Ballerina Posing for a Photographer
Ballerina Posing for a Photographer | |
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Artist | Edgar Degas |
Year | 1875 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 65 cm × 50 cm (26 in × 20 in) |
Location | Pushkin Museum, Moscow |
Ballerina Posing for a Photographer is an oil on canvas painting executed in 1875 by the French artist Edgar Degas. It depicts a young ballet dancer posing in front of a standing mirror; in the background, through a large window, is seen an elevated view of the walls of the houses opposite and the snow-covered rooftops of Paris. It is held in the Pushkin Museum, in Moscow.[1][2]
Description
In this work, Degas's relentless eye captures a sparsely furnished interior with a ballerina standing on a grayish wooden floor as the object of his attention. She is not displaying herself for an audience, but for a photographer who came to immortalize her in her work: therefore, she is looking for a nice position with the help of a mirror. As in other works by Degas, the dancer's gesture is not taken at the intense moment of an artistic performance, but when her limbs, exhausted, assume a strangely deformed, almost grotesque aspect.[3]
Provenance
The painting was first exhibited in London in the spring of 1875. It was sold by Durand-Ruel in 1902 to the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin for 35,000 francs, who displayed his extensive private collection to the public at his palace in 1909. After the Revolution in 1917, Shchukin left Russia and his collection was nationalized and his palace became a museum. In 1923 the collection was merged with that of Iwan Morozov. In 1948, they were divided between Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and the Degas piece ended up in the Pushkin Museum.[4]
References
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- The Bellelli Family (1858–1867)
- Young Spartans Exercising (1860)
- The Collector of Prints (1866)
- Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey (1866)
- Interior (1868–69)
- At the Races in the Countryside (1869)
- The Dancing Class (1870)
- The Orchestra at the Opera (c. 1870)
- Ludovic Lepic and His Daughters (1871)
- A Cotton Office in New Orleans (1873)
- The Dance Class (1874)
- The Ballet Class (1874)
- Ballerina Posing for a Photographer (1875)
- Place de la Concorde (1875)
- L'Absinthe (1876)
- The Dance Lesson (1879)
- Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879)
- Portraits at the Stock Exchange (1879)
- The Millinery Shop (1879–1886)
- Before the Race (1882–1884)
- Dancers Onstage (1889)
- Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs (1877)
- Les Choristes (1877)
- Singer with a Glove (1878)
- Waiting (1880–1882)
- Young Woman in Blue (1884)
- The Tub (1886)
- Woman in a Tub (1886)
- After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself (1890–1895)
- Blue Dancers (1897)
- Ukrainian Dancers (1890s series)
- The Impressionists (2006 series)
- The Line (2009 play)
- Little Dancer (2014 musical)
- Degas (crater)