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Four light-skinned ballerinas with russet-orange hair tied back in buns adjust the straps of their bodices as they gather close together, their bodies and wide, knee-length tutus taking up the left half of this horizontal painting. The background or backdrop beyond them shows a grove of deep green trees to our left and a sunset view of meadows leading back to trees to our right. Three of the dancers stand in a row that extends from the lower left corner to our right and away from us. All three wear rust-orange bodices over tutus that are painted loosely with flecks of pale celery green and buttercup yellow against a muted royal-blue background. Their bodices and upper bodies are outlined with black. The woman closest to us stands with her body angled to our right. Her face turns away as she looks to her left and adjusts that shoulder strap. The two dancers farther from us stand with their backs to us, their bodies angled away from us to our left. The middle dancer looks back over her right shoulder as she lifts the other elbow to adjust that strap. The third dancer in the row holds both hands to her right strap as she looks off into the distance, to our left. The fourth ballerina, to our far left beyond this trio, stands with the arm we can see, her left, lifted with her hand held high as she looks off to our right. Her bodice is a brighter carrot orange, and is more loosely painted. The green foliage behind the dancers extends off the top edge of the painting. The pale sage-green field to the right stretches before puffy, rounded trees daubed with mauve-pink highlights. The coral-pink and golden yellow sky is streaked with lavender-gray clouds. The artist signed his name in red paint with tiny, almost illegible letters in the lower right corner, “Degas.”

Four Dancers, c. 1899

Edgar Degas

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 83

Degas is famous for his depictions of ballerinas. This painting is one of his most perplexing examples. Four dancers appear together, adjusting their shoulder straps as if preparing to step onto the stage.

But is this a stage at all? Or is it an elaborate, dreamlike landscape with distant haystacks rising under a dramatically colored sky? Are these four separate women or a single dancer twirling through space and time? Art often blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. In this work, Degas invites us to decide which we are looking at.

Dive deeper

Degas studied his preferred subject, ballet performers, in hundreds of works. Four Dancers, one of the largest and most ambitious of his late works, exists in several variants that show different kinds and degrees of modification. While Degas suppressed descriptive detail elsewhere in the painting, emphatic dark lines shape the heads and arms, underlining the artist's formal concerns. Theatrical lighting over the off–stage performers recolors the figures and creates a simple color scheme of complementary red–orange and green hues.

Two of the figures repeat poses of a model who appears in a unique set of three photographic negatives. Shot between about 1895 and 1898, the original plates solarized into colors that resemble, in reverse, the oranges and greens in Four Dancers. Degas owned the photographic plates and may even have taken the pictures. The same model, hair piled on her head and features indistinct or hidden, posed for all three photographs, and the four dancers in the painting resemble her. Eadward Muybridge’s sequential photographs may also have influenced the arrangement of the four dancers, particularly his 1887 book, Animal Locomotion. Their poses, a succession of preparatory gestures, depict a progression of intricate movements.

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 151.1 x 180.2 cm (59 1/2 x 70 15/16 in.)

framed: 176.9 x 207.7 cm (69 5/8 x 81 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Chester Dale Collection

Accession Number

1963.10.122

Artists / Makers

Edgar Degas (artist) French, 1834 - 1917

Image Use

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Detail Information

Provenance

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas [1830-1917], Paris, France; (Degas sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 6 May 1918, no. 10); purchased by (Trotti et Cie., Paris). Wilhelm Hansen, Copenhagen. (Galerie Barbazanges, Paris). (Durand-Ruel, Paris); sold November 1931 to Chester Dale [1882-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.[1]

[1]Provenance according to Chester Dale papers and letter dated 18 May 1932 from Durand-Ruel, in NGA curatorial records. Sale to Chester Dale noted on the front page of Art News, 21 November 1931.

Associated Names

Dale, Chester
Degas, Edgar
Durand-Ruel et Cie
Galerie Barbazanges
Galerie Georges Petit
Hansen, Wilhelm
Trotti et Cie

Bibliography

1918: Lafond, Paul. Degas. 2 vols. Paris, 1918-1919: 1(1918):78, repro.

1930: Art News 28 (26 April 1930):repro

1941: Catalogue of French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 7, repro. pl. XIII

1942: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 39, repro.

1944: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1944: 39, repro.

1944: Jewell, Edward Alden. French Impressionists and their Contemporaries Represented in American Collections. New York, 1944: repro. 184.

1946: Lemoisne, Paul André. Degas et son oeuvre. 4 vols. Paris, 1946-1949: 3(1946):736, no. 1267, repro.

1953: French Paintings from the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1953: 48, repro.

1959: Evans, Grose. French Painting of the 19th Century in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Two in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 32, color repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 264, repro.

1965: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Paintings & Sculpture of the French School in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 78, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 39.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 32, repro.

1970: Minervino, Fiorella. L'opera completa di Degas. Milan, 1970: no. 1112, repro.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 98, repro.

1977: Reft, T. "Degas: A Master Among Artists." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Spring 1977): unpaginated, repro.

1979: Watson, Ross. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1979: 116, pl. 102.

1980: Kelder, Diane. The Great Book of French Impressionism. New York, 1980: 284, 306, 435, repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 476, no. 702, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 120, repro.

1991: Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 239-240, 242, color repro.

1992: National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 205, repro.

1995: Stuckey, Charles F. Claude Monet 1840-1926. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 1995: 221, repro.

1996: Kendall, Richard. Beyond Impressionism. Yale University Press, 1996:28, 38, 112, 119, repro.

1997: Kelder, Diane. The Great Book of French Impressionism, 1997, no. 271, repro.

1999: Vogel, Carol. "Finding Fashion and History on th Edges: Museums Look Again at Their Picture Frames." New York Times (September 2, 1999): C1, C3.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: book jacket back, 377, no. 311, color repros.