Christie's

Edgar Degas, "Danseuses ŕ la barre" (1877-79)

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When this pastel of ballet dancers sold for $1.45 million at Christie’s New York in 1982, it set a salesroom record for Degas. Dating from the artist’s best period, the work was once owned by the great early collector of Degas Louisine Havemeyer, the wife of the sugar magnate H. O. Havemeyer, who was advised on her purchases by the artist Mary Cassatt.

Degas’s images of dancers are among his most innovative works. The modernity and realism of Danseuses à la barre is accentuated by the almost photographic cropping of the right-hand figure. Despite the appearance of spontaneity, enhanced by the use of pastel, the composition is highly calculated, based on models who posed in the artist’s studio and who are rendered in precise detail, as in the left-hand dancer’s profile, wrist and bracelet, all outlined in charcoal.

Although Degas completed more than 1,500 works, in various mediums, depicting the ballet, Danseuses à la barre is one of very few finished early pastels of dancers to be offered at auction. Only seven or eight have come up in the past 12 years; one of those works, Danseuses au repos, holds the current record for the artist, selling in 1999 at Christie’s London for £17.6 million ($28.4 million), far above its estimate (£5–7 million; $8–11 million). The present work is the best example to be put on the block since then, says Olivier Camu, the head of the Impressionist department at Christie’s London.

"London Sales Preview" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.