Ballet Dancers

This pastel is one of the National Gallery's newest arrivals. It came to the nation in 2025 from the estate of the collector Ann Marks, under a British scheme that lets heirs pay inheritance tax with works of art. Four dancers rest in the wings in orange and turquoise tutus. The edge of the sheet cuts them off at the lower right, and the hair of a fifth dancer just shows. It reads like a quick glance backstage. The gallery points out that each figure actually comes from earlier studies of single dancers, which Degas kept and reused in several finished works. By 1888 pastel had become his main medium, and here he built it up in layers, blending and smudging one colour into the next.