Ballet Dancer with Arms Crossed

Degas left this dancer unfinished, and the Museum of Fine Arts treats her as a window onto how he worked. The museum dates the canvas to about 1872. She stands with her arms crossed, a quiet, inward figure. Her skirt has almost no paint on it at all, only the pale preparation layer that covered the canvas before any colour went on. Her arms are still rough contours. According to the museum, Degas drew his outlines first and then worked area by area, building up the half tones that model a body in the round, so here the stages of that process sit side by side in one figure. The painting stayed in his studio for the rest of his life. In 2025 it travelled to Australia, lent to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.