Edgar Degas - Dancers Climbing a Staircase Tile

Dancers Climbing a Staircase (Danseuses montant un escalier), painted between 1886 and 1890 in oil on canvas by French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. A procession of ballerinas moves upward across the unusually elongated horizontal canvas, which measures about 39 by 89.5 centimetres, each figure caught at a slightly different stage of the climb. The staircase converts an ordinary backstage passage into a sequence of repeated bodies, skirts and diagonals that suggests movement without showing a formal dance step. Degas crops figures and compresses the space so that the group reads almost like a moving frieze. The subject reflects his growing interest in the practical, unnoticed movements surrounding ballet as much as in performance itself.