceptional talent whose exacting eye has captured on canvas or translated into pastel or watercolor—and even, on occasion, sculpted—the seductive bizarreries of such a world. It is Monsieur Degas, who deals with the subject as a master, and knows precisely how a ribbon is tied on a dancer's skirt, the wrinkle of the tights over the instep, the tension the silk gives to ankle tendons” (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, London, 1988, p. 183).