Dancers in Pink

Considered to be the best draughtsman of his generation, Degas called his work the result of “premeditated instantaneousness.” At least half of his mature work was devoted to dance subjects, resulting in approximately 1,500 drawings, prints, pastels, and paintings. Degas’s preoccupation with dance was an aspect of modern life heretofore overlooked and thus constituted an entirely new theme in art. He created his works in a variety of media depicting all aspects of the ballet—classroom preparation and rehearsal, waiting in the wings, and sometimes, the performance itself. This work draws the viewer backstage, catching the eye with a central bright spot of paint for the dancer’s earring. Whereas the other Impressionists painted scenes from actual observation, Degas was not allowed to be in the wings of the theater to create his compositions from real life. Rather, he worked in his studio, where he made drawings and notes of models in sketchbooks and recreated poses typically assumed during practice and performances. Repetition in these drawings, in which a pose was exhaustively studied, served as building blocks, which he melded and composed into his finished works to create an illusion of spontaneity. Long before Hill-Stead acquired this painting, it was exhibited in the Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition in New York in 1883 to raise money for the pedestal base for the Statue of Liberty. One critic remarked about the “…repulsively real ballet girls [but] magnificently brushed in.” Whether Degas was depicting nudes or dancers, he characteristically drew them in realistic, contemporary settings, as opposed to the idealized, classical style that was accepted by the academics of his time.