The Impressionist movement, deeply embedded in the pulse of modern life, found inspiration in the vibrant scenes of theaters, café-concerts, and operas. Artists forged connections with the performers – actors, actresses, ballerinas, and singers – who populated these dazzling worlds. Among these artists was Edgar Degas, particularly drawn to the newly inaugurated opera house designed by Charles Garnier, an architectural marvel of Haussmann’s Paris. From 1874 onwards, Degas dedicated a significant portion of his artistic endeavors to the realm of ballet. For Degas, dance was not merely performance; it was an indispensable lens through which to study the human form in motion. He relentlessly sketched and painted ballerinas in their ever-shifting poses, capturing them in moments of rehearsal, onstage performances, dressing room preparations, or simply tying their shoes. His works are powerful testaments to the immense physical exertion and unwavering concentration demanded by ballet. Interestingly, Louisine Havemeyer, a close American friend of Mary Cassatt and an avid collector of Degas’s work, recounted a telling anecdote. When questioned about his persistent focus on ballerinas, Degas reportedly replied, “because, madame, it is only there that I can rediscover the movements of the Greeks.”
In Swaying Dancer, housed in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and also known as Dancer in Green, Degas offers us a glimpse into a stage performance, positioning the viewer as if observing from a side box within the opera house, offering both a privileged view of the stage and a tantalizing peek backstage. The audience remains unseen, yet their perspective is implicitly shared with ours. Degas’s utilization of a high, tilted vantage point became a signature technique, enabling him to capture his subjects in unexpected and dynamic postures.
Within the foreground of the painting, our attention is immediately drawn to a ballerina executed in full figure. She is captured mid-pirouette, arms raised, left leg extended in a complex and rapid spin. The other dancers in the foreground are intentionally cropped, presenting only fragments – glimpses of legs or sections of their tutus. Degas masterfully employs this fragmentation, leaving the complete figures and the entirety of their movements to the viewer’s imagination to complete. In contrast, the background reveals a line of dancers clad in orange, depicted frontally, in a state of repose. They are either awaiting their turn to perform or have just concluded their routine. The stage backdrop is rendered as an indistinct scene, suggestive of a rocky terrain interspersed with trees, yet it remains secondary to the dancers themselves in the overall composition.
This technique of figure shortening, a recurring motif throughout Degas’s ballet series, reveals the profound influence of Japanese prints and the burgeoning art of photography on his artistic vision. These influences propelled him to conceive a pictorial space where the central focus of action deviated from the traditional Western art convention of centering the subject. Degas sought to convey the inherent transience of reality, its perpetually shifting and incomplete nature, advocating for its depiction in a fragmented and momentary manner. Furthermore, the dramatic foreshortening and the swift gestures of the dancers effectively communicate a sensation of rapid movement, amplifying the instantaneous quality of the captured scene. The fleeting essence of the action is brilliantly conveyed through the light, agile brushstrokes made possible by pastels. Degas wielded this medium, which had gained popularity in eighteenth-century Europe for upper-middle-class portraiture, with unparalleled technical brilliance, elevating it to a status comparable to oil painting within the Impressionist movement. It is undeniable that Degas stood out as the preeminent master of pastel technique.
One of the earliest owners of this significant work was the British painter Walter Sickert, a fervent admirer of Degas. It is highly probable that Sickert acquired Swaying Dancer from Charles Ephrussi (1849–1905), a respected art historian, collector, and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. An insightful glimpse into the acquisition is provided by a letter from Sickert’s wife, Ellen, to their friend, the French painter Jacques-Émile Blanche. Shortly before the purchase, Ellen wrote, “We are delighted that Degas is selling — I think we shall end by giving up the dull necessities of life & buying one of his pictures ourselves! They haunt our imagination.” Swaying Dancer, which Sickert, possibly at Degas’s suggestion, renamed Dancer in Green, held a place of honor in his West Hampstead residence from the spring of 1886 onward. Following the couple’s divorce, the painting was inherited by Ellen’s sister, Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin, née Jane Cobden.
By Paloma Alarcó
