On Stage I

1876

Edgar Degas

Artist, French, 1834 - 1917

We look up at a stage from an orchestra pit or the first row of seats in a theater in this horizontal etching and drypoint print. The forms of people along the bottom edge of the scene, the two ballerinas on stage, and the backdrop behind them are scratched and scrawled in, sometimes heavily, creating areas of inky black. Closest to us and at the bottom center of the paper, the tall neck of an upright bass rests on the shoulder of a bearded man, who we only see from the moustache up. To our left, the hair, forehead, and noses of two more heads face him, and another, to our right, faces away. The instrument’s scrolling headstock reaches halfway up the composition, and it mostly obscures the dancers, who wear light-colored bodices and knee-length tutus. The background is almost filled with dark, squiggly lines. The print is signed in the bottom right corner, “Degas.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    soft-ground etching and drypoint on wove paper

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    plate: 12 × 16.2 cm (4 3/4 × 6 3/8 in.)
    sheet: 16 x 24.5 cm (6 5/16 x 9 5/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.3.3364

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Reed/Shapiro 1984, no. 22, State i/v

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Richard H. Zinser, Forest Hills, NY); purchased by Lessing J. Rosenwald [1891-1979], 1940; gift to NGA, 1943.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1946

  • Music in Prints: Prints from the Rosenwald Collection, NGA, 1946

1951

  • French Nineteenth-century Exhibition, Maryville College, Maryville, TN, 1951, no catalogue.

1955

  • Edgar Degas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX, 1955, no cat.

1956

  • Art and the Theater, Watkins Gallery, American University, Washington, DC, 1956.

  • Prints by the French Impressionists from the Rosenwald Collection, NGA, 1956, no catalogue.

1960

  • Loan exhibition of Degas for the benefit of the Citizen's Committee for Children of New York, Inc., Wildenstein and Co., New York, 1960, no. 120.

1962

  • Installation during Fine Art Festival, American River College, Sacramento, CA, 1962, no cat.

1963

  • Renoir to Picasso 1914, Lowe Art Gallery at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 1963, no. 21.

1964

  • Etchings by Edgar Degas, The University of Chicago, 1964, no. 24.

1983

  • Night Prints, NGA, 1983, no. 47.

1984

  • Edgar Degas: The Painter as Printmaker, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery, 1984-1985, no. 22 (I), repro.

2014

  • Degas/Cassatt, NGA, 2014, no. 16, repro.

2015

  • Degas and the Dance, Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art, 2015-2016.

2019

  • Degas at the Opera, Musée d'Orsay, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2019-2020, no. 169, repro.

Bibliography

1906

  • Delteil, Loys. Le peintre-graveur illustre. 31 vols. Paris: Published by the author, 1906-1926. Reprint. New York: Collectors Editions, Da Capo Press, 1969. Vol. 30 (Albert Besnard) is by Louis Godefroy.

1984

  • Reed, Sue Welsh, and Barbara Stern Shapiro. Edgar Degas: The Painter as Printmaker. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984: no.22, State i/v.

Wikidata ID

Q64955684

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