Blue dancers edgar degas 1890 fashion

Blue Dancers

Ballerinas were perhaps Degas's favorite subject.

He was fascinated by their art and the unique expression they achieved with the human form. He painted them through a long stretch of his career; Dancers in Blue was painted towards the end.

Degas typically painted dancers backstage.

Blue dancers edgar degas 1890 fashion style

His goal was to capture their unique poses in a candid fashion, along with their surroundings and all the elements of the backstage scene. He essentially was painting candid snapshots of dancers practicing or preparing to perform.

Here, he abandons fine detail and anecdotal surroundings in favor of intense color and massively state figures. The group lacks the dramatic poses of his other works, but they convey an informal nonchalance that is in fact not dissimilar to an image of a dancer warming up.

Degas is capturing them in