Ballet Dancers

Is this an outdoor scene?

No. The National Gallery of Art describes the dancers on a stage between two scrims representing trees, bushes and grass. Behind them, a backdrop suggests bushes and a mountain under a blue sky. ^[1]

George T. M. Shackelford also discusses these particular dancers as resting on stage in his 1984 catalogue, Degas: The Dancers. He reads their silhouettes against the stage scenery and treats the scene as an informal moment. ^[2]

Start with the complete composition. Find the orange costumes, then count the figures. Keeping the full scene in view makes it easier to see how the stage scenery partly hides the dancer who bends forward.

Find the bending dancer

The museum describes two dancers facing away from us and a third bending to adjust a shoe, with her face hidden behind the stage scenery. ^[1] Follow the orange and blue-green shapes through the group. Start at the left of the group, where the orange costume meets the brown stage scenery. Follow the reaching arm towards the shoe.

Compare the outlines of the costumes with the stage scenery beside them. Follow where one shape partly hides another.

Keep the cropped view beside the whole composition. The crop helps follow the overlapping figures, while the whole view retains the tree above them and the broader stage scenery.

What does “over monotype” mean?

The museum’s medium line is pastel and gouache over monotype. ^[1] It names added media as well as a printed starting image.

Heidi Hirschl’s explanation for the Museum of Modern Art describes monotype as a process in which ink or paint is worked on a plate and transferred to paper through a press. The transfer reverses the composition. The process typically yields a single print, also called an impression. ^[3]

The National Gallery’s exhibition on pastel explains that sticks can be made from pigment, filler and binder, and that artists apply pastel in several ways. ^[4]

The Museum of Modern Art’s 2016 Degas exhibition places his introduction to monotype in the mid-1870s and says he often used the medium as a starting point for reworking. ^[5] The National Gallery of Art object record states that this particular work has pastel and gouache over a monotype. ^[1]

Shackelford describes Ballet Dancers as a monotype almost completely covered with pastel. He identifies traces of the monotype at the angle of the tree at the top and on the rocklike stage flat at front. ^[2]

He argues that the figures were almost certainly added after the monotype was printed. ^[2]

How do the two approximate dates compare?

The NGA’s current record dates Ballet Dancers c. 1877. ^[1] Shackelford’s 1984 catalogue gives c. 1878. ^[2] The abbreviation means approximately. The dates quoted here are approximate rather than exact years.

Shackelford’s entry gives accession 1970.17.27 and dimensions of 29.7 by 26.9 cm. ^[2] The current museum record gives the same accession and labels its matching measurements as overall dimensions. ^[1] The older catalogue’s reproduction also matches the composition shown here. This page follows the holding museum’s current date and identifies the older date when discussing that publication.