NOTES
This densely rendered pastel of two ballet dancers warming up is representative of the last two decades of Edgar Degas’ career. His focus narrowed in on two of the many subjects from his Impressionist years: dancers and nudes. He continued to paint with oils on canvas, but he also created many more pastels on paper with painterly scale and ambition.
Degas was quoted as saying that his pictures were made through a “series of operations,” which suggests a complex and layered process. This statement is borne out in his pastels, which, contrary to custom, were drawn on tracing paper. This choice allowed him to trace and transfer figures from one drawing to another; he also enjoyed the smoother texture of tracing paper, which did not absorb the pigment.
