Ballerine

Degas was in his mid-fifties around 1890 and his eyesight was going. He complained about it constantly in letters, and he built pictures like this one out of poses he had drawn many times over rather than from anything standing in front of him. The dancers here are not performing. They are in the wings, one pulling at a shoulder strap, another at a skirt, in the last minutes before they are wanted. The blue of the costumes is the only strong note in the canvas, and the painted flat behind them is left looking exactly like a painted flat. A Paris doctor, Albert Charpentier, and his wife gave the picture to the French state in 1951.