Frieze of Dancers
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
{"framed":{"height":1.03,"width":2.335,"depth":0.07},"unframed":{"height":0.7,"width":2.005}}
Classification
Painting
Department
Modern European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of the Hanna Fund
Accession Number
1946.83
Tags
About this artwork
This painting may depict a single dancer seen from four different viewpoints. The young woman is placed in an undefined setting, surrounded by mere wisps of color, applied so spontaneously that the paint ran and dripped. Degas even added the circles in the foreground with his thumb. Such audacity, while acceptable in a small sketch, must have shocked the artist's contemporaries when presented on a six-foot canvas. Equally radical is the idea of combining multiple views of a single figure. Degas'...