The Four Dancers

Degas painted The Four Dancers around 1899, when he was in his mid-60s and nearly blind. It is one of his largest and boldest late works, and it shows how far he had moved from the careful compositions of his early career. Four ballet dancers stand in a row, seen from behind and to the side. Three are in the foreground, their tutos a bright yellow-orange against a green and red background. The fourth dancer is behind them, her face turned toward the viewer. The stage is suggested by a diagonal of red at the upper right and a dark area at the left. The canvas is large, roughly 60 by 71 inches, landscape format. The colors are saturated and the brushwork is loose, with the dancers' bodies built in broad strokes of paint. Degas had been painting dancers since the 1870s. By the 1890s, his eyesight was deteriorating from retinal disease, and his work became rougher and more abstract. He stopped working from careful observation and painted from memory and from earlier studies. The Four Dancers is built from elements he had used many times before, but the execution is new: the colors are hotter, the forms less defined, the composition less stable. French painting at the end of the 19th century was moving toward the Fauvism of Matisse and the Expressionism of the early 20th century. Degas was not part of any movement, but his late paintings, with their intense color and loose brushwork, point toward the direction French art would take after his death in 1917. Oil on canvas, 151 by 180 centimeters. Degas painted in thick layers, with the tutus built in heavy strokes of yellow and orange. The faces are barely indicated, with the features suggested by a few marks. The background is a field of green and red, with no spatial depth. This painting works in a living room, hallway, or studio. The bright colors and large scale suit a room with white walls and minimal furniture. The 18x24 framed version in a white frame complements the palette. The painting is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Chester Dale Collection. This is a public domain artwork, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.