Edgar Degas - Dancers Notebook

Dancers / Group of Dancers (Danseuses / Groupe de danseuses), made between 1884 and 1885 in pastel on paper by French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. Resting ballerinas form a compact group in which overlapping poses matter more than individual identities. Strong backlighting reduces faces and bodies to simplified shapes, allowing flashes of red, yellow and green to carry much of the visual energy. Around this period Degas was compressing depth and concentrating on fewer figures, a shift towards the more monumental and repeated dance motifs of the 1890s. This pastel is unusual within that development because the composition remained unique rather than becoming the basis for a series of close variants.