# Dancers

**Edgar Degas** (French, 1834–1917)  
c. 1896  
pastel with charcoal on tracing paper mounted on paper and backed with gray board  
Sheet: 55.7 x 41.4 cm (21 15/16 x 16 5/16 in.)

Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.1043. [The museum's record](https://clevelandart.org/art/1916.1043).

## About this work

Degas depicted the ballet in more than 1,000 paintings, prints, pastels, and sculptures. He preferred private, offstage moments to glamorous curtain calls or artfully constructed compositions. Here, three dancers stretch together in the wings, unaware of the viewer’s presence. Powdery layers of yellow, orange, and pink pastel create a rough surface characteristic of Degas’s late work in the medium. He invented special techniques that allowed him to build layer upon layer of color with varying degrees of opacity and transparency. This pastel’s rich surface and intense, vibrating palette is the result of such innovative methods.

_Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art._

Edgar Degas drew this in about 1896, aged about 57. It is now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

### How it was made

- **Pastel.** Sticks of almost pure pigment with very little binder. The colour sits on the paper as powder: bright, matte and fragile.
- **Charcoal.** Burnt willow or vine. It smudges and wipes away easily, which made it the natural tool for working out a composition.

### [Edgar Degas](https://www.ochreeditions.com/artists/edgar-degas)

French, 1834–1917; born in Paris; died in Paris

Degas trained in the academic tradition, admired Ingres and spent three years in Italy copying earlier art, but turned to modern Paris for his subjects: dancers, racecourses, laundresses, milliners and café singers. He helped organise the Impressionist exhibitions and showed in all but one, yet preferred to call himself a realist. Working from drawing and memory rather than outdoors, he composed with unexpected cropping and viewpoints, and in later years worked mostly in pastel as his eyesight failed.

_Written by Ochre Editions._

## Facts

- Type: Drawing
- Culture: France, 19th century
- The artist was about 57
- Real size: about 22 × 16 in (56 × 41 cm). The 16 × 20 in print is close to life size.
- Century: 19th century
- Movement: [Impressionism](https://www.ochreeditions.com/movements/impressionism)
- Colour: brown
- Rights: public domain (CC0 1.0); free to use for any purpose.

## Get it

- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/463.jpg?dl=1
- Image: https://img.ochreeditions.com/a/463/1920.jpg
- Giclée reproduction on Hahnemühle Photo Rag: 8 × 10 in $28; 11 × 14 in $38; 12 × 16 in $42; 16 × 20 in $56; 18 × 24 in $68
- Framed reproduction: 8 × 10 in $78; 11 × 14 in $98; 12 × 16 in $108; 16 × 20 in $138; 18 × 24 in $164
- Canvas reproduction: 8 × 10 in $58; 11 × 14 in $72; 12 × 16 in $79; 16 × 20 in $98
- Print-ready file: 8 × 10 in $2; 11 × 14 in $2; 12 × 16 in $3; 16 × 20 in $3; 18 × 24 in $3

Sizes stop where the museum's file would print below 150 pixels per inch. Everything sold is a reproduction, made to order. [Order a print](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/dancers-cma-95271).