Description
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's unusual presentation may have been inspired by the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)
Provenance
(Durand-Ruel, Paris, France, acquired from the artist and sold to Paul Cassier the same day) (September 19,1904); (Paul Cassirer, Berlin Germany, sold to Max Liebermann) (November 21, 1904); Max Liebermann [1847-1935], Berlin, Germany, deposited to the Kunsthaus Zürich (1904-May 9, 1933); Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland (1933-1935); Kathe Riezler, Max Leibermann's daughter, [1885-1952] Berlin, Germany and New York, NY, by inheritance (on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, October 1941-October 1942). (1935-1946); (Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (-1946); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1946-)
Accession Number
1946.83
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
Framed: 103 x 233.5 x 7 cm (40 9/16 x 91 15/16 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 70 x 200.5 cm (27 9/16 x 78 15/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of the Hanna Fund
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting French
Background & Context
Background Story
The Frieze of Dancers compresses multiple ballet figures into a horizontal band — a compositional strategy Degas developed in the 1890s that recalls the low-relief friezes of ancient Greek architecture. The dancers are seen from above, cropped, and arranged in a shallow space that eliminates the stage's depth. This aerial perspective was Degas's invention: no one before him had thought to look at dancers this way, and every subsequent depiction of ballet in Western art owes something to Degas's compositional originality.
Cultural Impact
The frieze format allowed Degas to explore repetition and variation — his two great compositional obsessions. Each dancer is both like and unlike her neighbors, creating a rhythmic pattern that is almost musical. This serial approach anticipates both Monet's series paintings and Minimalist serial compositions of the 1960s.
Why It Matters
The Frieze of Dancers is Degas at his most architecturally minded. The composition borrows from ancient Greek relief sculpture to create something utterly modern: a dance of pattern and variation that is as much about painting as it is about ballet.
