Degas: “Russian Dancers” and the Art of Pastel

One of Degas’s great late works, Russian Dancers (about 1899), is on loan to the Getty Museum as the centerpiece of a special installation of late 19th-century pastels. In this pastel, Degas celebrates the rambunctious abandon, bright colors, and elaborate folk costumes of Russian—more accurately Ukrainian—peasant dancers, very much in contrast to the ethereal ballerinas for which he is famous. To Degas, the Russian peasants embodied the primitive and visceral human urge to dance. He captured this exuberance by applying layers of pure color on paper, artfully combining the immediacy of drawing with the vibrancy of painting.

Russian Dancers is joined by a selection of works from the permanent collection, as well as from private collections, which include Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s The Model Resting (1889) and Baronne de Domecy by Odilon Redon (about 1900).

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.