Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Although several members of the Impressionist circle painted the spectacles of the theater and the world of the Opéra, no other artist brought this environment so brilliantly to life as Degas. The artist was fascinated by all aspects of the ballet, both on--and off--stage, and illustrated every step from rehearsal to performance in more than fifteen hundred works in various media. As the contemporary critic Jules Claretie wrote in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts: "The ballet dancer deserves a special painter, in love with the white gauze of her skirts, with the silk of her tights, with the pink touch of her satin slippers, their soles powdered with resin. There is one artist of exceptional talent whose exacting eye has captured on canvas or translated into pastel or watercolor--and even, on occasion, sculpted--the seductive bizarreries of such a world. It is Monsieur Degas, who deals with the subject as a master" (quoted in R. Gordon and A. Forge, Degas, New York, 1988, p. 183). Degas's images of dancers, moreover, are among his most innovative works. Richard Kendall has explained, "Degas increasingly used the subject of the ballet to break new compositional ground or cross pictorial frontiers, such as those between pastel and printmaking or between the depiction of public spectacle and private behavior" (Degas and the Little Dancer, exh. cat., Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 1998, p. 3).

For Degas, part of the appeal of the world of dance was the endless opportunities for experimentation that it afforded him, allowing him to reposition dancers and rework settings. The present drawing is one of several the artist executed around 1895 depicting a cluster of kneeling dancers with arms outstretched (cf. Lemoisne, nos. 1209-1210, both of which, like Groupe de danseuses, also formerly belonged to the modernist dealer, Ambroise Vollard).