Dancer Adjusting Her Dress
Edgar Degas, Dancer Adjusting Her Dress, ca. 1885, pastel on paper, Bequest of Winslow B. Ayer, public domain, 35.42
This work is not currently on view.
- Title
Dancer Adjusting Her Dress
- Artist
- Date
ca. 1885
- Medium
pastel on paper
- Dimensions (H x W x D)
display: 24 1/4 in x 18 1/4 in
- Inscriptions & Markings
watermark: MICHALLET, upper left corner; down left side
signature: Degas, pastel, lower right
- Collection Area
European Art; Graphic Arts
- Category
Drawings
- Object Type
drawing
- Culture
French
- Credit Line
Bequest of Winslow B. Ayer
- Accession Number
35.42
- Copyright
public domain
- Terms
The ballet was a favorite theme for Edgar Degas, whose body of work included approximately 1500 representations of dance subjects. Like other artists and writers of the late nineteenth century attracted to the social milieu of the ballet world, Degas recorded what only the most privileged were allowed to see—intimate glimpses of the classroom and the foyer beyond the stage, where dancers stretched, practiced, and flirted with their aristocratic patrons between performances. Dancer Adjusting her Dress is characteristic of Degas’s interest in the idiosyncratic and the individual, depicting the unguarded and natural gesture of a dancer as she rests during rehearsal.
- Exhibitions
2003 Paris to Portland: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masters in Portland Collections Portland Art Museum
2008 The Dancer: Degas, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec Portland Art Museum
