Group of Four Dancers

This drawing, a preparatory study for a pastel, is related to many other works that Edgar Degas executed around 1902 of groups of half-figure dancers in various positions. The artist's life-long fascination with dance began in the 1860s when he frequently attended the ballet, as well as the opera, café-concerts, and the circus. These performances provided Degas with endless sources of inspiration, and he was able to gain access to the backstage areas and practice rooms of the ballet, where he could study the young dancers in their more unguarded moments.

In his drawings, Degas developed a repertoire of poses that he used in later works. He often depicted dancers not actually performing, but resting, which is the case here, as the group of tightly massed dancers stand, with two figures in front adjusting their costumes. The small cluster of girls seems to have gathered during a break; they are facing different directions and look neither at each other, nor at the viewer. The final work for which this is a study is Dancers in Blue, formerly in the Edsel and Eleanor Ford collection, Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, and now in a private Michigan collection. The width of the two is identical, and the pastel is cut off at the position of the horizontal crease on the Oberlin drawing, near the outstretched hand at top right.

The drawing was purchased by the AMAM from the Marie Harriman Gallery in New York in 1940. Harriman was the wife of the prominent Washington diplomat and statesman Averell Harriman. It had been part of the third Degas estate sale in 1919.