EDGAR DEGAS | Danseuse à la rose

Private Collection, Paris (acquired by 1951)
Simon Dickinson, Inc., New York
Acquired from the above on February 22, 1999

Bern, Berner Kunstmuseum, Edgar Degas, 1951-52, no. 156 
San Antonio, McNay Art Institute, CG XIII, 1979, no. 50

Executed on blue laid paper. The sheet is adhered to a thin piece of paper along all four edges of its verso. This supporting piece of paper has in turn been t-hinged to a mount at two places along the top edge of its verso. All four edges of the sheet are deckled. The sheet is time struck overall. There are scattered spots of foxing throughout, primarily in the bottom half of the sheet. The work is in good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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No other subject features as prominently in Degas' oeuvre as the ballerina, whose lithe body and theatrical gestures fascinated the artist throughout his long career. Images of dancers overwhelmed his later production, as he experimented with rendering these young women in various media including oil, pastel and photography. Degas would often meet his models backstage after the ballet, sketching them while they stretched, relaxed or collapsed with exhaustion from their performance. In the present work, Degas captures a dancer in a moment of pure pleasure, smelling a rose that probably had been thrown onto the stage after a performance.  Behind-the-scenes participation at the Garnier Opera performances allowed Degas access to details of the dancers' practices that were otherwise unseen. By the late 1870s and into the 1880s he attended both the performances and rehearsals, and he became well-known among the members of the company. With such privileged access he could render the dancers with his pastels in the midst of a staged production and in their more intimate moments when their movements were wholly unchoreographed. As Richard Kendall and Jill De Vonyar write: "no one observed more closely than Degas...the process by which 'common' Opéra dancers were transformed—through makeup, stylized costumes, and the distance between the proscenium and the audience—into 'priestesses of grace'. Much of his own art was concerned with this metamorphosis: research has increasingly revealed the extent to which his performance images were rooted in firsthand experience of the state rather than in his painterly imagination" (Degas and the Dance (exhibition catalogue), The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit & Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2002, p. 157).



The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Galerie Brame & Lorenceau.