Edgar Degas - Dancers in blue

Dancers in Blue (Danseuses bleues), painted around 1890 in oil on canvas by French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. Blue-costumed ballerinas overlap in a shallow stage space, their bodies forming a dense pattern of curved arms, torsos and skirts. Degas reduces architectural detail so that colour and repeated poses carry the composition, making the dancers seem to merge with their surroundings. The painting belongs to a period when his ballet scenes became less narrative and more concerned with rhythm, surface and variations on familiar gestures. Although executed in oil, the broken, layered handling approaches the saturated colour and textured effect that Degas increasingly pursued in pastel.