Four Dancers
c. 1899 · Oil on canvas · National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
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About this work
- Artist
- Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
- Year
- c. 1899
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 151.1 × 180.2 cm
- Collection
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
- Movement
- Impressionism
Four dancers adjust the straps of their bodices as if about to step on stage, against a backdrop that could be painted scenery or an open landscape with haystacks under a fiery sky. Degas made it around 1899, late in his career, on a canvas a metre and a half high, and it is one of his most puzzling ballet pictures: the figures may be four women or a single dancer caught at successive moments, and the space never settles into a theatre. The hot, simplified colour and the heavy outlines belong to his last manner, in which the ballet became a pretext for pure painting. The painting stayed in his studio and was sold at the sale of his estate in 1918, bearing the atelier stamp. Chester Dale bought it from Durand-Ruel in 1931 and bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1963.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
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About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.





















